Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Breitbart Big Government: People can speculate as to what their motive is, but we suspect that they do not want to jeopardize their White House access leading into campaign season by being the ones to release the audio of His Presidency referring to Americans as “slugs.”

AP: A former Rutgers University freshman was indicted Wednesday on a hate crime charge after allegedly using a webcam to spy on a same-sex encounter involving his roommate, who committed suicide shortly afterward in a case that started a national conversation on bullying.

ACLU: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court today ruled in an American Civil Liberties Union case that the mere smell of marijuana no longer justifies a search or seizure, because the possession of a small quantity of marijuana is no longer criminal in Massachusetts.

AP: Tea party supporters in Arizona could show off their affinity for the movement on their vehicles if Gov. Jan Brewer signs a bill sent to her Wednesday creating a special “Don’t Tread On Me” license plate.

UPI reports and includes photo.

The Hill: Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) applauded his state’s governor, Jan Brewer (R), Monday for vetoing a controversial “birther” bill. The legislation, the first of its kind in the nation, would have required presidential candidates to prove their citizenship to be included on the state’s ballot.

Washington Post: The Obama administration privately urged Standard & Poor’s in recent weeks not to lower its outlook on the United States — a suggestion the ratings agency ignored Monday, two people familiar with the matter said.

Politico: A whopping 48 percent of Iowa Republicans said they don’t believe that Obama was born in the United States, according to the automated survey by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling out Tuesday. Another 26 percent said they weren’t sure whether or not the president was born in America as the Constitution requires to be eligible to serve in the nation’s highest office.

Rasmussen Reports: Perhaps the most stunning data point is that even among people who bought their home more than five years ago, just 52% believe their home is worth more than the mortgage. Among those who purchased a home three to five years ago, 64% think they owe more than it’s worth. Overall, 36% of all homeowners now believe their home is worth less than the mortgage.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, “companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million.” That’s in stark contrast from a decade ago, when for every job U.S. multinational companies created abroad, they created nearly two jobs here in America, according to economist Matthew Slaughter.

NCPA Policy Digest: Taxpayers must spend significantly more than $1 in order to provide $1 of income tax revenue to the federal government, says Arthur B. Laffer, the chairman of Laffer Associates.

AP: Records obtained by The Associated Press show that over the past 13 years, a little-known Philadelphia company called PrimeTel Communications has quietly gained control over nearly a quarter of all the 1-800 numbers . . .

AZ Republic: Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday shot down an effort by the Arizona Legislature to require presidential candidates to provide proof of citizenship in order to get on the state’s ballot.

Christian Science Monitor: Will the U.S. lose its status as the safest place to invest? That was the question for Fast Money traders Monday morning after Standard & Poor’s analysts cut the U.S. long-term debt outlook rating to negative from stable.

AP: epublicans have moved quickly to convert November election gains to legislative advances in the states. A look at some GOP successes, and setbacks, in the first months of the new order . . .

Seattle PI: “Following a letter from federal prosecutors to Gov. Chris Gregoire which said Uncle Sam could and would go after medical marijuana users and providers, the ACLU of Washington sent a fact sheet to state senators saying such claims are not backed up by the federal government’s behavior.”

Yahoo News (AP): There are so many breaks that 45 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax for 2010, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank

Bloomberg: Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia attorney general challenging President Barack Obama’s health- care overhaul, is quick to agree that his request for fast-track review by the U.S. Supreme Court is a long shot.

Findlaw (AP): “State by state, Republicans are moving at light speed on a conservative agenda they would have had no hope of achieving before the big election gains of November. The dividends are apparent after only a few months in office, and they go well beyond the spending cuts forced on states by the fiscal crunch and tea party agitation.”

CNBC: “Because the U.S. has, relative to its ‘AAA’ peers, what we consider to be very large budget deficits and rising government indebtedness and the path to addressing these is not clear to us, we have revised our outlook on the long-term rating to negative from stable,” the agency said in a statement.

Wall Street Journal: There haven’t been any major earthquakes or wildfires in California recently, but teachers apparently think that the potential budget cuts to education merit a “State of Emergency Week.” The California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, is planning a week of activities in May. The goal is to pressure Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and the state legislature to raise taxes rather than cut education spending.

Wall Street Journal: The mathematical reality is that in the absence of entitlement reform on the Paul Ryan model, Washington will need to soak the middle class—because that’s where the big money is.

Wall Street Journal: A new state law has emboldened the Detroit mayor and schools chief to take a more aggressive stance toward public unions as the city leaders try to mop up hundreds of millions of dollars in red ink.

East Valley Tribune: Assistant Attorney General Tony West told U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton she has no legal authority to review the state’s contention that Arizona is under invasion and that the federal government is not doing its job. He said issues of what the federal government is – and is not – doing to secure the border are “non-justiciable political questions.”

Boston Globe: Opponents of Ohio’s new collective bargaining law won approval Friday to move forward with their effort to get a referendum on the ballot this November, and they say they have 10,000 volunteers ready to gather signatures.

ABC: The gold standard, a monetary system in which the dollar is valued against a certain weight of gold, lasted until the Great Depression, when the Federal Reserve confiscated gold held by the public. President Nixon abolished the conversion of dollars to gold at a fixed rate in 1971.

The Hill: Two House Republicans weighing 2012 presidential campaigns voted against a long-term budget deal Thursday that has garnered opposition from grassroots conservatives.

AZ Republic: The Arizona Legislature has become the first in the nation to pass a measure requiring presidential candidates to provide proof of citizenship in order to get on the state’s ballot. House Bill 2177 got final approval Thursday night . . .

Reuters: The Wisconsin judge who blocked the implementation of the state law limiting collective bargaining by public workers threw out one of the three lawsuits on Thursday challenging the controversial measure.

The Hill: The House on Thursday passed a bill reflecting last week’s agreement to fund the federal government for the rest of fiscal year 2011, in a 260-167 vote in which most Republicans supported it, and most Democrats opposed it even though it was brokered by President Obama and has the support of Democratic leaders in Congress.

USA Today: Only 45.4% of Americans had jobs in 2010, the lowest rate since 1983 and down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000. Last year, just 66.8% of men had jobs, the lowest on record.

Jason Bradley writes at Breitbart Big Government: The state of our national government is in shambles. We are so far removed from the traditional political divide. To explain what is going on in Washington would require use of a metaphor such as The Mariana Trench to explain it. The Democrats might as well be speaking Mandarin and the Republicans, Latin. The American people as a consequence are, of course, def, blind, and dumb. Our politics has really devolved into the ‘us-them’ model and the only real losers are the American people.

NCPA: Concerns have long been voiced that workers with employer-based insurance may be reluctant to leave their jobs to start new businesses because of the high cost of premiums or the possibility of disrupting or losing insurance coverage — a phenomenon referred to as “entrepreneurship lock,” says the Kauffman-RAND Institute for Entrepreneurship Public Policy.

Roll Call: Republican won 24 of the 37 Senate contests last year, giving them a head start not only on winning a Senate majority in 2012 but possibly winning a 60-seat supermajority two years later.

Wall Street Journal Editorial: Mr. Obama then packaged his poison in the rhetoric of bipartisanship—which “starts,” he said, “by being honest about what’s causing our deficit.” The speech he chose to deliver was dishonest even by modern political standards.

The Hill: The data mining will be driven by keywords, including lawmakers’ names, and also by threatening terms such as “kill,” “slash” and “shoot.” Asked at what point comments would require further attention, Gainer said it would be depend on the situation.

Houston Chronicle: Kobe Bryant has been fined $100,000 by the NBA for using a derogatory gay term in frustration over a referee’s call.

AP: “An advocacy group has filed 13 civil rights complaints on behalf of homosexual and transgender immigrants who it says were abused and neglected while in custody at detention centers run by the Department of Homeland Security in nine states.”

AP on ABC15: The Arizona Senate has approved a revised bill requiring presidential candidates to prove they are U.S. citizens eligible to run for the office.

Wall Street Journal: “Here is the prepared text of President Barack Obama’s speech on the deficit, as released by the White House . . . ”

AP: “Volunteers with Citizens for a Better Arizona official said Tuesday they already have two-thirds of the 7,756 verified signatures required by May 31 to set a recall election for Republican Russell Pearce, who is the president of the Arizona Senate.”

Boston Globe: A bill that would end the practice of requiring non-union members to pay a share of collective bargaining costs in New Hampshire won the support of a key Senate committee Tuesday.

Washington Post: In detailing his opposition to the fiscal year 2011 budget negotiated by the White House and congressional leaders, Rand wrote: “I didn’t come to Washington to settle for $6 billion less in spending than if I had not been here” — a reference to the roughly $33 billion in cuts initially proposed by House Republican leaders before House freshmen objected. “I suspect most of my freshmen House friends didn’t, either. That’s barely half a day’s spending at our current pace… ,” Rand said.

The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELDHaeEsNF0

WSJ(full text via Google): The Obama Administration continues to ignore court decisions on Internet regulation and use agencies like the Federal Communications Commission to circumvent Congress. We’re happy to see House Republicans vote to overrule this behavior.

The Hill: The lawmakers’ comments come more than a week after ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity published an investigative story linking major contributors to President Obama’s election campaign to companies that have received loan guarantees.

The Hill: Senate Republicans are taking advantage of the amendment process to keep alive many of the spending-cut proposals that were excluded from the deal to avoid a government shutdown

Houston Chronicle: Texas recorded the largest population growth in the nation over the past decade, adding 4.5 million people for a total of 25.1 million. But 79 of its 254 counties lost people, all but a handful of them west of Interstate 35. Even more would have lost population if not for the decade’s phenomenal Latino growth; the number of Anglos declined in 162 Texas counties, including much of West Texas and the Panhandle.

Breitbart Big Government: Since donating over $1 million to the president’s campaign and building its online presence and fundraising base, the company has reaped continued returns on their investment, so much so, that Google’s former CEO is rumored to be on the shortlist to be the nation’s new Secretary of Commerce. In order to pad its bottom line, Google made a conscious effort to grow its influence in Washington . . .

MSNBC: Real estate developer Donald Trump blames President Obama for the rising price of oil, warning, “this country can never, ever recover” if oil prices continue to go up. “That’s really the life’s blood of the country,” Trump told CNBC in a phone interview on Monday.

A federal appeals court is refusing to lift a stay blocking major parts of a tough Arizona law targeting illegal immigrants from taking effect.

Bloomberg: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states don’t have “power to enforce its citizens’ rights in respect to their relations with the federal government,” according to today’s filing. The individual-coverage mandate is a legitimate exercise of Congress’s power to regulate the interstate market in health care, the Justice Department said.

AP: Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster says Congress overstepped its constitutional powers when it mandated that most Americans should have health insurance or pay a penalty.

Wall Street Journal (via Google): Governor Pat Quinn recently added to his reputation as America’s most taxing politician by signing a law applying the state’s 6.25% sales tax to Internet purchases made in Illinois. Within hours, Amazon, the online book and merchandise seller, announced it would discontinue using any of its 9,000 Illinois small business affiliates to avoid having to collect the tax. Congratulations, Governor.

In order to protect American families from an onslaught of indecency on network television, the U.S. Department of Justice must appeal the July 2010 2nd Circuit decision in Fox Television Stations, et al., v. FCC (lead Circuit Court docket is 06-1760) which invalidated the FCC broadcast indecency policy, according to Morality in Media general counsel Robert Peters.

USA Today: While the president’s party still controls Washington, House Republicans have dragged a reluctant Senate and White House into taking this imperfect first step toward getting spending under control. The agreement will reduce government spending by $38.5 billion over the next few months — and by hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decade

Honolulu Star: The appeals court said Justice sought the review under the state open-records law requiring the disclosure of documents based on a showing of “compelling circumstances affecting the health or safety of any individual.” | How Appealing links to the ruling.

The Hill: In a letter to all lawmakers, Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), said up to 2 million people who work for the federal government could be without pay during a shutdown.

The Hill: “The president needs a distraction, and this is a choreographed distraction to try to shift the blame from a president who has been AWOL from leadership and has very little political courage,” the conservative senator charged.

WorldNetDaily: “I’m not a ‘birther,’” Hawaii State Sen. Sam Slom told Jeff Katz of WXKS Radio in Boston, “and I followed this from the very beginning. At first I followed it with amusement, and then I got really concerned about it, because the question was if it was not just the birth certificate, but other records as well – school records, academic records, work records – why would anyone spend millions of dollars in legal fees, particularly someone in public office, particularly someone in the highest public office, to not make that information public?”

NCPA Policy Digest: Texas is now the nation’s leading industrial and manufacturing state. Thus, the state will be disproportionately impacted by the recent Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) greenhouse gas (GHG) regulation and the many other major rules to take effect in the next three years. Indeed, the rules on track to go into effect in the next three years could cost more than $1 trillion, result in hundreds of thousands of jobs lost and significantly impair electric reliability, says Kathleen Hertnett White, director of the Armstrong Center for Energy and Environment . . .

MSNBC carries the video (9:53 mins).

CNN: “He spent $2 million in legal fees trying on to get away from this issue, and if it weren’t an issue, why wouldn’t he just solve it?” he said. “I wish he would because if he doesn’t, it’s one of the greatest scams in the history of politics and in the history, period. You are not allowed to be a president if you’re not born in this country. Right now, I have real doubts.”

The emphasis of both conferences is a familiar one to American voters – change. Soros wants to begin changing the global economy in one event. In the other, his flunkies want to “Change the world. Change the media.”

The Hill: “The Senate declined on Tuesday to take up a resolution that would have affirmed a 2007 statement by then-Sen. Barack Obama that a president must gain Congress’s permission before authorizing a military attack.”

The Hill:aking at the National Press Club, John Gage, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said his union would consider filing a claim under the Constitution’s 13th Amendment in the event of a shutdown since some workers would have to work without pay to keep vital operations up and running.

CNSNews (includes video): House Budget Chairman Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said President Barack Obama’s budget strategy is to “do nothing, punt, duck, kick the can down the road” while the debt remains on track to eventually hit 800 percent of GDP and the CBO is saying it “can’t conceive of anyway” that the economy can continue past 2037 given its current trajectory.

Wall Street Journal: Mr. Ryan’s budget rollout is an important political and policy moment because it is the most serious attempt to reform government in at least a generation. The plan offers what voters have been saying they want—a blueprint to address the roots of Washington’s fiscal disorder. It does so not by the usual posturing (“paygo”) and symbolism (balanced budget amendment) but by going to the heart of the spending problem, especially on the vast and rapidly growing health-care entitlements of Medicaid and Medicare. The Wisconsin Republican’s plan is a generational choice, not the usual Beltway echo.

AP: A joint venture between three of the nation’s four largest cell phone carriers will soon offer the United States’ first commercially available mobile fare payment program to a public transportation system.

CNSNews: The Republican proposal says one of its aims is “making sure that not a penny goes toward implementing the new [health care] law” enacted last year.

The War on Illegal Pornography announced today that more than 100 U.S. Senate and House Members, including nine Senate Judiciary Committee Members, have [signed letters] addressed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder urging that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI vigorously prosecute major producers and distributors of illegal adult pornography.” . . .

Washington Times: “Congress on Tuesday passed the first major changes to last year’s health care law, undoing both a burdensome paperwork requirement for small businesses and rewriting part of the way the health exchange subsidies are paid for.”

Daily Caller: The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) was thrilled to hear the decision. “Parents should be able to choose what’s best for their own children. This ruling empowers parents to do just that,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman. “Parents should decide what schools their children attend and where their money goes. The ACLU failed in its attempt to eliminate school choice for hundreds of thousands of students nationwide and also failed to demonstrate that it had any constitutional basis for its clients to file suit in the first place.”

NCPA Policy Digest: “There is a growing number of public employees who are retiring one day and then going right back to the same jobs the next, enabling them to supplement their income with retirement benefits without really retiring at all.”

The Hill: “The Democratic leadership is trying to pack us into a corner with only two ways out: keep spending money at their outrageous levels, or shut down the government. “I believe they actually want to shut down the government for their own political purposes,” he added.