The Nation’s Top “Progressives” … and Socialists and Communists

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Editor’s note: A longer version of this article first appeared at American Spectator.

The left-leaning magazine The Nation has published a list of what it deems America’s all-time, most influential progressives. The list, which you can review for yourself, is very revealing.

For starters, it’s fascinating that The Nation leads with Eugene Debs at number 1. Debs was a socialist. It was 100 years ago this year, in 1912, that Debs ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket.

Today’s progressives get annoyed if you call them socialists. Well, why is a pure socialist the no. 1 “progressive” on The Nation’s list?

Of course, progressives really get annoyed if you suggest they bear any sympathies to communism. That being the case, two other “progressives” on The Nation’s list are quite intriguing: Paul Robeson and I. F. Stone.

Paul Robeson was a proud recipient of the “Stalin Prize.” Even the New York Times concedes Robeson was “an outspoken admirer of the Soviet Union.” When Robeson in 1934 returned from his initial pilgrimage to the Motherland, the Daily Worker thrust a microphone in his face. The Daily Workerrushed its interview into print, running it in the January 15, 1935 issue under the headline, “‘I Am at Home,’ Says Robeson At Reception in Soviet Union.”

Read More at Western Journalism. By Paul G. Kengor.

The Diet Nazis Want to be Your ‘Big Father’

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They started with salt and transfat. Now they’re going after 16-ounce drinks, but it won’t stop there. You can count on it. Prohibition didn’t work, and neither does the “war on drugs.” So don’t expect banning certain foods or large portions will make a dent in the battle over obesity. This type of government intrusion is a set up for big and better government programs.

Self-government is the key to behavior modification not civil government. Dieting is all about self-control. Anybody can lose weight. Burn more calories than you eat. It’s that simple. Does it take will power? Sure it does. Who’s responsible when I eat too much? I am.

Once people get used to the idea of government regulating our lives in these small areas where they do not believe the law will adversely affect them, they will acquiesce in more significant areas. Mayor Bloomberg’s sugary drink ban creates a mindset that the government is not our Big Brother but our “Big Father.”

 Read More at godfatherpolitics.com. By Gary DeMar.

Florida attempts to correct voter fraud, feds say no

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A former Justice Department attorney says purely political considerations have motivated the DOJ to order the state of Florida to stop purging foreigners from its voter rolls.

Recently the state of Florida discovered 53,000 dead people registered to vote. Florida also found non-citizens on the voter rolls, and Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner began the process of removing them. But the DOJ sent a letter to Detzner ordering him to stop.

J. Christian Adams is the former Justice Department Attorney who worked in the DOJ Voting Section and now writes for PJ Media. He says the Justice Department’s request is way beyond the power of the federal government.

“Panic has set in in this administration over the last four weeks because of polling numbers showing things do not look good,” he tells OneNewsNow. “So the Justice Department, it appears, has responded accordingly by using the power of the federal government to force states like Florida to keep illegals on the voting rolls [and] to do other things in other states on voter ID, like South Carolina, to really attempt to ratchet the election in their favor.”

Read More at onenewsnow.com. By Chad Groening.

South Korea removes references to evolution from HS textbooks – Scientific American

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Mention creationism, and many scientists think of the United States, where efforts to limit the teaching of evolution have made headway in a couple of states. But the successes are modest compared with those in South Korea, where the anti-evolution sentiment seems to be winning its battle with mainstream science.

A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx. The move has alarmed biologists, who say that they were not consulted. “The ministry just sent the petition out to the publishing companies and let them judge,” says Dayk Jang, an evolutionary scientist at Seoul National University.

The campaign was led by the Society for Textbook Revise (STR), which aims to delete the “error” of evolution from textbooks to “correct” students’ views of the world, according to the society’s website. The society says that its members include professors of biology and high-school science teachers.

The STR is also campaigning to remove content about “the evolution of humans” and “the adaptation of finch beaks based on habitat and mode of sustenance”, a reference to one of the most famous observations in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. To back its campaign, the group highlights recent discoveries that Archaeopteryx is one of many feathered dinosaurs, and not necessarily an ancestor of all birds2. Exploiting such debates over the lineage of species “is a typical strategy of creation scientists to attack the teaching of evolution itself”, says Joonghwan Jeon, an evolutionary psychologist at Kyung Hee University in Yongin.

The STR is an independent offshoot of the Korea Association for Creation Research (KACR), according to KACR spokesman Jungyeol Han. Thanks in part to the KACR’s efforts, creation science — which seeks to provide evidence in support of the creation myth described in the Book of Genesis — has had a growing influence in South Korea, although the STR itself has distanced itself from such doctrines. In early 2008, the KACR scored a hit with a successful exhibition at Seoul Land, one of the country’s leading amusement parks. According to the group, the exhibition attracted more than 116,000 visitors in three months, and the park is now in talks to create a year-long exhibition.

Read more at Scientific American HERE.

Alaska “Republicans” looking a lot like Wisconsin Fleebaggers

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With the Wisconsin recall election in the news, it is only fitting that we take a trip down memory lane.  Anyone remember those Democrat senators fleeing to Illinois to prevent a quorum so the the Senate couldn’t pass Governor Walker’s reforms?  Looks like the old guard in the Alaska GOP stole a page from their playbook.

With outgoing Chair Randy Ruedrich and other members of current GOP leadership publicly calling for delegates not to show up to the June 9th re-convening of the 2012 Alaska Republican Convention, I’m left wondering if the demons Scott Walker just drove out of Wisconsin haven’t taken up residence in Alaska. Seems Ruedrich’s designs are eerily similar to the ill-fated Wisconsin Democrats. He hopes to prevent a quorum so the Convention is unable to take up consideration of the rules changes put forward by the Convention Rules Committee, one of which just happens to be the “legacy rule” that would relieve Ruedrich of his duties effective immediately.  No self-serving there.

Also at issue is a whole roster of resolutions passed by the various committees at the April convention, everything from censuring Senator Lisa Murkowski for her “dishonesty, duplicity . . . and extraordinary disloyalty” to a resolution urging Congress not to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and a resolution calling for the full repeal of Obamacare.

What is perhaps most egregious is the fact that the old guard is citing rumors of nefarious intent on behalf of Ron Paul supporters as a pretext, claiming that there is a move under way to suspend the rules and change out all the national delegates previously elected – presumably with Ron Paul supporters.  Supporters of Dr. Paul deny the claim.  But that notwithstanding, how credible could such a claim possibly be when less than half of the elected state delegates are Paul supporters, and it takes a two-thirds vote to suspend the rules?

I must admit the whole specter is somewhat embarrassing, but this isn’t the first time I’ve been ashamed of my party leadership.  It seems a pattern is taking shape, one that is not a little bit troubling, and one that will eventually split the Republican Party if some leaders don’t emerge who are willing to call out the bad players. We cannot afford to let a small group of  elitists tarnish the party brand any further.

When the sitting Party Chair and members of the Central Committee are openly attacking duly elected leaders in the press; when sitting members of the Central Committee are vowing to “burn down” the party; when opposition research is being conducted and deployed by upstanding “Republicans” against their own party officers; when rules are being disregarded; it’s time to say enough is enough.

From the outset of my involvement in Alaska politics, I’ve watched the elites refuse to accept the landslide election of Sarah Palin as governor over incumbent Frank Murkowski and favored challenger John Binkley; refuse to accept Joe Miller’s election as the party’s nominee for US Senate, despite the fact that he received more than ten thousand more votes than Lisa Murkowski did in her decisive 2004 primary election win; and now refuse to recognize duly elected delegates and officers of the party simply because their candidates didn’t win.

It took the same folks a year-and-a-half after the election of Sarah Palin as governor to even acknowledge her administration on the party website. They joined forces with the liberal Democrats to viciously attack the governor after her return from the 2008 Presidential race, and eventually helped to drive her from office.  They publicly engaged in malicious personal attacks on Joe Miller in 2010.  And now they seek to do the same to Chair-elect Russ Millette. There is only one crime all three of these Alaskans are guilty of: being duly elected Republicans.

The good book declares,“by their fruits you will know them.”  When folks break party rules with impunity while holding others to the “letter of the law,” you can be sure they have an hypocrisy problem.  When folks disregard the law when it isn’t in keeping with their desired ends, you can be sure they have an integrity problem. When folks have no regard for the truth, even for their own word, you can be certain they have a problem with the truth.  And when they refuse to accept the outcome of democratic elections, you can be sure that they don’t have the public’s best interest in mind. They are a law unto themselves.

The “Republicans” I speak of are reminiscent of petulant school children: selfish, divisive,  mean-spirited, slanderous, dishonest. If they don’t get their way, they just take their toys and go home. Let’s do the rank and file membership of the Alaska Republican Party a favor and show them the door.

It is time for Alaska Republicans to show the voting public that we don’t condone the rogue behavior of the ruling class. We don’t run when things get tough. Leave that to those other folks from Wisconsin. Real Republicans take responsibility, finish what they start, and don’t shy away from hard decisions.  I’ll be joining the real Republicans at the Anchorage Baptist Temple at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday morning.  If you’re a delegate, I hope to see you there.

Matt Johnson is a delegate to the Republican State Convention from District 11

“Mole” in DOJ feeding House Oversight Committee evidence of Holder’s lies

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Big news about the Obama Administration’s “Fast and Furious” scandal broke earlier this week, when the House Oversight committee finally got its hands on some of the documents it subpoenaed long ago – specifically, a set of wiretap applications that prove high officials at the Justice Department were very well aware of the deadly “gun walking” tactics that put American weapons into the hands of Mexican drug cartel killers.  Attorney General Eric Holder has always maintained that knowledge of these tactics did not reach the upper echelons of his department.

The revelation of documents shredding Holder’s claims stirred some in the Republican leadership to begin taking the idea of filing contempt of Congress charges against the Attorney General more seriously.  Justice sent a letter to the House Republican leadership on Tuesday, offering to work out a deal for releasing some of the “Fast and Furious” information covered by those long-defied subpoenas.  As House Oversight chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) said in an angry letter challenging Holder’s honesty, it’s increasingly clear why he doesn’t want congressional investigators to see the documents he is refusing to hand over.

It turns out that Issa didn’t get those bombshell wiretap applications because Holder suddenly decided to comply with the subpoenas, and dribble out some useful material.  It seems the House Oversight committee has a “mole” in the Justice Department, who surreptitiously gave the wiretap documentation to House investigators.

In a Fox News interview on Wednesday, Issa said he would not reveal the identity of his source for the documents, pointing out that other “Fast and Furious” whistleblowers have experienced retaliation from their superiors, particularly at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives:

On Thursday, The Hill reported that Justice is angry about the document leak, although no decision about finding and punishing the mole has been made yet.

Read more at Human Events HERE.

Obama makes pornographic joke about wife at homosexual gala in Beverly Hills

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A comment by the commander-in-chief about his wife’s exercise routine sent snickers through a crowd of Hollywood’s gay and lesbian elite who gathered at an LGBT Leadership Council gala in Beverly Hills on Wednesday for a fund-raiser.

After being introduced by emcee Ellen DeGeneres, Obama called the comedian “a great friend who accepts a little bit of teasing about Michelle beating her in pushups” when the First Lady appeared on her show, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“I think she claims Michelle didn’t go all the way down,” Obama quipped.

The audience, which included cast members from “Glee,” “Modern Family’s” Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Cher, reportedly giggled before breaking out in naughty laughter.

“That’s what I heard,” the President added, after pausing, according to a report published by Politico. He later noted the First Lady outdoes him in pushups as well.

See what Rush Limbaugh & WND say about this HERE.

Read more at the NY Daily News HERE.

Obama Caught Lying Again: He Was a Card-Carrying Socialist, Says Kurtz

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Barack Obama was, in fact, a member of the socialist New Party in the 1990s and sought its endorsement for the Illinois senate–contrary to the misrepresentations of Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, and in spite of the efforts of Politico’s Ben Smith to quash the story. Stanley Kurtz, author of Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism (2010), has released new “smoking gun” evidence at National Review Online. It is evidence that the mainstream media can no longer ignore–and Obama can no longer deny.

When the story of Obama’s association with the New Party first broke in 2008, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt claimed that Obama had never been a member. (LaBolt likewise told the New York Times that Obama had “not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005”–a statement that carefully concealed the truth that Obama had spent time in Ayers’ home after he began serving in the Senate.) The Obama campaign took up the issue at its “Fight the Smears” website, smearing Kurtz and willfully distorting the truth about Barack Obama’s radical past:

Right-wing hatchet man and conspiracy theorist, Stanley Kurtz is pushing a new crackpot smear against Barack falsely claiming he was a member of something called the New Party.

But the truth is Barack has been a member of only one political party, the Democratic Party. In all six primary campaigns of his career, Barack has has run as a Democrat. The New Party did support Barack once in 1996, but he was the only candidate on the ballot in his race and never solicited the endorsement.

Ben Smith of Politico wrote a classic “nothing to see here” story, taking LaBolt and New Party founder Joel Rogers at their word. The rest of the mainstream media, eagerly covering up for–and campaigning for–Obama, took Smith’s report as the definitive “debunking” of the New Party “smear” and failed to look further. The mocking tone of Smith’s article (“The dread New Party”) put the topic beyond the pale of polite debate.

Now, through careful archival research, Kurtz has proven his case–and proven once again that there are many people on the left who have been willing to misrepresent and obscure facts about Barack Obama, as well as many in the mainstream media who have acted as Obama’s accomplices rather than searching for the truth.

Kurtz writes,

Minutes of the meeting on January 11, 1996, of the New Party’s Chicago chapter read as follows:  Barack Obama, candidate for State Senate in the 13th Legislative District, gave a statement to the membership and answered questions. He signed the New Party “Candidate Contract” and requested an endorsement from the New Party. He also joined the New Party.

Read More at breitbart.com. By Joel B. Pollak.

Federal Gov’t: We can wiretap US citizens without a warrant & you can’t sue

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The federal government is sticking to its guns and claiming that some violations of your rights are so super-secret that the government can’t be sued for them. Specifically, if government agents listened in on your communications without a warrant, say federal lawyers, you shouldn’t be allowed to seek redress in the courts bcause the U.S. government is protected against legal action by sovereign immunity. Even better, Congress is poised to reauthorize a law which explicitly legalizes such official intrusion.

Reports Wired: “A federal appeals court appeared troubled Friday by the Obama administration’s arguments that the government could break domestic spying laws without fear of being sued — and that the government’s argument might be correct, due to an oversight by Congress.  A two-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard an hour of oral arguments here by the government and a lawyer for two attorneys whom a federal judge concluded had been wiretapped illegally without warrants by the government.”

Note that the courts have already found the wiretapping in question to be illegal. The argument is whether the federal government can be held accountable for its actions. The federal government says “no.”

With all of this talk of secrecy and national security in place, the court win was a miracle of official incompetence. It came about only because the feds accidentally mailed two attorneys a classified document revealing that their conversations had been wiretapped. Such warrantless wiretaps were illegal at the time, but were later permitted by a 2008 amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act supported by, among others, then-Senator Barack Obama.

That amendment is up for reauthorization right now.

Read more at Reason.com HERE.

When Did Red China Become Our Friend?

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Recently in the news, it was reported that the Pentagon discovered that about 1800 crates worth of Chinese manufactured parts for some of our technology-driven weapons are USELESS! Apparently, the companies that brought these parts into the United States didn’t bother checking these parts to see if they actually WORKED before selling them to our military. Defense contractor Raytheon is among the most prominent of these companies.

This little scandal bodes the question: why are we buying sensitive military parts (parts that are needed to make weapons work) from Red China? Apparently, we Americans are too stubborn or thick-headed to learn our lessons easily. Red China has never stopped being Red China, In the last 6 years, they have blessed us with pet ingredients that basically killed about a thousand pets. Chinese birth control for the American pet world? Tainted tooth paste, tainted and destructive drywall ( look up Chinese drywall on the internet), defective tires, and lead paint tainted toys. Golly, they must really love us to send us such “quality products” huh?!

We have taken a lot of American jobs to China; think General Electric X-ray division among other things. G.E. Gateway computers was sold to the Chinese, who now import them back to the United States. You see the words”Made in China” on just about everything you buy today because they use cheap (slave) labor and can manipulate their currency to undercut the price of just about anything anybody else makes. In case you haven’t noticed, the Chinese are really good at what the Japanese used to do: copy (and sell cheaper) items that we all use!

They have even been able to reverse-engineer a new fighter plane that is a dead ringer for our F-22 Raptor stealth fighter; imagine that? Just because Chinese agents in this country are among the busiest in the world, engaged in industrial and military espionage, nobody should be alarmed in this country-should theyt? The way it has been going lately, all the Chinese have to do is ask the Obama administration for the secrets they want, make a nice campaign donation, and boom…..there they are!

What are the Chinese doing with all their new-found economic wealth? Feeding the poor? Repairing infrastructure? Not really; they seem to be spending their money on a massive military build up. One report in the news even said that China was building a huge UNDERGROUND complex…for what? China is also building itself something it never has had…..a modern BLUE WATER NAVY! It looks as though the Chinese may be setting the stage for a future challenge to the United States in the Pacific and elsewhere.

Read More at Western Journalism. By MJ Nellett.

Photo credit: terrellaftermath