If liberals can refuse to defend laws that they don’t like, then conservatives can refuse to fund those that they deem undesirable.
As most who follow politics well know, on the issue of marriage, twice recently, liberals refused to honor the law when it comes to marriage. Of course, as we also know, such efforts were successful.
Particularly troubling was the case involving California’s Proposition 8. Because the state of California refused to defend Prop 8 in court, it was left up to plaintiffs without legal “standing” to do so…Since the state of California still refuses to defend what was passed by their citizens, same-sex marriages were allowed to resume in California. In other words, California officials scanned the political landscape and deemed it now safe to simply ignore the law.
Other states are taking notice. Earlier this month, the Attorney General of the state of Pennsylvania, Kathleen Kane, announced that her office would not defend her state’s ban (since 1996) on recognizing same-sex marriages.
Liberals across the country seem to be perfectly content with this approach. However, they will howl like rabid dogs whenever it is proposed that the House GOP may consider a similar approach when it comes to funding Obamacare. As some conservative pundits have recently noted, most notably Rush Limbaugh, there are republicans that are also balking at the proposition of not funding Obamacare.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-31 04:23:002016-04-11 11:18:02Tit for Tat on Preferred Legislation
Photo Credit: WNDGeneral Mills, widely known for throwing its considerable influence behind same-sex marriage, has now unleashed one of America’s most beloved icons, Betty Crocker, in the effort.
When Minnesota begins allowing homosexual duos to legally exchange marriage vows at midnight Thursday, a few couples will be treated to free wedding cake, compliments of Betty Crocker.
According to the homosexual advocacy organization GLAAD, “Betty Crocker is performing this donation as a part of ‘The Families Project.’”
The organization says that three couples visited the Betty Crocker kitchens in Golden Valley, Minn., to sample wedding cakes on Monday, in a blog post titled “Betty Crocker Toasts Marriage Equality With Wedding Cake Tasting.”
“The company states that it wanted ‘to celebrate with these families and mark this moment in the state’s history’,” says the GLAAD blog.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2013-07-31 04:23:002016-04-11 11:18:03General Mill’s Betty Crocker Jumps on the Homosexual Marriage Bandwagon
Photo Credit: WNDThe next presidential election is still three years away, but top-rated radio host Rush Limbaugh is already making a bold prediction about who will be the likely nominee for the Democratic Party.
“I think it’s going to be Chris Christie,” Limbaugh said on his national program Tuesday.
“I think the contest in 2016, the Democrat side, is gonna be between Rahm Emanuel and Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie.”
What makes the prediction especially noteworthy is that Christie, the governor of New Jersey, is at present a Republican, and he would have to switch parties to be nominated by the Democrats.
On June 5, Limbaugh first brought up the possibility of Christie looking to lead the Democratic ticket, saying at the time: “I’m not predicting it officially here, but I will not be surprised, if when 2016 rolls around and Governor Christie is seeking the presidency, I won’t be surprised if he seeks the Democrat Party nomination.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-31 04:23:002016-04-11 11:18:03Dems ‘Likely to Nominate this Republican for Prez’
Photo Credit: Daily CallerOn Neil Cavuto’s “Your World” program on the Fox News Channel Tuesday, syndicated radio talker Mark Levin took on President Barack Obama, the Republican leadership in the U.S. House and New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie for the handling of the various scandals surrounding the White House.
In a nearly 10-minute interview, Levin took on the terrorist attack in Benghazi, the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups, and the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program.
“I will tell you this — this president could give a damn about a serious investigation about scandals that are swirling around his administration,” Levin said. “And then his lackeys go on TV, including ‘Fox News Sunday’ and tell us there’s no evidence. Their people plead the fifth. Their attorney general doesn’t conduct investigations. And what’s necessary is for the Republicans in the House to get their act together. We don’t need five committees investigating Benghazi. We need one special investigative committee with former assistant U.S. attorneys, other types of prosecutors, who are serious people, who have the resources necessary, full-time, to pursue these matters and put the information on the table. Same with the Internal Revenue [Service] investigation.”
Photo Credit: Wang Zhao/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images In a significant victory for law enforcement, a federal appeals court on Tuesday said that government authorities could extract historical location data directly from telecommunications carriers without a search warrant.
The closely watched case, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, is the first ruling that squarely addresses the constitutionality of warrantless searches of historical location data stored by cellphone service providers. Ruling 2 to 1, the court said a warrantless search was “not per se unconstitutional” because location data was “clearly a business record” and therefore not protected by the Fourth Amendment.
The ruling is likely to intensify legislative efforts, already bubbling in Congress and in the states, to consider measures to require warrants based on probable cause to obtain cellphone location data.
The appeals court ruling sharply contrasts with a New Jersey State Supreme Court opinion in mid-July that said the police required a warrant to track a suspect’s whereabouts in real time. That decision relied on the New Jersey Constitution, whereas the ruling Tuesday in the Fifth Circuit was made on the basis of the federal Constitution.
The Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on whether cellphone location data is protected by the Constitution. The case, which was initially brought in Texas, is not expected to go to the Supreme Court because it is “ex parte,” or filed by only one party — in this case, the government.
Photo Credit: GettyBy Alex Pappas. Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas is playing coy about whether she wants President Obama to nominate her to serve as the next Secretary of Homeland Security.
Asked by The Daily Caller on Tuesday about the Congressional Black Caucus’ lobbying on her behalf for the appointment, Jackson Lee declined to say whether she’s interested in the post, saying, “I don’t have any comment.”
But asked about the Black Caucus’ letter recommending her, Jackson Lee couldn’t resist expressing her joy.
Photo Credit: WNDDHS taking national security to new lows
F. Michael Maloof. Just as concern is peaking over the prospect of a catastrophic electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, event from either natural or man-made causes that could cripple the U.S. national electric grid, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has decided to cut back on training for electric utilities to harden their facilities to protect them.
DHS is charged with protecting the country’ critical infrastructures, including the national electric grid system, which would be dramatically and possibility irreversibly affected by a major EMP event.
DHS officials, who are aware of EMP and its potentially catastrophic effects on the nation’s critical infrastructure, still does not regard EMP as one of the 15 National Planning Scenarios which outline implementation instructions for national calamities, including flooding and acts of terrorism.
These and other concerns about the potential for an EMP and its effect were brought out in a conference near Capitol Hill by a newly formed EMP Coalition, which was created to ensure the resiliency of the U.S. electrical grid system and the critical national security and civilian infrastructures that depend on it.
The coalition is co-chaired by former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-31 04:18:582016-04-11 11:18:03Rep. Sheila Jackson, the Next DHS Secretary?
Photo Credit: hawaii news now“This is not a silver bullet, this does not solve everything” Representative John Mizuno is quick to point out the limitations of the “Return to Home” program, and he’s one of its staunchest supporters.
Mizuno helped get the program passed as part of Senate Bill 515.
“It’s fractional, it’s not for 5,000 homeless people. It’s going to be a handful of homeless people that we send home, again–home to their support unit” added Mizuno.
The program, which is set to launch this fiscal year, is a three-year pilot program in which $100,000 is appropriated each year to send homeless people in Hawaii back to their families on the mainland.
Representative Rida Cabanilla was also instrumental in getting it passed. She points to a dual purpose in the program: social empathy, combined with fiscal conservatism.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-31 04:18:102016-04-11 11:18:04Hawaii Sets Aside $100,000 to Offer its 17,000 Homeless People One-Way Airfare Back to Their Home States (+video)
By Chelsea J. Carter, Ashley Fantz and Larry Shaughnessy. A military judge acquitted Army Pfc. Bradley Manning on Tuesday of aiding the enemy, but convicted him of violations of the Espionage Act for turning over a trove of classified data to the website WikiLeaks, in a case where the soldier has been portrayed variously as a traitor and as a whistle-blower.
The verdict by the judge, Col. Denise Lind, dismissed the prosecution’s argument that Manning released documents — in the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history — that he knew would end up in the hands of al Qaeda. The verdict also found Manning not guilty of unauthorized possession of information relating to national defense.
If he had been found guilty of aiding the enemy, he would have faced life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Manning still faces the prospect of years, if not decades, behind bars. He was found guilty on 20 counts. The sentencing phase of the court-martial begins Wednesday, and Manning faces up to a maximum 136 years in prison.
Among the charges, Manning was found guilty of the theft of more than 700 U.S. Southern Command records, the possession of records pertaining to Afghanistan; the theft of State Department cables and the possession of classified Army documents.
Bradley Manning verdict: cleared of ‘aiding the enemy’ but guilty of other charges
By Ed Pilkington. Bradley Manning, the source of the massive WikiLeaks trove of secret disclosures, faces a possible maximum sentence of 136 years in military jail after he was convicted on Tuesday of most charges on which he stood trial.
Colonel Denise Lind, the military judge presiding over the court martial of the US soldier, delivered her verdict in curt and pointed language. “Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty,” she repeated over and over, as the reality of a prolonged prison sentence for Manning – on top of the three years he has already spent in detention – dawned.
The one ray of light in an otherwise bleak outcome for Manning was that he was found not guilty of the single most serious charge against him – that he knowingly “aided the enemy”, in practice al-Qaida, by disclosing information to the WikiLeaks website that in turn made it accessible to all users including enemy groups.
Lind’s decision to avoid setting a precedent by applying the swingeing “aiding the enemy” charge to an official leaker will invoke a sigh of relief from news organisations and civil liberties groups who had feared a guilty verdict would send a chill across public interest journalism.
The judge also found Manning not guilty of having leaked an encrypted copy of a video of a US air strike in the Farah province of Aghanistan in which many civilians died. Manning’s defence team had argued vociferously that he was not the source of this video, though the soldier did admit to the later disclosure of an unencrypted version of the video and related documents. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-31 04:18:102016-04-11 11:18:04Bradley Manning Acquitted of Aiding the Enemy but Guilty of Espionage Violations (+video)
Photo Credit: Saood Rehman/EPAHundreds of prisoners have been freed by Islamists in Pakistan after a spectacular assault by extremists on a jail in the western city of Dera Ismail Khan.
The attack, at around 11.30pm on Monday, involved one large bomb – so loud it rattled windows miles away – to blow a hole in the jail’s walls, followed by a mortar bombardment.
Around 70 gunmen, many dressed in police uniforms, then rushed through the gaps, throwing grenades and firing rocket-propelled grenades, killing six policemen and opening cells to free around 250 prisoners. Authorities said these included 24 wanted terrorists.
The attack, which came on the eve of voting for a new president in the troubled south Asian state, underlines once again the weakness of the Pakistani state and the inability of the country’s law and order agencies to maintain security.
One strike last week targeted an office of the main spy agency, the ISI, while another killed more than 50 Shia Muslims. Six Shia Muslim prisoners – the vast majority of Pakistanis are Sunni – were killed in Monday night’s assault.
Churches across San Antonio are expressing outrage over a proposed anti-discrimination law that would protect LGBT workers but would not provide a religious exemption and would effectively prohibit anyone who opposes homosexuality from holding public office or getting a city contract.
The proposed change would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the city’s discrimination ordinance. It would protect gays, lesbians, transgender, and veterans – a move that had critics accusing the council of playing politics with the military.
“No person shall be appointed to a position if the city council finds that such person has, prior to such proposed appointment, engaged in discrimination or demonstrated a bias, by word or deed, against any person, group or organization on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, age or disability,” the ordinance reads.
Critics argue that the ordinance could ban Christians who believe homosexuality is a sin from serving on the city council.
They also believe the ordinance would also ban the city from doing business with anyone who fails to espouse politically correct views and businesses run by people of faith would be subject to criminal penalties if they refused to provide services that conflict with their religious beliefs related to homosexuality.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2013-07-31 04:15:292016-04-11 11:18:04San Antonio Proposal Could Bar Christians From City Council
