When did Military Bases Become ‘Gun-Free Zones’?

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

It hasn’t always been the case that only MPs can carry firearms on U.S. military bases. A mere twenty years ago, “gun free zones” made their way to these facilities under the watch of President Bill Clinton.

According to a Washington Times editorial written days after the Nov. 5, 2009 attack on soldiers at Fort Hood, one of Clinton’s “first acts upon taking office… was to disarm U.S. soldiers on military bases.”

Clinton’s actions birthed Army regulations “forbidding military personnel from carrying their personal firearms and making it almost impossible for commanders to issue firearms to soldiers in the U.S. for personal protection.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Pew Survey: 53% of Americans Disapprove of Obamacare, Highest Negative Since Law’s Passage

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Pew Research Center survey found that public views of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act “are as negative as ever, and many are unaware of the elements of the law that will be going into place.”

According to the survey, “opinions are now as negative as they have been at any point since the bill’s passage,” as 53 percent of Americans disapprove of the regulation-ridden health care law, commonly known as “Obamacare,” while 42 percent approve.

The survey was conducted less than a month before the law’s health insurance exchanges open on October 1st.

Those who are uninsured are “as likely to disapprove (46%) as approve (49%) of the law,” Pew found.

And while 39 percent of the public say that Democrats have a better handle on health care, 40 percent now believe that Republicans “would do the better job dealing with health care.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Rush Limbaugh Explodes While Outlining the GOP’s ‘All-Out Assault on Ted Cruz’ (+audio)

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Photo Credit: rushlimbaugh.com

Photo Credit: rushlimbaugh.com

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh claims there is an “all-out assault” on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and others like him — within the Republican Party. He said the GOP establishment is currently carrying out a plan to “deal with” Cruz and others in their bid to “take over the Republican Party.”

He cited David Brooks, a “supposed conservative columnist for the New York Times,” who has reportedly warned that Cruz and other lawmakers like him “threaten the traditional Republican Party.”

“Brooks insists that Ted Cruz’s motives are less about legislation and policy and more about the politics of undermining the Republican establishment,” Limbaugh added. “And Brooks considers himself to be a ranking member of the Republican establishment.”

Limbaugh then played an audio clip of Brooks attacking Cruz on PBS’ “Newshour.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Will Question Your Sex Life

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A man holds a sign at the Tea Party Patriots 'Exempt America from Obamacare' rally on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol in Washington‘Are you sexually active? If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?”

Be ready to answer those questions and more the next time you go to the doctor, whether it’s the dermatologist or the cardiologist and no matter if the questions are unrelated to why you’re seeking medical help. And you can thank the Obama health law.

“This is nasty business,” says New York cardiologist Dr. Adam Budzikowski. He called the sex questions “insensitive, stupid and very intrusive.” He couldn’t think of an occasion when a cardiologist would need such information — but he knows he’ll be pushed to ask for it.

The president’s “reforms” aim to turn doctors into government agents, pressuring them financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary, and to violate their Hippocratic Oath to keep patients’ records confidential.

Embarrassing though it may be, you confide things to a doctor you wouldn’t tell anyone else. But this is entirely different.

Doctors and hospitals who don’t comply with the federal government’s electronic-health-records requirements forgo incentive payments now; starting in 2015, they’ll face financial penalties from Medicare and Medicaid. The Department of Health and Human Services has already paid out over $12.7 billion for these incentives.

Read more from this story HERE.

Another Mass Shooting….In a Gun Free Zone

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

Photo Credit: Irish Central

On a naval base where it is against the rules to carry weapons and in a city with some of the strictest gun laws in the US, a gunman chooses to disobey their rules and gun down a dozen victims.

The shooting at the Washington Naval Yard in Washington DC today, follows a familiar pattern in mass shooting history: The gunman finds a location where he knows his victims cannot shoot back and he can attain maximum mayhem.

Today that resulted in 12 innocent people shot dead and others left wounded.

No matter what the motives behind this shooting, whether it is terrorist related, a grievance, or just a mental case on a rampage, this incident shows it is time to stop disarming or making it almost impossible for law abiding citizens to be armed.

Most people would think a military installation would be a poor choice for a gunman to find unarmed, defenseless victims. After all most of our military personnel are trained in the use of firearms and are trusted to use those weapons in the defense of our country.

But most US soldiers on military bases are not allowed to carry weapons, except for the military police who are usually stretched thin. Regulations forbid military personnel from carrying their personal firearms and make it almost impossible for commanders to issue firearms to soldiers in the U.S. for personal protection.

It seems the government has decided it can’t trust its own service members.

This same idiotic mindset made it possible for Major Nidal Hassan at the Fort Hood Army base to leisurely slaughter 13 and wound over 30 in a room full of unarmed soldiers, before armed base police arrived.

The knee jerk reaction to this latest shooting will be to call for more gun control laws, but ask Chicago and Washington DC how those extremely strict gun laws are working out.

Obviously if military personnel/employees had been trusted to carry side arms on military bases, the death toll in these mass shootings would have been far less, or the incidents never would have been attempted.

Obviously, if law abiding citizens, including educators, had been armed during recent tragedies in Aurora Colorado, Sandy Elementary and Fort Hood, perhaps these and other tragedies could have been averted. See Mother Jones article: US Mass Shootings, 1982-2012: Data From Mother Jones’ Investigation.

John Lott wrote a book titled: “More Guns, Less Crime.” In it he has statistics where gun laws have been liberalized and ordinary law abiding citizens were encouraged to own and carry firearms, crime is reduced,,,…mass shootings are almost unheard of.

“Violent crime rates go down when states pass “shall issue” concealed carry laws. He presents the results of his statistical analysis of crime data for every county in the United States during 29 years from 1977 to 2005. The book examines city, county and state level data from the entire United States and measures the impact of 11 different types of gun control laws on crime rates.”

Perhaps its time to examine a radical idea and make it easier for the law abiding US citizen to carry a personal firearm, than it is for the criminals who routinely prey on them.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

State Department Obstructs Benghazi Investigation, Refuses to Hold Memorial Service

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Photo Credit: FrontPagMag

Photo Credit: FrontPagMag

First up, the House Oversight Committee is accusing the State Department of obstructing the investigation into the Benghazi attack.

The State Department willfully obstructed a congressional investigation of the deadly attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi last year, according to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

State Department officials routinely refused requests for documents on its investigation into the September, 2012, attack, including interview transcripts and summaries of eyewitnesses to the attack, according to a committee report obtained by The Hill.

Additionally, members of the independent Accountability Review Board (ARB) tasked with reviewing the events that led up to the Benghazi attack were rife with “actual and perceived conflicts of interest” with State, the House report adds.

“The State Department’s refusal to turn over ARB documents has made an independent evaluation of the ARB’s review difficult,” according to the report.

Read more from this story HERE.

Jihadists Cheer, Suggest Responsibility for Navy Yard Shooting that Killed 13

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Photo Credit: Twitter/JaredHalpern

Photo Credit: Twitter/JaredHalpern

Several online jihadists suggested Islamists were behind the deadly shooting at the Navy Yard as federal and local police investigated the motive behind the attack.

U.S. officials said there were no immediate signs that terrorists were behind the attack at the Naval Sea Systems Command office.

A total of 13 people were killed and about a dozen others wounded by at least one gunman at the Washington Navy Yard office located on a base in southeast Washington. The Navy Yard is located less than three miles from the White House.

Washington Mayor Vincent Gray told reporters that the investigation into the attack is ongoing and it is far too soon to draw any conclusions.

“We don’t know what the motive is at this stage,” Gray said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. “We don’t have any reason at this stage to suspect terrorism, but certainly it has not been ruled out.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Muslim Brotherhood Backer Gets DHS Promotion

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Photo Credit: twitter

Photo Credit: twitter

The Obama administration has promoted a Homeland Security adviser – who is a self-declared Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood supporter – to senior fellow within the Cabinet-level department of the federal government.

Mohamed Elibiary, who was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council by former Secretary Janet Napolitano in 2010, tweeted Sept. 12 that he has been reappointed to the position and promoted.

Just one year after he was first appointed to the council, PJ Media reported, “Elibiary may have been given access to a sensitive database of state and local intelligence reports, and then allegedly shopped some of those materials to a media outlet. He allegedly used the documents to claim the [Texas Department of Public safety] was promoting ‘Islamophobia.’”

According to the report, a “left-leaning media outlet” confirmed that Elibiary had provided “reports marked FOUO [For Official Use Only],” claiming it was proof of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s “Islamophobia.”

PJ Media added, Texas DPS Director Steve McCraw “confirmed that Elibiary has access to the Homeland Security State and Local Intelligence Community of Interest (HS SLIC) database, which contains hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports and products that are intended for intelligence sharing between law enforcement agencies.”

Read more from this story HERE.

The GOP Elites Never Miss an Opportunity to Pick a Fight

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

In the midst of the Navy Yard attack, former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum took advantage of the chaos to attack gun rights advocates. Gun control is a repeated hobbyhorse for Frum, who blamed the “gun lobby” for the atrocity at Sandy Hook Elementary in December. His reaction to Navy Yard placed him in common company with a newly-adrenalized Russian diplomat, who used the event to mock America.

A few days before, Frum’s ideological ally, David Brooks, took to the airwaves on PBS’ Newshour to attack what he called “the rise of Ted Cruz-ism,” his term for the efforts of conservatives to tackle such “fringe” priorities as ObamaCare, which is more loathed by the American people than ever. Brooks has been at war with the conservative grassroots since long before the Tea Party, calling Sarah Palin a “fatal cancer” in Oct. 2008.

Both Frum and Brooks are from Canada–a fact that would not merit mention, save for the additional fact that Brooks seems to think that it is acceptable to attack Cruz’s Canadian birth as a mark of illegitimacy. He called Cruz “the senator from Canada through Texas,” a meaningless, pseudo-nativist slur that he evidently believed would strike some kind of ironic chord with PBS’s urbane, intellectual, cosmopolitan, left-leaning audience.

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Gallup: ‘Trust and Confidence’ in Federal Gov’t Lower Than During Watergate

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The “trust and confidence” the American people have in the federal government’s handling of both domestic and international problems is now at a lower level than it was even during the height of the Watergate scandal in 1974, according to Gallup polling data released last week.

Since 1972, Gallup has periodically asked Americans: “How much trust and confidence do you have in our federal government in Washington when it comes to handling [international problems/domestic problems]–a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all?”

In April 1974, four months before President Richard Nixon was forced to resign as result of the Watergate scandal, 24 percent said they had a great deal of trust and confidence in the federal government’s handling of international problems and 49 percent said they had a fair amount of confidence—for a combined 73 percent who said they had a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence in the federal government in this area.

Also in April 1974, 9 percent said they had a great deal of trust and confidence in the federal government’s handling of domestic problems and 42 percent said they had a fair amount of trust and confidence—for a combined 51 percent who said they had a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence.

Read more from this story HERE.