Barone: Liberalism’s Snobbery Towards Most Americans

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Susan WalshThe roots of American liberalism are not compassion but snobbery. That’s the thesis of Fred Siegel’s revealing new book, The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class.

The standard account from liberal historians over the years, and more recently in bestsellers by Glenn Beck, is a linear story: Government expansion starts with the Progressives of a hundred years ago, accelerates through the New Deal and the Great Society, and is followed up by the Obama stimulus and Obamacare.

Siegel says it’s more complicated than that. And he argues that literary figures contributed as much to the liberal mindset — maybe more — than public policy wonks.

The Progressives he depicts as Protestant reformers, determined to professionalize institutions and tame the immigrant and industrial masses. Progressive projects included women’s suffrage and prohibition of alcohol.

But the many pro-German Progressives were appalled when Woodrow Wilson led America into World War I and by Wilson’s brutal suppression of civil liberties.

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Busted! Democrats in Major Voting Scam (+video)

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Photo Credit: APA new investigative video by guerrilla journalist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas reveals Democrat activists in Texas boasting about breaking the state’s election law by mining confidential records.

O’Keefe, who helped bring down ACORN, the community “organizing” behemoth for which Barack Obama worked as a lawyer, shows Battleground Texas Field Organizer Jennifer Longoria confirming on video that the group is culling names, telephone numbers and addresses from voter registration cards to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis.

However, Project Veritas points out that copying the personal details is illegal in Texas.

In the video, Longoria explains that the goal of her group, run by a former field director for Obama for America, is to increase the number of voters in Texas to try to raise the support for Democrats.

“So every time we register somebody to vote, we keep their name, number,” she says. When a Project Veritas investigator asks, “That’s from the voter registration form?” Longoria responds, “That data collection is the key.”

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DHS Contracted to Purchase 704 Million Rounds of Ammo Over Next 4 Years: 2,500 Rounds Per Officer

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Photo Credit: APThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is contracted to purchase 704,390,250 rounds of ammunition over the next four years, which is equal to a total of about 2,500 rounds per DHS agent per year, according to a January 2014 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report entitled Ammunition Purchases Have Declined Since 2009.

“If DHS were to purchase all 704 million rounds over the next four years, and if they were used by 70,000 DHS agents and officers, it would be roughly 2,500 rounds per agent per year,” David Maurer, author of the GAO report, told CNSNews.com.

“That would be higher than what we saw in past years at DHS and higher than the average annual number of rounds per agent or officer at the Department of Justice (DOJ),” he said.

“The 704,390,250 number of rounds is like a ceiling or credit limit which DHS wouldn’t have to fully execute,” said Maurer. “It’s there to use over the next four years until fiscal year 2018, if DHS needed to purchase those rounds.”

In Appendix III of the GAO report, “Department of Homeland Security Ammunition Contracts, as of October 1, 2013,” it states that “the 29 existing DHS ammunition contracts extend over the next 4 fiscal years and have a remaining contract limit of approximately 704 million rounds (for various ammunition types) if every option for purchasing ammunition were exercised into fiscal year 2018.”

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Obama: Ukraine, Syria are Not Pieces on ‘Some Cold-War Chessboard’

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn MartinPresident Barack Obama denied late Wednesday that Russian-US tensions over Syria and Ukraine were playing out on “some Cold-War chessboard” even as he acknowledged deep divisions between Moscow and Washington.

Obama, speaking at a joint press conference after a North American leaders’ summit, also flatly denied that the United States had played a role in stirring up the people against their government, saying that the uprisings “arose organically from within those countries.”

“I do think it is worth noting that you have, in this situation, one country that has clearly been a client state of Russia, another whose government is currently being supported by Russia,” he said.

But “our approach in the United States is not to see these as some Cold-War chessboard in which we’re in competition with Russia,” the president continued.

“Our goal is to make sure that the people of Ukraine are able to make decisions for themselves about their future, that the people of Syria are able to make the decisions without having bombs going off and killing women and children, or chemical weapons, or towns being starved because a despot wants to cling to power,” he said.

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Rep. Louie Gohmert Launches Conservative PAC to Defend Candidates Against Establishment Republican Attacks

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Joshua RobertsRepublican Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert is launching a new political action committee to help defend Houseconservatives from 2014 attacks from mainstream Republican PACs, Gohmert announced exclusively to The Daily Caller.

The new GOH Conservative PAC, inspired by the Senate Conservatives Fund, “defends conservative Republicans from the attacks that come from the mainstream,” Gohmert told TheDC. “That’s been a problem, we’ve seen in some races, where we’ve had leadership come and play and there was no counterbalance. So I’m going to do something about it.”

Gohmert detailed a long history of struggle and a do-nothing spirit within the Republican caucus, and the “depression” conservative House members felt when Speaker John Boehner conceded that Republicans shut down the government, a statement that must have been based on “reading the mainstream media and failing to read the record.”

“There’s a war against the tea party. There’s a war against conservatives, we’re told. If somebody declares war on me I’m not just going to lie down and take it. I’m going to fight,” Gohmert told TheDC. ”You’ve got to have money to fight opposition. The leaders in the party raise money so that [makes congressmen] feel they have to stay close to them. If we raise money on our own we can take a stand.”

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US Warns of Airline Shoe-Bomb Threat

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Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Spencer PlattUS security officials warned Wednesday about a potential shoe-bomb threat on international flights to the United States, local media reported.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a warning to airlines based on “very recent intelligence” considered credible that assailants would try to attack passenger jets using explosives hidden in shoes, NBC television reported.

Officials told NBC that passengers may be subjected to enhanced security screenings and airlines will pay more attention to passengers’ shoes.

Some airports already require passengers to take off their shoes for security after Richard Reid tried to detonate explosives stashed in his shoes during a Paris-Miami flight just three months after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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White House Adviser: Obamacare Didn’t Kill Jobs Because People Have Been Hired Since It Passed

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles DharapakWhite House health care adviser Phil Schiliro maintains that Obamacare can’t be bad for jobs because some jobs have been created since it passed.

“You can’t say the Affordable Care Act has killed job growth,” Schiliro told an audience at a Kaiser Family Foundation presentation Wednesday. “In the 46 months since it passed, over 8 million jobs have been created… No one would say the Affordable Care Act created those jobs, but you can’t say the ACA has killed job growth.”

Schiliro’s comparison presumes that were Obamacare damaging at all, it would have stopped job growth entirely — including any recovery from the financial crisis in late 2008.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the financial crash and resulting recession lost the U.S. economy 8.8 million jobs, Schiliro’s estimate still leaves the economy.

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Allegheny Admin to Pro-Lifers: Your Opinions are Dangerous and Harmful

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Photo Credit: Brendan Hoffman/Getty ImagesThe incident occurred on Feb. 7. Apparently, someone slipped pro-life flyers under the doors of professors’ offices in the Arter, Quigley, Steffee and Arnold buildings. Joseph DiChristina, the dean of students at Allegheny, decided to treat this like a security breach, and wrote in an email to campus that security personnel were investigating it.

“Promoting a particular point of view through this type of anonymous method is seen as an act that is antithetical to the kind of environment where open dialogue and conversation can take place,” he wrote in the email. “We ask that individuals engage in respectful behavior that promotes a free exchange of ideas. It is important that we value all people and that we not promote behaviors that cause harm and that can be seen as intimidating.”

DiChrstina did not respond to a request for comment as to why the pro-life viewpoint “causes harm.”

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Woman Dragged to Jail for Recording Cop (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND“Get off of me! You are breaking the law!” shouts a South Florida woman as a Broward County Sheriff’s deputy enters her car and drags her out, all because she was recording her traffic stop on Interstate 95.

Now, the police agency is facing serious legal action for alleged battery, false arrest and false imprisonment.

The saga of single mother Brandy Berning began last March when she was driving alone in the HOV carpool lane, which is designed for vehicles carrying more than one passenger during rush hour.

She was pulled over by Broward Sheriff’s Lt. William O’Brien, who told Berning about her traffic infraction. That’s when she then informed him she was recording audio of their conversation on her cell phone.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you I was recording our conversation,” Berning said on the recording.

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2 Former Navy SEALs Found Dead on ‘Captain Phillips’ Ship

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Photo Credit: AnonymousTwo security officers have been found dead aboard the Maersk Alabama container ship, the same vessel portrayed in the movie “Captain Phillips,” police said Wednesday.

The men, both former Navy SEALs, were found on Tuesday while the ship was moored in the Seychelles, Fox News reported.

“A postmortem will be carried out this week in order to establish the cause of their sudden deaths while the police investigates the possible circumstances which led to these incidents,” police in the Seychelles said.

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