US Presents: A Disconnected Administration

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesWhile the world is busy watching the World Cup, the forces of evil in the Middle East are working overtime in Iraq, Syria and here in Israel as well. With the situation as volatile as it is, it was no surprise to find a headline in The Washington Times stating: “The ‘gates of hell’ ajar in the Middle East.”

The accompanying article was written by Dr. Monica Crowley of Columbia University, an expert on international relations and a former adviser on international affairs to several presidents.

Without hesitation, Crowley accuses the United States of having opened the “gates of hell” — and she is not alone. It seems that there is no argument that the old order in the Middle East has collapsed. In its place, we now have a lack of order. And to think that two years ago, President Barack Obama said in an optimistic address, “The core of al-Qaida … is on the way to defeat.”

In her article, Crowley wrote: “A little over two weeks ago, three Israeli teenagers set off for home from the Jewish seminaries, where they were studying near the West Bank city of Hebron. Hitchhiking is not unusual for Israeli teenagers studying in the West Bank, despite its dangers. And the three — Eyal Yifrach, 19; Gil-ad Shaer, 16; and Naftali Frenkel, a 16-year-old with dual Israeli-American citizenship — began the trek home.

“They were never heard from or seen again, until Monday, when their corpses were found in a shallow grave.

“What does this have to do with the United States? Everything.

Read more from this story HERE.

D’Souza Declares A Strong Connection Between Hillary And Obama: It’s Saul Alinsky

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Photo Credit: Brett TatmanConservative filmmaker and commentator Dinesh D’Souza appeared on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday with stand-in host Martha Raddatz and Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson to discuss his new movie “America: Imagine The World Without Her.”

Raddatz quickly veered into asking D’Souza about the claims that he believes there is some type of left-wing conspiracy aimed at undermining America, and that President Obama and Hillary Clinton are apart of it.

“You essentially have a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama turning this nation into a socialistic nation, something you said started when Hillary Clinton was in college,” Raddatz said to D’Souza.

“It’s not a conspiracy theory,” D’Souza quickly responded. “A lot of people think that Hillary is like Bill and say ‘We want Billary back in the White House’ because” of that.

He then explained that both Obama and Clinton have both been strongly influenced by the ideas of liberal activist Saul Alinsky, and that is the connection they share.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sullivan ‘Stand Your Ground’ Claims Not Credible

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Photo Credit: dmcdevitFor weeks US Senate candidate Dan Sullivan has been running radio ads claiming that “as Alaska’s Attorney General, [he] successfully fought to . . . pass Stand Your Ground.”

When one examines the public record, this claim is problematic on several levels.

The first, and most obvious, problem is that Dan Sullivan left the Attorney General’s Office in December 2010, more than two years before the Alaska Legislature passed Stand Your Ground in April 2013.

Sullivan supporters might protest that he is not claiming to have passed the bill, but rather to have “fought to . . . pass” it. Fair enough, but the clear impression the ad leaves is that the bill passed during Sullivan’s tenure as Attorney General.

Regardless, that option isn’t very helpful either, because a letter was submitted to the House Judiciary Committee by Sullivan’s Department of Law opposing the HB 381 (Stand Your Ground) bill during the 2010 Legislative Session. To make matters worse, Dan Sullivan’s name is in the signature line, though Assistant Attorney General John Skidmore actually signed it.

In the letter of opposition, Skidmore, speaking on Sullivan’s behalf, states unequivocally that the bill “would promote violence and be a bad idea for our state.”

The bill sponsor, Representative Mark Neuman (R- Big Lake), has suggested that Sullivan’s office worked with him on the bill to simplify the language. But Committee minutes and audio recordings indicate that despite the fact that there was collaboration to address some of the stated concerns, the bill was opposed at every stage of the legislative process by the Department of Law under Sullivan’s leadership. The objection at issue remained removal of the “duty to retreat” from Alaska Statutes.

The aforementioned letter opposing HB 381 (Stand Your Ground) was presented as part of the record for the first Committee hearing in House Judiciary Committee on March 15, 2010. At that time, Assistant Attorney General Anne Carpeneti raised the Department’s concerns and answered questions. Mr. Neuman points to committee minutes from that hearing to confirm that he worked with the Department of Law to simplify the language, which is correct.

However, at the very next hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on March 29, 2010, Carpeneti clearly stated that the Department of Law still had concerns with the new Committee Substitute reflecting the updated changes. That version of the bill was the working document for all hearings on HB 381 (Stand Your Ground) for the remainder of that last session of the 26th Legislature, and was re-introduced in January 2011 at the beginning of the 27th Legislature, at which time Dan Sullivan was no longer Attorney General.

Representative Neuman’s repeated suggestions that the letter of opposition, proffered on behalf of Dan Sullivan by Assistant Attorney General John Skidmore, was irrelevant after the language of the bill was simplified could not be more misguided. The letter specifically addressed section (6) of the original bill, which was the exact language retained in the working draft – “in any place where the person has a right to be.”

The opposition expressed was grounded in the Department of Law’s objection to that specific language, which, in their view, removed “the duty to retreat.” The letter went on to say, “this does not express a value for human life” or “encourage finding a resolution to disputes other than violence.”

When HB 381 (Stand Your Ground) was heard in the House Finance Committee on April 8, 2010, Assistant Attorney General Anne Carpeneti reiterated her concerns, stating – “we still have concerns that this bill will increase violence in our state” and will “eliminate the duty to retreat.”

In the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 15, 2010 the third of Sullivan’s Assistant Attorneys General testified against the bill. This time it was the Director of the Criminal Division of the Department of Law, Sue McLean, who stated the following:

“HB 381 and similar laws have been characterized as “stand your ground” laws – and this is a trend – but it’s not about standing your ground. It really is about shooting first. Prosecutors nationwide are opposed to this type of law, and the Alaska Department of Law is similarly opposed. It promotes and condones a level of violence that may not have been necessary.”

Later in the hearing McLean further opined, “HB 381 takes away the duty to reasonably retreat. That’s why we’re so greatly opposed to it.”

On April 16, 2010 Assistant Attorney General Sue McLean testified again before the Senate Judiciary Committee, asserting that “this change in the law would give unreasonable people a license to act unreasonably and not retreat.”

Later in that same hearing, a friendly amendment drafted by attorneys at the Department of Law was offered, at which time McLean maintained, notwithstanding, the “Department of Law is opposed to this law.” The bill later died in the Senate Finance Committee.

It is clear from the legislative record that Dan Sullivan’s Department of Law unequivocally opposed HB 381 (Stand Your Ground).

Dan Sullivan’s defense now rests on passing the buck, as he did in a US Senate debate sponsored by KOAN radio and organized by the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club. When pressed in debate on the letter submitted to the House Judiciary Committee in his name, Sullivan responded that it wasn’t his letter, he didn’t write it.

Sullivan spokesman Mike Anderson was said to have echoed the candidate’s sentiments in a piece published on Amandacoyne.com. “In regards to the Department of Law letter in question, Dan didn’t write the letter, he didn’t see it before it went out, nor does he agree with the attorney who wrote it,” said Anderson.

Coyne also reported speaking with Assistant Attorney General John Skidmore, who now apparently claims to have acted independent of Sullivan. Yet the letter bears Sullivan’s name.

How “out to lunch” would one have to be if he really did “support it from the beginning,” as Sullivan claimed in a June 13 interview on the Mike Porcaro Show on 650 KENI, and not know that his subordinates at the Department of Law were officially opposing it?

Skidmore’s public statements regarding Sullivan’s lack of awareness of what was going on in his own Department are not only unflattering to Sullivan, but bespeak even deeper problems at the Department of Law if whole Divisions are out there going rogue on the Governor and the Attorney General to whom they are supposed to be accountable.

Let’s assume, for purposes of argument, that Sullivan really was in the dark with respect to the letter written in his name. Let’s also assume that he was unaware of his Department’s opposition to Stand Your Ground. Does this make his case any more plausible?

Remember, Sullivan’s claim is not just that he “supported it from the beginning,” but that he also “fought . . . to pass Stand Your Ground.” Skidmore’s defense of Sullivan makes it abundantly clear that Sullivan, in fact, did NOT “fight . . . to pass Stand Your Ground.” Not only did he not fight to pass it, he was completely uninvolved, and even ignorant of what was going on. He clearly didn’t follow the deliberations, nor did he bother to state his opinion for the record. Furthermore, he obviously didn’t exercise proper oversight over his subordinates, or represent the Governor at whose pleasure he served. So does the claim that Sullivan “fought . . . to pass Stand Your Ground” pass the red face test under even the most minimal standards? The answer is obviously “no.”

The independent politifact.com was indeed correct in rating any claim that Sullivan was responsible for passing Stand Your Ground as a false claim.

It is also clear that the more nuanced claim that Sullivan “fought . . . to pass Stand Your Ground” is also a false claim.

What is unclear is whether Sullivan ever supported Stand Your Ground at all. There is not a scintilla of independent evidence that he did. The only thing we have to date is Sullivan’s own word, and a veiled statement by Representative Mark Neuman that he thinks Dan Sullivan supported it, despite his admission that he never personally discussed the legislation with him. Neuman’s deliberations were with Sullivan’s staff at the Department of Law who are on public record opposing HB 381 (Stand Your Ground) throughout Sullivan’s tenure as Attorney General, and it doesn’t help Sullivan’s case that the Department of Law reversed course and supported Stand Your Ground legislation after Sullivan left the Attorney General’s Office.

Whether Sullivan really supported Stand Your Ground before running for United States Senate . . .

You decide.

Veteran With Concealed Carry Permit Shoots Back At Chicago Gunman

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller By Chuck Ross.

One of the spate of shootings that took place in Chicago, Ill. over the July 4th holiday weekend involved a veteran with a concealed carry permit who was forced to a shoot a man who began firing on him and a group of friends.

The incident occurred Friday night, the Chicago Tribune reports.

The veteran and three of his friends were leaving a party on the city’s south side. When the group reached their vehicle, a container with liquor was sitting on top of it. A woman from the group asked another group gathered next door who the liquor belonged to and removed it.

The move angered 22 year-old Denzel Mickiel, who approached the veteran and his friends shouting obscenities. The man then went into his residence and returned with a gun.

As Mickiel opened fire on the group, the veteran took cover near the vehicle’s front fender, according to assistant state attorney Mary Hain, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APStates look to gun seizure law after mass killings

By Associated Press.

As state officials across the U.S. grapple with how to prevent mass killings like the ones at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and near the University of California, Santa Barbara, some are turning to a gun seizure law pioneered in Connecticut 15 years ago.

Connecticut’s law allows judges to order guns temporarily seized after police present evidence that a person is a danger to themselves or others. A court hearing must be held within 14 days to determine whether to return the guns or authorize the state to hold them for up to a year.

The 1999 law, the first of its kind in the U.S., was in response to the 1998 killings of four managers at the Connecticut Lottery headquarters by a disgruntled employee with a history of psychiatric problems.

Indiana is the only other state that has such a law, passed in 2005 after an Indianapolis police officer was shot to death by a mentally ill man. California and New Jersey lawmakers are now considering similar statutes, both proposed in the wake of the killings of six people — three stabbed to death and three fatally shot— and wounding of 13 others near the University of California, Santa Barbara, by a mentally ill man who had posted threatening videos on YouTube.

Read more from this story HERE.

All Your Children Belong to Us

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Photo Credit: Seema Krishnakumar / Creative Commons Is any freedom more important, more sacred than the right to raise a family without government intrusion?

It’s a good question to ask this Independence Day weekend, as Americans reflect on the birth of a nation dedicated to the preservation of individual liberties: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But as government grows bigger and more powerful, as politicians, bureaucrats and busybodies increasingly think they know best, American families constantly must fight interference in their most personal decisions and judgments.

Of all the threats to our freedoms — warrantless snooping, government secrecy, expanded police powers — none worries me more than the relentless march of the Nanny State, which not only assumes that all parents are unfit to raise children, but that parents themselves must be treated like children.

It’s not a stretch to say that this movement considers all children the property of the state. As proof, look at what’s happening in Scotland.

Read more from this story HERE.

CLEVER! Leading New Hampshire GOP Governor Candidate Called Tea Party ‘Teabaggers’

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Photo Credit: YouTube screenshot / John StarkSomeone likely running against Walt Havenstein, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in New Hampshire, has unearthed a real gem of a video.

The 17-second video now on YouTube shows Havenstein speaking to a group of business students at the University of New Hampshire four years ago. In the clip, the GOP candidate derisively refers to tea partiers as “teabaggers.”

“We got a lot of problems in this country,” Havenstein says. “The teabaggers, or whatever they are, they’ve been telling us that all summer long. Alright?”

He then asks “Isn’t that who they are?” with his tongue stuck out.

“I’m a little out of touch,” he adds, with a big grin on his face.

Read more from this story HERE.

This List of Gov’t Bureaucrats Earning More Than $180K Makes The VA Scandal Even More Alarming

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The Office of Personnel Management maintains a list of the amount of civilian workers that each branch of the government has, in addition to their salary amounts. Although it does not mention individuals by name nor their positions, the numbers are quite surprising when the data is adjusted for an annual income of $180,000 or more.

Some facts to consider:

There are 25,356 government agency workers earning $180,000 or more.

18,709 of those workers work at the Department of Veteran Affairs (5% of workforce).

2,355 are at the Department of Health and Human Services (3% of workforce).

1,605 are at the Department of Transportation (3% of workforce).

Read more from this story HERE.

Liberals Hate Religion Because Government Is Their God

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Phtoo Credit: TownHall The liberal attack on religion stems from envy, greed, anger and hate, just like every other precept of liberalism. Liberals envy the loyalty and devotion that religion inspires. They hunger greedily to have it for themselves.

Mostly, they are angry because the religious dare to defy them and to reject the ugly and inhuman tenets of collectivism. And they hate God for having the temerity to define right and wrong. They consider that their sole prerogative.

The liberal freak-out over the Hobby Lobby decision is just the latest example of the left coming out of the closet and embracing its anti-faith bigotry.

It’s interesting to see how liberals approach the controversy, and how they fail to even accurately describe it. In the big picture, the Hobby Lobby case basically pitted the right of individuals to practice their religion even when they combine into closely-held corporations against a newly-minted pseudo-right of women to receive free birth control insurance coverage. Now, the right of religious liberty has been recognized for over two hundred years in the First Amendment. The pseudo-right of free birth control insurance coverage came into being when bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services decided to mandate it following passage of Obamacare in 2010.

Naturally, the liberals side with the government bureaucrats’ four year-old whim over the established principle of religious liberty.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Irresponsible Taunt: President Increasingly Willing to Go At It Alone

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Photo Credit: CHARLES DHARAPAK / APThe unanimous decision of the Supreme Court late last month that President Obama violated the separation of powers in appointing officials is the type of decision that usually concentrates the mind of a chief executive. Obama, however, appeared to double down on his strategy — stating in a Rose Garden speech on Tuesday that he intended to expand, not reduce, his use of unilateral actions to circumvent Congress.

Summing up his position, the President threw down the gauntlet at Congress: “So sue me.”

The moment was reminiscent of George W. Bush’s taunting Iraqi insurgents over 10 years ago by saying, “Bring ’em on.”

It was irresponsible bravado from a man who was not himself at the receiving end of IEDs and constant attacks that would go on to cost us thousands of military personnel. I imagine some lawyers at the Justice Department may feel the same way about Obama’s “sue me” taunt. They are the ones being hammered in federal courts over sweeping new interpretations and unilateral executive actions.

The renewed promise to go it alone is a familiar refrain from this President. He even pledged to take unilateral action to circumvent Congress in front of both Houses, in his State of the Union address this year — to the curious delight of half of Congress, which applauded wildly at the notion of being made irrelevant.

Read more from this story HERE.

Krauthammer: 'If Fences Don't Work, Why Is There One Around The White House?'

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Photo Credit: TownHall The illegal immigration problem at the Southwest border is worse than it has ever been—tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors are coming into the U.S. at unprecedented rates. Border Patrol is overwhelmed and lacking adequate resources to handle the influx, and the administration’s proposed solutions to stem the tide are underwhelming to say the least…

BILL O’REILLY: How do you secure the border, Charles?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Alright, here’s what I’ve been on for years. You start with a fence. It’s very simple. People say, ‘Oh, fences don’t work. You make a ladder.’ Well, then you build two fences, triple strand fences. San Diego did that in the mid 90’s and within a decade, the illegal immigration rate at that point was reduced by 90% and people ended up going through other places like Arizona.

Read more from this story HERE.