Witty Signs Keep Drivers Focused on Tricky Alaskan Road

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Photo Credit: CNN Although residents often like to joke that it is, the mosquito isn’t actually Alaska’s official state bird. (That’d be the willow ptarmigan.)

You also won’t see many coconut trees growing in the far north.

Judging by signage along Grande Drive in Denali, Alaska, however, you might not necessarily know those things.

Appearing along the steep, winding ascent to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain, road signs depicting giant mosquitoes carrying off human prey and warning of falling coconuts are clearly meant to get a laugh out of drivers.

Just less than a mile long and costing about $1 million to build, the mostly dirt road (some sharp corners are paved) leads to the Grande Denali Lodge.

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Not the First Time Obama Risked American Lives after Bypassing Congress

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Photo Credit: EPA; AP; ReutersBy Monte Kuligowski.

The chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Diane Feinstein, was visibly upset with Barack Obama upon learning of the president’s secretive Bergdahl deal. It is reasonable that she and all members of Congress should be outraged. But should they be surprised that the president traded five of the most dangerous terrorists in Gitmo for the deserter, Bowe Bergdahl, without consulting Congress per the law passed to prevent exactly what Obama did?

Congress should, of course, be livid. But shocked, I don’t think so.

At this point, it should be hard for anyone could be surprised. The man with a pen and a phone had more than threatened to illegally bypass Congress; he had done so before.

And he had done so in big ways.

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Photo Credit: Facebook Wife of soldier wounded searching for Bergdahl speaks out

By Jazz Shaw / HotAir.

The Bergdahl story continues to go from bad to very bad to really bad to worse. I first saw this story being written about by Rick Moran at PJ Media today. The wife of one of the soldiers who was grievously injured while searching for Bergdahl in Afghanistan has taken to social media to protest the handling of this story.

The wife of a disabled Afghanistan veteran who was injured while searching for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has posted a scathing message against him this week, adding a personal account to the rising protests against the negotiations with the Taliban that lead to Bergdahl’s freedom.

In a message she posted via Facebook, Shannon Allen, wife of Sgt. 1st Class Mark Allen, wrote ‘Meet my husband, injuries directly brought to you by the actions of this traitor. He can’t give an account of what went down, because he can no longer speak. Now, which guy is a “hero” again?!? Sick.’

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Photo Credit: AFPKerry defends Bergdahl-for-Taliban exchange

By Elise Labott.

The five Taliban figures who got out of Guantanamo in exchange for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s release would be taking an “enormous risk” if they return to the battlefield, Secretary of State John Kerry told CNN in an interview that aired Sunday.

“I’m not telling you that they don’t have some ability at some point to go back and get involved (in fighting). But they also have an ability to get killed doing that. ” Kerry said in his first public comments on the controversial prisoner exchange.

Kerry defended the swap and told CNN the former detainees will be monitored closely — and not just by officials in Qatar, where they were flown after being released. He wouldn’t say who else will be watching, but he said the United States is confident the conditions of their release will be honored.

“And if they’re violated, then we have the ability to be able to do things,” he said, warning that the United States would do whatever is necessary to protect Americans “if these guys pick a fight with us in the future, or now, or at any time.”

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Widespread US Police Surveillance Is Happening In Total Secrecy

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jim YoungData obtained by The Wall Street Journal suggests that “electronic-surveillance orders have increased over the past decade and that the vast majority remain sealed.”

Thousands of government requests for electronic surveillance in connection with criminal investigations remain under seal long after the investiga tions have ended, Jennifer Valentino-Devries of The Wall Street Journal reports.

The practice is unlike nearly all other aspects of American judicial proceedings, where courts have held that search warrants eventually should be made public.

The thing is that getting permission for electronic surveillance techniques — including tracking metadata and gathering all cellphones connected to a cell tower — is easier than getting a search or wiretap warrant.

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Ben Shapiro’s Obama Solution: ‘Prosecution Not Impeachment’

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Photo Credit: BreitbartOn Thursday, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) stated that he was “not, at this point, calling for impeachment.” He continued, “The president has two years left in his term. We hope they pass quickly.”

That hope is empty. They will pass slowly. And even should Republicans win back the Senate in 2014, President Obama promises heavy executive action–action that will surely violate the Constitutional delegation of powers.

Which is why, says Breitbart senior editor-at-large Ben Shapiro, impeachment isn’t the answer: prosecution is. And in his new book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration, Shapiro lays out the charges.

“A criminal administration can do virtually anything, without any sort of real consequences,” Shapiro writes. “Impeachment is rarely used – in the entire history of the United States, there have been just 19 House impeachments, and just eight of those ended with full removal after a Senate trial. No doubt the founders intended impeachment to be utilized far more often than it has been…But in practice, impeachment has been a failure.”

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Let College Students Carry on Campus

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Photo Credit: TownHall Pepper spray, police and cardboard signs failed to prevent the June 5 Seattle Pacific University shooting. Let’s stop mass violence on college campuses by defending college students’ right to carry firearms on campus.

Tragically, this is the third column this year that I must write defending college students’ natural right to self-defense on campus. In the Seattle Pacific University shooting, four more American youths took unnecessary bullets in a gun free zone.

One student was killed and three were severely wounded when a young man with apparent mental health issues, 26-year-old Aaron R. Ybarra, began firing his shotgun on the Seattle campus in broad daylight. Prior to unleashing such unwarranted violence against innocent strangers, Ybarra exhibited symptoms of mental instability.

Ybarra once made a black pilgrimage to the Denver, CO site of the April 20, 1999 Columbine High School shooting where two student gunmen fatally shot 13 and wounded 21, according to Seattle’s KIRO 7 News and The Associated Press. Prior to the shooting, Ybarra had also been arrested for non-violent offenses including driving while intoxicated and without insurance. A law enforcement officer told International Business Times that Ybarra was: “…hell-bent on killing a lot of people.”

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Obama Is Driving the Country to Ruin

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Photo Credit: INFIf you think of the United States of America as a store, its recent decisions and scandals resemble a sale, perhaps a fire sale. Or maybe even a “Going Out of Business” sale.

The list of dramatic markdowns is breathtaking. They include trading away five murderous terrorists for a likely Army deserter, an open invitation to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to cross the Mexican border, and a decision to recognize the terrorist group Hamas as part of the Palestinian government.

On the home front, environmental regulations will cost thousands of coal miners their jobs and drive up the cost of electricity for millions. The ObamaCare mess is hardly resolved, and the Veterans Affairs scandal keeps getting worse. The acting agency head reported the deaths of 18 more vets who were kept off the official waiting list in Phoenix.

Ticking quietly in the background is the mother of all threats — an Iranian nuclear bomb. That ticking grew louder last week as the ayatollah mocked our nation by standing in front of a banner that proclaimed, “America cannot do a damn thing.”

Technically, he’s wrong. It’s not that we cannot stop the mad mullahs’ march. It’s that President Obama has taken the military option off the table, and without it, Iran has nothing to fear. Our impotence was a choice.
Add to the combustible mix the expansionist moods in Russia and China, and the series of events recalls an observation by the late economist Herb Stein. Speaking in another context, he said that, “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.” That sums up the current sense of the nation as a whole.

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Seven Hours at the Border: Marine Held in Mexico’s New Legal Team Hones Case

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Photo Credit: Fox News The new lawyer for Andrew Tahmooressi, the U.S. Marine held in Mexico for more than two months after mistakenly crossing the border with registered guns, is planning a new legal strategy to win the sergeant’s freedom.

Tijuana-based attorney Lamberto Jesus Esquer Dabdoub will be looking at the prolonged amount of time Tahmooressi was held at the border in the custody of the Mexican military March 31 in what Tahmooressi felt was a failed shakedown.

“Andrew felt something was fishy when the military showed up and wanted to arrest him after the customs officials were willing to accompany him back to the U.S.,” said his mother,Jill Tahmooressi, who plans to travel to Tijuana next week for a news conference with Esquer. “Andrew told me he felt there was an implied expectation of a bribe of some sort by the military but nothing was ever directly requested. He was very uncomfortable with their demeanor.”

The Tahmooressis fired Andrew’s previous attorney amid claims he told the Marine to lie about past travels across the border. The legal shakeup has thrown the already-vague timetable for his case into limbo. But when the case gets back on the docket in Tijuana, Esquer plans to focus on the seven-hour period Tahmooressi spent in custody but without charges at the border between San Ysidro, Calif. and Tijuana.

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Obama to Free Gitmo Terrorist ‘Because He Took Up Yoga’

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Photo Credit: ReutersIf you thought President Obama’s release of five top Taliban commanders in exchange for POW Bowe Bergdahl was bad, wait until you see what his Gitmo parole board plans.

Desperate to empty the Guantanamo Bay prison by the end of his term, Obama quietly is giving “get out of jail free” cards for the flimsiest of excuses.

One al Qaeda suspect captured in Afghanistan is considered reformed because he took up yoga and read a biography of the Dalai Lama. Another is eligible for release because of his “positive attitude.”

And one longtime detainee, a former bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, is now harmless because he’s going to start a “milk and honey farm.”

The Periodic Review Board already helped clear 78 of the remaining 149 prisoners for release, documents show, and has scheduled more hearings for this summer.

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Abortion in Cases of Rape or Incest? We are People, Not Arguments

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Photo Credit: LifeNews How would like to be labeled “a hard case?” What if your class of people were systematically targeted for extinction within legislation?

What if political candidates felt quite comfortable with stating their position that you and your kind aren’t worth protecting and better off dead? What if your child was regularly stigmatized by our society?

That’s exactly what it’s like for those of us who were conceived in rape, mothers from rape, and those given a poor in utero diagnosis. But being branded as a “hard case” becomes easier when we all begin to unite behind our unique kinship. And that’s what Save The 1 has been doing – drawing together perhaps the most stigmatized and marginalized members of today’s society.

May 2014 was a very big month for Save The 1. On Saturday, May 3rd, Mary Rathke and I both spoke at the 1st Annual International Pro-Life Leaders Conference in Rome, Italy – sponsored by Lifesitenews — sharing our stories of having been conceived in rape. Mary was a double-exception because her birthmother was raped after having been diagnosed as schizophrenic. Pro-Life leaders from around the world received our message well – vowing to fight abortion without exception and without compromise.

The next day, Mary and I were introduced on stage at the Marcio Per La Vita – the Italian March For Life, which had an estimated 60,000 by the time we reached St. Peter’s Square, where the Pope came out and addressed us. The theme of this year’s march was “Pro Vita Senza Compromesso,” which means “pro-life without compromise.” During the march, thousands were chanting this theme!

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The Game is Rigged, Regardless of Who’s in Charge

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Photo Credit: TownHallThere’s too much money in politics, right? Lawrence Lessig has a new plan to solve an old problem. He wants to end money’s outsize influence on the political process, which subverts democracy and drowns out the masses to do the bidding of the well-to-do few. Most people are taking issue with his method of attack, which is (and I am not making this up) injecting more money from rich old white guys to drown out the money from the other old rich white guys.

But rather than take issue with his solution, let’s talk about what he gets right. A Princeton study has confirmed our suspicions that “rich people and organizations representing business interests have a powerful grip on U.S. government policy.”

Perhaps not shockingly, the wealthy hold different policy positions than the poor. But whereas rich people regularly find their policy preferences enacted into law, poor people do not. “Indeed, the opinions of lower-income groups, and the interest groups that represent them, appear to have little or no independent impact on policy.” Your vote matters. Unless you’re poor, in which case, not so much.

Enter campaign finance reform. The theory goes like this. First, rich people fund political campaigns. Generally the better funded campaign ends up winning. So money buys elections and rich people get what they want. We’re good on the first part. But the theory falls apart when it says that money always wins. It sounds right, but doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

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