Is Alaska Republican Party Platform Being Hijacked?

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photo credit: donkeyhoteyAnchorage, AK – Restoring Liberty received word last week of an effort underway to convene a series of closed-door invitation-only meetings intended to rewrite the Alaska Republican Party Platform in order to make it “reasonable-sounding to the average voter.”

Multiple conservative leaders in Anchorage have voiced concern over the secret meetings they believe are designed to purge the platform of social conservative values.

New information lends the appearance of a coordinated effort with acting State Chair Peter Goldberg and RNC representative Mike Shirley who were carbon copied on an email outlining the agenda for the “platform workshops.”

Such a move is sure to raise tensions ahead of the Juneau Convention scheduled for early May.

Many are already upset that the left-leaning State Central Committee voted to hold the State Convention off the road system for the second time in the last four years, presumably to block participation from more conservative areas of the state. The trip to Juneau is cost prohibitive for many.

The 2008 and 2012 Conventions on the road system ended poorly for party boss Randy Ruedrich and his “moderate” friends. After narrowly escaping majority opposition led by Joe Miller and former Governor Sarah Palin who sought to remove him as party chair in 2008, Ruedrich shut down the 2012 Convention prematurely in order to avert a rules change that would have done exactly that.

A subsequent reconvene granted at the parliamentarian’s insistence that the party comply with Robert’s Rules was also shut down when the former party chair took to the public airwaves and the press to discourage participation in order to block a quorum.

Coming on the heels of media reports linking US Senate candidate Dan Sullivan to a left-leaning cabal of outside billionaires seeking to remake the Republican Party by offering amnesty to millions of illegal aliens and pushing the door open for acceptance of gay marriage, more traditional Republicans are understandably nervous.

In the email forwarded to Restoring Liberty, failed 2012 party chair candidate Bruce Schulte opined that “our platform should not be an Albatross hung around the neck of every Republican regardless of the office they seek or the makeup of their constituency.”

It also outlined a list of objectives for the re-write: including, to “make the platform more inclusive of different perspectives [and] demographics . . . more positive . . . Alaska-centric . . . [and] to avoid alienating too many people.”

Attachments were provided to guide the process, inclusive of Republican platforms from Alaska, Utah and New Mexico, as well as those of the Alaska Democrat and Libertarian platforms.

Restoring Liberty was not invited, nor are we privy to who was blind copied on the email.

Benghazi Justice Could Help Hillary Run

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe Obama administration is under growing pressure to make an arrest in the Benghazi attack to quash lingering criticism of its response and help clear the road for a possible Hillary Clinton presidential run in 2016.

Blame for the shortcomings that contributed to the deaths of four Americans has increasingly focused on the former secretary of State as she weighs her next move. That heat is only expected to intensify as the U.S. prepares to pass the 18-month mark since the attack on the U.S mission.

Republicans have revived their probes into the attack ahead of the 2014 mid-term elections, with the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees both releasing reports in recent weeks. Meanwhile, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence panel used their additional views on a recent bipartisan investigation to pin the blame on Clinton for embassy security failings and excoriate the slow pace of justice.

“There simply is no justification … for not doing more to capture and interrogate terrorists who caused the deaths of four Americans,” they wrote in the Jan. 15 report. “The United States can and should do better.”

This past week, the chairman of the House oversight committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), traveled to New Hampshire to “hopefully shape the debate for 2016.” He used the occasion to tear into Clinton, accusing her of preventing the Department of Defense from sending forces to relieve the besieged Americans, despite the Pentagon’s own conclusion that it had no forces in the area ready to be deployed.

Read more this story HERE.

Report: Pentagon to Propose Shrinking Army to Pre-WWII Level, Scrapping Some Jets

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/LUKAS BARTHBy Reuters.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will propose on Monday a reduction in the size of the U.S. Army to its smallest size since before World War Two and scrapping a class of Air Force attack jets, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The plans, which the paper said were outlined by several Pentagon officials on condition of anonymity, would be aimed at reducing defense spending in the face of government austerity after a pledge by President Barack Obama to end U.S. involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUEU.S. governors plan to urge Obama not to downsize National Guard

By Aruna Viswanatha.

Governors from both U.S. political parties plan to talk to President Barack Obama on Monday about preventing potential cuts to National Guard units, several governors said on Sunday.

“In downsizing the military, we want to make sure that reserve and National Guard is protected in our country,” Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I’m going to have that discussion with the President tomorrow,” Malloy, a Democrat, said.

Many governors are in Washington this week for a national conference of state executives. They are scheduled to have dinner at the White House on Sunday and meet with Obama on Monday.

Several appeared on Sunday morning talk shows, where they said they wanted to speak to the president about the potential cuts to the National Guard. The Guard is a reserve force that is part of the Army but serves state governments often at times of crisis, such as during floods or after hurricanes.

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Former Justice Stevens: Change 2nd Amendment to Improve Constitution

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Photo Credit: AFPFormer Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has released a new book focused, in part, on “improving” the Constitution through amending the Second Amendment–by making the rights protected therein applicable only to a militia instead of the citizenry at large.

Stevens’ book is titled Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.

As written, the text of the Second Amendment is: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Stevens believes recent court decisions–notably District of Columbia v Heller (2008) and McDonald v Chicago (2010)–placed too much emphasis on individual rights, rather than on what he believes was the Founding Fathers’ primary goal: namely, to answer “the threat that a national standing army posed to the sovereignty of the states.”

Read more this story HERE.

Bachmann: ‘Lawless’ Obama ‘Rules by Tweet,’ Congress Must Have Support from Voters to Impeach Him

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What will be President Barack Obama’s legacy after he leaves office?

According to former 2012 Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann, Obama set precedents that will lead to the “establishment of lawlessness in the United States.”

“From stem to stern, this president has said, ‘The law doesn’t apply to me,’” Bachmann said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller. “It’s almost like when a parent raises a child with no rules. The child gets to do what ever they want to do; there is no discipline and no standards. The president has decided that the laws don’t apply to him. It’s as though the Magna Carta never existed.

“He’s brought the American people to think that some how he has been given a magic scepter that allows him to change the law into what ever Barack Obama wants the law to be, which is the opposite of our form of government,” Bachmann continued. “No man is above the law, including the president of the United States.”

Bachmann pointed to Obama’s autocratic modifications of Obamacare as evidence of lawlessness.

Read more this story HERE.

Susan Rice: Russian Military Intervention in Ukraine ‘Would be a Grave Mistake’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Efrem LukatskyAny Russian decision to send forces into Ukraine to restore a government it views as favorable “would be a grave mistake,” national security advisor Susan Rice said Sunday, after dramatic turns in the country’s standoff saw President Viktor Yanukovich effectively removed from office.

“It’s not in the interest of Ukraine or of Russia or of Europe or of the United States to see a country split,” Rice said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “It’s in nobody’s interests to see violence return and the situation escalate.”

Asked whether President Obama had told President Vladimir Putin to “back off” when the two spoke by phone on Friday, Rice replied, “The president’s message was, ‘Look, we have a shared interest in a Ukraine that remains unified, whole, independent, and is able to exercise the will of its people freely.’ At that point, Putin was in agreement.”

Russia and the U.S. have accused each other of interference in the crisis, which began when Yanukovich last November ditched a plan to strengthen economic and political relations with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia. Opposition supporters occupied Kiev’s independence square to protest the decision, which was cemented when Putin offered Yanukovich a $15 billion bailout.

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Security Flaw Makes iPhones, iPads, Macs Vulnerable to Hackers

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Photo Credit: ReutersA major flaw in Apple Inc. software for mobile devices could allow hackers to intercept email and other communications that are meant to be encrypted, the company said on Friday, and experts said Mac computers were even more exposed.

If attackers have access to a mobile user’s network, such as by sharing the same unsecured wireless service offered by a restaurant, they could see or alter exchanges between the user and protected sites such as Gmail and Facebook. Governments with access to telecom carrier data could do the same.

“It’s as bad as you could imagine, that’s all I can say,” said Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green.

Apple did not say when or how it learned about the flaw in the way iOS handles sessions in what are known as secure sockets layer or transport layer security, nor did it say whether the flaw was being exploited.

But a statement on its support website was blunt: The software “failed to validate the authenticity of the connection.”

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U.S. Air Force Reveals ‘Neighborhood Watch’ Spy Satellite Program

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Photo Credit: ThinkstockThe United States plans to launch a pair of satellites to keep tabs on spacecraft from other countries orbiting 22,300 miles above the planet, as well as to track space debris, the head of Air Force Space Command said.

The previously classified Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) will supplement ground-based radars and optical telescopes in tracking thousands of pieces of debris so orbital collisions can be avoided, General William Shelton said at the Air Force Association meeting in Orlando on Friday.

He called it a “neighborhood watch program” that will provide a more detailed perspective on space activities. He said the satellites, scheduled to be launched this year, also will be used to ferret out potential threats from other spacecraft.

The program “will bolster our ability to discern when adversaries attempt to avoid detection and to discover capabilities they may have which might be harmful to our critical assets at these higher altitudes,” Shelton said in the speech, which also was posted on the Air Force Association’s website.

The two-satellite network, built by Orbital Sciences Corp will drift around the orbital corridor housing much of the world’s communications satellites and other spacecraft.

Read more this story HERE.

North Carolina Joins List of States Banning Muslim Sharia Law

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Photo Credit: Bebeto Matthews, APNorth Carolina has become the seventh state to prohibit state judges from considering Islamic law in family cases, joining what critics say is a national anti-Muslim campaign.

Gov. Pat McCrory allowed the law, which was passed by state lawmakers in July, to take effect without his signature.

In an interview with The Associated Press, McCrory said the measure doesn’t do anything. “I didn’t think it was worth the time to pass, nor do I think it’s worth the time to have someone come back and vote on it again,” he said.

North Carolina now joins Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Tennessee, according to Religion News Service, in banning Islamic Sharia law. A constitutional amendment seeking the same change in Alabama will be on the 2014 ballot. In Missouri, the governor vetoed an anti-Sharia bill because of its potential impact on international adoptions.

But the law in Oklahoma was struck down in court as unconstitutional, according to the Progressive Pulse, because it discriminated among religions without justification.

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Video – Allen West Inspires: What the GOP Should Stand For

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Photo Credit: Shark TankWest gave a short, yet inspiring portrayal of what the Republican Party stood for. West said that the GOP did not stand for the Grand Ole Party anymore, but that it stood for Growth, Opportunity and Prosperity.

We believe in the individual. We believe in the indomitable American spirit. We believe in individualism and entrepreneurship that can cause us to be here together in this great hall, that can allow a young man from the inner city from Georgia to stand before you tonight. That is who we are.-Allen West

Read more this story HERE.