Congressman: Let’s Scrap Income Tax

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The federal tax code is a complex, unintelligible mess, and America needs to embrace the simplicity of a national consumption tax known as the Fair Tax, according to Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., who is just one of many conservatives touting the idea as Americans rush to meet the federal income tax deadline.

“PROBLEM: folks sacrificing precious time, money and peace of mind on a broken complex tax code. SOLUTION: the #FairTax,” tweeted Price on Tuesday. Fellow Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., also tweeted support for the Fair Tax and the abolishing of the IRS.

Price said the first thing Americans need to recognize is that the current tax system is a disaster.

“Our current system actually punishes the things that we say that we want as a society,” he said. “We say we want hard work. We say we want success. We say we want entrepreneurs, risk taking, investment and all those kinds of things. Yet our tax system punishes every single one of them. So many of us believe that we need think more fundamentally and more creatively about it and come up with a tax system that doesn’t just massage what we currently have but puts in place a system that actually rewards those things.”

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga.:

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WATCH: Here’s What Defiant New York Gun Owners Decided to Do on the Day of State’s Gun Registration Deadline

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The state of New York gave gun owners who owned so-called “assault weapons” before the passage of the SAFE Act, a hastily-passed gun control law, until April 15, 2014, to register them with the state government.

On Tuesday, the deadline, New York gun owners and Second Amendment rights advocates gathered in downtown Buffalo, N.Y., and shredded gun registration forms in an act of protest.

New York lawmakers have “shredded” their constitutional rights, so it’s only fitting the gun registration forms get the same treatment, protesters reportedly said.

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Obama’s Pencil-Thin Presidency

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Photo Credit: American Thinker

Photo Credit: American Thinker

Peeking over the top of Obama’s shirt pocket is not the end of the pen that he threatened to use, along with his phone, if he didn’t get his way. It’s the tip of a pencil. An ordinary, wooden, No. 2 pencil, complete with eraser, both ends worn to the nub, in desperate need of sharpening.

Pens suggest importance and permanence. Great documents are composed with pens. Pivotal moments in history are recorded in ink, as are inspiring presidential legacies. The references to the current president inserted into those biographies, however, are sketched in the erasable strokes of a pencil — as is everything else Obama has ever produced or that his presidency has inspired.

Pencils’ output is flexible. Pencils design and transform and spin. Pencils redefine, divide, draw distractions and smudge and distort and erase: facts, events, and narratives. Penciled opinions can conveniently evolve. Penciled statistics, measurements and books are easily cooked. Red lines marked by pencils can be erased and redrawn. Laws become mere “suggestions” and imply a “vast amount of discretion” in enforcement.

Because Obama is a “master of words” — one with the ability to control their meaning — his pencil, aided by a vast media complex, is a tool that holds the potential for absolute power as executive, legislator and judge.

A prominent law professor once aided Obama in that mastery with this explanation: “[Obama] didn’t say what he meant…and having said that, in order to avoid misleading anyone, he had to clarify it.” Thomas Sowell put it a little clearer than Mr. Tribe when he observed about Obama: “One of the many ways of lying smoothly is to simply redefine words.”

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Obama Program Aims to Reduce ‘Births’ Among Blacks, Latinos

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

President Barack Obama is attempting to lower the rate of “births” — and separately, pregnancies — among blacks and Latinos.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists reducing “births” as one of the top goals of Obama’s “Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative.”

The language on the CDC’s website makes clear that the program seeks to reduce the rate of both pregnancies and “births” among minorities.

Specifically, the CDC says the “purpose of this program is to demonstrate the effectiveness of innovative,

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South Korea Says Hundreds Missing after Ferry Sinks Off Southern Coast

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Photo Credit: AP/YONHAP

Photo Credit: AP/YONHAP

South Korean officials said Wednesday that nearly 300 people were still missing several hours after a passenger ferry sank off that country’s southern coast, leaving at least two dead and seven injured.

A government official had said earlier Wednesday that around 100 people were unaccounted for, but the number was later revised upward due to a tallying error.

The ferry was carrying 477 people, most of them high school students, and was bound for the island of Jeju when it sent a distress call at around 9 a.m. local time Wednesday as it began leaning to one side, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Security and Public Administration.

The government said about 95 percent of the ship was submerged.

Two coast guard officers told the Associated Press that a 27-year-old woman named Park Ji-yeong and another unidentified person had died. Both spoke on condition of anonymity citing department rules.

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Babies With Club Feet, Cleft Palates are Aborted Up to the Day of Birth in Britain

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

Today, a baby with club foot or cleft palate can and is aborted up to the point of birth in England. The law permits an abortion to take place “up to birth” if tests indicate that the child may be disabled when born, while there is a legal limit of 24 weeks for abortions on other grounds.

Why is that the case? Jane Ellison, the public health minister, says the British parliament has not adequately defined the term “serious handicap” in its abortion laws, which has led to a loophole by which babies with very minor disabilities can be aborted after the 24-week legal limit.

Fortunately, Ellison says the government is looking into tightening the abortion guidelines to prevent this, though abortion on non-disabled babies would still continue unabated.

As the London Telegraph reports:

However, she said that the Government is reflecting on the issue and that “we do have some opportunities coming forward… to add clarification through guidelines”.

It comes amid warnings from MPs that the current law on late-term abortions is being applied in a “haphazard fashion” and that the current guidance to doctors is no longer adequate because of medical advances.

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Al-Qaeda: ‘Spreading Like Wildfire’

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Photo Credit: AFP / HO

Photo Credit: AFP / HO

Last week, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee held a hearing provocatively titled “Is Al-Qaeda Winning?” The answers that the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade received were profoundly unsettling.

Former Senator Joseph Lieberman (I–Conn.) testified that Syria had become a key focal point of al-Qaeda’s efforts. He noted that there are more foreign militants fighting in Syria today than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over the past 10 years: “Put very bluntly, Syria has become the most dangerous terrorist sanctuary in the world today—and the United States has not coherent or credible policy for dealing with it.”

Frederick Kagan, director of the critical threats project at the American Enterprise Institute, warned that the Obama Administration has underestimated the threat posed by al-Qaeda’s ideology, which has inspired a global insurgency. He assessed that al-Qaeda’s “brand is spreading like wildfire, the groups affiliating themselves with it control more fighters, land and wealth than they ever have, and they are opening up new fronts.”

Heritage Foundation analysts long have warned about the more permissive environment that al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups have exploited in many countries destabilized by the “Arab Spring” uprisings. Syria, in particular, has been a magnet for foreign militants and a rich recruiting ground for al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda has made a comeback in Iraq, and gained followers in Egypt, Libya, Mali, East Africa, and Yemen.

The chief takeaway from the hearing was that the Obama Administration needs to focus more on the revolutionary threat posed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates in the Middle East and Africa. Furthermore, the administration should alter its narrow definition of the al-Qaeda threat, which it currently holds as “the immediate terrorist threat posed by the al-Qaeda core group based in Pakistan.”

This article originally appeared at Heritage.com and is re-published in full with the Heritage Foundation’s permission.

It’s Time to Protect Religious Liberty in the Marriage Debate (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

For years, a central argument of those in favor of same-sex marriage has been that all Americans should be free to live and love as they choose; however, does that freedom require the government to coerce those who disagree into celebrating same-sex relationships? A growing number of incidents demonstrates that the redefinition of marriage and state policies on sexual orientation have created a climate of intolerance and intimidation for citizens who believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and that sexual relations are properly reserved for marriage.

Now these citizens are facing a new wave of government coercion and discrimination. State laws that create special privileges based on sexual orientation and gender identity are being used to trump fundamental civil liberties such as freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion.

Consider the case of Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene Flowers, who is being sued by the state of Washington. In March 2013, she met with long-time customers who asked her to arrange the flowers for their same-sex wedding ceremony. Stutzman felt that she had to decline because of her “relationship with Jesus Christ,” and her belief that marriage is between one man and one woman. While she was happy to sell and arrange flowers for any other occasion (the same-sex couple were happy costumers of hers for nine years), she didn’t want to use her artistic skills to help celebrate a same-sex wedding ceremony.

As Stutzman explains:

I think most artistic people—especially painters—put their hearts into their arrangements. It’s part of them, it’s part of who they are. And I think that’s the same thing with a florist.

A month later, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed suit against Stutzman, contending that she had violated the state’s sexual orientation law. The state of Washington is seeking a $2,000 fine and a court order forcing Barronelle to violate her conscience by using her artistic talents to celebrate a same-sex relationship.

Stutzman is not the only small business owner whose religious liberty is at risk. As we note in a new Backgrounder, “Protecting Religious Liberty in the State Marriage Debate,” she is joined by other families across the country who are being hauled into court for their belief that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.

Cake makers, photographers, family bakeries, and adoption agencies, among others, have faced penalties and lawsuits for working in accordance with their faith.

This shouldn’t happen in America. Part of the genius of the American system of government is its commitment to protecting the liberty and First Amendment freedoms of all citizens while respecting their equality before the law. The government protects the freedom of citizens to seek the truth about God, to worship according to their conscience, and to live out their convictions in public life. Likewise, citizens are free to form contracts and other associations according to their own values.

State and federal policy should respect Americans’ ability to live and work in accordance with their beliefs. Even in states where marriage is redefined, government should not coerce individuals and organizations to violate their moral or religious beliefs about marriage. Although Americans are free to live as they choose, no one should demand that government compel others into celebrating their relationship. And Americans should continue to work for laws that reflect the truth about marriage. If marriage is redefined, attempts to marginalize the view of marriage as one man and one woman will only increase.

For citizens like Barronelle Stutzman, the consequences are becoming apparent. Read more about it here.

This article originally appeared at Heritage.com and is re-published in full with the Heritage Foundation’s permission.

WP: Is Barack Obama ‘Black’? A Majority of Americans Say No

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President Obama made history in 2008 as the first African American president in U.S. history.

But according to data in a fascinating new Pew Research Center study, a majority of Americans describe the president as “mixed race,” while just more than a quarter (27 percent) call him “black.”

Photo Credit: Pew

Photo Credit: Pew

While whites and Hispanics are far more likely to describe Obama as “mixed race,” a strong majority of African Americans see him as black. And black voters voted in historically large numbers for Obama. He won 93 percent of the African American vote in 2012 and 95 percent among that group in 2008. (John Kerry won 88 percent of the black vote in 2004; Al Gore won 90 percent in 2000.)

Obama, for his part, struggled for much of his life in how to define himself racially with a Kansas-born white mother and a Kenyan father. David Maraniss documents that process in fascinating detail in his biography of the country’s 44th president. Of Obama’s racial identity, Maraniss wrote:

Here, at age 22, was an idea that would become a key to understanding Obama the politician and public figure. Without a class meant that he was entering his adult life without financial security. Without a structure meant he had grown up lacking a solid family foundation, his father gone from the start, his mother often elsewhere, all leading to a sense of being a rootless outsider. Without a tradition was a reference to his lack of religious grounding and his hapa status, white and black, feeling completely at home in neither race. The different path he saw for himself was to rise above the divisions.

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Republican Odds of U.S. Senate Takeover Rise as Turnout Shrinks

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Photo Credit: Bloomberg

Photo Credit: Bloomberg

National Polls
Obama’s approval rating has run at an average of 42.9 percent in eight national opinion polls conducted since March 20, matching former President George W. Bush’s standing in early 2006, when Republicans lost control of both the House and Senate in midterm elections that he called “a thumpin’.”

Jennifer Duffy, senior editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington, has raised her estimate of Republicans taking control of the Senate from a 25 percent chance last fall to 50 percent today. The tilted turnout of midterm elections is only part of her calculation.

“We are weighting environment much higher — the president’s approval ratings, the generic congressional ballot, just basically what Americans are thinking,” Duffy said in an interview. “The Republicans have been able to expand their own playing field, putting races on the map that weren’t there.”

Toss-Up Races
Republicans need to gain six additional seats to take control of the Senate, and Democratic incumbents are defending most of the hotly contested seats. The party’s chances of retaining seats it now holds in Louisiana, Arkansas, Alaska, North Carolina and Michigan are all rated toss-ups by the Cook Political Report. The report rates two other Democratic seats — in West Virginia and Montana — as leaning Republican…

With ads hammering Democrats for support of the president’s Affordable Care Act, the Koch-backed group has targeted nine Senate races where Democrats are defending seats. Its four top targets: incumbents Pryor, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Begich of Alaska.

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