Americans’ Belief That Gov’t Is Too Powerful at Record Level

Six in 10 Americans (60%) believe the federal government has too much power, one percentage point above the previous high recorded in September 2010. At least half of Americans since 2005 have said the government has too much power. Thirty-two percent now say the government has the right amount of power. Few say it has too little power.

america's perception

These most recent data come from Gallup’s Governance survey, conducted Sept. 5-8. The 7% who feel the government has too little power has been mostly steady since Gallup started tracking the measure regularly in 2002.

Republicans and Democrats Divided on Views of Government

This new high encompasses Republicans (81%), who are now more likely than at any time since 2002 to say the government has too much power, and Democrats (38%), who now are more likely to say this than at any time since President Barack Obama took office in 2009.

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Benjamin Netanyahu Warns of Iran ‘Honey’ Trap

benjamin-netanyahu-speech__13223894__mbqftemplateidrenderscaledpropertybildwidth465Prompted by growing alarm over the prospect of rapprochement between Iran and the West, the Israeli prime minister will warn that Mr Rouhani’s conciliatory tone conceals the same hostile intent voiced explicitly by the combative Mr Ahmadinejad when he addresses the UN general assembly on October 1.

He will also warn the West to avoid being caught in a honey trap laid by Mr Rouhani, who was elected in June on a promise to end Iran’s international isolation. “This is not honey, this is venom,” the prime minister will say, according to Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, which claimed to have seen a preview of his planned delivery.

Israeli officials have been trailing excerpts from Mr Netanyahu’s speech more than a week in advance in a desperate effort to counteract the effects of Mr Rouhani’s arrival in New York, where he is expected to call for a fresh diplomatic engagement in his own UN speech today.

By contrast, the Israeli leader will respond to Iranian overtures seeking a resolution to the impasse over its nuclear programme by warning that no deal is better than a bad agreement. He will remind diplomats that a deal was struck in 2005 over North Korea’s nuclear activities only for the Communist regime to test a bomb a year later.

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Top Democratic Senator Calls for Scrapping Key Snooping Patriot Act Section

Photo Credit: Susan Walsh

Photo Credit: Susan Walsh

The Senate’s senior lawmaker said Tuesday that its time to end the Patriot Act power that the intelligence community has relied on to collect all Americans’ phone records, saying it isn’t making the country safer.

“In my view, and I’ve discussed this with the White House, the Section 215 collection of Americans’ phone records must end,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and chairman of the SenateJudiciary Committee. “It is not making America safer and the government has not made its case this is an effective counterterrorism tool.”

Speaking at Georgetown Law Center, Mr. Leahy said he would hold a classified briefing this week and call an open hearing next week to try to look at the issues at stake.

The intelligence snooping has come under scrutiny since leaks earlier this year exposed that the U.S. government was collecting the time and phone numbers of calls made in the U.S., as well as combing through other electronic communications.

Since then, the intelligence community has admitted it has repeatedly broken its own rules — though officials say they have caught themselves and have generally not found any intentional efforts to abuse the programs.

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Conservative Group: Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn ‘Turncoats’

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A conservative political action committee on Tuesday slammed two of the Senate’s top Republicans as “turncoats” who have “surrendered” on the health care fight.

“Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn have surrendered to Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and the Democrats,” charged an email blast from the Senate Conservatives Fund. “More importantly, they have surrendered to Obamacare — the biggest job killer in America.”

The email took McConnell (R-Ky.) and Cornyn (R-Texas) to task over their declining to block a House-passed spending measure that would defund Obamacare. Some conservatives, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), are opposed to moving that bill forward, arguing that the process for doing so would allow Senate Democrats to remove defunding language from the bill. But McConnell’s and Cornyn’s offices have signaled that they won’t join attempts to thwart the bill.

“Sen. McConnell supports the House Republicans’ bill and will not vote to block it, since it defunds Obamacare and funds the government without increasing spending by a penny,” a spokesman for McConnell said in a statement on Monday . “He will also vote against any amendment that attempts to add Obamacare funding back into the House Republicans’ bill.”

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Pelosi: Part Time Jobs Are Liberating, Now Go Pursue Your Passion – Broke and Hungry (+video)

pelosi_spendingAs America runs headlong towards joining the ranks of the banana republics of the world, it’s nice to see that our leadership is embracing a third world work ethic for all Americans. In an interview this past Sunday, one of our nation’s greatest arguments for term limits was on TV, babbling almost incoherently and defying us to try to follow her contorted logic.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is fresh back from schmoozing with the world’s financial elite at the wedding of George Soros, the currency killer. Naturally, she’s chocked full of empathy for people trying to make ends meet and facing the reality of part time “obamajobs” being the only employment out there as a result of the impending doom that is obamacare.

But, according to Nancy, that is a good thing. She looks at work as if it is a burden that she and her other deranged know-nothings in the Democrat party are rescuing us from. Now, since we no longer have the option of working forty hours a week, we have all kinds of free time to spend pursuing happiness.

Not the happiness that comes with being able to provide for your family or enjoy dining out or a movie, those non-essential life-enhancing things, no, she’s talking about the happiness that comes with sitting around doing nothing, you know, Democrat happiness.

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Time for a Million Muslim March on Washington to Protest the Violence

Photo Credit: Irish Central

Photo Credit: Irish Central

In the wake of the horrific Muslim terror attack in Kenya, the “religion of peace” is starting to get a black eye.

I was speaking to a friend the other day, who was once married to a Muslim and has close ties to the worldwide Muslim community. We both agree that the Muslims we personally know are kind decent people and not at all associated with the daily jihad violence seen around the world. They abhor the crazies amongst them.

The worlds 1.2 billion Catholics have one spokesman who can support or condemn policy and speak out for them. They have a pope and his message is mostly of kindness and compassion for each other.

But Muslims have no main leader to speak for them and as a result, the ones among them who preach a brand of hatred and violence seem to grab the attention of the media.

In the latest round of senseless violence:

The storming of a “western” shopping center in Nairobi Kenya by Muslim extremists resulted in the slaughter of every non Muslim they could put their gun sights on….72 dead so far. Alarmingly, it seems that among the Muslim terrorists who attacked the mall, were American Muslims recruited from Minnesota and Maine. Minnesota is known to have a large Muslim Somali community, and they are reportedly recruited to take part in terrorist activity.

While the Kenya attack was occurring, in another part of the world a pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up outside a 130-year-old Anglican church in Pakistan. The bombings were timed for Sunday Mass, killing at least 78 people in the deadliest attack on Christians in the predominantly Muslim country.

Ongoing attacks on Christians by Muslim Brotherhood adherents have resulted in churches getting torched and countless Christians murdered in Egypt. See: There Is a Bulls eye on the Back of Every Christian Living in Egypt.

In the Syrian civil war, Muslim “rebels” have systematically targeted Christian towns, destroying them and killing the inhabitants.

Violent oppression of Christians has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations, especially in Africa and the Middle East. In some countries it is government sanctioned violence that burns down churches and imprison parishioners.

In others countries, groups and vigilantes take matters into their hands by murdering Christians and driving them out of regions they have called home for centuries. Read more: Heads roll as the religion of “turn the other cheek,” meets the religion of “peace”

According to the latest State Department report on worldwide terrorism, there were 6,771 terrorist attacks in 2012, fueled by an upsurge in state sponsored terrorism by Iran. See: What 2012 Terrorism Statistics Reveal.

America is still jittery after getting another wake up call when Boston was bombed by Jihadists during the historic Boston Marathon.

Many people are starting to question why peaceful Muslims tolerate this violence being waged on Muslim and non Muslim in the name of their religion. There is no other religion in the world that is surrounded by such violence under its banner.

America is the most religiously tolerant country in the world and accepts all sorts of different beliefs…..As long as they are not violent towards us. We know that all Muslims are not terrorists, but it seems that most of today’s terrorists are Muslim.

America and the worlds tolerance is being stretched thin by one atrocity after another being waged under the banner of a religion. Even though the percentage of the extremists among Muslims is small, it is painting the whole religion with a violent paintbrush.

It is time for leaders among the Muslim faithful to step forward and condemn the violence. It would be totally appropriate and appreciated by the world to see a massive show of condemnation of this violence. A symbolic way to show it would be a million Muslim march on Washington DC… Americans of every stripe would gladly join in a show of solidarity.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Americans Paid All-Time Highs In State and Local Taxes in 2nd Quarter

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Revenues from state and local individual income taxes, general sales and gross receipt taxes, motor fuel taxes, motor vehicle taxes and taxes on alcoholic beverages each hit all-time highs in the second quarter of this year, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.

That means that in no quarter of any year since the Census Bureau first started tracking state and local tax revenues in 1962 have Americans paid more in each of these categories of state and local taxes then they did in the quarter that ran from April through June of 2013.

Americans paid a record of $114.032 billion in state and local individual income taxes in the second quarter of this year, according to the Census Bureau. That was up $7.787 billion—or 7.3 percent—from the previous all-time record of $106.245 billion in state and local individual income taxes that Americans paid in the second quarter of 2008.

Americans also paid a record of $82.212 billion in state and local general sales and gross receipts taxes in the second quarter of this year. That was up $1.85 billion—or 2.3 percent—from the previous record of $80.362 billion in general sales and gross receipts taxes American paid in the second quarter of 2008.

Americans paid a record of $11.254 billion in state and local motor fuels taxes in the second quarter of 2013. That was up $135 million—or 1.2 percent—from the previous record of $11.119 billion paid in the second quarter of 2012.

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See the Brazilian President’s U.N. Speech Excoriating the United States: ‘Totally Unacceptable’ (+video)

Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff used her position as the opening speaker at the U.N. General Assembly to accuse the United States of violating human rights and international law through espionage that included spying on her email.

Rousseff had expressed her displeasure last week by calling off a high-profile state visit to the United States scheduled for October over reports that the U.S. National Security Agency had been spying on Brazil.

In unusually strong language, Rousseff launched a blistering attack on U.S. surveillance, calling it an affront to Brazilian sovereignty and “totally unacceptable.”

“Tampering in such a manner in the lives and affairs of other countries is a breach of international law and, as such, it is an affront to the principles that should otherwise govern relations among countries, especially among friendly nations,” Rousseff told the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

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Number of Dutch Killed by Euthanasia Rises by 13 Per Cent

Photo Credit: ALAMY

Photo Credit: ALAMY

Voluntary euthanasia or physician assisted suicide, where a doctor is present while a patient kills themselves, usually by drinking a strong barbiturate potion, has been legal in the Netherlands since 2002.

Requests have risen steadily since 2003 when 1,626 people applied for medically administered euthanasia, in most cases by a lethal injection, or assisted suicide.

As previously controversial “mercy killings” have become socially and medically acceptable, the number of cases, the vast majority of medical euthanasia, have more than doubled over the decade to 2012.

One explanation for the steep rise of Dutch cases is the introduction last year of mobile euthanasia units allowing patients to be killed by volunatry lethal injection when family doctors refused.

Around 80 per cent of people who request euthanasia die at home and are killed by doctors on the grounds that they are suffering unbearable pain and are making an informed choice. The opinion of a second doctor is also required.

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Iranian President Rejects Meeting with President Obama

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declined to talk to President Barack Obama after White House aides offered to arrange “an encounter” between the two leaders.

“What we indicated was we were open to the two leaders having an encounter here on the margins, officials said,” according to the White House pool report.

“The Iranians have an internal dynamic that they have to manage and the relationship with [the] United States is clearly quite different than the relationship that Iran has with other Western nations,” the pool report quotes a senior administration official as saying.

The official explained that the meeting was just “too complicated for Iranians to do at this point.”

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