Hardcore, Constitutionalist Lawmaker: Time to Sue Obama Over Amnesty

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmorePressure is mounting on the House of Representatives to pass the Senate immigration bill, but Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, says the Senate plan is unconstitutional and is not nearly focused enough on border security.

House Republicans met Wednesday to get a sense of where the members stand on immigration and what the GOP strategy should be.

Rep. Stockman told WND Republicans don’t feel much pressure to pass the Senate bill. He said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has not submitted the bill to the House because he knows the GOP believes it’s unconstitutional.

“The bill is unconstitutional because Article 1, Section 7, says quite clearly that all taxes are to be started in the House, not in the Senate,” he said. “The thing is loaded with taxes, loaded with pork, so Harry Reid to my knowledge has never sent it over to the House.”

The congressman said if Reid does submit it, the House GOP will request a point of order on the alleged constitutional violation. He believes that would be followed by the House “blue-slipping” the bill.

Read more from this story HERE.

Holder Living High on the Hog, Too: Spent Almost $1.5 Million on Travel in 2011

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Photo Credit: ReutersU.S. Attorney General Eric Holder took 62 out-of-town trips in fiscal year 2011 at a cost of at least $1.45 million, according to a set of disclosures sent to Bloomberg News.

Holder’s travel during the period included an April 2011 trip to Las Vegas, marked business and personal, that cost $46,358. Nine other trips, including visits to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Miami, were labeled “personal,” and cost a combined $169,502. He took an $83,002 flight to Krakow, Poland, to attend the G-6 summit.

Flight costs for seven trips, including journeys to China, Hawaii and Brussels, weren’t provided.

As attorney general, Holder is a “required use” official who is compelled by executive order to use government aircraft for all travel while in office due to “security and communications needs,” according to a February 2013 U.S. Government Accountability Office report.

For personal trips, Holder is required to reimburse the government for the equivalent commercial coach fare, which is often much less than the total trip costs, the GAO said.

Read more from this story HERE.

A Whopping 85% of Americans Believe Businesses Should Be Able to Turn Away Homosexual Customers

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Photo Credit: PargonThis is no idle hypothetical from Rasmussen. A photography studio in New Mexico was fined years ago under the state’s Human Rights Act for refusing to accept a lesbian couple’s request to photograph their commitment ceremony because it was contrary to the owners’ Christian beliefs. The studio lost several rounds of appeals because the state’s antidiscrimination law forbids “public accommodations” from discriminating on the basis of orientation. As Gabe Malor said a few weeks ago after the big SCOTUS DOMA decision, this is the next flashpoint in political skirmishing over gay rights. Does free exercise of religion extend to how you run your business?

A heavy, heavy majority says yep, sure does:

If a Christian wedding photographer who has deeply held religious beliefs opposing same-sex marriage is asked to work a same-sex wedding ceremony, 85% of American Adults believe he has the right to say no. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only eight percent (8%) disagree even as the courts are hearing such challenges.

You can, if you like, agree with the majority here without bringing free exercise into it. A strong-form libertarian would say that the photographer has a right to refuse for whatever reason he chooses, religious or not. It’s a matter of private property, not free exercise.

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Obama Speaks With Putin Amid Tensions Over Snowden

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Photo Credit: Jedimentat44By Fox News. President Obama spoke Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid escalating tensions between the two countries over NSA leaker Edward Snowden but there was no indication they reached any accord on the fugitive’s future.

Snowden, surfacing for the first time in weeks, held a meeting with human rights groups earlier Friday at the Moscow airport, where he’s been stuck in the transit zone since he left Hong Kong last month.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the meeting amounted to a “propaganda platform” for Snowden, and criticized Russia for its handling of the affair.

“It’s also incompatible with Russian assurances that they do not want Mr. Snowden to further damage U.S. interests,” he said.

The Russian government so far has rebuffed calls to return Snowden to the U.S. to face multiple federal charges. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APInside the Ring: More NSA leaks

By Bill Gertz. U.S. intelligence officials are braced for more disclosures of National Security Agency eavesdropping secrets from renegade contractor Edward Snowden, who is seeking asylum in Venezuela.

New details from Mr. Snowden, who was still in a Moscow airport transit lounge on Wednesday, appeared Sunday. Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine and Brazil’s O Globo newspaper published new details about NSA electronic intelligence gathering, including two code names for programs that had not been made public before.

In an email interview with video maker Laura Poitras and journalist Jacob Appelbaum, Mr. Snowden revealed that the NSA works with German intelligence and other Western governments to track down terrorists and other criminal suspects.

“We [NSA] warn the others when someone we want to catch is using one of their airports, and they then extradite him to us,” he stated. “We can have obtained the information for that, for example, from the monitored cellphone of the girlfriend of a suspected hacker who has used it in an entirely different country that has nothing to do with the matter.”

Mr. Snowden said the NSA’s Foreign Affairs Directorate is the main liaison. Read more from this story HERE.

Dangerous Times: When America Supports Evil

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Photo Credit: Mad Mike 3000Obama is the most cynical and amoral president we have ever had, if you look at his actions and not at his words.

In Egypt both sides are now blaming us for their near-civil war, and they are both right. Obama lost the moral high ground when he destabilized Egypt, the greatest Arab pillar of Middle Eastern peace, by forcing Hosni Mubarak to resign. To make it worse, Obama then supported the Muslim Brotherhood, which immediately introduced their own Shari’ah-leaning constitution, squeezing out political rivals, ignored the judiciary, and took over the armed forces.

There is a reason why Brother Morsi was just thrown out of power. Nobody in Egypt trusted him. He received 51% percent of the vote, but he was trying to grab 100% of the power.

In Egypt we are now caught between one kind of evil — the kind that kills young girls who meet boys without the father’s permission — and another kind of evil, a coup d’etat. Thank you, Mr. Obama.

In Syria this administration is doing even worse things, because now we are supporting Al Qaida rebels against the Assad regime. At least 100,000 Arabs have killed each other in Syria, and there is no end in sight. And we knowingly empowered the worst kinds of Islamic terrorists.

Read more from the story HERE.

Non-Sexualized Boy Scouts Alternative Launched (+video)

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Photo Credit: WNDRecently, millions of Americans were shocked and saddened when the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) disgracefully bowed to left-wing political pressure and became something it had never before been: a hyper-politicized, aberrantly sexualized petri dish for social and sexual experimentation.

Created in 1910 to “prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes,” the BSA, on May 23, 2013, inexplicably voted to welcome into its ranks “open and avowed” homosexuality (boy-on-boy sexual attraction and behavior), thereby disavowing the “morally straight” Scout Oath its members have been sworn to uphold for over a century…

This is particularly disquieting when you consider that homosexual assaults against boys occur at an alarmingly disproportionate rate when compared to heterosexual assaults. Of course, not every “gay” man – self-identified or otherwise – is a pedophile, but, and despite baseless claims to the contrary, many studies indicate that a disturbing percentage of same-sex-attracted men are.

Consider, for instance, a study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, of over 200 convicted pedophiles and pederasts. It found that “86 percent of offenders against males described themselves as homosexual or bisexual.” This demonstrates, as notes Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, that “homosexual or bisexual men are approximately 10 times more likely to molest children than heterosexual men.”

That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news: As the BSA leadership of fools rapidly sinks, those who desire a safe, non-sexualized alternative to the Boy Scouts now have a life raft. On Saturday, June 29, I, along with nearly 50 top Christian, youth and scouting leaders from across the nation, took part in a private, landmark meeting in Louisville, Ky. The meeting was convened to lay the groundwork for a principled, values-based scout-like youth character development program for young men. Although some finishing touches remain (such as the organization’s official name), a press conference was recently held in Washington, D.C., to announce the launch of this exciting new organization.

Read more from this story HERE.

Paul Ryan Has Been Working Behind the Scenes on Bipartisan Amnesty Deal Since Last Year

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Photo Credit: GARY CAMERONTwo weeks after the end of his failed vice-presidential bid, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was already thinking ahead to another big fight: immigration reform. And he was thinking about it in a bipartisan way.

Ryan ran into his old friend, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), and urged him to restart his effort to get a comprehensive immigration package through Congress. Ryan’s arguments stemmed from a religious and economic foundation, not from the huge political liability the issue had become for the Republican Party during the 2012 presidential campaign.

“You’re a Catholic; I’m a Catholic; we cannot have a permanent underclass of Americans exploited in America,” Ryan told Gutierrez, according to the Democrat’s recollection of the November discussion.

Given those sentiments, and the drubbing the GOP ticket took among Latino voters, supporters of an immigration overhaul expected Ryan to emerge as the House’s most prominent public voice on the issue.

Instead, as the issue has grown more contentious with the recent passage of a sprawling 1,200-page Senate bill, Ryan has worked quietly behind the scenes, declining to become the public face of the issue and leaving the effort without any prominent sponsors among the House GOP leadership.

Read more from this story HERE.

DHS Chief Janet Napolitano Resigns; Rewarded With Presidency of 10 Campuses, Huge Salary (+video)

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Photo Credit: LA TimesJanet Napolitano, the U.S. secretary of Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, is being named as the next president of the University of California system, in an unusual choice that brings a national-level politician to a position usually held by an academic, The Times has learned. Her appointment also means the 10-campus system will be headed by a woman for the first time in its 145-year history.

Napolitano’s nomination by a committee of UC regents came after a secretive process that insiders said focused on her early as a high-profile, although untraditional, candidate who has led large public agencies and shown a strong interest in improving education.

UC officials believe that her Cabinet experiences –- which include helping to lead responses to hurricanes and tornadoes and overseeing some anti-terrorism measures — will help UC administer its federal energy and nuclear weapons labs and aid its federally funded research in medicine and other areas.

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Holds Obamacare Briefing With Left Wing Bloggers

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Photo Credit: myglesiasThe White House held a background briefing Friday to discuss Obamacare implementation with a handful of journalists from liberal and progressive outlets.

Slate blogger Matthew Yglesias posted a photograph to Instagram Friday featuring himself and other liberal journalists at the White House, with the caption “#thistown.”

Yglesias’ photograph features American Prospect staff writer Jamelle Bouie and MSNBC’s Benjy Sarlin attending the briefing.

Yglesias, who publicly cheered the death of conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, is known as a member of a tight-knit circle of progressive bloggers that includes Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein and low-rated MSNBC host Chris Hayes.

Read more from this story HERE.

Study: Obama Could Care Less About the Poor, Hardly Ever Mentions Them

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Photo Credit: APStanding before an audience of 80,000 rapturous supporters and framed by a pair of giant Greek columns, Barack Obama partly used his 2008 nomination acceptance speech in Denver to showcase a subject he has mostly seen fit, ever since, to avoid. “We are more compassionate,” he said back then, “than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty.”

But since then, the poverty rate has increased: from 13.1 percent in 2008 to 15.1 percent in the most recent measurements released by the U.S. Census Bureau. And while he is widely seen as an ally of those Democratic constituencies most apt to focus on the plight of the underclass, Obama has actually mentioned the poor less frequently than any of his modern predecessors in the Oval Office.

A new study by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a non-profit center whose social scientists study issues of concern to Catholics, tabulated all references to an economic class that have appeared in the public papers of each president dating back to John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first — and to date only — Catholic president.

The study found that Lyndon B. Johnson, architect of the 1960s “War on Poverty,” was most apt, among the modern presidents, to mention the poor in some form or fashion: 84 percent of the time he made reference to any economic class. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter came next, with both mentioning the underclass approximately three-quarters of the time. Presidents Ford, Reagan, and George W. Bush all rated in the mid-to-high 60s, with Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton not far behind. George Herbert Walker Bush, the study found, was apt to speak about the poor fully half the time.

Only then — dead last in the Georgetown rankings — comes Barack Obama, who mentions the nation’s least well-off only 26 percent of the time.

Read more from this story HERE.