Rush: Racism Worse Under Obama

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Photo Credit: WNDTalk radio icon Rush Limbaugh warned his listeners Wednesday that while many expected the election of a half-black president would ease racial strife in American, it is worse than ever under Barack Obama.

Limbaugh was reflecting on the newest strategy by Attorney General Eric Holder – to attack laws that allow self-defense, such as the famed “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida that was cited by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman.

He was acquitted last week of charges of second-degree murder after a jury decided he had been in fear for his life when teen Trayvon Martin was beating his head on a concrete sidewalk. Zimmerman pulled his firearm and shot.

On Wednesday’s show Limbaugh said, “Eric Holder is moving on the stand-your-ground law. I tell you, folks, these people… It is really sad. I think it was the British historian Alistair Cooke (I think it was him) in his Letters to America who said that America would never overcome its ‘black problem.’ It was never going to happen. I’m struck here. We elected the first black president, and that was supposed to fix all of this, wasn’t it, or at least make a huge dent in the race problem in this country?”

He continued, “The theory was that if America, with a vast majority white population and 12 to 14 percent black population, elected a black man president, ‘Why, that would speak volumes about how progressive and advanced America had become. It would go a long way toward healing the wounds that apparently remain from slavery and discrimination and all the other things.’ But seems it’s got worse, to me. It seems that with the election of Barack Obama, racial strife in this country’s worse than it’s ever been since the Civil War. Or as bad, at least.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Democrats Pin Their Hopes for Obama’s Amnesty Bill on Rep. Paul Ryan

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreDemocrats doggedly pursuing a far-reaching immigration bill are counting on help from Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s running mate last year and an unlikely candidate for delivering the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s second-term agenda.

Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who is frequently mentioned in the GOP lineup of possible 2016 presidential candidates, stands apart from many fellow House Republicans in favoring a way out of the shadows for the 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. in violation of the law.

He casts sweeping overhaul as a necessity to ensure both economic and national security — a fitting argument for an acolyte of Jack Kemp, the late Republican congressman and 1996 vice presidential candidate who backed an ill-fated effort in 2006 to overhaul the immigration system.

‘‘Paul Ryan says we cannot have a permanent underclass of Americans, that there needs to be a pathway to citizenship,’’ says Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who has been working relentlessly on immigration legislation. ‘‘He is my guiding light. I know I get him in trouble every time I say it.’’

Senior White House aides often mention the Wisconsin Republican as crucial to the prospects for legislation this year, hoping the Republican with impeccable conservative credentials will sway recalcitrant House members. Ryan also is a reminder of two other powerful forces backing an overhaul of immigration laws — the Catholic Church and business.

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Controversial Black Pastor Confronts Congregants Who Think Zimmerman is Guilty (+video)

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Photo Credit: ATLAH.orgDr. James David Manning, the notoriously controversial chief pastor at the ATLAH World Missionary Church in New York City, recently delivered a bold and controversial message to his congregants about the black community’s perception of the George Zimmerman trial. He urged his mostly black congregation to stop viewing the world through their “black eyes” and start looking at it through the “blood of Jesus.”

If they did that, the pastor explained, there would be no denying that the verdict in the Zimmerman was the correct one. He also told those who are convinced that Zimmerman is guilty that they only believe that because they are black.

“You are focusing on the fact that Trayvon Martin is black and you believe that George Zimmerman is white, he isn’t. His father is baptist, his mother, she’s from Peru. He’s Latin. A mix of Latin and White,” Manning said. “Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and all that crowd jumped the gun, they thought he was white, but he isn’t.”

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Federal Surveillance Drone Crashes in Florida, Shuts Down Highway (+video)

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Photo Credit: APA Florida highway was closed on Wednesday after a crash involving a fallen drone from an Air Force base, according to reports.

The Associated Press reported that the drone, from Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Fla., crashed on the U.S. 98 highway in Florida’s Panhandle.

The stretch of highway affected is an a rural part of Florida, but officials said the road could be closed for as long as 24 hours.

The drone has a 24-hour battery life and will become inactive after that, according to the AP.

Read more from this story HERE.

Stymied by Tea Party on Main Bill, Boehner Now Shifts to Backing Amnesty for Minors (+video)

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Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday offered an endorsement for a proposal to grant citizenship to children who were brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents.

“This is about basic fairness,” Boehner said one week after convening a two-hour meeting to discuss immigration with his conference.

“These children were brought here of no accord of their own, and frankly they’re in a very difficult position,” he said. “And I think many of our members believe that this issue needs to be addressed.”

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) are crafting a bill to deal with children brought to the U.S. illegally. They have said it will differ from the Dream Act in the Senate, which would grant citizenship to children brought to the U.S. illegally who meet certain requirements.

The Judiciary Committee plans to hold an initial hearing on the issue next week.

Read more from this story HERE.

Root Cause of America’s Economic Decline: The Loss of the Protestant Work Ethic

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The causes of America’s current economic malaise are many, and some are harder to address than others. The misguided fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policies of our profligate and dysfunctional government head the list. Those can be turned around.

But a problem much more difficult to turn back is the rotting of our moral fabric—the decay of the Protestant work ethic—engendered by decades of New Deals, Great Societies and one attempt after another to Spread the Wealth Around. In its stead, we now have a culture of entitlement and dependency that threatens to accelerate our slide into permanent decline.

The alarming statistics can be seen in the accompanying graph. The first is the breadwinner index—the percent of the U.S. male population that is gainfully employed. Only a few points of this decline can be ascribed to the aging of the population. The graph for males 18 to 52 has much the same slope.

The second shows the number of out-of-wedlock births, the rate of which surpassed 40 percent of all births as of 2008. Add to this the new-normal 50 percent divorce rate and we have a country in which the majority of our children are being raised outside of the economic unit once known as the nuclear family.

The third shows per capita inflation-adjusted total government spending, including federal, state, and municipal government expenditures as best as they can be estimated. The extent to which the huge spike in government spending per person over the past 60 years is the cause or the effect of the first two trends is open to debate. But the relationship is clear. When traditional family breadwinners stop carrying their load, the burden falls upon the remaining workers, an increasing number of whom are single mothers struggling to make ends meet.

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Proponents of Religion Push for More Freedom of Expression in the Military

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Photo Credit: APThere are famously no atheists in foxholes, but some conservatives say that the American military is not giving a fair shake to soldiers, sailors and Marines who want to practice their faith and express their beliefs more openly.

The Family Research Council and more than a dozen other conservative and pro-family groups this month announced a renewed push in Congress for stronger legislative protection for religious military personnel to combat what they say is a threat to religious liberty in the nation’s armed forces. A report from the Family Research Council documented a range of events in the military — such as one in which an Air Force officer was told to remove a Bible from his desk — that the group said exposed a “growing hostility to religion.”

Critics say the charges are overblown and are part of a covert move to promote evangelical Christianity within the ranks, but the coalition says it has collected a number of examples of violations of religious liberty and expression inside the military.

“There is a growing list of cases and incidents that point to the fact that religious liberty in our nation’s military is under attack,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

One event detailed in the report described a soldier who was reprimanded for serving fare from Chick-fil-A — known for its owners’ strong Christian beliefs — and for making statements related to the federal law on same-sex marriage at his promotion party. Religious leaders have had invitations to speak at military events abruptly withdrawn, and military personnel have been ordered to remove religious signs and symbols.

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Germany: We Have Good Cause to Abhor the Surveillance State

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Photo Credit: Jw WuOur grandparents’ generation feared the early-morning knock of the Gestapo. During the cold war, West and East Germans alike were aware that their divided country was crawling with spooks of all denominations. We recognised that mutually assured espionage helped prop up the bipolar balance of power. (It also made for some superb spy thrillers.) Still, no one misses the sombre paranoia, reinforced in and after the 1970s by the ramping up of West Germany’s domestic intelligence services in response to homegrown terrorism.

Germans who were born east of the Berlin Wall were careful to give the organs of the Staatssicherheit a wide berth. But it was only after the fall of the Wall in 1989, when the citizens who had brought down their government stormed the secret police’s headquarters and realised the full horror of the web woven by the Stasi: neighbours spying on neighbours; husbands spying on wives. Joachim Gauck, our current president, was the first head of the Stasi Archives, the government agency that, 20 years on, continues to painstakingly piece together a full record of East Germany’s surveillance of its citizens.

Yes, we Germans have better cause than many of our allies to abhor the secret state. It’s why we don’t like closed-circuit television cameras. It’s also why our constitutional court enshrined a fundamental right of data privacy, and declared it illegal for Germany to implement an EU directive on preventive data storage.

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NRA: Holder Exploiting Trayvon Martin Death to Push Gun Control Agenda

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The National Rifle Association (NRA) on Wednesday accused Attorney General Eric Holder of exploiting the death of Trayvon Martin to push the Obama administration’s gun control agenda.

NRA Executive Director Chris Cox blasted Holder’s calls for states to review “stand your ground” laws, which allow the use of deadly force for self-defense. Those statutes received scrutiny during the Florida trial of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who was acquitted Saturday on charges of murder and manslaughter in the shooting of Martin, an unarmed black teenager.

“The attorney general fails to understand that self-defense is not a concept, it’s a fundamental human right,” Cox said in a statement. “To send a message that legitimate self-defense is to blame is unconscionable and demonstrates once again that this administration will exploit tragedies to push their political agenda.”

In a speech Tuesday, Holder said “stand your ground” laws in states like Florida encouraged “violent situations to escalate.”

“Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation’s attention, it’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods,” Holder said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Enzi Slated for Tea Party Meeting

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Photo Credit: APBy Tarini Parti. Sen. Marco Rubio will face several of his supporters-turned-critics in a closed door meeting of the Tea Party Caucus next Tuesday.

The Florida Republican has been criticized by tea party and conservative groups for his work with the Gang of Eight, and will be one of the senators, House members and tea party-affiliated groups attending the meeting.

The meeting will be co-chaired by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) — two of the most vocal conservatives in the upper chamber.

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), who is now facing a primary challenge from Liz Cheney, is also expected to attend the caucus meeting, which could serve as an opportunity for him to solidify support among conservatives.

The meeting is organized by the TheTeaParty.Net, but several other conservative groups including Americans for Tax Reform, Tea Party Express, 60 Plus, Republican Jewish Coalition and National Tax Payers Union are expected to have a presence at the caucus meeting. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APRand Paul to Mike Enzi: ‘I’ll do anything I can’

By Hadas Gold. Rand Paul is formally endorsing Sen. Mike Enzi as he faces Liz Cheney in a Wyoming GOP primary next year, Paul told POLITICO in an interview Wednesday.

“I’ve told him I’ll do anything I can to help him,” the Kentucky GOP senator said. “In fact, somebody asked me today if they could use my name, and I said I’d be happy to sign on and do a fundraiser for him.”

Paul said he isn’t sure why Cheney decided to challenge Enzi, but said she might end up picking up some grudges for doing so.

“I don’t think it probably will be helpful in the long run. I’m pretty sure Senator Enzi will be able to hold off against any primary challenge,” Paul said. “In doing so there will be some people that won’t be so happy with the primary challenge, that might bear grudges.”

Cheney, 46, is the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney and launched her campaign Tuesday with a video calling for a “new generation of leaders to step up to the plate.” Read more from this story HERE.