Alaska Conservatives Respond After IRS Commissioner Ousted (+video)

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The head of the Internal Revenue Service was ousted amidst controversy that the agency had targeted certain political groups. According to the U.S. Treasury, the IRS delayed processing applications for groups tea party-affiliated groups. Those groups are already very critical of the federal government. Those CBS 11 talked to say firing the head of the agency does little to ease their fears about federal bias.

Since 2010, the Treasury Inspector General said, the IRS has not been fair in processing applications from certain groups seeking tax-exempt status. President Barack Obama addressed Americans in a press conference where he called the scandal an “outrage.”

He announced the resignation of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, but former Alaska tea party candidate Joe Miller said that’s not enough. “The people that made that decision, they need to be prosecuted. The house needs to be cleaned. The IRS [needs] to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Mark Fish is one of the founding members of Alaska’s tea party movement. He said government scrutiny is exactly why his tea party group in Alaska opted not to file tor tax exempt status. “You know, with current events, it looks like some of those fears have been founded.”

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Even Moderate Republicans Now Piling Onto Obama

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Photo Credit: T.J. KirkpatrickCongressional Republicans, not resting with the Internal Revenue Service scandal, are moving to broaden the matter to an array of tax malfeasances and “intimidation tactics” they hope will ensnare the White House.

Republican charges range from clearly questionable actions to seemingly specious allegations, and they grow by the day. On Friday, lawmakers sought to tie the I.R.S. matter to the carrying out of President Obama’s health care law, which will rely heavily on the agency. Whether they succeed holds significant ramifications for Mr. Obama, who will soon know if he is dealing with a late spring thunderstorm that may soon blow over or a consuming squall that will leave lasting damage.

Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, the usually mild-mannered chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, set the tone Friday at Congress’s first hearing on the targeting of conservative groups by the I.R.S., laying out details, from the alleged threatening of donors to conservative nonprofit groups to the leaking of confidential I.R.S. documents.

In that context, he said, the screening of Tea Party groups for special scrutiny was not the scandal itself but “just the latest example of a culture of cover-ups — and political intimidation — in this administration.”

“It seems like the truth is hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election,” Mr. Camp said.

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President Obama Is Not Doing His Job

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Photo Credit: White House FlickrGovernment is bad for personal freedom. That argument is premised upon the truism that everything government does interferes with freedom because it either prohibits or compels. Everything it owns it has taken from others. Much of what it says is divorced from the truth. President Obama, like President George W. Bush, has argued that his first job is to keep America safe, and if he impairs personal freedom in the process, that is a small price to pay for safety. Many of my colleagues in the media on the left and right have bought this argument, notwithstanding its fallacies.

Until now.

This past week, we learned that the IRS has targeted for additional scrutiny the tax exemption applications of groups with whose messages it disagrees. We also learned that the Department of Justice obtained the personal telephone records of hundreds of reporters and editors employed by the Associated Press without a search warrant issued by a judge. And during this past week we learned that the White House, the Department of State and the CIA all engaged in a conspiracy of disinformation so that the official version of events of what caused the murders of four Americans at our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, would not impair Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012.

The common threads in all of this government secrecy and lying are a general rejection of government’s moral obligation to tell the truth, a disturbing yet brazen willingness to evade and avoid the restrictions the Constitution has deliberately built around government, and a glib admission that the government can do as it pleases so long as it can politically get away with it.

The Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause requires that the government treat all similarly situated entities in a similar manner. The Constitution’s First Amendment prohibits the government from using the speech and expressive activities of persons in America as a basis for the disparate treatment of them.

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NASA: Meteor Slams into Moon, Causes Explosion Visible to Naked Eye on Earth (+video)

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Photo Credit: NASAA MASSIVE explosion from a meteor which crashed into the Moon was visible to the naked eye on Earth, NASA says.

A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, causing an explosion so bright anyone looking up at the right moment would have spotted it, NASA said.

NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the Moon in the eight years the monitoring program has run, the National Geographic reports

About 300 lunar impacts have been logged over the years but this latest impact, from March 17, is considered much, much brighter than anything else observed.

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So Much for Evolution: Scientists Say People are Getting Dumber

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller The average intelligence level of a Victorian-era person was higher than a modern-era person, a European research team posits in a report published last week in the journal Intelligence.

The research flies in the face of current assumptions of the Flynn Effect, which states that basic intelligence levels — measured through IQ tests — have risen since the 1930s.

IQ tests have been criticized, however, for reflecting bias toward certain cultures and education levels, while reaction times to stimuli might reflect “true intelligence” — the shorter the reaction time, the smarter the person.

European researchers Michael Woodley, Jan te Nijenhuis and Raegan Murphy compared reaction times to stimuli between people in the Victorian-era and modern-era people between 1884 to 2004.

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Remote Alaska Volcano Erupting with Lava and Ash

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Photo Credit: APA remote Alaska volcano continues to erupt, spewing lava and ash clouds.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory said Thursday a continuous cloud of ash, steam and gas from Pavlof Volcano has been seen 20,000 feet above sea level. The cloud was moving to the southeast Thursday.

John Power, the U.S. Geological Survey scientist in charge at the observatory, estimates the lava fountain rose several hundred feet into the air.

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Congressmen Demand End to EPA’s IRS-Like Bias Against Conservative, State/Local FOIA Requestors

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner Two powerful congressional Republicans want to know more – a lot more – about why and how Environmental Protection Agency officials have for several years erected multiple obstacles to conservative think tanks, media outlets and non-profit activists filing Freedom of Information Act requests with the agency.

“According to documents obtained by the Committees, EPA readily granted FOIA fee waivers for liberal environmental groups – effectively subsidizing them – while denying fee waivers and making the FOIA process more difficult for states and conservative groups,” said Sen. David Vitter and Rep. Darrell Issa in a letter today to EPA’s acting administrator, Bob Perciasepe.

“This is a clear abuse of discretion. Consequently, the committees request that you immediately take necessary steps to ensure that such manipulation of the FOIA process does not occur in the future,” Vitter and Issa wrote.

Reproduction fees covering multiple documents can easily run into the thousands of dollars, which is why Congress included a liberal waiver provision in the original FOIA it approved in 1966 and which remains in the law today.

Issa, a California Republican, is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, while Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, is the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

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Bear Attacks Man, Man Fights Back (+video)

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Photo Credit: FOX 11Gerre Ninnemann says he’s lucky to be alive. He had to fight off a black bear Monday afternoon at his cabin in Silver Cliff in Marinette County.

So how did it all start? Her name’s Maddy. “We came out this patio door,” said Ninnemann.

Ninnemann – a retired financial planner who splits his time between his home in Green Bay and cabin in Silver Cliff – was getting ready to go for a walk with his pal Maddy – his eight-year-old yellow lab.

“And the bear was right here,” said Ninnemann pointing to the side of the cabin. “(Maddy) let out a ferocious bark and growl and started chasing after it.”

But the young male black bear was soon chasing after Maddy. “I came running out into the yard here, shouting, waving my arms at the bear, thinking that would scare him away,” said Ninnemann, who has dealt with bears on his property for the past 20 or so years. “But it didn’t. All it did was leave the dog and come right for me.”

Bear attacks man in Marinette County

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Steyn Warns of ‘Serious Secession Movements’ if Drift Toward Socialism Not Reversed (+video)

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerRadio host Dennis Miller and National Review columnist Mark Steyn considered Thursday the possible outcomes if the United States continues down the path of socialism.

If socialism became the prevailing governing philosophy, Miller speculated, escaping it wouldn’t require a move to the Australian outback. Instead he suggested heading for the state of Texas, because it would be the first place to push back against it.

“If I ever do flee, don’t think fleeing has to involve you going over to Alice Springs or something,” Miller said. “I’m going to Texas because that’ll be the first place that pushes back. They’re not going down the tubes with this country if this country decides to go down the tubes. I really think I’d head for Texas.”

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Report: US Naval Academy Instructor Teaching On Behalf Of US Muslim Brotherhood

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Photo Credit: Official U.S. Navy ImageryAccording to promotional material, a United States Naval Academy professor is teaching on behalf of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a part of the US Muslim Brotherhood and where global Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi reportedly serves as a trustee. IIIT recently announced its Summer Students Program for 2013 to be held from May 26 – July 3. According to the IIIT announcement, one of the instructors for the program will be Professor Ermin Sinanovic, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland who will be teaching the following course titled “Muslim World Affairs”:

This course is meant to provide students who had little or no background on the Muslim world with a basic understanding of its contemporary history, its geopolitics, its diverse cultures, languages and ethnic groups. Also, the course introduces the key issues and developments that framed the relationship between the world of Islam and the West, such as the colonial encounter, the capitalist expansion of the West, the emergence of the nation-state and its institutions, the discovery of oil in the Middle East and its implications, the communication revolution and contemporary globalization and their impact on cultures, values and life styles; and finally the US foreign policy towards the Muslim world and its implications. This course will be covered in twelve hours. Instructor: Professor Ermin Sinanovic, US Naval Academy, Maryland.

According to his bio, Ermin Sinanovic is:

…an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, USA. He studied for an MA and a PhD in Political Science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Prof. Sinanovic obtained two BAs (one in Qur’an and Sunnah Studies, the other in Political Science) and an MA (Islamic Civilization) from the International Islamic University Malaysia. His research interests include transnational Islamic revival, Southeast Asian politics, Islamic movements, Middle East politics, Islamic political thought, and Islam and politics in general. At the Naval Academy, Prof. Sinanovic teaches courses on Southeast Asian politics, Middle East politics, and Islam and politics. He speaks Bosnian, English, Arabic, and Malay. “

One of the other instructors at the IIIT summer program will be US Muslim Brotherhood leader Louay Safi, identified in the announcement as affiliated with the College of Islamic Studies of the Qatar Foundation. In 2009 Louay Safi, also an official at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), was at the center of a controversy when it was learned that the US Defense Department brought him to Fort Hood as an instructor and that he had been lecturing on Islam to troops in Fort Hood who were about to deploy to Afghanistan. In February 2010, the activities and lectures of Dr. Safi on all military bases were suspended pending a criminal inquiry by the U.S. military. A shooting took place at Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas on November 5, 2009 in which a single gunman killed 13 people and over 30 people were injured in the worst shooting ever to take place on an American military base. The only suspect in the shooting is Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old U.S. Army major serving as a psychiatrist. Dr. Safi has also been recently identified as a leading member of the Syrian National Council, a Syrian opposition group dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

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