A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants the federal government to butt out of states’ decisions to legalize and regulate marijuana, whether it’s for medical or recreational purposes.
The Respect State Marijuana Laws Act, introduced in Congress by a consortium of congresspeople led by Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, would immunize pot smokers, growers and sellers in permissive states from federal prosecution.
Eighteen states and Washington, D.C., have some form of medical marijuana laws and two — Colorado and Washington — recently passed laws legalizing pot for recreational use.
The bill is co-sponsored by Republicans Don Young and Justin Amash and Democrats Jared Polis, Earl Blumenauer and Steve Cohen.
“This bipartisan bill represents a common-sense approach that establishes federal government respect for all states’ marijuana laws,” Rohrabacher said in a statement. ”It does so by keeping the federal government out of the business of criminalizing marijuana activities in states that don’t want it to be criminal.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-14 03:11:522013-04-14 03:11:52Bipartisan Bill Seeks to Protect Pot Smokers from the Feds (+funny video)
Citing recent “inflammatory rhetoric” by Army officials, the head of the Family Research Council is warning supporters that President Obama could put evangelical Christians and Catholics on a “watch list” to prevent them from purchasing guns.
FRC President Tony Perkins said on his “Washington Watch” radio broadcast Wednesday that the Senate’s bipartisan proposal requiring background checks for Internet gun sales is “very concerning given the fact that the United States military has been increasingly showing hostility toward evangelicals and Catholics as being somehow threats to national security and people that need to be watched.”
In an email today to FRC supporters, Perkins explained that a recent Army briefing on “religious extremism” declared evangelical Christians and Catholics are among the biggest threats to America, along with Islamic supremacist groups such as al-Qaida and Hamas.
Perkins said it was also discovered that, in an email, Army Lt. Col. Jack Rich highlighted FRC and the American Family Association as groups that do not share “our Army Values.”
In his broadcast Wednesday, Perkins tied together the Army rhetoric with the proposed Senate legislation.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-14 03:10:552013-04-14 03:10:55'Evangelicals, Catholics Could be put on Watch List, Denied Guns'
According to an ABC News report, senators from the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” pushing immigration reform are expected to drop their bill, estimated at around 1,500 pages, on Tuesday, mere hours before the only scheduled Senate hearing on the topic.
“A bipartisan group of senators plans to introduce its long-awaited immigration bill on Tuesday, Senate sources confirmed to ABC News,” Jim Avila and Jordan Fabian wrote on Friday. “Four Democrats and four Republicans, known as the ‘Gang of Eight,’ wrapped up months of hard-fought negotiations this week and will put forth a bill that includes a pathway to citizenship for many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.”
If the Senators actually do wait until Tuesday to roll out their lengthy proposed overhaul of the U.S. immigration system, that will give members of the Senate Judiciary Committee less than a full day to read it before the only Senate hearing on the topic. Despite ardent pleas from Senate conservatives, including ranking Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Chuck Grassley, the committee’s chairman, Sen. Pat Leahy, has only agreed to one hearing on the legislation.
Leahy scheduled that single hearing for Wednesday at 2:30 PM, and the hearing’s sole scheduled witness is Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Napolitano would have less than a full day to read the bill she is scheduled to testify about.
“Gang of Eight” member Marco Rubio (R-FL) has said he supports multiple hearings and an open and transparent immigration reform process, but his actions do not necessarily back his words. He has not pushed Leahy to force multiple hearings; he appears content with the single hearing Leahy has scheduled on the issue and now appears to be backing down from his demand for multiple hearings.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-14 03:07:302013-04-14 03:07:301,500 Page Immigration Bill to Drop One Day Before Only Hearing?!
Retired Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus declared to Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview that “Obamacare is going to kill off small business.”
“If [employees] are thrown out of their medical plans now, where they’re covered in a good plan and thrown under the bus, they’re going to be destroyed,” Marcus said on Thursday. “If, in fact, they don’t stay as full-time employees but go to part-time employees, they’re going to be destroyed…
“People have to understand that the villain is not their employer; the villain is the U.S. government,” Marcus added. “Obamacare is the capper. That’s the bullet to the temple.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-14 03:06:072013-04-14 03:06:07Video: Home Depot Co-founder: Obamacare Will ‘Kill Off’ Small Business, Gov't is the 'Villain'
The saga of Sundance, the $100-bill-eating dog, apparently appealed to a lot of people.
A Google search Wednesday turned up 34,600 results for Wayne Klinkel’s story of his dog Sundance, who ate five $100 bills last Christmas, and his tale of woe in trying to pick up the digested remnants to recoup some of his loss…
The gist of his story is that Klinkel and his wife traveled to Denver last Christmas to visit their daughter, and when they stopped for dinner they left Sundance in the car, along with five $100 bills and one $1 bill. When they returned, the $1 bill was untouched and the $500 was gone.
Klinkel immediately guessed that his chew-loving dog ate the bills, so while in Denver he donned rubber gloves and followed Sundance around the yard as he conducted his “business.” Klinkel retrieved quite a few fragments, but it wasn’t until his daughter visited Helena recently that she was able to give him enough remnants for him to piece together a large portion of all five bills.
He washed and bleached them, taped them back together and submitted them to the Federal Treasury, hoping to be reimbursed. That could take up to two years; a spokesperson said that if more than 51 percent of the bills are there, Klinkel may get at least some of his $500 back.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-14 03:04:142013-04-14 03:04:14Montana Man Asks Feds to Reimburse $500 Eaten By Dog
Congressman Steve Stockman Wednesday reinforced his intentions to use a “blue slip” to kill any Senate anti-gun bill that contains expanded background checks.
Stockman will also deliver U-Haul gift cards to the offices of Mark Begich, Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu, Kay Hagan and Max Baucus should they vote for the package, to help with move-out expenses after they are defeated by voters in 2014.
“A requirement to make citizens submit to a background check imposes a tax. Such legislation cannot originate in the Senate. The bill is automatically unconstitutional,” said Stockman.
“Constitutional rights don’t require permission slips. If you infringe upon the Second Amendment’s absolute protections, you will be removed from office,” said Stockman. “The language of the Second Amendment is perhaps the starkest and most absolute in the Constitution. ‘The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ That means any obstacle whatsoever is strictly prohibited. The right to keep and bear arms cannot even be approached.”
“Criminals nationwide are applauding Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey,” said Stockman. “Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey want to give the federal government the name and address of everyone who buys a gun. They want to turn our entire country into Chicago.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-14 03:03:132013-04-14 03:03:13Rep. Stockman: Senate's Gun Control Bill Unconstitutional, We'll Kill it in the House and Send You Packing in a U-Haul
On CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report” on Friday night, conservative commentator and author Ann Coulter faced off against founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist over the issue of immigration reform.
Norquist supported the reported outline of the proposal that is being negotiated in secret by a group of senators dubbed the “Gang of Eight.” Norquist said the these efforts will bring substantial benefits for Americans…
Coulter, author of “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama,” said the current bill shouldn’t be defined as pro- or anti-immigration, but instead shoudl be judged on the merits of the proposal.
“It isn’t pro-immigration or anti-immigration — it’s changing the current immigration policy,” Coulter said. “I think we ought to be trying to get immigrants who are better than us, not worse than us. And 85 percent of legal immigrants come from the Third World since [former Sen.] Teddy Kennedy changed immigration law in this country. Sixty-five percent of them need some sort of government assistance. I mean, when I hear that — you know, ‘Don’t worry, immigrants are only on welfare 15 percent higher than native Americans,’ it shouldn’t be any immigrants.”
“We ought to be getting — we can’t get the surgeons, the businessmen, the people who would be competing with everybody who is talking about immigration — it is the servant class that is coming in who taxpayers need to support,” she added. “And of course, the business community has always been for immigration. Some elements of the evangelicals always have, but the point is: Is it a good policy or bad policy? It is bad for America. It is good for people who want cheap labor, while the rest of us subsidize cheap labor.”
Liberal education has been very successful in this country because nobody challenged the progressive educators and their agenda. We are waking up to the unraveling of our society caused by this liberal education and wondering, what happened. Could it be too late to reverse the damage?
Conservative news outlets are pointing out the obvious—our children have been indoctrinated into socialism for 33-40 years and this indoctrination is finally bearing fruit. We have bred a nation of young, entitled citizens who do not like to work, do not like to read or study anything too involved or complicated that exceeds Twitter’s 140 words, do not take responsibility for their actions, exhibit righteous indignation if their demands are not met, claim racism and hate speech if others disagree with them, and are afraid of their shadows.
Students no longer explore and discuss the history of America even in the History Department of the local college—it has long been replaced by courses that praise and promote sexual, “racial and ethnic differences,” instead of highlighting our common American heritage, what made America great and an exceptional nation that has contributed to the betterment of mankind. Socialist professors admire, teach, and laud the history of non-western cultures as superior to our own culture.
As the Blaze reported, Thomas Klingenstein commissioned a report on Bowdoin’s (a liberal arts college) academic and non-academic curriculum. The National Association of Scholars produced 355 pages of information describing in great detail what the college was teaching.
Short on critical thinking skills, the college, instead of concentrating on scientists, men of letters, philosophers and orators who contributed to western thought and civilization, chose courses such as Queer Gardens, Beyond Pocahontas: Native American Stereotypes, Sexual Life of Colonialism, and Modern Western Prostitutes.
By Elizabeth Weise. A video released by Saturday by North Korea shows nuclear launches against the United States reaching four sites, including Washington, D.C., California, Hawaii and what the announcer describes as Colorado Springs, but which looks like Arkansas. U.S. officials were clear they did not believe the belligerent nation has missiles capable of reaching the United States.
The video was released Saturday on Uriminzokkiri, a North Korean government web site. It has also been posted on YouTube.
In it, each of the U.S. targets explodes into a ball of flames as the missiles strike on the map. The Colorado Springs attack is presumably because the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is located near there, as well as the U.S. Air Force Academy. However based on the map the North Koreans posted, the attack site is actually in either southern Arkansas or northern Louisiana.
The video, typical of North Korean propaganda, is introduced by a male voiceover while a female news anchor in the traditional Korean hanbok dress reads from news headlines. The images are accompanied by synthesizer music and sounds of thunder. Further in, jarring montages of missile launches and military equipment are accompanied by what sound like 1970s power rock guitar solos. The video had more than 225,000 hits on YouTube by Saturday afternoon. Read more from this story HERE.
Kerry assured: China committed to getting N. Korea to abandon nuclear weapons
By Guy Taylor. After a day of diplomatic talks with Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Saturday, Chinese authorities claimed they are committed to working “peacefully” toward the goal of getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.
“We maintain that the issue should be handled and resolved peacefully through dialogue and consultation,” China’s State Councilor Yang Jiechi said on Saturday evening in Beijing while sitting beside Mr. Kerry at a restaurant in the Chinese Capitol.
“To promptly address the Korean nuclear issue serves the common interests of all parties,” said Mr. Yang. “It is also the shared responsibility of all parties.”
The remarks created the appearance of fresh unity between Beijing and Washington, where the Obama administration hoped that Mr. Kerry would be able to convince Chinese leaders to take a more active role in encouraging North Korea to tone down its recent nuclear threats.
Mr. Yang, however, took care to avoid making any specific commitments with regard to actions China is willing to take to pressure the North Korean military or the nation’s 28-year-old leader Kim Jong-un to give up the nation’s nuclear arsenal and back away from the recent wave of antagonistic posturing. Read more from this story HERE.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offers many faces, many threats
By Ernesto Londoño. When Kim Jong Un first appeared in Pyongyang’s carefully stage-managed public spotlight in the fall of 2010, North Korea watchers began scouring for clues to learn whether the pudgy heir apparent would be a reformist or simply the newest face of a despotic regime.
Nearly 16 months after taking the reins of the hermit state following the death of his stoic father, North Korea’s 30-year-old leader appears to be careening toward the latter — at least on the surface.
Having disavowed his country’s armistice with South Korea and threatened to fire his increasingly capable missiles toward the United States, Kim has put the Korean Peninsula and Washington on a war footing. His behavior follows the playbook of his predecessors, with one notable and potentially dangerous departure that appears to have him backed into a corner.
“His father and his grandfather always figured into their provocation cycle an off-ramp of how to get out of it,” Adm. Samuel Locklear III, the commander of U.S. troops in the Pacific, told Congress this past week. “It’s not clear to me that he has thought through how to get out of it. This is what makes this scenario, I think, particularly challenging.”
Making sense of the Kims has been more of an art than a science. A cadre of North Korea scholars has spent decades piecing together a portrait of the eccentric, secretive family by poring through mounds of propaganda, defector accounts and the limited, sporadic contact the regime has had with the West. While acknowledging that Kim Jong Un remains an enigma, experts in the intricacies of Pyongyang say a careful study suggests his recent bout of bellicose rhetoric probably represents a desperate cry for legitimacy rather than a genuine appetite for combat.Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-14 02:55:132013-04-14 02:55:13North Korea Produces Video Depicting Nuke Attack on US, While China "Commits" to Help Defuse Situation
Officials in Beijing confirmed today that a 7-year-old girl is infected with H7N9 avian influenza, widening the geographic spread of the virus that’s already killed 11 people.
The girl, whose parents sell live poultry, was admitted to the hospital Thursday with pneumonia and is the first case reported outside eastern China, where the virus was first reported in late March.
Government officials said the total number of new bird flu infections across the country rose to 47 today as the eastern province of Jiangsu reported two fresh cases and shanghai reported one, The Associated Press reported.
What is concerning about this latest report is the distance between Shanghai and Beijing. The virus was able to travel more than 750 miles without leaving a trail of dead birds.
Unlike the H5N1 bird flu that raised concerns starting in 2003, H7N9 does not seem to make birds very sick or sick at all. This makes tracking the movement of the virus and containing it to limited flocks of birds next to impossible.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-04-14 02:53:582013-04-14 02:53:58Bird Flu Widens Reach in China, Worrying Public Health Officials Worldwide
