Former Obama Staff Complain Of Cold Inaugural Shoulder

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WASHINGTON — In a sour footnote to President Barack Obama’s sweeping electoral victory last November, many of his campaign staffers have been shut out of the inaugural festivities, more than a dozen of them complained to BuzzFeed Monday.

“We worked our butts off, and I’m going to watch it on TV instead of being there,” said one former staffer. “It’s a huge bummer.”

Former staffers — who spoke to BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity to preserve their relationships, and possible jobs, in Obama’s second term — say they have grown frustrated by what they see as inadequate communication from the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the group responsible for the inaugural balls, and in particular by its restrictions on access to the official events.

“I didn’t hear anything from PIC until a little more than a week ago,” said another staffer. “They knew this was happening. Instead of giving us details [of what we could attend] on November 7th, we found out so late that it would cost me $2,000 to go to Washington for a weekend as opposed to $1,000 or less if I booked two months ago.”

More than 35,000 attendees are expected at Obama’s consolidated formal Inaugural Ball Monday night, which replaces nearly a dozen separate balls. Many staffers complain that after the hard work of getting Obama re-elected they still couldn’t snag tickets to the event — only a small number were made available to staffers. PIC outsourced the ticketing to Ticketmaster, whose system bungled the public distribution earlier this month.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rallying the Right

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Following the defeat of 2012, it seems as if everyone – yours truly included – has an opinion about where the conservative movement goes from here. But right now presents an excellent opportunity to rally the Right again.

Following the fiscal cliff fiasco, the next big battle inside the beltway will be the debt ceiling in March. Some Republicans who caved on the fiscal cliff are already talking tough. Take Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, for example. After voting for the largest tax increase in 20 years, Toomey is one of several Republicans now saying the debt ceiling showdown may require a government shutdown if Democrats insist on more tax increases.

So with some key Republicans already throwing down the gauntlet now is the time for the conservative movement to re-assert itself. The time for the licking of wounds has past. The time for leadership has arrived. We’re at our best when we let our principles lead the way. The two times I can remember the right-of-center coalition of evangelicals, conservative Catholics, libertarians, and the pro-growth/limited taxation crowd being truly unified since the 2004 election were the 2010 midterm elections and Scott Walker’s recall in Wisconsin last year.

Why?

Because those elections were clearly about principles, and principles unite us. Unlike Democrats who join that party out of identity politics, we become Republicans because of principles like the ones found in the party platform.

And the Republican Party platform is clear about two things: the rule of law has the obligation to protect the God-given right to life, and the government big enough to give you everything you need is large enough to take away everything you have. We have been struggling for a message that puts both of these principles into practice simultaneously. One that bypasses the in-fighting plaguing our movement for years now, and mobilizes and energizes our grassroots to go on offense. The debt ceiling showdown provides us that opportunity.

Planned Parenthood received more than $542 million from the government last year, which means an astounding 45% of its revenue came from the American taxpayer. Every one of us would agree that is simply inexcusable. Some of us may believe that based simply on the sanctity of life, given that Planned Parenthood is one of the leading child killers in America. Some of us may believe that’s simply a terrible waste of the people’s money at a time we’re flat broke and a symbol of our misplaced priorities. Both of us recognize Planned Parenthood is one of the Left’s major political fundraisers. Regardless of the premise we all come to the same conclusion.

Thus, now is the time for all of us to use this issue as a catalyst that unifies our various factions behind a shared principle—absolutely no increase in the debt ceiling should even be considered until all money for the child killing industry is removed from the budget.

If we’re going to consider these things “private moral matters” then it is intolerable to ask the taxpayer to subsidize it, especially at a time when we’re flat broke and taxes are going up on everybody. If we wouldn’t ask the taxpayers to buy your next shot of tequila, jolt of trans-fats, or drag from a cigarette then we shouldn’t ask them to buy your next condom or abortion. If someone wants to get their freak on, they can buy their own birth control pills or dental dams.

This week on my radio show Dr. Thomas Woods, one of the most respected libertarian thinkers in the country, agreed with me. “Even if you’re a pro-abortion libertarian you don’t believe the taxpayer should be funding it,” Woods said.

If we cannot get Republicans to hold the line on this at this crucial time in our history, then there really is no point to having a Republican Party (or at the very least to having these Republicans). If the conservative movement isn’t willing to take the lead in forcing their hand, then there really is no point to our movement other than selling books and syndicating radio shows like my own. This is an easy first step to re-unify for the much bigger and longer battles that await us to return to constitutional government.

Concern over the growth of government, and the resulting loss of personal freedom, is what gave birth to the modern conservative movement. Concern about the sanctity of life is what swelled the ranks of the movement with Catholics who were once predominantly Democrats and evangelicals who previously didn’t even vote en masse. Regardless of which of those issues most trips your trigger, we cannot take back control of the Republican Party without each of them working in concert. And the Republican Party is worthless if we don’t wrestle away control from the cynical, feckless, and ineffective party establishment.

But we need a message to unify and mobilize us that is based on shared principles. This message does that. It allows us to walk and chew gum at the same time. Instead of both sides fighting each other for control of the movement, we unite a movement around a shared principle to fight the real enemies to liberty and morality. We are better together. We cannot win if we’re not united. But calls for unity for unity’s sake fall on deaf ears. We must lead on genuine principle to create genuine unity.

We must rally the right for such a time as this, and this is the simple yet principled message to do it. Either we hang together or we will all hang alone. If we can’t hang together on this one, then I’m not sure where we can.
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You can friend “Steve Deace” on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @SteveDeaceShow.

LA Times: Why Did the FBI Have an Informant in Joe Miller Campaign?

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fultonThe Los Angeles Times reported today that, “Now that the mole who helped bring down the leadership of the Alaska Peacemaker Militia has talked publicly, the big question on some minds in Alaska is: Why was federal FBI informant William Fulton involved in political campaigns?”

The LA Times interviewed not only Fulton, but also Joe Miller and 2010 Lieutenant Governor Candidate Eddie Burke who hired Fulton as his campaign manager. Fulton’s FBI handler also commented for the article.


During Joe Miller’s interview, he was asked about the impact of the handcuffing and what he thought about an FBI informant working in Alaska politics:

The widely reported arrest of a journalist at a town hall meeting “absolutely” was detrimental to his campaign, Miller said Monday in an interview with The Times.

“I’m a strong supporter of the 1st Amendment, and I had close friends that had been supporters of my campaign question, ‘Why would Joe Miller handcuff a journalist?’ For crying out loud, I wasn’t even in the building,” Miller said. “It was utilized as a political weapon against us in the state.”

Miller said he is now troubled that Fulton, whose personal politics turn out to be not at all aligned with the far right, was injecting controversy into his campaign and was also working on the campaign of Burke, another right-wing candidate who lost — all during 2010, when he was a paid informant for the FBI.

Miller recalled the well-publicized election of 2008, when longtime U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens lost his bid for reelection after being convicted of failing to report gifts from an oil industry lobbyist at the end of a long investigation waged by the FBI in Anchorage. The charges were dismissed in 2009 on the U.S. Justice Department’s own motion when it was learned that potentially exculpatory evidence had not been turned over to the defense. But by then, Democrat Mark Begich had won Stevens’ seat.

“This is the second U.S. Senate race in Alaska that the FBI has had some involvement in,” Miller said. “I’m certainly not expressing any type of conspiracy theory about the FBI causing any kind of trouble to my campaign, but it’s conceptually troubling to me that you have a paid informant working on multiple campaigns answering to the FBI, being debriefed by the FBI, and I really think it’s incumbent on that agency to come clean about the scope of this individual’s employment and the level of involvement the FBI had in that.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Syria Bombs Damascus Suburbs to Keep Rebels Out

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BEIRUT (AP) — The Syrian government bombed areas around Damascus on Monday as part of its push to keep rebel fighters out of the capital, leaving many children among the dozens killed, anti-regime activists said.

An international aid organization cited such raids, along with rape and widespread destruction, as key factors in the exodus of more than a half-million Syrians to neighboring countries since the conflict began in March 2011.

The International Rescue Committee said it could be “months, if not years” before the refugees can return home, and the organization warned that Syria’s civil war could inflame tensions in the Middle East.

After nearly two years of violence, it appears unlikely the war will end soon. Although rebels seeking to oust President Bashar Assad have made gains in the country’s north and east and outside Damascus, they have yet to seriously challenge his hold on the capital or other parts of the country.

Earlier this month, Mr. Assad dismissed calls from the U.S. and others that he step down and vowed to keep fighting until the country is free of “terrorists” — his government’s shorthand for rebels.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Levin Calls Out Obama’s UnConstitutional ‘Imperial Presidency,’ Says President’s ‘Arrogant as Hell’

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In this must-see video, Mark Levin rails against Obama:

I’m not into imperial presidents who act imperial and speak imperial and Obama forgets there’s a Constitution. Yes, he keeps telling us he won re-election, congratulations. But guess what, the Constitution wasn’t up for election. It’s not up for a plebiscite or referendum. He has to comply with it, too. He was sent back to Washington, but he’s got a strict list of rules that he has to follow as president.

So when he gets up there and starts saying, ‘If Congress doesn’t do this I’m going to do this unilaterally,’ it violates separation of powers a lot of the time.

And this a man who’s been pushing the edge of the envelope as far as I’m concerned, whether it’s the appointment clause, whether it’s his unilateral on immigration, whether it’s his trashing the commerce clause and tax clause under ObamaCare. Now they’re talking about executive orders on the Second Amendment. They’ve issued regulations on the First Amendment attacking religious liberty. This notion that he might be able to lift the debt ceiling, you know, unilaterally under the 14th amendment.

Biden: W.H. Readies 19 Executive Actions On Gun Control

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The White House has identified 19 executive actions for President Barack Obama to move unilaterally on gun control, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of House Democrats on Monday, the administration’s first definitive statements about its response to last month’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Later this week, Obama will formally announce his proposals to reduce gun violence, which are expected to include renewal of the assault weapons ban, universal background checks and prohibition of high-capacity magazine clips. But Biden, who has been leading Obama’s task force on the response, spent two hours briefing a small group of sympathetic House Democrats on the road ahead in the latest White House outreach to invested groups.

The focus on executive orders is the result of the White House and other Democrats acknowledging the political difficulty of enacting any new gun legislation, a topic Biden did not address in Monday’s meeting.

The executive actions could include giving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authority to conduct national research on guns, more aggressive enforcement of existing gun laws and pushing for wider sharing of existing gun databases among federal and state agencies, members of Congress in the meeting said.

“It was all focusing on enforcing existing law, administering things like improving the background database, things like that that do not involve a change in the law but enforcing and making sure that the present law is administered as well as possible,” said Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.).

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Australia Has Already Been Down the Road of Gun Control; See How It Worked Out for Them

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Here’s the observations of one Australian, back in 2011, about the impact of the nation’s radical gun control laws:

The passage of gun control laws fueled our [Australia’s] illegal arms market, and gun-hungry gangs multiplied. The significance: many gangland deaths/wars involved bullets. The tribal fights exploded after the Port Arthur massacre-inspired gun laws, against mainstream media predictions.

To concerned Victorians, too, it felt like our criminal class was running the state. The problem though (in Australia at least) is that campaigning newspapers and television networks are never wrong — no matter how many people are killed or threatened by guns, there’s always a “complex” excuse.

The odd thing about gun control is that a culture of censorship often increases after anti-gun laws fail to deliver. So, it would be hard for an Australian writer to submit a piece on Switzerland’s pro-gun ownership culture and low gun crime rate because our media isn’t “ready” to accept opposing views. Only a “thought control” culture can sustain a “gun control” culture.

When one punishes law-abiding citizens for the sins of criminals, good intentions will backfire. By criminalizing productive citizens, we have made life easier for criminals, and wasted precious police resources on policing farmers.

Competitive Enterprise Institute: EPA Email Release “Gravely Compounded Unlawful Activity We Have Exposed”

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photo credit: us dept. of labor

Washington, D.C., January 14, 2013 – At about 4:55 p.m. on Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency finally complied with a court order to deliver the first of four sets of emails in response to a lawsuit filed by Christopher Horner, a senior fellow in the Center for Energy and the Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Here is Horner’s statement on the emails:

Where in the World is Richard Windsor?

EPA’s Court-Ordered Email Production Proves Agency Has “Gone Bunker”

Just before 5 pm on this deadline date for producing records, I received a hand-delivered CD and cover letter from the EPA in response to CEI v. EPA, now best known as the “Richard Windsor” suit. The delivery came under order of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In short, this response is deeply troubling and seems to have gravely compounded the unlawful activity we have exposed involving a false identity assumed for federal recordkeeping purposes.

Problems begin with the cover letter, which states not the promised (to the court) first delivery of “approximately 3,000” but “more than 2,100 emails received or sent” by Jackson, on what EPA insists is her one non-public account.

“Waiter, the food was terrible, and the portions too small!”

First, 2,100 is two-thirds of the way to the agency’s commitment (possibly the agency also will determine two-thirds of 12,000 is sufficient, although we have our doubts). Perhaps seeking to take the air out of a growing scandal, EPA’s defective compilation boasts an impressively anemic content-to-volume ratio. It starts with Washington Post daily news briefs, then follows with Google alerts for “Lisa Jackson EPA” (none for “Richard Windsor”). Then EPA HQ national news clips. And so on. Rope a dope. Clever. Maybe too much so.

It seems EPA simply decided it had to produce a lot of something. Desperate to produce nothing at the same time, it came up with this. But in the details, the desperation shows through.

A big red flag in the cover letter is the claim that, “As you are aware” — with no support for how we know this, which we do not — “the Administrator uses one secondary official account to conduct EPA business,” then states these emails come from that one account.

Read more from this story HERE.

Groundhog Day for Immigration

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photo credit: gage skidmore

The Wall Street Journal profile on Rubio’s amnesty plan makes me want to take piano lessons or learn ice sculpture — because it’s Groundhog Day for immigration policy, and it’s like yesterday never happened.

I don’t mean that politicians should necessarily be chastened by past defeats. There are no lost causes and no gained causes in a democracy (or not many, anyway), and if the side that was defeated by the bipartisan surge of public anger in 2007 wants to try a comeback, that’s the way the game is played.

But the specific policies Ned Ryerson Rubio is selling are just the same old, same old: “earned” amnesty for illegal aliens plus de facto unlimited immigration, in exchange for promises to some day implement E-Verify and build more fencing.

Even worse, what makes me want to throw a toaster into the bath tub is the utter lack of awareness that nothing Rubio’s saying is even remotely novel. Either he or the writer, Matthew Kaminski, or both, don’t seem to realize we’re hearing I Got You, Babe all over again. Rubio’s plan is described as one that “charges up the middle,” between “the liberal fringe that seeks broad amnesty for illegal immigrants and the hard right’s obsession with closing the door” — as though any element of Rubio’s proposal would be a deal breaker for the left.

Read more from this article HERE.

Video: Rand Paul Says ‘Someone Who Wants to Bypass Congress . . . Is Someone Who Wants to Act Like a King’

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Senator Rand Paul was asked by CBN News about the possibility of President Barack Hussein Obama trying to impose gun control via executive order.

Senator Paul’s response was unequivocal: “I’m against having a king.”

“I think having a monarch is what we fought the American Revolution over and someone who wants to bypass the Constitution, bypass Congress, that’s someone who wants to act like a king or a monarch.”

“I’ve been opposed to executive orders, even with Republican presidents. But one that wants to infringe on the Second Amendment, we will fight tooth and nail,” he stated.