IRS targets Tea Party groups – their goal is silence of the right

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The Tea Party is an amazing political phenomenon, one that remains strong despite the media’s all-out assault since its beginnings in 2009, and I am proud to be a part of it. If ever there was an All-American movement, it is the Tea Party. Patriotic, hard-working, family oriented, and focused on a simple request – limited government and fiscal responsibility. What’s not to like about it ? The answer is simple – it threatens the liberals grip on government and many other areas of our lives.

One of the revealing benefits of many concerned citizens becoming politically active is the realization by many that politicians are not as smart as they make themselves out to be. In fact, it becomes pretty distressing to see how limited is the knowledge base of many politicians in regards to the  Constitution and American history. As more and more patriots get involved, our efforts become more effective, despite many setbacks and the continued assault by both the President and the MSM to derail the Tea Party.

While at CPAC this year, I met many great conservatives passionate about fighting for shared American ideals. There was a great cross-section of the country and all age groups. Especially heartening were the many young people, including some strong conservatives I met at the Yale Political Union in January. Another passionate  and articulate Tea Party patriot who spoke at CPAC is Jennifer Stefano, who literally stumbled upon a Tea Party rally while taking a walk in the park with her family. Now she is an articulate and effective spokesman for the movement and drawing a lot of attention to the grass-roots movement.

Yet what is the response to the Tea Party from the MSM, the President, and now, the IRS ? Their goal is simply to silence the movement. Their number one argument is that the Tea Party is racist, the ultimate trump card they use when anything doesn’t go their way. While Occupy Wall St. can break laws all day long while politicians from Oakland to New York City cross their arms, the Tea Party is investigated in Draconian ways, now officially through the IRS.

Mark Levin is pursuing action against the IRS (Exempt Organization Division) for

using inappropriate and intimidating investigation tactics in the administration of applications for exempt status submitted by organizations associated with the Tea Party movement.

Michelle Malkin also reports on the IRS intimidation of Tea Party groups across the country.

Make no mistake, this is bullying at the highest levels of government. While the President and the MSM feign outrage at the slightest faux pas (real or imagined), real outrage should be directed at these type of Machiavellian steps our government seems to take with impunity. Let us work towards electing politicians who will uphold the Constitution and allow us to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without the government meddling in our everyday lives.

Where will we be in November 2012 – let alone in 2020?

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As I discussed during my Senate campaign less than two years ago, our nation faces some very tough times ahead, in both the near-term and certainly in the long term.  Since that campaign, the state of our nation – and Alaska – has not improved; by many standards it has deteriorated.  The false hope peddled by Obama lies strewn about the Occupy sites, even as many continue to cling to unreality.  However, I am doubly committed to fighting to Restore Liberty in our nation and my great state.

Our nation has reached a condition where many times, up is down, right is wrong, and good is evil. Whereas diversity is celebrated as a core character trait, we witness over and over that “diversity” is an acronym for the “liberal mindset,” entertaining no deviation from politically correct dogma. Nothing crystallizes the backlash of straying from the liberal plantation more than Susan G. Komen’s recent public relations disaster following its announcement that it would cut off funds from Planned Parenthood.

At the same time, US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg tells Egyptian media that she would look elsewhere if she were writing a constitution today. Never mind that she is sworn to uphold the US Constitution, the legal foundation for the greatest nation on earth.  But this is no surprise given Ginsburg’s increasing reliance on foreign courts in her own legal decisions.

President Obama, with deep ties to radical members of anti-American organizations, has no qualms in dropping the name of his alleged savior when it brings him political points via a fawning US media. Citing Jesus in support of how one should spend money is a surprise though, given the fact that Obama donates a pathetic 1% of his income to charity.  Moreover, his sudden affinity for Christ doesn’t make much sense in light of his past hostility toward our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage.  Nevertheless, he invokes the name of Jesus to aid in tax collecting.

As we head into this important and already contentious election season, we are faced with a juggernaut Establishment machine that seems to have no regard for the rule of law, especially as it regards vote integrity. While Eric Holder demonizes any state that dares to pass voter ID laws, his own media event attacking these requirements required all attendees to present – you guessed it – an ID card.

The Republican nomination might be considered by some as a healthy and vigorous means of competing for the right to oppose Obama. But right now it appears that “Republican Demolition Derby” might be a better way to describe that process.  In any event, one of the least conservative candidates, Mitt Romney (whom I strongly oppose), has a solid advantage on the road to the nomination.  Newt Gingrich, trying to link himself to Ronald Reagan, carries his own baggage:  big government credentials from the past thirty years that should set off alarm bells for any conservative.  And while my visit with Ron Paul last month was very encouraging on the fiscal front, his assessment of the threat of radical Islam is difficult to stomach. So is Santorum the “not Romney?”  Not as long as he continues to embrace earmarks, endorsement of establishment candidates, and the other hallmarks of DC corruption.  Such an approach to government makes his conservative rhetoric ring hollow.

So where will we be in November of this year?  How about 2020? Can we tolerate another four years of Obama’s devastating assault on the moral and economic fabric of our nation?

The sleeping conservative giant woke up in 2008, organized in 2009, and won amazing victories in 2010, nationally and in many statehouses and local jurisdictions. The conservative movement is alive and well, and on the move. 2012 is another step on the path to Restoring Liberty, but it won’t be the final step, not by any stretch of the imagination. This is a long war we are in, one that requires all of our efforts, for the long haul.

What must we do this year and beyond? We must fight, for sure. We need to recruit, educate, and become stronger organizationally and policy-wise. We have the moral – and legal – high ground, yet it seems we continue to cede this ground back to the enemy. We must always be prepared to give an answer for our hope, to fight vigorously, yet with civility, on the battlefield of ideas.

The mission I started almost two years ago is as valid now as it was then, if not more so. With recent visits to Yale and with conservative leaders in DC, I am encouraged with the commitment of so many who are fighting for our nation.  This includes a surprising number of like-minded students at Yale who vigorously defended free market principles amidst a crushing onslaught of Big Government-types who seem to see DC as the answer to everything.

This week, I will be joining thousands of conservatives at CPAC. I hope to learn about the many different organizations that are fighting the good fight and listen to and share ideas with grassroots conservatives from across the nation.

2010 was just the beginning, and 2012 will be another campaign in a long war to take back our nation.  If the gains in 2012 are as significant this year as two years ago, our movement will continue to grow – and be effective in the goal to Restore Liberty. We will likely not gain all of the victories we desire at once, but we should take heart in our current strength – and trajectory.  We must win the Senate, the White House, and gain even more Tea Party strength in the House, not to mention the critical battlefields of local and state politics.

Are you with us in this fight? It just takes a few patriots to Restore Liberty to this great nation.

For the future of America, get involved now.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Gingrich’s Lunar Plan: Blasting Government Spending to New Heights

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As most of you know, I am no fan of Mitt Romney.  The only constant in Mitt’s history seems to be moving his political career forward.  So, I haven’t exactly been disappointed in the recent disruption of Mitt’s coronation plans.  Moreover, I’ve got to admit that I’ve enjoyed watching the Establishment’s hyperventilation over Newt Gingrich’s upstart candidacy.

I’ve always been amazed by Newt’s intellect and his capacity to generate almost unlimited schemes to make government better.  He’s a big idea guy, maybe a bit of a technocrat.   So it didn’t surprise me when today, he announced a big idea to make America proud again:  a permanently manned lunar base by 2020.  But this scheme directly confirmed my fears of what Newt’s presidency could become.

What this boils down to is little connection to reality.  Reality is that this nation is nearly bankrupt.  To get us even close to solvent requires radical, significant cuts, similar to what Ron Paul has proposed.  If the Speaker wants to combine his space plan with fundamental reforms of the entitlement state, perhaps it would be worthy of discussion.

For those of you who see this as something to help America dream again, creating new found patriotism, keep in mind what our last major space project was:  the International Space Station.  I’m not exactly a fan of creating “patriotism” in international efforts.  And Gingrich hasn’t guaranteed an exclusively sovereign US effort, something we’re unlikely to see given his internationalist tendencies and modern multinational space efforts.  Nor have I heard him call for serious reform of NASA, an agency dominated by failure and alien hunters.

In any event, the real problem is that we’re well over $100 trillion in debt, including future unfunded liabilities, and until that is radically attacked, there’s no way we can spend hundreds of billions on a moon base.

Newt has called for downsizing the federal government, getting rid of deficit spending and returning power to the states.  But now he’s calling for more spending, making me wonder whether he really comprehends that the federal government is the problem.  Its debt threatens to drag us into oblivion.  Dreams are nice, especially while Rome is burning, but they don’t put out the fire.

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Socialism behind Obama’s Rejection of Keystone?

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The president’s decision to reject a proposal concerning the Keystone pipeline project is exceptionally disappointing.  In short, the pipeline would have served as a major distribution corridor for crude oil from the oil sands of Canada to various refineries located throughout the United States.  At a number of junctures in the lower-48, it was also expected to be a conduit for significant quantities of American crude.

No one can reasonably contest that the construction of the pipeline would have led to the creation of thousands of good jobs here in America, not to mention its role in increasing the worldwide supply of energy.  I briefly touched on this world supply issue in an earlier post concerning the sensitive situation with Iran in the Straits of Hormuz.

The not-so-cynical view of Obama’s decision is that he was playing to his radical environmentalist base.  That’s consistent with one of his major stated reasons — the threat of environmental damage from the pipeline — for rejecting Keystone.  However, pipeline environmental disasters are rare and minor compared to oil tanker mishaps at sea.  And now that Obama has rejected the pipeline, Canada will inevitably look to transpacific buyers, such as China, for their western crude supplies.   And how will the crude get to Canada’s new partners? By seafaring supertankers, of course.

The cynical view of Obama’s decision is clear:  he rejected the pipeline because it’s largely a private enterprise, created by market demands not government dictated economic policies.  In other words, he doesn’t like it because it is not a project run by the federal government.  But while Obama single-handedly destroys this guaranteed US economic opportunity from private investment, he has no problems sinking billions of US tax dollars to support failing energy businesses like Solyndra.

So what gives?  Unlike Obama’s socialistic projects, private investment like the Keystone pipeline doesn’t allow for much corruption, campaign contribution kickbacks, cronyism, and other graft.  Had the Keystone pipeline been constructed by government contractors using a government-run slush fund and Obama’s cronies, there’s little doubt that it would have been approved.

Such cynicism should be no surprise after nearly four years of Obama.

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Iran situation illustrates need for energy independence

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The United States may reject oil from Iran but that does not result in immunity from Iran’s saber-rattling in the Persian Gulf.  The situation shaping up in the Strait of Hormuz illustrates the need for a serious push towards energy independence here in the United States.  It defies common sense for the American economy to be reliant on foreign sources of energy when we have so much available right here at home.

Simply put, it comes down to supply and demand.  When any nation, such as Iran in this case, decides to restrict the supply of energy available on the world market, the price of that energy will spike for consumers, and especially American consumers.

Our nation has the ability to greatly increase the energy supplies available here at home, so why do we continue to allow petro-dictators, oppressive regimes and declared enemies of the United States to distort the market at the cost of the American People?

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Individual mandates are not conservative

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With the top contenders for the GOP nomination fighting over who’s a conservative, I thought it might be appropriate to talk about the individual mandate, a provision in Obamacare and Romneycare mandating that individuals purchase a minimum level of health-care coverage or pay a stiff fine.

Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have both argued at one time or another that individual mandates within health-care reform reflect conservatism. They have both suggested that individual mandates bring about personal responsibility, but I’m at a loss for how government-dictated policy brings that about. Romney still defends this approach, Gingrich has since backed off of it.

Frankly, it seems that “technocrat,” rather than “conservative,” might be a good label for both candidates, because it seems that each of them are competing to be the best manager of efficient government rather than a leader in reversing the outrageous growth of the federal government and its deficits. In fact, their approach to government seems pretty similar to what the so-called “conservatives” advocate for in many Western European nations.

Conservatism is basic in its philosophical basis: achieving the proper balance between liberty and government. There is no logical way one can connect individual mandates within health-care reform to principles of conservatism. However, both Gingrich and Romney have tried to do just that. Compelling a citizen to purchase health insurance under the penalty of law is certainly not personal responsibility, and it is definitely not conservatism in action. Only activist judges with contempt for the founders’ vision of the Constitution could consider such a law constitutional.

With so few health insurance companies in the market today because of extreme regulatory burden (welcomed by these same corporations to prevent competition), the only winners via the individual mandate favored by Romney, and formerly by Gingrich, will be the multi-billion dollar health-care providers. Not surprisingly, these conglomerates donate lavishly to candidates from both parties and spend millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers at all levels.

Typical Crony Capitalism. And you can thank the Ruling Class for that.

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Obama’s Flagrant Disrespect for the Rule of Law

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As a Senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama decried the use of presidential signing statements, but as with so much other rhetoric originating from Obama concerning “hope and change,” he has decided to keep things the same.  Yesterday the Washington Times laid out candidly President Obama’s latest efforts to circumvent the Constitution and his own campaign promises:

When the president of the United States signs a bill into law, it’s expected that he will abide by it. That’s not the case with President Obama, who has a sudden interest in novel legalistic interpretations getting him off the hook from laws he doesn’t like.

On Friday, the president signed the $1 trillion omnibus spending bill, which funds the government for the remaining nine months of the fiscal year. Afterward, he released a statement saying he won’t abide by the law because the Justice Department had advised that certain provisions are “subject to well-founded constitutional objections.”

The mainstream media tells us that Barack Obama is some kind of expert on Constitutional Law, but it looks like he has some reading comprehension issues because the Constitution is clear as to how the president may act when presented with a bill from Congress:  he may approve and sign, veto, or ignore.

There is no option to both approve and ignore, as he intends to do.  But his flagrant disrespect for the law should come as no surprise to us given his past refusal to enforce and defend statutes he disagrees with.  The only surprise should be that he hasn’t been impeached yet.

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Obama: Pride before the fall?

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It’s no secret that President Obama has an inflated view of himself.  This becomes crystal clear when the President, as he routinely does, blames everybody but himself for the nation’s problems.  A leader who does not acknowledge his or her own mistakes is clearly suffering from an overdose of hubris.  Because President Obama apparently can’t help but display his arrogance, it came as no surprise to many when he declared himself to be the fourth greatest president in the history of the United States in a recent CBS interview (an interview that many will understandably confuse with a game of slow-pitch softball).

For a fleeting moment, I thought Obama may have finally come around to reality and was trying to say that he should be considered the fourth worst president.  But instead — and in typical Obama arrogance — the President put his administration at the top stating, “I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president.”  And then, after a brief pause, he begrudgingly permitted “the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln.”  See the video clip by clicking HERE.

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Democrats are either lying or looney

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Last week, Nancy Pelosi repeated the bizarre claim that an extension of unemployment benefits would create an uptick in employment.  This was not the first time we heard this insane logic.  We posted about President Obama’s similar claim on December 11 in which he also declared that an extension of unemployment benefits would result in job creation – more job creation than the proposed Keystone pipeline project!

Apparently Pelosi and Obama have no idea as to what the definition of “unemployment” is.   The head of the Democratic National Committee, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, also chipped in when she said that unemployment did not increase under President Obama.  Well, we know that is not true.

My main concern is whether or not President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and other leading Democrats actually believe what they say when it comes to the economy.  If not, they’re lying again to the American public.  On the other hand, if they really do believe what they’re saying, then it must be safe to assume that they are simply not living in reality.  Either way, their statements on the economy reflect a severe disconnect with what is happening in the beltway (their universe) and what is really going on in the country.

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