Conservative Groups That Backed Wisconsin Gov. Walker Appear Target of Secret Govt. Probe

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Photo Credit: APDozens of conservative groups that support Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker reportedly have been subpoenaed by a special prosecutor demanding donor lists and other documents pertaining to their backing of Walker’s union overhaul and recall fight.

The so-called “John Doe” investigation bars those subpoenaed from talking publicly.

But Eric O’Keefe, director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, told The Wall Street Journal recently that investigators have raided at least three homes and that he “wants the public to know what is going on,” despite the personal risk.

He also suggested the probe is having a chilling effect on conservative groups as Walker approaches a 2014 re-election effort.

He said the subpoenas, including the one he received in early October, “froze my communications and frightened many allies and vendors of the pro-taxpayer political movement in Wisconsin. … The process is the punishment.”

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Turning Off the Next Generation of Politicians

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Photo Credit: itupicturesDuring the 2012 presidential election, we conducted a national survey of more than 4,200 high school and college students. We asked about their attitudes toward politics and current events, their career aspirations and their political ambition. The results are stark. Only 11 percent of our survey respondents reported that, someday, when they were older, they might consider running for political office.

In fact, they’d rather do almost anything else.

In one set of questions, we presented these high school and college students with four career options — business owner, teacher, salesperson or mayor of a city or town — and asked which they would most like to be, assuming that each position paid the same amount of money. Nine out of 10 respondents chose a career other than mayor as their first choice. Nearly 40 percent reported that mayor would be their least-desired job.

We also asked which of the following higher-echelon jobs they found most appealing: business executive, lawyer, school principal or member of Congress. Serving as a member of Congress came in dead last, with just 13 percent of young people choosing it. It placed first on the least-desirable list.

The fact that young Americans do not want to run for office cannot be divorced from their perceptions of the political system, which could not be much worse. Eighty-five percent of our survey respondents did not think that elected officials want to help people; 79 percent did not consider politicians smart or hard-working; nearly 60 percent believed that politicians are dishonest; and fewer than 30 percent said they thought that candidates and elected leaders stand up for their convictions.

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The ‘Fatal Conceit’ of President Obama and Kathleen Sebelius

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Photo Credit: Washington ExaminerI have lined up my Christmas presents this year for President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

I will send them both a copy of the last book written by one of greatest economists of the last century, and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974, F.A. Hayek.

The book is called The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism.

Although the language and discussion of the book is not all that simple, the basic point is, I think, pretty straightforward. Hayek summed it all up in his acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize.

He noted the critical importance that we know what we don’t know. Thinking you know what you don’t and can’t know, the illusion that men can plan, organize, and control things far beyond their understanding is the “fatal conceit” of socialism.

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Dozens of Lawsuits Used to Hide ‘Islamic Realities’

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Photo Credit: WND The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which according to FBI evidence was founded by the Egyptian-based, Saudi-funded Muslim Brotherhood, has filed more than 150 lawsuits over a two-year period that have been aimed at stifling speech – all with the goal of hiding “Islamic realities,” according to a think tank’s report.

CAIR has been described by authorities as a front group for Hamas to promote Islam in the U.S.

It was the Florida-based national security think tank Citizens for National Security that released the report, “Council on American-Islamic Relations: Its Use of Lawfare and Intimidation” to every member of Congress.

CFNS co-founder William Saxton said the study focuses on CAIR’s practice of “lawfare” to silence critics and force corporations, private citizens and charitable organizations to pay large sums of money to settle lawsuits out of court.

Saxton said the two-year task force project found CAIR has filed more than 150 lawsuits with the intention of silencing critics.

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McConnell: Tea Party ‘Bullies’ Who Need Punch In Nose

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Photo Credit: APSenate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on a conference call organized by Karl Rove’s Crossroads organization for large donors and their advisers on Oct. 30 that the Tea Party movement, in his view, is a “nothing but a bunch of bullies” that he plans to “punch … in the nose.”

On the call, according to a donor who was on it, McConnell personally named Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) as Tea Party conservatives he views as problematic for him. “The bulk of it was an attack on the Tea Party in general, Cruz in particular,” the source, a prominent donor, said in a phone interview with Breitbart News.

But the most memorable line came at the end of the call. “McConnell said the Tea Party was ‘nothing but a bunch of bullies,’” the source said. “And he said ‘you know how you deal with schoolyard bullies? You punch them in the nose and that’s what we’re going to do.’”

Rove, as well as American Crossroads President and CEO Steven J. Law who also serves as the president of sister group Crossroads GPS, were also on the call. Rove “talked in a slightly gentler way, or let’s say, a more diplomatic way,” the source said. “But the message was pretty well the same: That if we’re going to save this thing, we have to back real Republicans.”

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New Poll: If Voters Had Known They’d Lose Insurance, Barack Obama Would Not Be President

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If voters had been aware last year that they might lose their health-care plans when Obamacare went into effect, Republican President Mitt Romney would be sitting in the White House today, according to a poll released Friday.

A Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research survey conducted from Nov. 18-20 asked voters who supported President Barack Obama in 2012: “As you may know, millions of Americans have lost their insurance plans despite President Obama’s promise that, quote, ‘if you like your plan, you can keep it.’ If you knew in 2012 that this promise was not true, would you still have voted for Barack Obama?”

In response, 23 percent said they would not have voted to re-elect Obama, while 72 percent said they would still have voted for him. The largest number of defections were among female voters ages 18-54, 31 percent of whom said they would not have supported the president.

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The (Really) Do-Nothing Congress

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Photo Credit: ReutersSen. Tom Carper had been wavering over the “nuclear option” for days — until one of his colleagues issued a blunt judgment of Congress.

“My colleague said, ‘It’s hard to imagine it getting much worse because we’re not getting anything done,’” the veteran Delaware Democrat said. “If there was an a-ha moment, that was probably it.”

Indeed, the 113th Congress is on track to go down as the least productive in history — a legacy that may be cemented after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gutted the filibuster on presidential nominees by deploying the “nuclear option.” Republicans say the unprecedented move will make them even less likely to cooperate with Democrats — not that there’s much collaboration to begin with.

So far, this Congress has only enacted 49 laws, the fewest since at least 1947, when the Congressional Record began tallying legislative activity on a yearly basis. In fact, the 80th Congress — famously dubbed the “do nothing” Congress by President Harry Truman — enacted 388 public laws by July 1947.

In the last 66 years, there are just four occasions in which fewer than 100 laws were enacted by a similar point in the legislative calendar. And two of those instances were in the last two Congresses, with the previous Congress making just 62 laws through November 2011.

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Pope Francis: ‘We Won’t Resign Ourselves to a Middle East Without Christians’

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Photo Credit: AP/ Karim KadimPope Francis expressed new concern Thursday for the situation faced by “Christians who suffer in a particularly severe way the consequences of tensions and conflicts in many parts of the Middle East.”

“Syria, Iraq, Egypt and other areas of the Holy Land sometimes overflow with tears,” he told a gathering at the Vatican of leaders from Eastern rite churches that have links with the Roman Catholic Church.

“We won’t resign ourselves to a Middle East without Christians who for two thousand years confess the name of Jesus, as full citizens in social, cultural and religious life of the nations to which they belong,” he said.

The pope appealed for “everyone’s right to a dignified life and to freely profess their faith [to] be respected.”

He also said he would “not rest as long as there are men and women, of any religion, affected in their dignity, deprived of life’s basic necessities, robbed of a future, forced to the status of refugees and asylum-seekers.”

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Hobby Lobby President Proposes Public School Bible Course

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Photo Credit: The Christian Post/Napp NazworthThe head of a major Christian retailer presently suing the federal government has proposed a Bible class elective for an Oklahoma high school.

Steve Green, president of the Oklahoma-based retail giant Hobby Lobby Inc., has proposed a class for Mustang High School with a curriculum focused on various aspects of the Holy Bible.

“There’s still some fine-tuning, but the curriculum breakdown would include an intro course covering the Old and New Testaments and the Bible’s impact on society. Three advanced courses would focus on deeper history and cultural influence,” reported KOCO 5 News.

At present, Mustang Public Schools Superintendent Sean McDaniel has expressed an interest in the idea and the proposed course will get official consideration next month.

Green’s proposal for a Bible course comes as his family-owned craft retail company may go before the United States Supreme Court regarding a lawsuit against the federal government.

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Price of Electricity Hit Record for October; Up 42% in Decade

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Photo Credit: APThe price of electricity hit a record for the month of October, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That made October the eleventh straight month when the average price of electricity hit or matched the record level for that month.

The average price of electricity in October was 13.2 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH), up from 12.8 cents per KWH in October 2012—and up from 9.3 cents per KWH in October 2003.

Americans now pay 42 percent more for electricity than they did a decade ago.

In November 2012, electricity was 12.7 cents per KWH, which was down from the 12.8 cents per KWH price of November 2011. But, in December 2012, the price of electricity stayed at 12.7 cents per KWH, matching the record monthly price of 12.7 cents per KWH that had been reached in December 2011.

In each of the ten months since then (January through October 2013), the price of electricity has hit a record level for that month.

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