UN trying to sucker the US into another bad treaty, this one gutting parental rights

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

This past week, 34 senators, the bare minimum, were convinced to stand against the internationalist Law of the Sea Treaty.  Today, Obama may attempt to subject the US to the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty.  But another bad UN treaty that has not received the same amount of publicity as LOST and the Arms Trade Treaty, is also being considered.  This proposed treaty addresses national laws pertaining to persons with disabilities.  According to Rick and Karen Santorum, parents of a disabled child, the proposed treaty is an attack on the fundamental rights of parents to educate, care, and raise their disabled children:

On the surface, United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (“CRPD”) calls for numerous protections for people with disabilities. Many of these protections are consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, CRPD also includes provisions that were drafted by the United Nations and should concern all Americans. If ratified, CRPD would become the law of the land under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, and would trump state laws, and could be used as precedent by state and federal judges. Since it is a treaty, the Constitution requires that it must be ratified by two-thirds of the United States Senate.

There are two very troubling provisions in this treaty. The first spreads the identical standard for the control of children with disabilities as is contained in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. This means that the Federal government, acting under U.N. directions, can determine for all children with disabilities what is best for them. The second, the education provision of CRPD does not support the parental rights rules of past U.N. human rights treaties. Omission of these rules would potentially eradicate parental rights for the education of children with disabilities.

Over the years we have seen many U.N. treaties which can endanger the American way of life by attempting to trump U.S. laws. As a matter of foreign policy, we firmly believe that we should never allow our beliefs and values to be outsourced to outside entities that may not always have our best interests in mind.

On this particular treaty, however, we come at it from a more personal experience.

During our campaign for president, many of you learned about our daughter Bella. She is a special-needs child who has blessed our hearts. In working with health-care professionals, we found that a few advised treatments were not only not helpful to Bella, but could actually be quite harmful. As parents, it was crucial to be involved to make the proper decision for the best benefits of our child. And through our experience caring for her, we found that we are far from alone.

Read more from the Santorums’ critique of the CRPD .

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Drug money funds voter fraud in Kentucky (+video)

Voter fraud has a shocking new meaning in eastern Kentucky.

That is where in some cases, major cocaine and marijuana dealers admitted to buying votes to steal elections, and the result is the corruption of American democracy. The government continues to mete out justice in the scandal, as two people convicted in April in a vote-buying case face sentencing this week, and another public official pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy.

“We believe that drug money did buy votes,” Kerry B. Harvey, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, said of a separate vote-buying case.

He described a stunning vote-buying scheme that includes “very extensive, organized criminal activity, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in many cases that involves drug money.”

Harvey has led a recent string of federal prosecutions exposing the widespread and accepted practice of vote buying in eastern Kentucky. The soft-spoken federal prosecutor, along with his team and state authorities, are waging a battle against what he characterizes as a vote-buying culture embedded in many of the communities for generations.

Read more from this story HERE.

View the video reporting on the cocaine-vote buying outrage here:

 

Photo credit: Vishnu Balunsat

Unprecedented: Feds take over New Orleans Police Department. Would the Founders Approve?

Taking aim at a long history of civil rights abuses, corruption and slipshod oversight within the New Orleans Police Department, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu unfurled a bevy of sweeping reforms Tuesday afternoon in the nation’s most expansive consent decree to date. The long-awaited agreement, to be overseen by an appointed monitor and U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan, amounts to a 492-point, court-enforced action plan for overhauling NOPD policies and practices — from when officers can pull their weapons to the kind of data they track. The announcement at Gallier Hall on Tuesday afternoon featured Holder, Landrieu and other federal and city officials, including Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas and City Attorney Richard Cortizas.

It came after several months of detailed and sometimes testy negotiations over hot-button topics such as off-duty police details and the sheer financing of the reforms, all of which will fall to the city.

Landrieu estimated that putting the consent decree in motion will set the city back $11 million a year to start. Holder said the government would offer support by way of available federal grants and advice, but the city is on the hook for the full tab.

Still, Landrieu exuded pride in what amounts to an unprecedented local-federal pact, even though the far-reaching document is a response to a yawning breadth of problems that he said have plagued the NOPD for years.

The consent decree follows what Holder called “one of the most extensive investigations of a law enforcement agency ever conducted by the (Justice) department.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: Kyle Taylor

NSA whistleblowers: Feds spying on every single American

Testimonies delivered in recent weeks by former employees of the National Security Agency suggest that the US government is granting itself surveillance powers far beyond what most Americans consider the proper role of the federal government.

In an interview broadcast on Current TV’s “Viewpoint” program on Monday, former NSA Technical Director William Binney commented on the government’s policy of blanket surveillance, alongside colleagues Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, the agency’s respective former Senior Official and Senior Analyst.

The interview comes on the heels of a series of speeches given by Binney, who has quickly become better known for his whistleblowing than his work with the NSA. In their latest appearance this week, though, the three former staffers suggested that America’s spy program is much more dangerous than it seems.

In an interview with “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer, Drake said there was a “key decision made shortly after 9/11, which began to rapidly turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet blanket electronic surveillance.”

These powers have previously defended by claims of national security necessity, but Drake says that it doesn’t stop there. He warns that the government is giving itself the power to gather intel on every American that could be used in future prosecutions unrelated to terrorism.

Read more from this story HERE.

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House passes Ron Paul’s ‘Audit the Fed’ bill; Bernanke calls it a “nightmare scenario”

In a move that serves as a capstone to Rep. Ron Paul’s colorful career, the House on Wednesday voted to have Congress‘ chief investigators conduct a full audit of the Federal Reserve’s shrouded decision-making process.

The overwhelming 327-98 vote sends the measure to the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, at one time expressed support for an audit — though he reportedly has changed his mind.

House passage already marks a high-water mark for those who for years have been pushing for an audit, led by Mr. Paul. The Texan rode the slogan “Audit the Fed” to prominence in two Republican presidential primary campaigns, and he said the bill is a chance for Congress to begin to reclaim the money and banking powers it is given in the Constitution, but had delegated to the Fed.

“It is up to us to reassert ourselves,” Mr. Paul said during floor debate Tuesday.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke doesn’t like the prospect of such a broad audit, calling it a “nightmare scenario” last week and saying it would lead to politicians second-guessing his decisions.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit:  Joe Miller, All Rights Reserved.

 

Gun sales explode in wake of Aurora shooting

The theater shooting in Colorado last week continues to generate discussions about firearms in America, but it is doing more than just getting people to talk. Gun sales in Colorado have skyrocketed in the days since the Aurora, CO massacre.

James Holmes, 24, is being held in connection with the Friday morning outburst that left 12 people dead and injured dozens more. Authorities allege that Holmes opened fire shortly after the midnight screening of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises began at the Century Aurora 16 theater. Only hours later, though, locals were lining up in droves to equip themselves with the same kinds of weaponry.

Jake Meyers tells the Denver Post that he arrived for work at Rocky Mountain Guns and Ammo on early Friday to find a line of 15 to 20 people waiting outside of the store. Three days later, he said surging gun sales yielded “probably the busiest Monday all year” and that, for the first time all year, firearms classes taught by the store’s staff were booked for three weeks straight.

“It’s been insane,” Meyers says.

“A lot of it is people saying, ‘I didn’t think I needed a gun, but now I do,’ ” Meyers adds. “When it happens in your backyard, people start reassessing — ‘Hey, I go to the movies.'”

Read more from this story HERE.

Effort to register your pet to vote for Obama moves to Virginia; Romney complains

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign is asking Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to launch an investigation into voter-registration forms that are being sent to Virginia residents and addressed to deceased relatives, children, family pets and others ineligible to vote.

The errant mailings from the Washington-based nonprofit group Voter Participation Center have befuddled many Virginia residents, leading to hundreds of complaints.

The organization has been mass-mailing the forms — pre-populated with key information such as names and addresses — to primarily Democratic-leaning voting blocs such as young adults, unmarried women, African-Americans and Latinos.

In a letter to Cuccinelli’s office and the State Board of Elections, Kathryn Bieber, an attorney for the Romney campaign, calls for an investigation into the matter by law-enforcement officials, claiming that the mailings appear to violate “at least one and maybe several Virginia laws aimed at ensuring a fair election.”

Bieber refers to the mailings as “tactics that amount to, or at the very least induce, voter registration fraud,” and says the issue “presents a very significant risk to the proper administration of the upcoming general election.”

Read more from this story HERE.

 

US Catholic bishop conference helped fund Alinsky training for young Barack Obama

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ “Campaign for Human Development” paid a young Barack Obama’s airfaire to a training program on community organizing given by the Industrial Areas Foundation, an organization founded by leftist radical Saul Alinsky, according a book to be released tomorrow on the subject.

No Higher Power, by conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly and journalist George Neumayr, reports that “In the 1980s, the Catholic archdiocese of Chicago contributed to the training of Obama in the very Alinskyite radicalism that would culminate in such anti-religious measures as the HHS mandate,” according to an article on the book published by the Blaze.

“In fact, in the course of writing this book, we met a source who once had access to copies of documents from the archives of the Chicago archdiocese. This source supplied us with never-before-published copies of invoices, checks, and letters that confirm the Church’s support for the man who would one day seek to destroy its religious freedom,” they add.

The documents, which have been published on the Blaze’s website and are displayed below, purportedly show correspondence between Obama, writing as a member of the Calumet Community Religious Conference, and the US bishops’ Campaign for Human Development, which is today known as the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD)

The letter purported to be from Obama is for the purpose of submitting proof of his “requisition order for the ticket purchased for my trip to the IAF Training in Los Angeles, ” and is dated May 20, 1986. A copy of what appears to be the ticket or the requisition order for the ticket is included.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: BoingBoing

Study: Obama dismantling immigration enforcement

A detailed timeline being released this week by a leading anti-illegal immigration group documents what the organization describes as a pattern by the Obama administration of looking the other way on immigration enforcement.

While the charges are not necessarily new, the detailed list of grievances regarding the administration’s immigration policy could provide fodder for those trying to paint President Obama as weak on enforcement in advance of the November election.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which provided an advance copy of the election-year study to FoxNews.com, catalogued dozens of statements and policy decisions since 2009. The group claims the “unilateral actions” all bend toward the same goal — “to render enforcement of U.S. immigration laws ineffective.”

The study follows on the heels of the administration’s decision in June to, through the Department of Homeland Security, allow thousands of illegal immigrants who came here as children to stay and seek work permits.

FAIR describes that announcement as the culmination of a string of other decisions designed to weaken enforcement, including: filing suit against states, like Arizona, that passed their own anti-illegal immigration laws; announcing changes via memo in the way the government decides whom to deport, and most recently moving to close down nine Border Patrol stations.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Proof: Establishment Media Controlled by Government

There was a rather low-key confession made in the New York Times last week that deserves to be blared throughout this country so that every American understands what they are reading in the establishment’s ultra-controlled, government-managed “press” – and I use that last word loosely indeed.

The admission came in the form of a story by Jeremy Peters on the politics page of the Times July 16. I’ve been waiting for others to point it out, discuss it, debate it, express shock and exasperation over it. But I’ve waited for naught.

What this shocking story reveals is that even I – one of the kingpins of the new media and a refugee from the state-controlled spin machine – underestimated the utter and total corruption of the euphemistically called “mainstream press.”

It shows that most – not some – members of the print media establishment with access to the White House submit their copy to government officials for review, “correction” and approval before it reaches the American people!

Here are some key excerpts from the piece, if you think I’m exaggerating:

  • “The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative.”
  • “They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.”
  • “Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree. After the interviews, they review their notes, check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest sound bites for review. The verdict from the campaign – an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script – is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message.”
  • “Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations.”
  • “Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all mid-level aides in Chicago and at the White House – almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail.”
  • “Many journalists spoke about the editing only if granted anonymity, an irony that did not escape them.”
  • “From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position. Those officials who dare to speak out of school, but fearful of making the slightest off-message remark, shroud even the most innocuous and anodyne quotations in anonymity by insisting they be referred to as a ‘top Democrat’ or a ‘Republican strategist.’”
  • “Those [reporters] who did speak on the record said the restrictions seem only to be growing. ‘It’s not something I’m particularly proud of because there’s a part of me that says, Don’t do it, don’t agree to their terms,’ said Major Garrett, a correspondent for The National Journal.”
  • “It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly. Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times have all consented to interviews under such terms.”

Read more from this story HERE.