The Spreading Scourge of Anti-Christian Persecution

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Intolerance that fosters pogroms abroad is taking root in U.S. communities. Sobering and unforgettable images are projected across our television and computer screens. They should elicit the most basic instincts of both fear and compassion.

I’m referring to images of showing the persecution of hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of our fellow brothers and sisters by incomprehensible religious zealots. Their intolerance of Christianity is beyond horrible. People are beheaded for their faith. Women and young girls are sexually violated, and whole families are wantonly slaughtered in cold blood. Perhaps just as abhorrent is the profound silence of the current administration. Even though President Obama has declared that we are not a Judeo-Christian nation, we are still compassionate people who should not ignore humanitarian atrocities, much less ones where the victims are only guilty of maintaining a belief in the principles espoused by Jesus Christ.

We have an obligation as Americans to denounce these acts of persecution. Even those who do not worship a higher deity should be concerned. For when we stand up to such intolerance, we are defending the root of freedom. We are defending choice — the ability to worship and call on the name of a heavenly being without fear of torture and abandonment.

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Obama's Greatest Flaw, America's Greatest Cost

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

I’m not a psychologist, but I’m intrigued by the work of those who study the mind and behavior, especially when it accurately explains why people do what they do — or can’t do what they would like or are expected to do. Case in point, President Barack Obama.

In 2008, I wrote a column titled “A Personality Profile of Barack Obama’s Leadership.” The warnings of mental health professionals then have come to fruition today. And other brain and personality experts, many of whom cast their votes for Obama at the ballot box, have since learned the nation appointed a man to the highest position in the land who cannot lead in or out of crisis, especially in the face of opposing forces.

Six years ago, I pointed to the research of the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, at St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict, which did a professional personality profile “for anticipating Obama’s likely leadership style as chief executive, thereby providing a basis for inferring the character and tenor of a prospective Obama presidency.” The study concluded: “The combination of Ambitious, Accommodating, and Outgoing patterns in Obama’s profile suggests a confident conciliator personality composite. Leaders with this personality prototype, though self-assured and ambitious, are characteristically gracious, considerate, and benevolent. They are energetic, charming, and agreeable, with a special knack for settling differences, favoring mediation and compromise over force or coercion as a strategy for resolving conflict. They are driven primarily by a need for achievement and also have strong affiliation needs, but a low need for power.”

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Stop the Coming Obamnesty!

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

By Pat Buchanan.

According to Rep. Luis Gutierrez, Obama intends “to act broadly and generously” on behalf of the “millions and millions” of illegal immigrants in the United States today.

Gutierrez, who meets often with the president, is implying that Obama, before Labor Day and by executive order, will grant de facto amnesty to five million illegal immigrants.

They will be granted work permits and permission to stay. With his pen and his phone, Obama will do what Congress has refused to do.

There is a precedent. Obama has already issued one executive order deferring the deportation of “dreamers,” children brought into the United States illegally by their parents before 2007.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions is on to what is afoot. “We must prevent the president’s massive amnesty from going forward,” he says, and urges legislation to block an executive amnesty. But this divided Congress is not going to pass any such law. Nor would Obama sign it.

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Rep. King Reignites Impeachment Debate, White House Unconvinced House has Dropped the Issue

Photo Credit: Examiner

Photo Credit: Examiner

By Fox News.

Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King reignited the debate Sunday about the Republican-led House considering impeachment proceedings for President Obama, just days after party leaders furiously tried to extinguish such talk.

King suggested on “Fox News Sunday” that the impeachment issue could be reconsidered if Obama again uses his executive powers to delay or defer deportation for illegal immigrants beyond those brought illegally to the United States in past years by their parents.

“I think then we have to start, sit down and take a look at that,” King said.

Political observers have suggested Obama will expand his 2012 executive memo on deportation to include the surge of illegal Central American youths because Congress on Friday went on a five-week summer recess without passing legislation to help fix the crisis.

The GOP-led House passed legislation, but the Democrat-led Senate did not.

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Did Rubio’s immigration flip-flop rehabilitate his image among Republicans?

By Noah Rothman.

Once a strong 2016 contender, Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) stock among conservatives dropped significantly after he helped to craft the Senate’s immigration reform bill.

Preliminary 2016 polling, which had shown Rubio at the top of the prospective GOP pack in late 2012 and early 2013, revealed his standing among conservatives had collapsed by the beginning of this year. Some analysts indicated that Rubio would ultimately recover from his immigration reform-induced collapse in the polls – his likely 2016 GOP opponents are not well positioned to attack the Florida senator from the right on immigration issues – but it would be months before Rubio would have the chance to rehabilitate his image with conservatives.

But the crisis on the southern border has provided Rubio with an opportunity to create some distance from his own immigration reform bill and to adopt a more hawkish stance on border security. Rubio has made the most of that opportunity, and it seems to be bearing fruit.

A recent Quinnipiac survey of the 2016 landscape in Florida found Rubio rebounding significantly among conservative voters in that critical Super Tuesday state. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who had been consistently trouncing his potential GOP opponents in his home state, has slid significantly among Republican primary voters. An April Quinnipiac poll found Rubio trailing both Bush and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). By July, however, Rubio had regained standing among Florida Republicans and is now statistically tied with Bush, at 18 and 21 percent support respectively, in the race for the GOP nomination in Florida.

Rubio’s penance on immigration reform is, however, coming at a price. While Rubio’s stock among conservatives is on the rise, standing in the media is falling proportionally.

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The Environmental Corruption Agency

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

The lofty motto of the Environmental Protection Agency is “protecting people and the environment.” In practice, however, EPA bureaucrats faithfully protect their own people and preserve the government’s cesspool of manipulation, cover-ups and cronyism.

Just last week, Mark Levin and his vigilant Landmark Legal Foundation went to court to ask federal district judge Royce Lamberth to sanction the EPA “for destroying or failing to preserve emails and text messages that may have helped document suspected agency efforts to influence the 2012 presidential election.” The motion is part of a larger Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to force EPA to release emails and related records from former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and others “who may have delayed the release dates for hot-button environmental regulations until after the Nov. 6, 2012, presidential election.”

Thanks to Levin and Landmark, Jackson and other EPA officials admitted in depositions that they used personal, nongovernmental email accounts to hide communications about official EPA business sent and received on their government-issued BlackBerries and smart phones. The agency has continued to drag its feet for two years in response to Landmark’s FOIA requests.

Levin minced no words: “The EPA is a toxic waste dump for lawlessness and disdain for the Constitution.” Not to mention disdain for the public’s right to know. As Levin added: “When any federal agency receives a FOIA request, the statute says it must preserve every significant repository of records, both paper and electronic, that may contain materials that could be responsive to that request.”

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Obama’s Self-Made Border Crisis

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Photo Credit: Jesus Alacazar

Photo Credit: Jesus Alacazar

“You didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” In the case of the ongoing crisis along America’s southwest border, that someone is President Obama. When the president used his pen to sign the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, memorandum on June 15, 2012, he effectively rolled out the welcome mat to those abroad seeking to immigrate illegally.

The numbers are undeniable. From 2011 to 2013, the number of minors crossing the border illegally increased threefold, from roughly 8,000 to 24,668. Officials initially estimated that number would soar to 60,000 this year, though it is now expected to be close to 90,000.

Some have attempted to attribute the sudden wave of migration to factors other than the actions taken by the Obama administration. Most frequently cited is the stunning violence plaguing Central America, but according to United Nations data the region’s dramatic increase in violence began in 2007.

The other frequently cited cause is a little-known anti-trafficking law that gave additional protections to certain immigrant minors, but that law passed in 2008. While those two factors may intensify the crisis, there was no greater pull factor than the president’s executive decree forbidding immigration officials from enforcing the law.

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America: Then vs Now; How Far Have We Drifted?

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Photo Credit: Facebook / Shane Idleman

Photo Credit: Facebook / Shane Idleman

It’s almost unbelievable how far we’ve drifted.

Newsweek magazine, on Dec. 27, 1982, in an article entitled, How the Bible Made America, had this revealing statement, “Historians are discovering that the Bible, perhaps even more than the Constitution, is our Founding document.”

To understand the core values of a nation, one must simply look to the beliefs set forth during its conception. Judge for yourself how far we have drifted from the original intent of early Americans. Consider the following:

Then: If a proposed article for the Constitution was not supported by, or rooted in the Bible, it was not considered. In their early writings, many of the Founding Fathers quoted or referenced the Bible nearly four times more than any other source.

Now: The Bible is mocked, ridiculed, and discarded.

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Want a Real Anti-Poverty Plan? Stop Amnesty!

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

It is now all the fashionable rage in Washington, D.C., to proclaim solidarity with America’s working poor in front of the cameras — while stabbing them in the back behind closed doors.

Privileged Illinois Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and others have taken to Twitter, posting photos of themselves eating tuna sandwiches and buying Ramen noodles to show how much they empathize with minimum-wage workers. On the other side of the aisle, GOP Rep. Paul Ryan has wrapped himself in a cloak of compassion, putting a cheesy Taylor Swift hand heart around conservatism by proposing government “life coaches” for those in poverty.

Message: They care! Reality: They fake. The cognitive dissonance on Capitol Hill is so thick you need a V8-powered chainsaw to slice it.

While cynical politicians prattle on about protecting the American Dream, they’re working together to destroy it. If these elected officials care so much about reducing poverty, why are they working so hard to import more of it from around the world? Leaders in both political parties have thrown struggling Americans under the bus to feed the cheap illegal alien labor machine.

The working poor are the biggest losers in D.C.’s amnesty game. U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow has been a lonely voice warning about the impact of mass illegal immigration and perpetual amnesty on low-income black Americans. “The country’s economic woes have disproportionately harmed African-Americans, especially those with little education,” he warned this spring. “The economy has a glut of low-skilled workers, not a shortage,” which is driving wages down.

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Rush: Obama Trying 'Very Hard' To Be Impeached

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

By Joe Kovacs.

President Obama is trying “very hard” to coax Republicans into impeaching him. That according to talk-radio giant Rush Limbaugh, who says Obama’s actions letting illegal aliens into the U.S. is part of that strategy.

“He is really trying to goad the House Republicans into impeaching him. Really trying, I mean, very hard,” Limbaugh said on his national broadcast Monday. “It’s become obvious. It’s so obvious, he’s not fooling anybody.”

Limbaugh noted he happened to see a headline Monday on CNN which stated on screen: “GOP wants to impeach Obama.”

“I looked at that and I said, ‘No, that headline is a lie,’” the talk host explained.

“And so I turned on the sound, and that headline went with a story about Obama trying to goad the GOP into impeaching him. The graphic, the headline on screen said nothing about Obama. It just said GOP wants to impeach Obama. So even without them doing it, they’re gonna get blamed for it.

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Mark Levin: Palin Right about Impeaching Obama

By Bob Unruh.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential candidate in 2008, says the immigration crisis Obama has created along the southwestern U.S. border is the tipping point, and she believes it now is time to bring impeachment articles against the president.

“It is time,” she told Sean Hannity on Fox News Tuesday. “A great awakening is due in this country … [that] he is not an imperial president and lawlessness will not be accepted by the American people.”

She cited a long list of the scandals under Obama’s tenure, but said the “tipping point” has been the “illegal immigration crisis created by Obama.”

“Impeachment is a message that has to be sent to the president,” she said, citing the president’s “lies.”

She rejected the suggestion that impeachment would be a losing issue for Republicans, and said it actually would be a bipartisan issue.

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Washington Post: Obama’s Agenda Misfiring on All Cylinders

By Cathy Burke.

President Barack Obama declared 2014 a “year of action,” but it’s been anything but, with his lofty State of the Union goals to fix everything from immigration to the tax code either having failed, getting mixed results or pending.

Updating the president’s agenda for entrepreneurs, employers and the economy, The Washington Post reported Monday that many of Obama’s goals have largely been a bust.

For example, tax reform is “going nowhere fast,” The Post reported, noting that former Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus has stepped down to become ambassador to China, and lawmakers are split on just how to go about tax code reform.

As for immigration reform, the president’s concerted push came to a screeching halt in June, with Republicans sharply critical of the administration’s enforcement of current laws.

Raising the minimum wage has been left to states and cities, including Seattle, to take action, The Post reported.

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Policing America

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

I want the police to be better armed than the bad guys, but what exactly does that mean today?

Apparently it means the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security equip even the tiniest rural police departments with massive military vehicles, body armor and grenade launchers. The equipment is surplus from the long wars we fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To a hammer, everything resembles a nail. SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams were once used only in emergencies such as riots or robberies where hostages were taken. But today there are more than 50,000 “no-knock raids” a year.

It’s not because crime got worse. There is less crime today. Crime peaked around 1990 and is now at a 40-year low. But as politicians keep passing new criminal laws, police find new reasons to deploy their heavy equipment.

Washington Post reporter Radley Balko points out that they’ve used SWAT teams to raid such threatening haunts as truck stops with video poker machines, unlicensed barber shops and a frat house where underage drinking was reported.

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What America Needs Now

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Forty-five years ago, there was a day like few others that rallied Americans and changed America forever. Yet I could find but one or two news stories about that momentous occasion and triumph. Do you remember what it was? It’s the type of event that America needs now, maybe more than ever before.

If you’re old enough, you remember July 20, 1969, when 123 million of roughly 200 million Americans were riveted to their televisions, watching astronaut Neil Armstrong 240,000 miles from Earth. As he stepped off the Eagle — the lunar landing module — to become the first human to walk on the moon, Armstrong’s words were heard by over a billion people around the globe: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

It was a moment that inspired America and even the world. And we all know that the impetus for that inspiring moment came nearly a decade earlier, on May 25, 1961, when then-President John F. Kennedy uttered this challenge to our Congress and country: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.”

Where are the presidents today who are visionary leaders and spur on American exceptionalism, excellence and the entrepreneurial spirit? Where are the leaders who call us to dream again — to rise above the levels of maintenance and mediocrity? Where have American innovation and exploration gone?

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