Why the Tea Party Still Matters

Tea Party principles are based on a belief in the U.S. Constitution. Across America, a huge natural constituency exists for the bread-and-butter American issues of lower taxes, reduced government, a strong national defense, secure borders and a return to the traditional American values of: E Pluribus Unum, Liberty and in God we trust.

E Pluribus Unum means from many, one. It does not mean unquestioning acquiescence to multiculturalism and diversity. Liberty means opportunity for all, not equality of results. In God we trust means reliance upon the Creator of all things. It does not mean passive acceptance of secularism, atheism or submissive surrender to “progressive” statist mandates.

The Tea Party movement began as a peaceful protest against big government, reckless government spending, high taxes and oppressive regulations. The Tea Party’s Contract From America expressed principles held by its members. The most basic being that “Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government.”

The principles of the Tea Party were clearly expressed in the Contract: Protect the Constitution, reject Cap & Trade, demand a balanced budget, enact fundamental tax reform, restore fiscal responsibility and Constitutionally limited government in Washington DC, end runaway government spending, defund, repeal and replace government-run health care, pass an ‘all-of-the-above’ energy policy, stop the pork, and stop the tax hikes.

The American idea, the shot heard round the world, is that We The People can govern ourselves. By the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God we are entitled, by virtue of our humanity, to the maximum amount of Individual Liberties consistent with law and order, and to the Right of private ownership, not the least of which is the Right to own and decide for ourselves. These Liberties and Rights are to be equally protected by a Constitutionally limited, representative government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. This is a distinctly exceptional American idea.

These are the Tea Party’s principles, which today are largely viewed as being Conservative or “right wing”. Adherence to these principles are shared by members of many political Parties, but rejected wholesale by the institutionalized “progressive” left movement, which has co-opted today’s Democratic Party.

If you are in the Tea Party, you believe in America.

If you believe in America, you belong in the Tea Party.

In an election where a decision will made between the American way of life and a nanny state “entitlement” society based on a European idea, the Tea Party Matters.

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates. Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/. His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/

Video: CNN’s Brooke Baldwin Battles Reparative Therapist Promoting Homosexuality Cure

As Restoring Liberty reported yesterday, California’s governor signed into law this weekend a bill banning mental health intervention for children who have been molested and then say they’re gay, bi-Sexual, or transgendered.

A leading opponent of this new law, a reparative therapist who had gone through such therapy himself as a child after being molested, was then interviewed on CNN by a hostile Brooke Baldwin.

On Baldwin’s show, he announced a court challenge to the new law.

If you have any interest in this subject, you should watch the below exchange:

California Bans Mental Health Intervention for Children Who Say They’re Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgendered, etc.

Photo credit: Guillaume Paumier

On Saturday, California became the first state in the nation to sign into law a prohibition on mental health intervention to address a child’s homosexual or bisexual proclivities. It also prohibits therapy to address “transgendered” children. It applies to all children under 18 years of age.

In a statement issued upon the signing of the new legislation, Governor Jerry Brown stated that “These practices have no basis in science or medicine, and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.”

Specifically, the law bans “any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” If a practitioner violates the law, he or she will face adverse licensing action by the “licensing entity for that mental health provider.” In other words, the offending mental health professional will likely lose his or her license.

A number of groups opposed the new law including California’s Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays. Calling the bill unconstitutional, the group told legislators that, “As parents of gays and ex-gays, we are ashamed of your willingness to take action against parents, children, and the family in order to support gay activists…California is not a socialist state and our children do not belong to the government, subject to the ideology of the state over the objections of their parents.”

One conservative California group has pointed out that this “is what you get with Democrats in charge” and suggests the legislature should consider Isaiah 5:20: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”

Alaskan Combat Military Veterans May No Longer Qualify For PFD, But Murkowski, Young & Begich Do

In a unanimous decision yesterday, the Alaska Supreme Court determined that former-Alaska Attorney General Wayne Anthony Ross’s son, an Annapolis graduate and active-duty Marine, no longer qualifies for an Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend. As a result, his minor children also lose their Permanent Fund Dividends.

This decision was reached even though there is no dispute that Lieutenant Colonel Brian Ross has been a life-long Alaskan resident. He was born and raised in Anchorage. After graduating from Service High School in Anchorage, he attended the United States Naval Academy.

Wayne Anthony Ross told Restoring Liberty that his son “graduated as the top Marine applicant of the Class of 1994. He served in Iraq three times. He always continued to maintain himself as an Alaskan resident, registering his cars, voting, keeping his Alaska driver’s license and hunting licenses here. He owns land and a lodge herein Alaska and has returned home almost every year. He intends to return home here after getting out of the Marine Corps.” Mr. Ross said that, in 2012, his son returned to Alaska three times.

Unfortunately for LTC Ross, who entered active duty in 1990, our ethically-challenged state legislature decided in 1998 that Alaskan residents who have been absent from the state for more than ten years should no longer qualify for an Alaska PFD. Exceptions were made for our royal congressional class (at the time Senator Murkowski, Senator Stevens, and Representative Young), their immediate families, and even their staff, but no exception was made for Alaskan military veterans deployed outside of the state.

Mr. Ross argued that this different approach for congressional members and their families was a violation of equal protection. Obviously, if the legislature is willing to permit Senators and our lone Representative to continue to collect the PFD even though their residences have been in the Beltway for far more than ten years, veterans deployed in the service of their country should have the same treatment.

The Alaska Supreme Court unanimously said “no.” This decision should come as no surprise given the fact that this same Supreme Court chose to ignore equal protection violations during the Miller-Murkowski senatorial race in 2010. There, our royal Senator received a hand count of her ballots while Mr. Miller’s vote result was established by a Diebold machine count even though it was an established fact that the Diebold machine count was inaccurate.

Our Supreme Court unanimously said that it did not matter that over 60% of all Alaskan votes (McAdams and Miller votes) were counted differently than Murkowski’s.

The Alaskan electorate needs to bring accountability to the Alaskan judiciary. And a tool to do that is available. It’s called the retention vote. Vote “No” this November.

Obama’s “Export More Jobs” Gaffe & Gibson Guitar: Stunning Hypocrisy

This past Thursday, President Obama made a slip of the tongue during a campaign speech in which he stated that he wanted to “export more jobs.” After seeing puzzled looks from his audience and hearing his own words echo in his ears, he then joked that he was channeling his opponent, Mitt Romney.

I hope this stunning, but no longer surprising, hypocrisy of Obama’s attack on Romney (in an attempt to mask his own goof up) is not wasted on an increasingly apathetic and seemingly gullible public. Many have either forgotten or never heard about a bizarre act in 2011 by the Obama administration in which it compelled the Gibson Guitar corporation to outsource its American labor force to Madagascar.

In fact, the administration threatened Gibson that it had to outsource jobs if the business wanted the “trouble” with Obama’s administration to go away. No matter the reason, it’s Obama with outsourcing blood on his hands from meddling in the affairs of a private business and coercing it to fire its American workers in favor of foreign ones.

Not only is it simply a bizarre act for anyone professing love for the American worker, but it also shows that Obama has demonstrated his lack of genuine concern for keeping jobs stateside. He’s already tried to send them overseas and it wasn’t even his own business. For some unknown reason, Obama wanted so badly for a U.S. business to outsource jobs that he stepped in and told them to do so or else face his wrath.

Talk about THE Outsourcer-In-Chief. Let’s hope that some of the Obama-no-matter-what crowd comes out of their trance in time to save our economy.

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Byron Nelson is an American who contributes to https://www.nocommunism.com in addition to Restoring Liberty. He’s on Twitter at https://twitter.com/no_communism.

Must Watch Video: Radio Hosts Suspended for Encouraging Listeners to Put Up YouTubes Saying, “Muhammad Sucks A**”

Yesterday, two popular radio hosts in northern California encouraged their listeners to “swamp the world” with articles and YouTube’s saying, “Muhammad sucks a**.”

They also suggested that videos be produced suggesting that “Muhammad’s a goat rapist” and that websites be set up with addresses like “MuhammadBarnLove.com.” Why? They’re convinced that this will either force the Islamic radicals to “grow up” or we’ll “get it on” and take care of the problem.

The hosts observed that Islam is a religion of submission, not peace. One host said Muslims want to “Set fire to the olive branch.”

They also stated that our “sacred principles,” namely the First Amendment, permit all Americans to “denigrate any damn religion [they] want” and that “if Mitt and his guys don’t jump on this, they aren’t fit to be dog catcher, much less President.”

Finally, they asserted that some of the supposedly offensive videos may have been “made up as an excuse to blow up stuff.”

These comments may have cost the hosts their jobs:

Obama’s “Bump in the Road” is Really a Pot Hole on the Highway to Hell

In comments made during a CBS ’60 Minutes’ interview, Barack Obama described violent attacks on embassies in the Middle East and the murder of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, as “bumps in the road.”

When asked if recent events in the Middle East had changed his outlook on supporting the Arab Spring, Obama responded: “Well, I’d said even at the time that this is going to be a rocky path. The question presumes that somehow we could have stopped this wave of change. I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal right, a notion that people have to be able to participate in their own governance. But I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road because, you know, in a lot of these places, the one organizing principle has been Islam.”

A coordinated military maneuver, confirmed by the head of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center as a terrorist attack, that employed rocket propelled grenades and other heavy weapons, which was launched on the anniversary on 9/11 against an American embassy that directly led to the death of four Americans, including an ambassador, is a “bump in the road”?

During the interview, Obama admitted that his campaign ads had made mistakes, but somehow, CBS News didn’t find that piece of information newsworthy enough to share with their viewers.

When asked if he was disturbed by fact checkers proving assertions in his ads were untrue, Obama responded: “Do we see sometimes us going overboard in our campaign, are there mistakes that are made, areas where there is no doubt somebody could dispute how we are presenting things? You know, that happens in politics.”

That happens in politics when a campaign cannot run on its record in office, is so desperate to win that it deems it necessary to employ every long used dirty “progressive” smear tactic and suffers from a severe shortage of ethics, morals and socially redeeming qualities.

Remember when the United States was unquestionably Israel’s strongest ally? Not anymore. According to Obama, Israel is merely “one of our closest allies in the region.”

Since his inauguration, Obama has attempted to appease the Islamist world with an “even-handed” approach. Now Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has serious doubts about American resolve to stand behind Israel.

For his part, Obama admitted to viewing Netanyahu’s requests for the U.S. to take a harder stance against Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons as “noise” he must ignore when making American security decisions.

Is it sheer coincidence that the exact same word was used to describe Israel by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? “I have spoken about this topic at length, previously. We generally speaking do not take very seriously the issue of the Zionists and the possible dangers emanating from them. Of course they would love to find a way for their own salvation by making a lot of noise and to raise stakes in order to save themselves. But I do not believe they will succeed. Iran is also a very well recognized country and her defensive powers are very clear.”

Is this any way for America to conduct foreign policy? Does having cities in twenty different countries descend into weeks of anti-American violence and murder sound like a “bump in the road” or more like just cause for alarm? Does treating long-time ally Israel like they are simply “one of our closest allies in the region” sound like a recipe for successfully enlisting new allies in the future? Is this what Americans view as making America safer? Is this what Americans see as elevating America’s standing in the world view?

Is it accidental that a large number of Americans who are currently engaged in early voting are oblivious to this information?

I think we can all agree that America deserves much better than this.

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates. Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/. His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/

Did Lisa Murkowski Cause the Alaska Republican Party to Adjourn Prematurely in Fairbanks? (+video)

The Alaskan Republican Party central committee meeting in Fairbanks on Saturday, September 22, 2012, adjourned after only an hour. Yesterday, we suggested that the premature adjournment reflected the dysfunction of the state party. But some suspect the early adjournment by out-going ARP Chairman Randy Ruedrich was intentional, so as to avoid any vote on a pending censure resolution against Senator Lisa Murkowski.

One attendee, an ARP District Chair, wrote down his observations of the Saturday meeting. Here’s his description of what happened after the initial roll call, invocation, and pledge of allegiance:

At approximately 0930 Mr. Ruedrich moved to the Treasurers Report. It was at this time that Alaska Republican Party Treasurer Mr. Frank McQueery stood and stated that Mr. Daniel Palmer had been recording the entire event and was live streaming onto You Tube. He stated he was not comfortable with the live streaming as this was a private organization discussing political strategy.

A motion was made to have the video stopped and the vote was overwhelming to stop recording. At this point Mr. Palmer started discussion on the subject citing his right to record the meeting. Another member pointed out that anything broadcast on You Tube is on a permanent record. Various other members became involved at this point, pointing out the fact that it was being broadcast worldwide and they were not comfortable with speaking live on YouTube.

National Committeeman Ralph Seekins said he agreed he could record his own private conversation but did not believe it was right to record other people without their consent. He also noted that the event was not public but was a private event of the Republican Party.

The motion to restrict the recording of this and future meetings of the SCC was called and passed. The Chairman requested that the video be stopped and Mr. Palmer declined. At that time, following additional comments from the party Treasurer, a motion was made to remove Mr. Palmer from the meeting and recess the meeting until that was done.

Chairman-Elect Russ Millette approached Mr. Palmer and told him that he had voted against the motion to stop the recording but asked him to stop the recording because it was going to create problems for party unity. Mr. Palmer refused to cooperate and said he would continue the recording. Chair-Elect Millette again said, “I’m asking you again nicely to reconsider”. But Mr. Palmer still refused.

Following additional time the meeting was called back to order and a motion to adjourn was made by the proxy vote for Don Young and was seconded. Mr. Ruedrich called for a vote from the few people remaining in the room and the motion to adjourn passed.

This type of action was completely detrimental to the Alaska Republican Party as a whole. We have approximately 42 day’s left to win the election and at the present time Obama has 269 confirmed electoral votes. The fact is, we will not win this election as a divided party.

For the video of the Fairbanks SCC meeting, click HERE.

Former AFN Chair: Alaska Federation of Natives No Longer Represents the People

Several days ago, a good friend and leader in the native community sent me an email from the former chair of the Alaska Federation of Natives. This email, publicized throughout the Alaska native community, was written by Nels Anderson, Jr. His email made a number of excellent points about how the regional native corporations were perpetuating the problems in the villages and were improperly interfering with native voting in Alaska. Many of Mr. Anderson’s points were nearly identical to what my campaign advocated in 2010.

After receiving a copy of Mr. Anderson’s email, I contacted Mr. Anderson and asked for his permission to publish the email on our Restoring Liberty site, under the Alaska News section. He graciously agreed.

Mr. Anderson’s article was posted at Restoring Liberty the evening of September 24. It ran for almost two days before I was contacted by Mr. Anderson again. Without explanation, he retracted his permission for the article to be posted. Although under no legal obligation to do so, we have as a courtesy to Mr. Anderson removed his article from this page. Additionally, as requested by Mr. Anderson, we have posted his retraction of permission HERE.

We have requested additional dialog with Mr. Anderson to determine what was behind his retraction, but he has declined.

Restoring Liberty Now Second Most-Read Alaskan News Site

This past weekend, the Restoring Liberty news site passed another milestone. As of Friday, it now exceeds the liberal Fairbanks News Miner in Internet traffic ranking, leaving only the Anchorage Daily News with more US web users.

This is an exciting development. As reported earlier this month, Restoring Liberty surpassed the traffic of the Alaska Dispatch blog. The Dispatch blog, founded and funded by Alice Rogoff, wife of billionaire and former Carter-adviser David Rubenstein, seems to have a single purpose: tearing down any efforts to reform the corrupt political establishment in Alaska (Ms. Rogoff has not responded to Restoring Liberty’s written request for an investigative interview). Profit seems to be no objective as it reputedly sucks in millions of dollars per year and is quite staff-heavy. Advertising revenue is likely a mere fraction of expenses.

Similarly, the News-Miner has significant funding behind it. The paper, the oldest in the State of Alaska with the second-highest circulation, is controlled by the family trusts of Dean Singleton and Richard Scudder, the founders of the MediaNews Group. This entity also owns 56 other newspapers throughout the United States as well as KTVA in Anchorage, the television station that was caught attempting to fabricate a story about my campaign and child molesters in 2010.

Although rarely reported by either biased outlet, both the News-Miner and the Alaska Dispatch filed lawsuits connected with my campaign. The Alaska Dispatch remains embroiled in litigation in an attempt to secure legal fees against me related to the Fairbanks North Star Borough case.

As many computer-savvy readers already know, Internet rankings are not entirely static. But at the time of the writing of this column, the national ranking for JoeMiller.us stands at 12,038, Fairbanks News-Miner – 12,303, Alaska Dispatch – 13,167, KTUU – 15,644, the Juneau Empire – 29,324, KTVA – 70,022, Alaska Public Radio – 105,178, and the Mat-Su Frontiersman – 223,982. [Current statistics for each site are available from Alexa.com]

The fact that Alaskans are turning away from our corrupted media to solid conservative sources is incredibly encouraging. Please support our efforts by advertising at Restoring Liberty. And let your favorite businesses know about Restoring Liberty as well. Advertising revenue will allow us to hire staff reporters so that we can fully displace the biased press from the State of Alaska. You can also contribute by sending us tips ([email protected]) and by providing original content on liberty-oriented topics.

Kathleen and I thank you for your readership, prayers, and other support. May God Bless our efforts together to Restore Liberty!