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Miller Calls Out Begich for Vote to Override Alaskans’ First Amendment Rights

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

Joe Miller today urged the United States Supreme Court to protect Americans’ constitutional rights by striking down the ObamaCare contraception mandate. He also called out Senator Mark Begich for not only being the 60th and deciding vote for ObamaCare, but also voting last year to uphold the Department of Health and Human Service’s controversial regulation.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in the Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius cases, which address whether the Department of Health and Human Services can require private business owners to provide abortion-inducing drugs, regardless of their religious convictions.

“Alaskans must always remember that Mark Begich was the 60th and deciding vote for ObamaCare, a vote he made contrary to what the majority of the people he is supposed to represent wanted,” said Miller. “Having cast that egregious vote, Begich had the audacity to double-down last March and vote to affirm the HHS contraception mandate, which requires healthcare coverage to include abortion-inducing drugs, regardless of the deeply-held religious beliefs of those paying for the coverage.”

Our nation was founded on the belief in God-given rights. One of our God-given rights, according to both Thomas Jefferson (the author of the Declaration of Independence) and James Madison (the father of the Constitution), is the right to worship and exercise ‘the duty which we owe our Creator’ in a way our conscience directs. The very first right recognized in the Bill of Rights is this freedom: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” According to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, another of our most fundamental rights is the right to life.

“It should come as no surprise to Barack Obama, Kathleen Sebelius or Mark Begich that the owners of Hobby Lobby and other companies around this nation, in seeking to honor and worship God, cannot participate in the taking of human life,” said Miller. “It is my hope that the Supreme Court will see this for what it is, a clear violation of Americans’ First Amendment rights.”

Freedom of the Press? FCC Plan to Place ‘Researchers’ in Newsrooms

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Photo Credit: victoriapeckhamFirst Amendment: The FCC has cooked up a plan to place “researchers” in U.S. newsrooms, supposedly to learn all about how editorial decisions are made. Any questions as to why the U.S. is falling in the free press rankings?

As if illegal seizures of Associated Press phone records and the shadowy tailing of the mother of a Fox News reporter weren’t menacing enough, the Obama administration is going out of its way to institute a new intrusive surveillance of the press, as if the press wasn’t supine enough.

Ajit Pai, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission, warned this week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that a plan to dispatch researchers into radio, television and even newspaper newsrooms called the “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs” is still going forward, despite the grave danger it presented to the First Amendment.

Pai warned that under the rationale of increasing minority representation in newsrooms, the FCC, which has the power to issue or not issue broadcasting licenses, would dispatch its “researchers” to newsrooms across America to seek their “voluntary” compliance about how news stories are decided, as well as “wade into office politics” looking for angry reporters whose story ideas were rejected as evidence of a shutout of minority views.

Read more from this story HERE.

NC High School Football Coach Ordered To Cease Baptisms, Leading Prayers

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Photo Credit: SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty ImagesHead football coach of Mooresville High School, Hal Capps, has been ordered to stop baptizing players and leading them in prayer following criticism from a national organization promoting constitutional separation of church and state.

The Wisconsin-based nonprofit Freedom from Religion Foundation wrote a request last fall that coach Capps cease leading prayers and joining baptisms for his players as a base rule of separating public school activities and religious ceremonies. School Superintendent Mark Edwards met with Capps, who said, “he understood” the violation and would no longer participate in such religious observances, the Charlotte Observer reports.

“It is a violation of the Constitution for the Mooresville High School football coach to organize, lead, or participate in prayers or other religious proselytizing before, during, or after games and practices,” Patrick Elliott, attorney for Freedom from Religion Foundation, wrote to the school’s district attorney last fall.

“It is well settled that public schools, and by extension public school officials, may not advance or promote religion.”

Elliott emailed the Observer a picture from the Blue Devils’ team Twitter, reportedly showing Capps at a team baptism. But Superintendent Edwards said the photo is from a baptism performed at the Charles Mack Citizen Center, a church that many team members attend and Capps was simply invited to attend.

Read more from this story HERE.

Starbucks CEO: If You Have a Gun, We Don’t Want Your Business

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dump starbucksThe day after the mass shooting at the Naval Yard in Washington, D.C., Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced that guns aren’t welcome at Starbucks. With Schultz’s unfortunate comment to a traditional marriage supporter just six months ago, many conservatives will undoubtedly regard this as yet another slap against them by the world’s largest coffee retailer.

In his “Open Letter,” the CEO acknowledged that Starbucks’ past approach to open-carry was to “follow local laws [and] permit it in states where allowed and we prohibit it in states where these laws don’t exist.” Then, without citing any specific instance, Schultz said the open-carry debate was becoming “increasingly uncivil” and “even threatening.”

Although Schultz suggests that the “presence of a weapon in our stores is unsettling and upsetting for many of our customers,” he doesn’t explain how a concealed weapon would bother anyone. Nor does he examine whether gun-free zones – like the Naval Yard in DC – actually encourage the type of violence and bad press he is trying to avoid.

Schultz concludes that he is proud of our nation and its first amendment heritage. With the likely fall-out from his announcement, Schultz may regret not giving more consideration to the very amendment that guarantees that heritage.

Not Backing Down: 8th Grader Jailed Over His NRA T-Shirt Returns to School…Wearing the Exact Same Shirt (+video)

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Disciplined 8th-grader Jared Marcum returned to class on Monday after being suspended from school and arrested for refusing to change his NRA t-shirt at the request of one of his teachers. The shirt apparently pictured a firearm and the words “protect your rights.”

However, he apparently hasn’t learned his lesson — assuming that there was even any lesson to be learned. Fresh off his suspension, Marcum showed up to school on Monday wearing the exact same NRA shirt that sparked what many have labeled “t-shirt control.”

There were also other people wearing matching shirts in support of Marcum, WOWK-TV reports.

“There’s a lot of people wearing this same exact shirt, showing great, great support and I really appreciate it,” the student said Monday before going to school.

Read more from this story HERE.

Declaration of War on American Values: Battalion Commander Tells Troops that Patriots, Christians belong to Hate Groups

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A combat battalion commander assigned to the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, sent an email out to several dozen subordinate officers and senior noncommissioned officers describing conservatives as members of hate groups.

The senior officer, seen in the YouTube below, apparently decided that his ignorant soldiers needed some political indoctrination regarding the Army’s new values, as decreed by Obama.

So, using the infamous Southern Poverty Law Center as a guide, the lieutenant colonel set out to educate.

Using the subject line of ‘Domestic Hate Groups,’ LTC Jack Rich warned his subordinate leaders that,

Many events have been taking place across the country – just want to ensure everyone is somewhat educated on some of the groups out there that do not share our Army Values.

Before identifying for his troops who the haters in America are, he makes it clear that his email is an action memo:

When we see behaviors that are inconsistent with Army Values – don’t just walk by – do the right thing and address the concern before it becomes a problem.


In other words, this misguided Army ‘leader’ is telling his junior officers that they are to actively intervene with any of their troops that they suspect has ‘hateful’ beliefs.

Once identified, the hater presumably will be forced to recant such beliefs.

Sound familiar? Turn back the clock to the Cold War years and you might mistake LTC Rich with a political commissar, the Soviet ideological officer who guarded military units against “harmful” beliefs.

So who exactly belongs to a hate group? Probably most conservatives. According to Commissar Rich and his communist buddies at the Southern Poverty Law Center, they include:

• members of the Christian right (like Focus on the Family’s former leader, James Dobson)

• anti-gay groups (those who oppose the “so-called homosexual agenda”)

• members of Patriot organizations (those “opposed to the ‘New World Order'”; those who believe that the “‘New World Order’ is imposing a global plan, called Agenda 21, to take away citizens’ property rights”; those who “believe that being well armed is a must”; those who fear “impending gun control or weapons confiscations, either by the government or international agencies”)

• anti-Muslim groups (those who “broadly defame Islam”; those who believe the “inherent danger to America posed by its Muslim-American community”, that Muslims are a “fifth column intent on undermining and eventually replacing American democracy and Western civilization with Islamic despotism”; those who “allege that Muslims are trying to subvert the rule of law by imposing on Americans their own Islamic legal system, Shariah law”)

• anti-illegal alien groups

Commissar Rich identifies the Family Research Council, American Family Association, United States Justice Foundation, Atlas Shrugs, Sharia Awareness Network, Bare Naked Islam, and many other organizations as hate groups.

Yes, the thought police have infected the U.S. Military. Never mind that troublesome First Amendment. Obama must be proud.

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Read Commissar Rich’s complete email HERE.

Here’s a video of Commissar Rich at a live fire exercise at Fort Campbell. Let’s pray he doesn’t make it beyond O-5:

Doctors to Obama: You’ve Failed Again

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Photo Credit: WNDMembers of the Christian Medical Association had harsh words for Barack Obama after his latest attempt to mandate abortion coverage in Obamacare: You have failed.

“This latest version of the contraceptives and sterilization mandate remains unacceptable,” said Dr. David Stevens, executive director of the Christian Medical Association. “Since when does the government get to pick and choose which groups will get to enjoy First Amendment protections?

Our founders intended the First Amendment to protect every American’s freedom to act according to one’s conscience,” he said. “They didn’t specify that only groups deemed religious will be afforded this protection; freedom of conscience applies equally to all Americans.”

Dr. Gene Rudd, CMA executive vice president, joined Stevens.

“The administration fails to understand that many employers and individual Americans, regardless of a religious label or not, maintain strong conscience objections to participating in any, way, shape or form in a plan that promotes pills that the FDA says can cause the demise of a living human embryo – a developing baby in her earliest stage,” Rudd said.

Read more from this story HERE.

The War Between the Amendments

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The horrific Newtown, Conn., mass shooting has unleashed a frenzy to pass new gun-control legislation. But the war over restricting firearms is not just between liberals and conservatives, it also pits the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution against each other.

Apparently, in the sequential thinking of James Madison and the Founding Fathers, the right to free expression and the guarantee to own arms were the two most important personal liberties. But now these two cherished rights seem to be at odds with each other and have caused bitter exchanges between interpreters of the Constitution.

Many liberals believe there is no need to own semiautomatic assault rifles, magazines that hold more than ten bullets, or even semi-automatic handguns. They argue that hunters and sportsmen don’t need such rapid-firing guns to kill their game — and that slower-firing revolvers and pump- or bolt-action rifles are sufficient for home protection.

Implicit in the liberal argument for tighter gun control is the belief that the ability to rapidly fire off lots of bullets empowers — or indeed encourages — mass murderers to butcher the innocent.

Most conservatives offer rebuttals to all those points. Criminals will always break almost any law they choose. Connecticut, for example, has among the tightest gun-control laws in the nation. A murderer can pop in three ten-bullet clips in succession and still spray his targets almost as effectively as a shooter with a single 30-bullet magazine. Like a knife or bomb, a gun is a tool, and the human who misuses it is the only guilty party. An armed school guard might do more to stop a mass shooting on campus than a law outlawing the shooter’s preferred weapon or magazine.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Cost of Living in a Free Society

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We often hear the phrase “Freedom isn’t Free”, and we generally attribute that cost to the sacrifice our fighting men and woman make to preserve our republic. But we should all realize that we also must pay the price at times for the privilege of living in a free society. In the wake of the devastatingly crushing news of the school shootings in Newtown Connecticut on December 14, we are left pondering what we can do as a free society to prevent this type of tragedy from ever occurring again. Perhaps we should first ask ourselves, What price are we willing to pay?

Of course the first remedy after an event like this spouted by the simpleminded media and politicians with a larger agenda is to assault the Second Amendment. We are so accustomed to this attack on our freedom that many of us immediately begin to fret about the battle to come over gun rights instead of mourning the loss of the victims of the massacre. But we never have long to wait before a “gun grabbing” senator or even a president begin to capitalize on the tragedy to promote the idea that “El número dos” from our Bill of Rights is an outdated concept that needs to be ignored, altered, or abolished outright. But would a move to remove guns from legal firearms owner’s hands ensure a safe environment for us and our children forevermore? Of course not. The worst school massacre in U.S. history occurred in Bath Township, Michigan in 1927. The deranged individual used a makeshift bomb made from commercial explosives to kill thirty eight elementary school children, two teachers and four other adults. In China, on the same day as the events in Newtown, a deranged man slashed twenty two school children with a knife. Crazy will always find a way to be crazy, and the world is full of tools that can be used to carry out such attacks. So are you willing to give up your freedom and security in the form of your firearms to provide an inadequate, destined to fail guarantee of safety as a result?

One course of action that some have promoted is increased vigilance by the state in the monitoring and control of those in our midst with mental health issues. Of course the state would first have to identify those individuals that are deemed (by them) to be a possible threat, no doubt predominantly at the public school level. And then take over their care, medication and or incarcerate them through commission to a mental health facility if they are evaluated to be a risk. While we do need to pay more attention to the folks in our society that are afflicted with mental issues that may affect that same society as a whole, forgive me if I doubt the government’s ability to address the issue while protecting constitutional and parental rights in the process. As they have already shown, they have a dismal record of addressing behavioral and developmental problems (real or make believe) among our children so far. So the question is, are you willing to give up your rights as a parent or your own personal liberty to insure that anyone with the perceived potential to go postal at some point in the future as determined by some governmental bureaucrat are contained through mandatory medication or incarceration?

Read more from this article HERE.

School Removed God Reference From First-Grader’s Poem

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photo credit: kevin dooley

An elementary school in North Carolina censored a first-grade student’s Veterans Day poem by removing a line that referenced her grandfather’s belief in God.

The West Marion Elementary School student was supposed to read the poem at a Nov. 8 Veterans Day ceremony to honor her grandfather, a Vietnam veteran.

The deleted line read: “He prayed to God for peace, he prayed to God for strength.”

An attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which advocates for religious rights and freedoms, criticized the school’s decision.

“America’s public schools should encourage, not restrict, the constitutionally protected freedom of students to express their faith,” said Matt Sharp, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, in a statement. “Students should not be censored when speaking about their faith or honoring those who valiantly served to protect our freedoms. … The censorship of this young student’s poem about her grandfathers is repugnant to the First Amendment rights of all students and sends an impermissible message of hostility towards religion.”

Read more from this story HERE.