Regulation
Your Taxes Going to Pay for Hotel Rooms for Illegal Aliens
-By Warner Todd Huston
Fox News just found out that the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is spending thousands of your tax dollars a day on hotel rooms for illegal aliens. One official said this “shouldn’t be happening,” but it is.
Fox found that millions of illegals a year are given temporary status for asylum in the USA and are often given free hotel stays while they wait for a hearing before an immigration judge. Worse, some 600,000 to 800,000 a year don’t bother to show up for their hearings. That means they are wandering about the USA with no accounting for their whereabouts or their legal status.
There are so many, sometimes hundreds per day, that ICE hasn’t anywhere to keep them so they just foot the bill for hotel rooms while they wait. This wait can be weeks and months away from being given their cozy, free hotel rooms paid for by you and me.
Fox found that the numbers of asylum seekers has grown exponentially of late and that these illegals are using “special key words” when they apply for asylum, words the Obama administration has set up as safe words used to give these illegals immediate protected status.
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Your Taxes Going to Pay for Hotel Rooms for Illegal Aliens”
New Obama Rules Will Force ‘Diversity’ on Your Community
-By Warner Todd Huston
Obama is taking steps to begin to force “diversity” on your neighborhood through new fiat changes to policies of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Many fear this will force lenders right back into the sort of dangerous Democrat-sponsored lending practices that brought us the recent economic collapse.
This move corresponds to Obama Executive Order 1282, headlined: Leadership and Coordination of Fair Housing in Federal Programs; Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.
“This rule,” the HUD website says, “accordingly proposes to refine existing requirements with a fair housing assessment and planning process that will better aid HUD program participants fulfill this statutory obligation and address specific comments the GAO raised.”It continues saying,
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New Obama Rules Will Force ‘Diversity’ on Your Community”
Hawaii Lawmakers Want to Buy One-Way Tickets Off the Island for Homeless
-By Warner Todd Huston
“Dear homeless, you have been voted off the island.” That is what some Hawaii lawmakers are saying with a plan to allocate state funds to buy one-way tickets off the Island for the state’s homeless population. It is two Democrats sponsoring the program, too.
Now, wait… two Democrats are sponsoring legislation to ship the homeless off the island? Yep. So, doesn’t that break the claim that only the left cares about the homeless. Yep.
It’s all a case of NIMBY, not in my back yard. Oh, these Democrats love the homeless… when they are someone else’s problem.
The “Return To Home” program will give any homeless person a one-way ticket back to the contiguous United States if they can show that someone will take them in.
Lawmakers have funded the program with $100,000 each year for three years. It was created by Democrat state Rep. John Mizuno, the vice speaker of the House of reps.
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Hawaii Lawmakers Want to Buy One-Way Tickets Off the Island for Homeless”
Obamaphone Company Launches Ad Blitz to Sell Obamaphone Program
-By Warner Todd Huston
A new advertising campaign meant to save the reputation of the much-derided “Obamaphone” is underway.
Some of you may recall the 2012 video of that wacky woman ebullient that President Obama was giving out free “Obamaphones” to minorities and that, she said, is why we should all vote for him?
Well, since then the real program this woman was babbling about has come under fire.
Tracfone, one of the companies that gets hundreds of millions from the federal government and phone companies to run the program, is now launching an advertisement campaign to help protect the program.
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Obamaphone Company Launches Ad Blitz to Sell Obamaphone Program”
Video: A Test Case That Is Proving Free Markets Beat Government Regulations
-By Seton Motley, Founder and President of Less Government
Fire Island is a tiny New York hamlet of about 200 full-time residents. Whose 1930s old-school land line phone connections were wiped out by Hurricane Sandy.
So wireless companies are — rather than rebuilding the very expensive, woefully outdated connections they had — switching them to a brand new, cutting edge Internet Protocol (IP) system.
This format is much, much better than the old-school system — in large part because it is far less regulated than the old-school system.
So the Left — which relies on regulatory regimes to impose their failed worldview and for their very existence — are freaking out.
All of this, and more, is explained in this guerrilla video.
Please, enjoy.
Feds Repeal ‘Domestic Propaganda’ Ban
-By Warner Todd Huston
With the updating of the Smith-Mundt Act, some are criticizing the repeal of rules that banned certain government-sponsored news broadcasts–such as Voice of America–from being aired inside the USA.
John Hudson of Foreign Policy, for instance, calls the move a “repeal” of the ban on government propaganda and says it will unleash “thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption.”
“Until this month,” Hudson says, “a vast ocean of U.S. programming produced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks could only be viewed or listened to at broadcast quality in foreign countries.”
But with new amendments to the Smith-Mundt Act, those broadcast outlets will for the first time be allowed to broadcast inside the USA programming meant to appeal to specific communities.
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Feds Repeal ‘Domestic Propaganda’ Ban”
Obama Solutions: ‘Rogue IRS Agent’ Promoted
-By Warner Todd Huston
Instead of being reprimanded, one of the so-called “rogue” operatives at the Cincinnati IRS office is getting a big promotion.
Expressing his “anger” in May when the IRS targeting scandal broke, President Obama promised to “hold the responsible parties accountable” at the IRS. On the heels of that claim, Obama’s IRS chief called the guilty IRS operatives “rogue” employees.
From such rhetoric one might expect heads to roll at the IRS.
Yet, now, one of those “rogue” IRS officials, Exempt Organization Specialist Stephen Seok , is getting a new job. Instead of a mere department specialist, now Seok is being promoted to “supervisor IRS agent.”
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Obama Solutions: ‘Rogue IRS Agent’ Promoted”
Mayor Bloomberg’s Anti-Gun Group Launches Ad Campaign Against Senator Mark Pryor
-By Warner Todd Huston
Living up to his promise to attack even Democrats that he deems insufficiently anti-gun, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced an ad buy to criticize Arkansas’ Democrat Senator Mark Pryor.
Pryor, who will be running for a third term in 2014, recently voted against the Toomey-Manchin anti-gun bill drawing the ire of Bloomberg and his Mayors Against Illegal Guns group.
Bloomberg’s group has announced a $350 thousand buy for a two-week campaign.
The video ad features former Democratic staffer Angela Bradford-Barnes mourning the loss of Democrat Party chairman Bill Gwatney who was shot to death in 2008 as he worked at party headquarters in Little Rock.
No motive for the shooting was ever determined by police.
In the anti-Pryor ad, Angela Bradford-Barnes mentions Gwatney’s murder and then says that she was “disappointed when Mark Pryor voted against comprehensive background checks.”
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Mayor Bloomberg’s Anti-Gun Group Launches Ad Campaign Against Senator Mark Pryor”
Piers Morgan: This IRS Thing is ‘Vaguely Tyrannical Behavior by the Government’
-By Warner Todd Huston
CNN’s chief anti-gun zealot Piers Morgan may have been loathe to admit it, but this IRS scandal seems to validate some of his detractor’s distrust of government.
During his evening show on May 16, Morgan’s guest was magician Penn Jillette and the discussion turned to the admission by the Internal Revenue Service that it had misused its offices to intimidate President Obama’s opponents. Morgan seemed to ruefully come to understand that this abuse of power lends credence to those that say the government cannot be trusted.
“I’ve had some of the gun, pro-gun lobbyists on here, saying to me, ‘Well, the reason we need to be armed is because of tyranny from our own government,’ and I’ve always laughed at them. And I’ve always said ‘don’t be so ridiculous, your own government won’t turn itself on you.’ But, actually, when you look at this–this has nothing to do with guns–but actually this is vaguely tyrannical behavior by the American government. I think what the IRS did is bordering on tyrannical behavior, I think what the Department of Justice has done, actually, to the AP, is bordering on tyrannical behavior.”
We might recall that Piers Morgan was skeptical of Breitbart’s own Ben Shapiro for making just that point earlier this year.
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Piers Morgan: This IRS Thing is ‘Vaguely Tyrannical Behavior by the Government’”
Joe Scarborough: This IRS Scandal Sure Hurts My Anti-Gun, Let’s Trust Government Argument
-By Warner Todd Huston
MSNBC’s Morning Joe host, Joe Scarborough, is nearly apoplectic over the recent IRS admission that it used the power of its office to intimidate conservative groups throughout Obama’s presidency. Not necessarily because the IRS was acting so poorly, but because the scandal hurts his anti-gun argument.
During the recent debate over gun control in the Senate, Scarborough was a big booster of the Toomey/Manchin gun bill.
One of the arguments against the two Senators’ bill was that expanded background checks would likely lead to an un-Constitutional gun registry. Opponents maintained that the government wasn’t trustworthy enough not to misuse the information that would be gleaned from universal background checks.
In April Scarborough called anyone that opposed his support of the Toomey/Manchin bill an “extremist.”
This week, after the current IRS scandal hit the news, Scarborough is changing his tune albeit if only slightly.
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Joe Scarborough: This IRS Scandal Sure Hurts My Anti-Gun, Let’s Trust Government Argument”
Fox News’ Eric Bolling: ‘I Was Audited by IRS’ After Criticizing Obama
-By Warner Todd Huston
During the May 14 broadcast of Fox News’ “The Five,” panel member Eric Bolling announced that he feels he was audited by the IRS after criticizing President Obama.
As Bolling told the panel, “[In] 2011, I was pretty vocal against four more years of President Obama & I don t know if it s coincidence or not but I did get an IRS audit in 2012 for my 2011 tax returns. I m not sure if there’s any correlation.”
Andrea Tantaros chimed in saying, “It’s the Chicago way. [Obama] said he would change D.C. and the way they do business. Boy, has he ever.”
On Thursday, May 16, Obama demurred from appointing a special prosecutor to look into the growing IRS scandal saying that he thought the current internal investigations he’s proposed would suffice.
“I think it s going to be sufficient for us to work with Congress–they ve got a bunch of committees. Attorney General Holder announced a criminal investigation of what happened,” the President said during a joint press conference with Turkey s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoan.
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Fox News’ Eric Bolling: ‘I Was Audited by IRS’ After Criticizing Obama”
52 Media Orgs Sign Letter of Complaint to Eric Holder
-By Warner Todd Huston
The journalist group Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has penned a letter of complaint to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder after revelations that the Dept. of Justice obtained the phone records of some 100 reporters from the Associated Press.
The letter informs Holder that the group was “stunned” to learn of the DOJ’s actions against the Associated Press and notes that none of them could “remember an instance where such an overreaching dragnet for news gathering materials was deployed by the Department.”
“The scope of this action calls into question the very integrity of Department of Justice policies toward the press and its ability to balance, on its own, its police powers against the First Amendment rights of the news media and the public’s interest in reporting on all manner of government conduct, including matters touching on national security which lie at the heart of this case,” the letter states.
The letter continues to outline the legal implications, processes, and the law governing the DOJ’s requests for such records and ends by demanding that the Dept. of Justice “immediately return the telephone toll records obtained and destroy all copies” it holds.
The letter ends with a few final demands.
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52 Media Orgs Sign Letter of Complaint to Eric Holder”
As Gangs Flourish, Displaying Historical Firearms Illegal in Chicago Museums
-By Warner Todd Huston
Outside of Chicago’s museums gangs are killing each other at an alarming rate. But due to Chicago’s strict gun ban policies, inside those museums curators are not allowed to display historical firearms. In fact, in some cases the museums are not even allowed to store their collections inside the city limits.
The matter has become an issue after the family of the late Major General William Levine, one of America’s highest ranking Jewish generals, donated his belongings to Chicago’s Pritzker Military Library this year. The collection included a firearm that the general picked up in Germany during WWII.
But the library isn’t allowed to display the captured German pistol. In fact, the library isn’t even allowed to store it in the collection inside city limits.
“We realized when we received that gift that we couldn’t keep that gun in the city of Chicago,” said Ken Clarke, Pritzker Military Library CEO.
To correct this foolish oversight in the law, powerful city alderman Ed Burke has proposed a museum amendment to the city’s strict gun ban law.
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As Gangs Flourish, Displaying Historical Firearms Illegal in Chicago Museums”
Feds Killing Off Private Bus Lines Based on Fraudulent Study
-By Warner Todd Huston
The story of the coming demise of Chinatown bus lines in New York City is a tale of multiple failures in both government and the media and shows that both have a bias against entrepreneurs that kills new, start up ideas with unfair regulations, faux public advocacy, and dismal reporting.
A “Chinatown buss” was a new idea in the late 90s pioneered by Chinese immigrants in the Big Apple. These were private buses that cruised the streets looking for fares like cabs do, picking customers up at curbside, not having fixed bus stops or routes, and going where ever the customer wanted to go within a defined area of the city. Because they originated in New York’s Chinatown area, they became known as “Chinatown busses.”
Unfortunately, their success led to their downfall when nosey politicians like Senator Chuck Schumer began to take notice of them. Schumer and other New York pols began to call for a crack down on the busses and started looking to hit them with an avalanche of stifling regulations meant to “save lives.”
To assist Schumer in that jobs-killing endeavor the National Transportation Safety Bureau jumped to conduct a “study” of the safety records of Chinatown busses and purported to have found that these busses had a death rate “seven times higher” than that of other services.
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Feds Killing Off Private Bus Lines Based on Fraudulent Study”
Optional Medicaid Expansion: Considerations Facing the States
Across the country, state governments have been considering whether to expand Medicaid coverage as envisioned by the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “Obamacare”).
To help break down what’s at stake, a new video—based on a recent study by Mercatus Center scholar Charles Blahous—reviews the key factors states must consider in this complex decision.
View the study and learn more at Mercatus.org.
Obama’s Rogue Union Board Dealt Major Setbacks
-By Warner Todd Huston
Upon coming to office, President Obama began using the obscure National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to give big payoffs to unions at the expense of business and to the detriment of our economic recovery but at last his incredible abuse of this agency is under scrutiny.
By and large, NLRB is not one of those Washington agencies that get much notice. In normal times, that wouldn’t be a big deal. The NLRB is a federal agency controlled from the White House that is supposed to act as an unbiased arbiter between the business sector and labor unions, its chief job to write rules to govern how business and labor relate to each other. But since President Obama took office he’s thrown out any pretense of his board being an unbiased arbiter and used this obscure agency to implement all sorts of illicit, union-favoring rules at the expense of business and economic recovery and often in direct violation of what the courts have ruled.
At long last, though, Obama’s NLRB is seeing its assumed powers questioned. The most recent reversal of fortunes occurred on April 7 when the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the NLRB’s poster rule with U.S. Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph ruing that the NLRB had exceeded its legal authority to force over 6 million employers to post signs advertising unions to employees.
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Obama’s Rogue Union Board Dealt Major Setbacks”
Store Owner Installs $350K of Surveillance to Stop Frivolous Lawsuits
-By Warner Todd Huston
Supermarket owner Rafael Cuellar from Passaic, NJ, reports that he had to spend $350,000 to install 69 surveillance cameras, recording devices, and video storage banks in order to stop fake “slip and fall” insurance claims against his store. It’s a cost that just adds to the cost of living for everyone and is a perfect example of the abuse of the legal system that we see every day with this avalanche of frivolous lawsuits.
While the cameras also help Mr. Cuellar track and prevent shoplifting–another expensive problem in retail–the main purpose of the cameras, he says, is to stop abusive, frivolous lawsuits lodged by unscrupulous crooks pretending to be customers.
“Yesterday alone we had a consumer who came back in [the store] and claimed she fell,” Mr. Cuellar recounts in the video, Supermarket Swindle (seen below). “Once the loss-prevention director said, ‘Let’s pull it up on the camera,’ she goes, ‘No, I just twisted my ankle.’ And the story changed all of the sudden.”
Cuellar spent half a million dollars to prevent being inundated with these frivolous lawsuits. Imagine what he could have done with that money if he didn’t need to waste it in such a manner. He’d have been able to expand his business, advertise more, hire more people, or even do more for the community.
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Store Owner Installs $350K of Surveillance to Stop Frivolous Lawsuits”
The Gang of Eight Immigration Bill, Explained in One Infographic
Kelsey Harris The Heritage Foundation
Senators return to Washington next week to debate the Gang of Eight’s comprehensive immigration bill. Heritage President Jim DeMint has said the bill is “unfair, it costs too much, and it’s going to make the problem worse.” We’ve put together an infographic that explains some of the major problems with a “comprehensive” approach to immigration reform.
What Is This ‘Well Regulated Militia’ Business, Anyway?
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Question:
The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, 1789: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
We talk about the “right of the people” to “bear arms” all the time. But we don’t often talk about the “well regulated militia” part that precedes it. So, what is it about? Is this militia still relevant to us today? Can we just ignore it? If unnecessary, does the lack of a need for the militia make the whole Second Amendment null and void?
Background:
Our founders had just fought a war with one of the greatest powers in the world. In the mid 1780s, British forces were considered the best of the best. But our founders hadn’t joined a war with a “foreign power.” They had fought a war with their own government in order to separate from it and start anew. This was because we Americans felt England had violated our very rights as Englishmen.
As our Declaration of Independence notes:
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
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What Is This ‘Well Regulated Militia’ Business, Anyway?”
3D-Printed Guns Can’t Be Stopped
-By Warner Todd Huston
According to many at the 3D Printing Conference and Expo, 3D-printed guns are inevitable despite the efforts of some 3D printer companies and politicians to try and stop it.
The expo now underway in New York revealed opposing views on the issue of printed firearms, but according to 3D gun advocate Cody Wilson, 3D-printed guns are not only already here but should be legal.
Wilson, the founder and director of Defense Distributed, scoffed at claims by other conference speakers that 3D-printed guns are still not technologically viable. “No, it’s here today,” he said from the podium.
Wilson’s group has printed several gun parts and used them to fire live rounds. Defense Distributed isn’t the only group that has done this, either.
Several 3D technology companies, however, are not as excited as Wilson about the possibility of printing firearms.
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3D-Printed Guns Can’t Be Stopped”
VIDEO: Boone County IN Sheriff Ken Campbell on Absurdity of Magazine Bans
-By Warner Todd Huston
This video effectively shows how lacking in veracity the left’s talking points about “high capacity” magazines is and how their reasons for banning them is so fee of any intellectual heft.
But, then again, the left really doesn’t care about “high capacity magazines.” What they care about is getting every new little victory in anti-gun legislation because every new law is one step closer to their ultimate goal of banning all firearms. This year’s “common sense” law is next year’s “not far enough” law and another excuse to go father.
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VIDEO: Boone County IN Sheriff Ken Campbell on Absurdity of Magazine Bans”
Obama’s Budget Would Use Tax $$ to Fund Lobbyists Pushing Tax Hikes
-By Warner Todd Huston
Remember when Obama took office and one of his biggest promises was that lobbyists would never gain a foothold in his Administration? Well, now that he doesn’t have to stand for election again he’s doing his level best to give lobbyists one of their biggest perks yet. He’s trying to make it legal to give them your tax dollars so they can lobby to increase your taxes. And in fact he’s already broken laws governing lobbyists several times since 2009.
A report by the government watchdog group Cause of Action found that Obama’s Department of Human Services (HHS) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) gave federal money in the 2009 stimulus program to lobbyists and public relations agencies for them to use to advocate for “tax increases on tobacco and sugar sweetened products.” This is a violation of federal law.
Worse, even more money has been earmarked in Obamacare to do the same thing, again in violation of the law.
It gets even worse.
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Obama’s Budget Would Use Tax $$ to Fund Lobbyists Pushing Tax Hikes”
AP: Gosnell’s Gruesome Assistants ‘Only Following Orders’
-By Warner Todd Huston
In shades of the Nuremberg Trials, an April 12 article from the Associated Press seems to excuse away the actions of the assistants of accused criminal abortionist Kermit Gosnell as “only following orders.”
For the AP, Maryclaire Dale begins her piece with that very sentiment saying, “They say they were just doing what the boss trained them to do.”
Incredibly, throughout the article, Dale seems to absolve these assistants for the horrible things they did, softening the guilt of nearly every person accused of crimes with excuses.
In some cases, Dale claims that these accused assistants had a hard time finding jobs before Gosnell gave them a shot at killing babies born alive. According to Dale, one had to work for Gosnell because she had “post-traumatic stress syndrome.” Dale excuses others because they were somehow related tangentially to fiendish Doctor Gosnell.
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AP: Gosnell’s Gruesome Assistants ‘Only Following Orders’”
Leftist Hypocrites on Campaign Donations
-By Warner Todd Huston
One of the left’s biggest rallying cries against what they claim are the evils of the right was its opposition to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that essentially opened up our political process to unlimited donations to political causes. The left claimed allowing more money into politics was evil and says the case must be over turned. But now leftists in New Jersey are hypocritically using the case for their own ends.
A Washington DC-based left-wing super PAC has sued New Jersey’s campaign finance watchdog agency saying that the Garden State shouldn’t be allowed to limit what it can raise from an individual donor.
As a New Jersey paper reported recently, “The Fund for Jobs and Growth filed the complaint against the state Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) in federal district court on Friday.”
New Jersey says that there should be a limit per donor. But the group wants to raise money to make independent expenditures (i.e. political spending independent of the campaigns they are pushing) and based on the Citizens United case, they say that they should be able to wheedle from donors every penny that they can–and they are right, too.
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Leftist Hypocrites on Campaign Donations”
Pastor Rick Warren, Gun Control, and Matthew Warren’s Suicide
-By Warner Todd Huston
Pastor Rick Warren and his family suffered a devastating loss last week when their son, Matthew, took his own life with a pistol that he may have bought illegally from a person he contacted over the Internet. Dealing with such a loss is heartrending, of course, and the Warren family has much to endure as they deal with this terrible incident. But one thing is sure, new gun laws would not have prevented Matthew Warren’s suicide.
Warren’s son, Matthew Warren, committed suicide on April 5 with a self-inflicted gunshot. After news broke, the young man’s father reported that Matthew had been under a doctor’s care for years and had been suicidal for some time. Sadly, his doctors weren’t able to save the young man from his fatal choice.
Rick Warren said, Matthew “suffered from mental illness resulting in deep depression and suicidal thoughts. Despite the best health care available, this was an illness that was never fully controlled and the emotional pain resulted in his decision to take his life.”
In the days since, Warren has Tweeted several times about his son’s death and in a Tweet on Friday afternoon, the Pastor of the Saddleback Valley Community Church mentioned that his son had bought his gun illegally from someone over the Internet.
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Pastor Rick Warren, Gun Control, and Matthew Warren’s Suicide”
The CA Bill That Would Shut Down Every Small Restaurant
-By Warner Todd Huston
The State of California has one of the worst proposals of any legislature in the country this year with a new bill that would force every restaurant and food service business in the state to commission an expensive “risk assessment” test for every menu item, a test that could cost thousands of dollars for every food item sold. This outrageous and cost prohibitive testing would certainly cause all but the biggest chain restaurants to go out of business almost instantly.
In another exercise in nanny-statism, California’s State Senate Democrats want this “risk assessment” conducted to determine whether food being sold “contributes significantly to a significant public health epidemic.”
The bill, Senate Bill 747, is an addition to the current health and safety codes and is currently set for a hearing on April 17. It was written and introduced by Sen. Mark DeSauliner (D, Concord).
The introduction of the bill clearly says that the law would require the food service companies to pay the state for the testing in order to fill state coffers and notes that without the assessment, the state would have the right to shut an offending restaurant down.
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The CA Bill That Would Shut Down Every Small Restaurant”
America’s Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, Stands Alone Against Unions And Outsiders in Recall Effort
-By Warner Todd Huston
Only three weeks after re-election in 2012, Sheriff Joe Arpaio was hit with a recall effort. Now, with anti-Arpaio petitions in circulation in Maricopa County, Arizona, “America’s Sheriff” is organizing his forces to oppose a recall backed by the deep pockets of the unions, millions in outside money, and a flood of non-Arizonans arriving to act as the left-winger’s ground troops. (See www.savesheriffjoe.org)
Arpaio’s team is being ramrodded by the Conservative Business League and unlike the opposition’s recall efforts, the CBL is an Arizona-based organization. The duo taking the helm of the save Joe campaign is the CBL’s Ron Ludders and Bob Thomas.
Ludders and Thomas say that the left’s effort to destroy Sheriff Joe Arpaio is no less than an effort to use the Colorado model (the campaign that turned Colorado from red to blue) to give Arizona to the Democrats. It is also a mirror of what the left tried to do to Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin and, if successful, would be a model for Democrats to regain power in Texas.
Strangely, Arizona’s recall law is incredibly loose. An elected official in The Grand Canyon State can be recalled for any reason at all and, with one exception, at any time. Unlike such laws in most states, the Arizona law does not require a recall for cause such as criminal activity, fraud, or other real reasons. The only rule seems to be that the elected official has to be in office for six months into his first term before a recall can be mounted. This rule did not apply to the six-term Sheriff. To start a recall, petitioners must gather the signatures of 25 percent of the number of votes cast in the last election.
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America’s Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, Stands Alone Against Unions And Outsiders in Recall Effort”
Sunday Shows Go Full Out On Immigration
-By Warner Todd Huston
It looks like the Sunday morning political shows got the same memo that Immigration is the topic of the day for April 7.
The big three networks and CNN are all hosting guests that certainly lean toward amnesty for illegals if not out right in support of the same.
- Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
- Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
- Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State
- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
- Bill Richardson, former U.N. Ambassador and New Mexico governor (D)
- Michele Flournoy, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy
Sunday Shows Go Full Out On Immigration”
VP Biden Still Lobbying for Gun Control
-By Warner Todd Huston
Vice President Joe Biden is again plying the phones calling his former colleagues on Capitol Hill bending ears over the President’s gun control ideas. His calls are coming on a “near-daily basis” as Obama mounts another push for gun control.
Biden has held private meetings with Republican Senators such as John McCain (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and, Johnny Isakson (Ga.), and will be haunting the offices of Capitol Hill in the days ahead.
It appears that President Obama is relying on Biden to leverage the relationships he had built when he was a long-serving Senator from Delaware to cajole Congress into acquiescing to new gun control laws.
“President Obama is the strategist and Vice President Biden is the tactician,” Democratic consultant Chris Kofinis told The Hill. “I think the president is laying out the frame, the message, the vision about where we need to go and why. The vice president understands how to make that happen. You have two interlocking pieces that work very well together.”
Republicans, however, scoff at the idea that Biden is an effective negotiator.
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VP Biden Still Lobbying for Gun Control”