Hugh Hewitt: Seventy percent of Americans know they’ve been conned

Minimum estimate of Saturday’s crowd on the Mall: 300,000 Maximum estimate: One million people.

Meaning of the crowd: An enormous upheaval in the emotions of average Americans is coursing through the country, with a certain significance for November’s elections. It will have a lasting, profound impact on America’s political direction.

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin provided an occasion to glimpse this undeniable phenomenon. Of course, the interpretations of what the phenomenon is and what its consequences will be will keep the chattering class busy for weeks, if not years.

Some on the left are trying, with increasing desperation, to use old and new media to brand this surge in public participation in politics as sinister, even though it was preceded by a surge from the left of people and energy into President Obama’s campaign.

The new tools of communication and the ease of movement have unleashed a tumultuous era of politics driven by the demand that elites not attempt to speak for, or condescend to, average citizens. They will not quietly or passively be lectured to, or insulted by, the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg or any anchor on any network, any columnist in any paper, or any blogger on any Web site.

The people on the Mall and the millions more who watched the gathering with satisfaction rather than fear are quite simply sick of the left, and of its vast sneer toward the traditions, values and, yes, faith of the American middle class.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Arthur Brooks has quite accurately described America as a 70/30 nation, with the 70 percent presently massively underrepresented in the federal government, the Manhattan-Beltway media elite and academia.

The 70 percent is appalled by the placebo economics practiced by the president and the Congress over the past two years, shocked by its profligacy with the wealth of the republic, and sickened by the looting of the next generation’s opportunities.

The 70 percent did not want Obamacare, but it has been thrust upon them.

The 70 percent did not want federal judges to declare “game over” in the complex discussion of what marriage is and means.

The 70 percent want a fence on the border that works, and do not want their concern over unregulated immigration dismissed as nativisim.

The 70 percent are not ashamed of their belief in God, deeply resent being labeled bigots because they view ground zero as land that ought not to be exploited for “messaging” of any sort by any group, and are enraged by the scorn which they encounter everywhere in media except Fox News and talk radio.

The 70 percent believe that the federal government is remote and clueless, and that the Constitution’s principles of enumerated and limited powers and the sovereignty of the states are vibrant, important core values to the republic.

The 70 percent think Iran is in the grip of an evil, theocratic fascism, and that Israel is our true friend and ally deserving of our full-throated support.

We are in the middle of a perilous economic passage to a new competitiveness across the globe. We are watching other countries across the globe respond to the new demands of competitiveness by shrinking the public sector and encouraging private-sector growth. But American education is crippled by bureaucracy and burdened by the inability of a political class to demand reform of the practices and pensions of the public sector. Children have been hostages of this countrywide collapse of common sense for a generation, despite wave after wave of “reform”.

Two years into what had been sold as a new politics and a new approach, the 70 percent are fully aware that they have been conned, suckered, and taken to the cleaners by a hyper-ideological amalgam of leftist public intellectuals, snarling bloggers, career politicians with limited abilities who are often corrupt, and a president wholly inexperienced in the management of complex problems who is in way over his head and prisoner to slogans and schemes that make for great campus debates — but for disaster in the real world.

The people on the Mall were saying much more than “this far and no farther.” They were saying “rewind and restart.” They will hold that thought and that purpose as they peacefully, but with great passion and purpose, insist on real change come Nov. 2.
Read the original article Washington Examiner:

Senator Tom Coburn:100 stimulus projects that give taxpayers the blues

Obama to Suspend Arctic Drilling

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

President Obama will announce on Thursday a suspension of all applications for offshore oil drilling in the Arctic through the remainder of the year, an Alaska senator said late Wednesday.

The decision essentially extends an informal moratorium that Mr. Obama had set shortly after the BP accident on April 20 that led to the spewing of millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The new restrictions would suspend new offshore drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico and off the North Slope Alaska until the cause of the accident is determined and stricter safety and environmental safeguards are imposed.

One major oil company, Shell Oil, had been hoping to begin a controversial exploratory drilling project this summer in the Arctic Ocean, which the new restrictions would put on hold.

Senator Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska and a staunch supporter of drilling in the Arctic, said he was informed of the new restrictions by the Interior Department. Sen. Begich said he was frustrated because the decision “will cause more delays and higher costs for domestic oil and gas production to meet the nation’s energy needs.”

“The Gulf of Mexico tragedy has highlighted the need for much stronger oversight and accountability of oil companies working offshore, but Shell has updated its plans at the administration’s request and made significant investments to address the concerns raised by the Gulf spill,” Senator Begich said in a statement. “They make an effective case that we can safely explore for oil and gas this summer in the Arctic.”

The White House could not be immediately reached for comment late Wednesday night.

In his statement, Senator Begich argued that the administration’s decision would cost Alaska jobs and money, and force the country “to export more dollars and import more oil from some unfriendly places, jeopardizing our economic and national security.”

Senator Begich has been pushing for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a protected, 19- million-square-mile area along the northeastern coast of Alaska — for some time. Earlier this month, he wrote a joint letter with two other Alaska congressmen urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to consider oil and gas exploration in a special, 1.5 million-acre section of the refuge called the “10-02” area, named after the section of a bill that expanded the refuge three decades ago.

“New technology can now facilitate both a better understanding of the oil and gas reserves within the 10-02 area as well as enable more environmentally responsible development,” he stated in the joint letter earlier this month. “Directional drilling techniques would allow extraction of oil and gas from some of the 10-02 area with no surface disturbance.”

Read the original article NYTimes

Private pay shrinks to historic lows as gov’t payouts rise

Dennis Cauchon,

Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year, a USA TODAY analysis of government data finds. At the same time, government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.

Those records reflect a long-term trend accelerated by the recession and the federal stimulus program to counteract the downturn. The result is a major shift in the source of personal income from private wages to government programs.

 The trend is not sustainable, says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes. Reason: The federal government depends on private wages to generate income taxes to pay for its ever-more-expensive programs. Government-generated income is taxed at lower rates or not at all, he says. “This is really important,” Grimes says.

 READ the original article USAToday

An Anti-Military Justice?

William Kristol

For me, the key obstacle to Elena Kagan’s confirmation is pt. 5 in Ed Whelan’s NRO post, which is also the question raised by Peter Berkowitz in these pages several years ago and by Peter Beinart just recently: Her hostility to the U.S. military.

Hostility? Isn’t that harsh? Kagan has professed at times her admiration for those who serve in the military, even as she tried to bar military recruiters from Harvard Law School. But how does one square her professed admiration with her actions–embracing an attempt to overturn the Solomon Amendment that was rejected 8-0 by the Supreme Court–and her words?

Consider these words in particular from her letters to “All Members of the Harvard Law School Community”: On Oct. 6, 2003, Kagan explained that she abhorred “the military’s discriminatory recruitment policy….The military’s policy deprives many men and women of courage and character from having the opportunity to serve their country in the greatest way possible. This is a profound wrong — a moral injustice of the first order.” On Sep. 28, 2004: “…the military’s recruitment policy is both unjust and unwise. The military’s policy deprives…” etc. And on March 7, 2006: “I hope that many members of the Harvard Law School community will accept the Court’s invitation to express their views clearly and forcefully regarding the military’s discriminatory employment policy. As I have said before, I believe that policy is profoundly wrong — both unwise and unjust…,” etc.

Notice, time and again: “the military’s discriminatory recruitment policy,” “the military’s policy,” “the military’s recruitment policy,” “the military’s discriminatory employment policy.”

But it is not the military’s policy. It is the policy of the U.S. Government, based on legislation passed in 1993 by (a Democratic) Congress, signed into law and implemented by the Clinton administration, legislation and implementation that are currently continued by a Democratic administration and a Democratic Congress. It is intellectually wrong and morally cowardly to call this the “military’s policy.” Wrong for obvious reasons. Cowardly because it allowed Kagan to go ahead and serve in the Clinton administration that enforced this policy she so detests, and to welcome to Harvard as Dean former members of that administration, as well as Senators and Congressmen who actually voted for the law–which is more than the military recruiters whom Kagan sought to ban did.

As Ed Whelan asks, “Instead of taking potshots at military recruiters who were merely complying with the law, did Kagan ever exclude from campus any of the politicians responsible for the law?”

Of course not. Indeed, whatever moral opposition Kagan had to the law when it was adopted didn’t deter her from seeking and obtaining employment in the Clinton White House. Nor will it keep her from palling around with the many senators who voted for it, such as Vice President Biden.

Kagan engaged in her cheap moral posturing in the aftermath of 9/11, at a time when American soldiers were at war defending our freedom.

Many important people are complicit in what Kagan regards as the “moral injustice of the first order” of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The only ones Kagan sought to make pay a price were those serving the ranks of the military.

So Kagan needs to be asked: Why doesn’t this reflect hostility to the military?

Read the original article Weekly Standard

Noemie Emery: You’ve disregarded civility, Mr. President

Noemie Emery

Physicians help parents, schools combat propaganda

Charlie Butts and Bill Bumpas – OneNewsNow

The American College of Pediatricians (ACP) is cautioning educators and expressing concerns on dealing with sexual orientation and gender confusion by sending a letter to every U.S. school superintendent.

 ACP president Dr. Thomas Benton sent the letter to the school districts. In that letter he refers recipients to FactsAboutYouth.com, a website that has been established to provide educators, parents, and youngsters factual information about sexual development. He encourages parents to go to the site, check out the facts, and start a dialogue with their school superintendent.

 ”We feel like that’s where the movement towards a safer school environment will occur is by parents being empowered to take action,” comments Benton.

Peter LaBarbera, executive director of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), supports these efforts.

 ”I’m very glad that the FactsAboutYouth website is up,” he notes. “It’s going to give parents a place to go to get factual information to answer all this gay propaganda that’s infiltrated the schools.”

Benton’s letter urges educators to stop promoting homosexual identity on children. He believes since no scientific evidence supports the theory that people are born as homosexuals, schools should not teach or imply that it is life-long and unchangeable. The ACP president also does not find it healthy that some school districts promote homosexual clubs for youth to declare their sexual orientation.

 ”There are medical and physiological harm[s] to declaring that as a teenager,” he points out.  “They don’t have clubs for cigarette smokers — people who declare they want to be cigarette smokers — and that likewise is a harmful medical thing to do.  So we just wanted to make sure that the school superintendents, and particularly the parents, were aware that that’s happening in some school districts and, in our opinion, should not be happing.”

In the letter, the American College of Pediatricians reminds school superintendents that it is not uncommon for youth to experience confusion about their sexual orientation — and that most students will ultimately adopt a heterosexual orientation if not otherwise encouraged. LaBarbera concurs.

“A lot of times, kids have these temptations or they experiment in an area, but that doesn’t mean that’s their identity,” LaBarbera contends. “And so this group is warning school officials not to confirm impressionable young people in a homosexual identity.”

The AFTAH executive director adds that the false information obtained from activists is designed to promote their gender-identity disorder, but the new website takes on more importance because parents generally have no clue how active the homosexual agenda is in schools.

Read the original article OneNewsNow

Scam artists are taking advantage of new health care law, Obama administration warns

RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR

WASHINGTON – Scam artists are taking advantage of the new health insurance law to peddle phony policies.

Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius said Tuesday she is warning state officials about a proliferation of scams involving phony health insurance policies. Federal investigators are also on the lookout.

Some of the hustlers are going door to door claiming there’s a limited open-enrollment period to buy health insurance now. But the big expansion of coverage won’t come for another four years, and door-to-door salespeople are unlikely to be part of the plan then.

“Unfortunately, scam artists and criminals may be using the passage of these historic reforms as an opportunity to confuse and defraud the public,” Sebelius wrote in a letter to state insurance commissioners and attorneys general.

In the letter, released Tuesday, she urged vigorous prosecution of anyone caught selling fraudulent policies.

The new health care law will ultimately provide coverage to more than 30 million uninsured, but those changes will come slowly, beginning with smaller steps.

As early as the summer, people who have been turned down for coverage because of a medical problem will be able to buy a plan through a new high-risk health insurance pool. Many states already operate such pools, but the coverage has been expensive, and only about 200,000 are signed up. The new health care law provides an infusion of federal dollars to bring down costs and cover more people.

Then in the fall, two other consumer benefits take effect. Insurance plans will no longer be able to deny coverage to children with medical problems. And parents will be able to keep their adult children on their policies until they turn 26.

While those measures may make a big difference for particular families, experts say it will only lead to a small decline in the number of uninsured people, which now is nearly 50 million.

The big push to cover the uninsured comes in 2014, when new health insurance marketplaces will open for business and federal tax credits will start flowing to millions of working families and individuals. At the same time, Medicaid will be expanded to more people living near the poverty line. And health insurers will not be able to turn anyone down on account of a medical problem.

Once those tax credits and new consumer protections are in place, most Americans will be required to carry health insurance. The nearly $1 trillion, ten-year law will provide coverage to an estimated 94 percent of eligibile Americans when it is fully phased in.

Read the original article StarTribune

Case against 3 SEALs weakens Hitting captive to be denied

By Rowan Scarborough

Cracks are beginning to appear in the military’s prosecution of three Navy SEALs accused of striking a most-wanted terrorism suspect they had captured in Iraq.

Maj. Gen. Charles Cleveland last week signed grants of immunity for five Navy colleagues of the accused.

Some of those five, three enlisted men and two officers, are expected at trial to flatly contradict the prosecution’s key witness, according to a Navy source close to the case, which centers on the September 2009 capture of Ahmed Hashim Abed.

The witness, the master-at-arms at the base in Anbar province where the captured terrorist was brought, told investigators that he saw Abed being struck by one SEAL. One of the immunized witnesses identified by the master-at-arms for corroboration is not expected to support his testimony. The military has not released witness statements.

In addition, the defense has requested that the judge order the government to turn over the name of the Army officer who interrogated Abed once he was brought to Baghdad, where he remains in custody on order of an Iraqi judge. The disclosure would mean that defense attorneys may call him as a witness to testify about Abed’s appearance after he left the SEALs’ custody.

A judge has ruled that the military must produce Abed as a witness for courts-martial, scheduled to be conducted in Baghdad perhaps as early as next month. Defense attorneys, in front of a military jury, can expose Abed’s history as the suspected mastermind of the 2004 Fallujah atrocity that left the bodies of U.S. contractors hanging mutilated on a bridge.

The master-at-arms told investigators that Abed was punched in the gut by Special Operations Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe. Petty Officer McCabe denies hitting Abed.

“We’re pleased about the immunity grants,” said Neal Puckett, Petty Officer McCabe’s attorney. “They allow witnesses who have favorable testimony to testify.”

At some point during Abed’s captivity that first day, blood appeared inside his lip. The Navy source said, “All these al Qaeda guys are trained to injure themselves and claim they were tortured.”

Two other SEALs on the mission, Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas and Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Keefe, are charged with providing false statements, as is Petty Officer McCabe.

In another win for the defense, a military judge ruled last week that the prosecution may not use Petty Officer Keefe’s statement that he did not see Abed struck. The judge said investigators did not advise Petty Officer Keefe that he could remain silent.

U.S. Central Command, where Gen. Cleveland oversees special operations forces, filed official charges in October. The assault charge against Petty Officer McCabe stated that the SEAL did “unlawfully strike Ahmad Hashim Abed in the midsection with his fist.”

The false statement charge states that Petty Officer McCabe told a Petty Officer McCabe “I did not assault nor did I see anyone assault or abuse” Abed.

Petty Officer McCabe says that statement is true. At a rally Saturday in Scottsdale, Ariz., to raise legal funds, he announced that he had passed an independent lie-detector test on the question, “Did you strike Abed?”

A statement on Mr. Puckett’s Web site says, “These terrorists are trained to claim abuse despite no physical evidence of such. More importantly, they know the powerful influence of our mainstream media and legal system and are using these facets as tools against us. This tactic with resulting media attention is effective in causing our heroes to question their training and decisions, placing their missions, lives and our security in jeopardy.”

The military’s decisions to charge the SEALs who took a suspected terrorist off the streets has stirred protests from some members of Congress and ordinary Americans.

A Facebook page, “Support the Navy SEALs who Captured Ahmed Hashim Abed,” has attracted nearly 120,000 members. Another Facebook page, “Americans United Against the Prosecution of 3 Navy SEALs,” has nearly 265,000 members.

When the SEALs brought the captured Abed back to Camp Schwedler in September, they had executed a perfect mission. Based on an intelligence report on Abed’s whereabouts, they surprised him while he slept in his bed, marched him back to their helicopter and evacuated the area without firing a shot.

The U.S. command in Iraq has refused to provide details on Abed except to say that he is being held.

Gen. Cleveland wrote to members of Congress saying his decision to charge the SEALs was influenced by evidence that they tried to cover up a suspected assault.

Read the original article Washington Times

Troops: Strict war rules slow Afghan offensive

ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU and DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press

MARJAH, Afghanistan – Some American and Afghan troops say they’re fighting the latest offensive in Afghanistan with a handicap — strict rules that routinely force them to hold their fire.

Although details of the new guidelines are classified to keep insurgents from reading them, U.S. troops say the Taliban are keenly aware of the restrictions.

“I understand the reason behind it, but it’s so hard to fight a war like this,” said Lance Cpl. Travis Anderson, 20, of Altoona, Iowa. “They’re using our rules of engagement against us,” he said, adding that his platoon had repeatedly seen men drop their guns into ditches and walk away to blend in with civilians.

If a man emerges from a Taliban hideout after shooting erupts, U.S. troops say they cannot fire at him if he is not seen carrying a weapon — or if they did not personally watch him drop one.

What this means, some contend, is that a militant can fire at them, then set aside his weapon and walk freely out of a compound, possibly toward a weapons cache in another location. It was unclear how often this has happened. In another example, Marines pinned down by a barrage of insurgent bullets say they can’t count on quick air support because it takes time to positively identify shooters.

“This is difficult,” Lance Cpl. Michael Andrejczuk, 20, of Knoxville, Tenn., said Monday. “We are trained like when we see something, we obliterate it. But here, we have to see them and when we do, they don’t have guns.”

NATO and Afghan military officials say killing militants is not the goal of a 3-day-old attack to take control of this Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan. More important is to win public support.

They acknowledge that the rules entail risk to its troops, but maintain that civilian casualties or destruction of property can alienate the population and lead to more insurgent recruits, more homemade bombs and a prolonged conflict.

But troops complain that strict rules of engagement — imposed to spare civilian casualties — are slowing their advance into the town of Marjah in Helmand province, the focal point of the operation involving 15,000 troops.

“The problem is isolating where the enemy is,” said Capt. Joshua Winfrey, a Marine company commander from Stillwater, Oklahoma. “We are not going to drop ordnance out in the open.”

That’s a marked change from the battle of Fallujah, Iraq in November 2004. When Marines there encountered snipers holed up in a building, they routinely called in airstrikes. In Marjah, fighter jets are flying at low altitude in a show of force, but are not firing missiles.

Politically, it’s not the best time to campaign for relaxing the rules in Afghanistan. On Sunday, two U.S. rockets struck a house and killed 12 Afghan civilians during the offensive in Marjah, NATO said. On Monday, a NATO airstrike accidentally killed five civilians and wounded two in neighboring Kandahar province.

It was public outrage in Afghanistan over civilian deaths that prompted the top NATO commander, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, last year to tighten the rules, including the use of airstrikes and other weaponry if civilians are at risk.

Afghan civilian deaths soared to 2,412 civilians last year — the highest number in any year of the 8-year-old war, according to a U.N. report. But the deaths attributed to allied troops dropped nearly 30 percent as a result of McChrystal’s new rules, according to the report.

Under the current rules of engagement, troops retain the right to use lethal force in self defense, said U.S. Col. Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for the international force.

The rules seek to put the troops in the “right frame of mind to exercise that right,” Shanks said. They require troops to ask a few fundamental questions:

• Even if someone has shot in my general direction, am I still in danger?

• Will I make more enemies than I’ll kill by destroying property, or harming innocent civilians?

• What are my other options to resolve this without escalating the violence?

On Monday, Marines in the northern part of Marjah followed the rules of engagement, but a civilian still ended up dead.

As troops fought teams of insurgent snipers throughout the day in heavy gunfights, a young Afghan man ran toward the Marines. More than once, the troops warned him to stop, but he kept running.

Following the rules, the Marines uttered a verbal warning, and fired a flare and a warning shot overhead. Still the man didn’t stop. Marines shot him dead.

Afterward, Marine officers said the victim appeared to be a mentally ill man who had panicked during the gun battle.

“Sadly, everything was done right,” said Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, commander of 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines. “The family understood.”

Christmas said his troops might be frustrated, but understand the reasons behind the strict rules. As he spoke, Cobra attack helicopters fired Hellfire missiles nearby. Ground forces under intense fire had requested the air support 90 minutes earlier, but it took that long to positively identify the militants who were shooting at the allied forces.

“We didn’t come to Marjah to destroy it, or to hurt civilians,” Christmas said.

That message was drilled into the troops in the run-up to the offensive.

“What are we here for?” Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, the top Marine commander in Afghanistan, would shout to his troops.

“The people!” was the troops’ refrain.

Afghan forces cite examples of the restrictions too.

Col. Shrin Shah Kohbandi, commander of the new Afghan army corps in Helmand province, told reporters that his troops saw militants running away from the battlefield toward a village in Nad Ali district where they disappeared among villagers. “They hid their weapons so they became `civilians,’” under the rules, he said. “We didn’t kill them and we weren’t able to arrest them.”

Khan Mohammad Khan, a former Afghan Army commander in neighboring Kandahar province, said being able to use heavy weapons and conduct air strikes only in selective situations has hamstrung troops in Marjah.

But Brig. Gen. Sher Mohammad Zazai, commander of Afghan army troops in the south, said there is no plan to revise the rules.

“The aim of the operation is not to kill militants,” he said. “The aim is to protect civilians and bring in development.”

Read the original article Yahoo News