Strongest College Republican Chapter in Oregon Leaves the Federation

Corvallis, Oregon—The Oregon State University College Republicans chose to leave the Oregon Federation of College Republicans (OFCR) and have become an independent College Republican Chapter. The Oregon State University College Republicans decided to leave the federation due to leadership failures, corruption within the organization, and lack of financial oversight.

The OFCR executive board, led by the chair, continues to hold secret meetings, fails to send out information in the required time, and doesn’t include all chapters in their decisions. This shows a disregard for the OFCR Constitution and respect for the chapters in the Federation.

OFCR Chair, Caleb Huegel has repeatedly used his position to advocate for Senate Candidate Jason Conger, which explicitly violates the OFCR Constitution. In October he used his position send out information on only one candidate, Jason Conger. He used OFCR funds for himself and other Conger interns to travel to Dorchester. While people should be able to freely support the candidate of their choice they should not use their position to advance a candidate if the rules specifically bar it.

The Oregon Federation of College Republicans has not had a positive income for the last four years. When Caleb Huegel became chair, the Federation had over $6023 and currently it has only $1634. They have spent over $4000 while only bringing in $659. Some of the major expenses include $800 for Chairman’s personal Travel, $618 for a house party at Dorchester, and $316 Fines with the Secretary of State. The donations that the Federation receives rarely trickle down to the Chapters or assisting candidates, but instead go to perks for the executives.

The OSU College Republicans are the largest most active chapter in the state with over 5% of the campus (of 27,000) identifying as a College Republican. We have accomplished a lot with our many activities, forums and candidate events on campus. Our chapter is the strongest financially, bringing in over $17,000 (over 26 times what the Federation made) this year. There is not a doubt that our chapter will thrive without the hindrances of the OFCR and will continue to work to turn Oregon red this November by contributing on several campaigns.

For more information on the OSU College Republicans, please visit the website, http://osugop.com/, or contact Donald Handeland, OSU College Republicans President, at president@osugop.com Read More......

House Republicans find 10% of tea party donors audited by IRS

Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday.

Read more at the Washington Times
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Lennart Bengtsson: He Knows How Little We Know

One of the most eminent climate scientists, the Swede Lennart Bengtsson, has defected to the camp of climate sceptics. For the climate debate, this could have beneficial effects.

How the global climate will develop in coming years and decades, and what influence mankind has upon the climate, is a question that has been discussed with almost religious fervor until a few years ago. That is, there were no discussions really; rather, one of the two parties declared the other insane: “climate denier“ was the term used for those who were of the opinion that global warming does not take place or that it may be warming less rapidly as most scientists believed. In any case, the human impact on climate change was far from proven.

Read more at the Global Warming Policy Foundation
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Ted Cruz Releases Definitive List of 76 ‘Lawless’ Obama Actions

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz released a definitive list Wednesday of 76 “lawless” Obama administration actions and abuses of power.   Cruz’s “The Legal Limit Report No. 4,” obtained by The Daily Caller, delves into little-known and little-reported details of President Obama’s executive actions. Cruz was set to discuss his report at the Federalist Society in the Promenade Ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington at 2:15 PM Wednesday.  “Of all the troubling aspects of the Obama presidency, none is more dangerous than the President’s persistent pattern of lawlessness, his willingness to disregard the written law and instead enforce his own policies via executive fiat,” Cruz stated in the report’s introductory remarks.

Read more at The Daily Caller
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Rewriting the First Amendment

A standard liberal talking point about the Tea Party is that its constitutional designs are "extremist." But you will search in vain for any Tea Party proposal that is anywhere close to as radical as the current drive by mainstream Democrats to rewrite the Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allowing unions and corporations to donate to independent political groups has driven liberals to such fits that they now want to amend the First Amendment. At a Senate Rules Committee meeting last week, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer announced a proposal to amend the Constitution to empower government to regulate political speech.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

32 Year Old Woman on Why She Abuses Welfare, Doesn’t Work, and Happily Takes Your Money

A woman named Lucy called in to a Texas radio station as they were discussing welfare abuse. What happened would surprise anyone. Not that this happens – just how proud this woman is of it. Lucy proceeds to laugh at taxpayers like they are suckers taking bait and proceeds to detail her marijuana usage and laziness. She admits that her parents and most likely her children will also take advantage of living this lazy, no-work life.

Listen to the video clip at TTPN
(Hat tip: John) Read More......

Freedom for Religion, Not From It

Today the U.S. Supreme Court once again affirmed that the so-called “wall of separation” that exists between church and state is not quite the edifice that liberals would like it to be. In Town of Greece v. Galloway, the court ruled today that a village in upstate New York did not violate the First Amendment in allowing members of clergy to begin town board meetings with prayers, some of which were explicitly sectarian (and usually Christian) rather than ecumenical. The narrow vote along the usual 5-4 conservative/liberal lines is bound to incite many on the left to express fears about the court trying to turn the U.S. into a “Christian nation.”

Read more about the Town of Greece v. Galloway decision at Commentary Read More......

Gowdy tapped to lead Benghazi select committee

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has named Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a second-term Republican and former federal prosecutor, to head a new House select committee investigating the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012. ✧ Gowdy was the preferred choice of Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to take on what will be a high-profile assignment for the GOP over the next several months. The deep-voiced South Carolinian is known for his prosecutorial style in questioning witnesses at hearings as well as his impassioned floor speeches.

Read more at The Hill Read More......

Company Bans Homeschooled Workers

Discriminatory practice reflects a narrow-minded and statist view of education' - An Indiana-based company has decided not to hire any homeschool graduates, withdrawing a job offer from one candidate after discovering he was home educated, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association. ✧ That’s despite the fact that assessments and evaluations for homeschool students routinely run higher than for public-school students. ✧ HSLDA spokesman Michael Donnelly said NiSource, an energy-distribution company, informed HSLDA it would not hire homeschool graduates. ✧ The decision was based on the company’s interpretation of state law.

Read more at WND Read More......

Barack Obama and the Tyranny of False Choices

Center for Individual Freedom - Barack Obama loves the rhetorical trope of the “false choice.” From his earliest days as a national figure, the president has repeatedly attempted to convey his intellectual superiority to ordinary politicians by announcing that some controversy of the day is being unnecessarily simplified. ✧ Thus was there “a false choice between our safety and our ideals” when it came to national security. ObamaCare was a response to “a false choice” between “government-run health care with higher taxes — or insurance companies without rules denying people coverage.” Conservative and liberal views of economics represented a false choice “between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy.” ✧ As Ruth Marcus [of the Washington Post] noted, Obama’s application of the [false choice] tactic would often run as follows: “Set up two unacceptable extremes that no one is seriously advocating and position yourself as the champion of the reasonable middle ground between these unidentified straw men.” Read more at CFIC... Read More......

Boehner announces special committee on Benghazi, Kerry subpoenaed

HOUSE REPUBLICANS move on two fronts to dig for answers on the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks, with Speaker John Boehner announcing a special committee to investigate and a key panel subpoenaing Secretary of State John Kerry to testify. Read more at Fox News Read More......

Sen. Mike Lee on Fighting for Equal Opportunity

FOUNDRY, by Sen Mike Lee (R-Utah) - “In this present crisis,” Ronald Reagan famously declared, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” These words, though they inspired a generation of conservatives, almost sound quaint today. ✧ Government of course remains the problem, but the nature of that problem has evolved dramatically since Reagan’s first inaugural. If Republicans want to grow their party into a national majority, we must begin, as Reagan did in 1981, by confronting our present crisis: America’s large and growing Opportunity Deficit, namely, immobility among the poor and insecurity in the middle class. ✧ Compounding the shortage of opportunities among the poor and middle class is an unholy union of big government, big business, and big special interests that twists public policy to benefit Washington insiders unfairly at the expense of everyone else.

Read more at The Foundry Read More......

Krauthammer: ‘Mainstream Media’ Won’t Be Interested in Benghazi ‘Cover-up of a Cover-up’

Commentator Charles Krauthammer challenged the mainstream media to report on documents released this week directly tying then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s Benghazi talking points to instructions in an email from a White House official. ✧ The mainstream media are going to say, ‘Oh, it’s so complicated,’ and they’re not going to look into this and without it it’s going to be quite a struggle,” Krauthammer said last night on Fox’s “Special Report.” ✧ He was referring to emails obtained through a lawsuit by Judicial Watch that reveal senior White House official Ben Rhodes instructed that Rice blame an “Internet video”—not a policy failure—for the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left the U.S. ambassador and three others dead.

Read more at Fox News (with Videos) Read More......

The Robin Hood Fallacy: Piketty Would Take from the Rich to Give to the Poor

FOUNDRY, by Stephen Moore - In public policy, bad ideas—no matter how many times they have been discredited—never completely go away. They seem to pop up over and over. Enter the hot new book that has captured the imagination and attention of the left because it endorses an 80 percent tax rate on the rich in the name of “leveling” incomes. ✧ The book is entitled “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by French economist Thomas Piketty, and in addition to 1970s-style tax rates, he wants a new wealth tax on the rich and more money for social welfare programs. He’s being treated like the modern-day Adam Smith by the media [THE LEFT]. ✧ The way to create a more equal distribution of income, apparently, is by making everyone poorer. Piketty warns that “meritocratic extremism”—which is another way of saying you get to keep the fruits of your labor—is ruining our nation’s economy and if we don’t divide the pie more equally, the result could be “truly frightening.” He says that his goal is to “save capitalism… [ahem]”

Read more at The Foundry Read More......

Obamanomics under fire from GOP as economy slows to 0.1 percent growth rate

WASHINGTON – The U.S. economy slowed to an anemic pace in the first quarter of the year, according to new Commerce Department estimates, renewing Republican claims that Obama administration policies are slamming the brakes on the recovery. ✧ The department estimated that growth slowed to a barely discernible 0.1 percent annual rate between January and March. That was the weakest pace since the end of 2012 and was down from a 2.6 percent rate in the previous quarter.

Read more at Fox News Read More......

Wisconsin's Sheriff responds to changes former Justice Stevens would make to the Second Amendment

INDIANAPOLIS — Sheriff David Clarke Jr. may not be a household name…yet. But he’s well on his way after his rousing speech at the 2014 NRA convention. Consider the standing ovation he received after revealing the seven words he would add to the Second Amendment: “Keep your hands off our guns, dammit.”

Clarke, the outspoken gun proponent who heads the sheriff’s office in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, was easily one of the most popular speakers during the convention’s leadership forum. His comments about amending the Constitution were aimed at former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who said in his recent book that he would change the Second Amendment by adding five words in the middle: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the militia shall not be infringed.”

Read more at The Blaze Read More......

Study reveals who's really running America

To Hillary Clinton, it was a right-wing conspiracy that was causing all the problems. Barack Obama's administration got more specific, blaming the GOP and George Bush for everything. In time, the tea party became the whipping boy. But a new study suggests something far different actually is running America these days ... and it's bad news for ordinary folks …

Read more at WND

Related
Washington Free Beacon: Oligarchy in the Twenty-First Century - Think rich conservatives rule the world? Think again. Read More......

Educational Decay: Loss of 18th Century Rigor

I have recently been reading Teaching A Generation of Leaders: A Thomas Jefferson Education for the 21st Century by Oliver Van DeMilleIle. ✧ This book was given to me by my sister, who was leaps and bounds above me in knowing the best way to educate her children. Having graduated Cum Laude from a University with a Bachelor’s in Education and having experience teaching in the public school, surely I had more expertise in educating children, compared to what she and her “odd” ideas of homeschooling could. She and most parents that are seeking an alternative to public school, in most part, are doing so because they have realized, what I have only recently become aware of, that an education today is NOT a true education. ✧ Betty Peters puts it succinctly when she states, “What is missing from 21st Century Skills? 18th Century Rigor!”

Read more at Wyoming Against the Common Core Read More......

Fence fight on Steens Mountain

THE BULLETIN, Bend, OR - Walden meeting with BLM in Burns over grazing dispute
WASHINGTON — More than a decade after Congress carved out special protections for Steens Mountain, including 100,000 acres of wilderness free of cattle, a dispute over fencing has pitted a local landowner against the Bureau of Land Management. ✧ George Stroemple wants to graze cattle on his Harney County property within the 100,000-acre “No Livestock Grazing Area” portion of 174,000 acres of wilderness created by the Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Act of 2000. The disagreement lies over who should build the fence needed to keep his livestock off the protected lands. ✧ Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, plans to meet with BLM officials in Burns today [4/25]. ✧ The law states: “The Secretary (of the Interior) shall be responsible for installing and maintaining any fencing required for resource protection within the designated no livestock grazing area.”

Read more at The Bulletin Read More......

Common Core's Dirtiest Trick: Dividing Parents and Children

By Bruce Deitrick Price When you look back at New Math (ca. 1965) and Reform Math (ca. 1990), one of the most striking and persistent features was that parents could not understand the homework their children brought home. Mystified parents were trying to advise mystified children. The parents, presumably the wise members of the society, were helpless to say anything useful when confronted by the weird complexities of “reform” math, which has now been rolled forward into Common Core. Here is a commonplace horror story that can stand in for millions of others: “When Mike and Camille Chudzinski tried to help their son with his homework earlier this fall, they were bewildered. The fourth-grader brought home no spelling lists, few textbooks, and a whole new approach to solving math problems. When he tackled multi-digit addition, for instance, Patrick did not just line up the two numbers and then add the columns, as his parents had been taught to do. Instead, he sketched…

Read more at American Thinker Read More......

What 'Lean In' Misunderstands About Gender Differences

What if difference between men and women turns out to be a phenomenon not of oppression, but rather of social well-being? --Christina Hoff Sommers (2013)

There is much to admire in Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. It is full of funny stories about her brilliant career and helpful advice for workplace success. As former chief of staff at the U.S. Treasury Department and vice-president of Google, and now COO of Facebook, the 43-year-old billionaire and mother of two has a lot of worldly wisdom to share. She is right that many women sell themselves short and pull back too early from their careers. Sandberg urges them to man up.

But this otherwise likeable and inspirational self-help book has a serious flaw: It is mired in 1970s-style feminism. Nation magazine columnist Katha Pollitt compares Sandberg to "someone who's just taken Women's Studies 101 and wants to share it with her friends." What Pollitt intends as a compliment goes to the heart of what is wrong with Lean In.

Read more at The Atlantic Read More......

Republican Senators Warn President Not to Abandon Immigration Enforcement

In a letter to President Obama, 22 Republican senators said the deportation policy changes under consideration by DHS would represent “a near complete abandonment of basic immigration enforcement and discard the rule of law and the notion the United States has enforceable borders.” The letter warns Obama to improve immigration enforcement, not look for ways to weaken it.

Read more at NumbersUSA Read More......

Oregon to abandon 'Cover Oregon' exchange

According to health watch writer Elise Viebeck at The Hill, Oregon is set to become the first state to drop its ObamaCare exchange and transition into the system managed by the federal government. ✧ The decision follows months of severe technical issues that have made Oregon's marketplace one of the worst in the country. ✧ "Cover Oregon" is the only ObamaCare enrollment system that won't let registrants buy coverage and qualify for tax credits in one sitting. It remains mired in glitches almost seven months after a rocky launch.

Read more at The Hill Read More......

Governor Mike Pence In Berlin: Diplomacy with Russia Has Failed

Gov. Mike Pence (R., Ind.) on Wednesday declared the “reset” of U.S.-Russian relations a failure and called for the construction of a European missile defense shield to deter Russian aggression.  “With Russian aggression on the rise again, it is clear that our policy of conciliatory diplomacy has failed, Pence said at a Friends of Indiana reception in Berlin, Germany.

Read more at the Washington Free Beacon
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

62 Percent of Americans Say They Favor a Flat Tax

The latest Reason-Rupe poll asked Americans if they would support or oppose changing the federal tax system to a flat tax, where everyone pays the same percentage of his or her income, finding that 62 percent favor the flat tax and 33 percent are opposed. When asked where they would set the flat tax, the aveage response was 15 percent.

This reflects another recent Reason-Rupe poll finding that 67 percent of Americans say it is "not the responsibility of the government to reduce the differences in income between people with high incomes and those with low incomes," while 29 percent say it is.

Read more at Reason.com
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Western lawmakers gather in Utah to talk federal land takeover

It’s time for Western states to take control of federal lands within their borders, lawmakers and county commissioners from Western states said at Utah’s Capitol on Friday. More than 50 political leaders from nine states convened for the first time to talk about their joint goal: wresting control of oil-, timber -and mineral-rich lands away from the feds.  "It’s simply time," said Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, who organized the Legislative Summit on the Transfer for Public Lands along with Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder. "The urgency is now."

Read more at the Salt Lake Tribune
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Pot, Poker and Prohibitionism: Do Republicans Want To Be the Party of Unprincipled Killjoys?

Mike Lee calls for "a new conservative reform agenda" based on "three basic principles," one of which is federalism. "The biggest reason the federal government makes too many mistakes is that it makes too many decisions," the Republican senator from Utah explained in a speech at the Heritage Foundation last year. "Most of these are decisions the federal government doesn't have to make -- and therefore shouldn't."

So why on earth is Lee co-sponsoring a bill introduced last month that would ban online gambling throughout the country, instead of letting each state decide whether to allow Internet-assisted poker?

Read more at Townhall.com
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

EDITORIAL: Paying the ObamaCare premium

April 14--Contrary to the Obama administration's empty assurances, ObamaCare-related premiums are not on pace for merely a slight increase next year. Health insurance officials tell The Hill newspaper that patients could see their fees double in some parts of the country.  Their response follows comments by former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who told Congress that rates in 2015 will rise slowly. "The increases are far less significant than what they were prior to the Affordable Care Act," she said.  Fat chance, according to industry insiders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity -- no doubt in response to Ms. Sebelius' threats against those who speak ill of ObamaCare.  One insurance official from a "populous swing state" says he expects his company to triple its rates, The Hill reports.

Read more at Insurance News Net
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

How Obama's Justice Department Selectively Blocks Mergers By Republican CEOs

Like all mergers, the proposed $45.2 billion Comcast CMCSA +1.67% merger with Time Warner Cable TWC +1.3%—the largest and second largest cable providers in the nation—has its advocates and critics. There are certainly important questions about what impact the merger would have on consumers—but there are equally significant issues associated with the highly politicized approval process. The Obama Department of Justice, led by Eric Holder, must review the merger and decide whether to approve or block it. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration and Justice Department have a long track record of pushing the rule of law aside and making decisions based on politics.

Read more at Forbes
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Uncle Sam Revives Feudal Practice to Collect From Children of Debtors

Holding children responsible for the debt incurred by their parents is a feature of historical feudalism and a few modern third-world sh**holes. ✧ Developed countries, by and large, assume that a debt dies with the person who willingly incurred it, or at least stops with his or her estate. "By and large," I write, because the U.S. government has broken with centuries of tradition holding individuals responsible for their choices, opting to withhold tax refunds from children whose parents incurred vague and often ill-documented obligations to the feds.

Read more at Reason.com

Oh, man! This is going to be hard to fight! --bc Read More......

WSJ: As Tax Day Nears, Where Does Your Money Go?

Three nonprofit groups help answer that and other questions of interest to taxpayers -- Where does your money go? Loren Adler, research director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget offers a breakdown, which shows how $100 of revenue was allocated among spending programs in fiscal year 2013. Please note that last year's figures do not include the cost of changes under the Affordable Care Act, which Mr. Adler estimates will come to about 6% of spending when they are fully phased in.

Read more and see the "tax receipt" graphic by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget at Wall Street Journal Read More......

34 States Call for Constitutional Convention — and Possible Rewrite

Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of California recently asked House Speaker Boehner for clarification as to where the state count stands, and if Michigan has tipped the two-thirds majority needed to make the convention call. ✧ "With the recent decision by Michigan lawmakers, it is important that the House — and those of us who support a balanced budget amendment — determine whether the necessary number of states have acted and the appropriate role of Congress should be in this case," Hunter wrote to Boehner. ✧ Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told The Washington Times that the Republican leader will have his lawyers review the request. ✧ What may give the speaker pause in his decision is that several states long ago rescinded their calls for a convention, although there is nothing in the Constitution that allows them to do that. ✧ Also, states have made the requests in differing forms...

Read more at Newsmax Read More......

Obama Decries ‘Bogus’ Voter Fraud Complaints

President Obama labeled complaints about voter fraud “bogus” and accused Republicans of cynically trying to prevent Americans from accessing the polls in a fiery speech Friday at a civil rights forum hosted by Al Sharpton. ✧ Obama argued that attempts in some states to impose new voter identification restrictions were actually efforts by Republicans to make “it harder, not easier to vote.” And the president said that while voter fraud should be prevented, it rarely occurred.

Read more at Minutemen News Read More......

Huffington Post: Obamacare Victims are Real

A Thursday Huffington Post article highlighting Obamacare victims is causing quite a stir on the left.  The piece, titled "How Obamacare Leaves Some People Without Doctors," breaks from the Huffington Post's usual embrace of Obamacare and features the voices of Covered California customers who are already dissatisfied with the health insurance they bought through the Covered California exchange.  "My insurance is pretty useless," 35-year-old new Los Angeles mother Ruth Iorio told HuffPo. "I don't know what to do. I may just drop it for myself and keep my son on it. It's really depressing."

Read more at Breitbart.com Read More......

Sharyl Attkisson: I was called a troublemaker for pursuing Obama administration scandals

It’s been a month since Sharyl Attkisson left CBS News, a departure which many assumed related to editorial interference with her reporting on stories that focused on Obama administration scandals. Attkisson appeared last night on Fox’s O’Reilly Factor and confirmed those assumptions. Attkisson tells Bill O’Reilly that CBS News labeled her a “troublemaker” for her insistence on sticking with stories such as the Fast & Furious scandal. CBS wanted her to drop the Fast & Furious story over “a lack of interest,” and Attkisson says that the “interest” issue was editorial rather than audience related.

Read more at Hotair.com
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

WSJ: Sarah Palin Searches for the Great Outdoors

The former VP candidate on politics and social media, running for office again, and her new TV show, 'Amazing America.'

Excerpt: Ms. Palin also resents government surveillance, as she makes clear in referring to Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked documents about the agency's collection of data, including the phone call records of millions of Americans. "Snowden isn't the problem!" she says. "The American government spying on its own people is the problem!" She finishes her thought by saying, "The smaller the government, the bigger the people, and this show talks about big, bold, beautiful America."

Read More......

IRS under fire: Vote for Obama stickers, campaign cheerleading commonplace

Even as the IRS faces growing heat over Lois G. Lerner and the tea party targeting scandal, a government watchdog said Wednesday it’s pursuing cases against three other tax agency employees and offices suspected of illegal political activity in support of President Obama and fellow Democrats.  In one case the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates federal employees who conduct politics on government time, said it was “commonplace” in a Dallas IRS office for employees to have pro-Obama screensavers on their computers, and to have campaign-style buttons and stickers at their office.

Read more at The Washington Times Read More......

Eric Holder: ATF Planning to Use Drones

Attorney General Eric Holder admitted Tuesday that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was in the process of looking at the use of domestic drones.  Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, questioned Holder during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, asking the Attorney General if he believed if the Federal Aviation Administration or Congress should regulate of drone use.  “Would you think that it would be better that Congress intervene and employ legislation safeguarding the Fourth Amendment, right of privacy basically on citizens or do you suggest as Attorney General that the FAA still control who gets a drone or not?” Poe asked.

Read more at Breitbart.com
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Latest ObamaCare surprise: Most won't be able to buy health insurance until end of year

There is yet another ObamaCare surprise waiting for consumers: from now until the next open enrollment at the end of this year, most people will simply not be able to buy any health insurance at all, even outside the exchanges.  "It's all closed down. You cannot buy a policy that is a qualified policy for the purpose of the ACA (the Affordable Care Act) until next year on January 1," says John DiVito, president of Flexbenefit which has 2,500 brokers.

Read more at Fox News
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Healthcare cuts canceled after Dem complaints

The Obama administration announced Monday that planned cuts to Medicare Advantage would not go through as anticipated amid election-year opposition from congressional Democrats.  The cuts would have reduced benefits that seniors receive from health plans in the program, which is intended as an alternative to Medicare.  Under cuts planned by the administration, insurers offering the plans were to see their federal payments reduced by 1.9 percent, which likely would have necessitated cuts for customers.

Read more at The Hill
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

WSJ: Oppressed by the Ivy League

Academia has been obsessed over identity politics for two generations, so there's some justice in the newest addition to the matrix of oppression: an Ivy League education, according to the Dartmouth College students who this week took over the president's office.

On Tuesday Dartmouth's finest seized the main administration building and disrupted college business. The squatters were allowed to remain until Thursday night, when the dean of the college negotiated and signed an exit settlement assuring them the non-dialogue would continue.

The demonstrators had a 72-point manifesto instructing the college to establish pre-set racial admission quotas and a mandatory ethnic studies curriculum for all students. Their other inspirations are for more "womyn or people of color" faculty; covering sex change operations on the college health plan ("we demand body and gender self-determination"); censoring the library catalog for offensive terms; and installing "gender-neutral bathrooms" in every campus facility, specifically including sports locker rooms.

We rarely sympathize with college administrators but we'll make an exception for Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon... Read more at the Wall Street Journal Read More......

Charles Koch: I'm Fighting to Restore a Free Society

Op-Ed by Charles G. Koch - Instead of welcoming free debate, collectivists engage in character assassination.
I have devoted most of my life to understanding the principles that enable people to improve their lives. It is those principles—the principles of a free society—that have shaped my life, my family, our company and America itself. Unfortunately, the fundamental concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and personal freedom are under attack by the nation's own government. That's why, if we want to restore a free society and create greater well-being and opportunity for all Americans, we have no choice but to fight for those principles. I have been doing so for more than 50 years, primarily through educational efforts. It was only in the past decade that I realized the need to also engage in the political process.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal Read More......

The Belief in Good...

(Hat tip: NoisyRoom.net)

I stopped breathing and my heart was breaking when the little girl wasn't there. --bc Read More......

Oregon State University pays $101,000 to settle First Amendment lawsuit over trashed student newspaper

Oregon State University has paid $1,000 plus $100,000 for legal fees to former student William Rogers to settle a First Amendment lawsuit over the university trashing distribution boxes for the conservative students newspaper The Liberty and the newspapers in them.

The university, which had been found at fault by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, did not admit wrongdoing but agreed to the six-figure payout to end the lawsuit. The suit was formally dismissed Wednesday.

Read more at Oregonlive.com Read More......

Oregon Senate Poll: Merkley Under 50 Percent

Is Oregon the sleeper race in 2014? - Democratic senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon is polling ahead of his potential Republican opponents, but his position is weak heading into his reelection campaign, according to a new survey by a GOP polling firm. Harper Polling found Merkley is ahead of two possible Republican opponents but is still polling less than 50 percent against them. Forty-seven percent say they would vote for Merkley over GOP state representative Jason Conger, who polled 40 percent, while 12 percent say they are not sure. Meanwhile, Republican Monica Wehby, a Portland-area pediatric neurosurgeon, trails Merkley by 12 points, 46 percent to 34 percent, with 20 percent saying they are unsure. The poll was taken among likely voters in Oregon.

Read more at The Weekly Standard Read More......

Oregon: How do you Commit Theft without Stealing?

I Spy Radio Guests: OSU Emeritus Professor of Forestry, Dr. Mike Newton & Senator Doug Whitsett
This week: How do you commit theft without stealing? You make it legal. But to do that, you need to pass a law or create administrative rules to give your agency legal "permission" to take what you want. And to create those laws or rules, you need to provide the justification for it -- hence, "best available science."

Last week we discussed how far-left environmental groups abuse laws like the Endangered Species Act to increase their bottom line. This week we discuss the abusive outcomes when they purposefully ignore good science for bad. First, with Dr. Mike Newton about his study that demonstrates a global, blanket policy currently in place to lower stream temperatures through shading may be harming fish production -- the opposite of their stated intention. But it does help prevent logging.

Then we talk with Sen. Doug Whitsett about what constitutes “best available science” from a legislator's viewpoint, which leads to governmental policies that take land from ranchers and give those lands to another group of people. And if ranchers don't take the deal the government tells them to take, they'll simply have their water shut off.

Call it environmental blackmail or legalized theft, it's the same effect. And all of this happens while a Governor -- who has the power to stop the administrators’ hands -- does nothing. And, in fact, advocates for it.

Busy on Saturday or Sunday? Not a problem. Monday, after the show airs you can go to our webpage www.ispyradio.com and download it from our “latest show” page. Read More......

ATF Director: 'Wish I Had Better Answers' About ATF Agents Probing a Tea Party Conservative

B. Todd Jones, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, couldn't tell Congress why his agents made two visits to a tea party conservative in a 13-month period -- but only after she requested tax-exempt status for her conservative group, True the Vote.  Catherine Engelbrecht had a Federal Firearms License (FFL) for 12 years. "And suddenly she applies for tax exempt status, and you're knocking on her door twice in 13 months," Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told Jones at a hearing on Wednesday.  "Congressman, I wish I had better answers," Jones said.

Read more at CNS News
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

NSA performed warrantless searches on Americans' calls and emails – Clapper

US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a "back door" in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans’ communications. The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases.  Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed for the first time the use of this legal authority to search for data related to “US persons”.

Read more at the Guardian UK
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Obama Wants to Pay 33% More to U.N. and Other Int’l Groups

When U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power testifies before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday, the panel will consider a budget request for international organizations that is 33 percent bigger than last year’s, including a 43 percent hike in U.S. contributions to peacekeeping missions.   Read more at CNS News

(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

OBAMACARE REAL ENROLLMENT: JUST 1.7% OF UNINSURED COVERED

Obamacare, the plan purportedly created to provide health coverage for the uninsured, has enrolled just 1.7% of America's 48.6 million uninsured.  News of the disastrous numbers comes as nervous Democrats and President Barack Obama, ahead of the November midterm elections, did their best on Monday's enrollment deadline to put a positive spin on the deeply unpopular Obamacare program. The latest Associated Press poll finds that Obamacare has now hit an all-time low approval rating of just 26 percent.

Read more at Breitbart.com
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......