Editor

Obama-Holder Send DOJ After GOP Conservative

April 25, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

New York Republican Rep. Michael Grimm’s attorney confirmed late Friday that federal prosecutors plan to file criminal charges against the congressman.

The decision follows a two-year FBI investigation into various aspects of Grimm’s business and campaign history.

“We are disappointed by the government’s decision, but hardly surprised,” said the statement from Grimm’s attorney, William McGinley. “From the beginning, the government has pursued a politically driven vendetta against Congressman Grimm and not an independent search for the truth.”

The statement said Grimm “asserts his innocence of any wrongdoing” and “will be vindicated.”

“Until then, he will continue to serve his constituents with the same dedication and tenacity that has characterized his lifetime of public service as a Member of Congress, Marine Corps combat veteran, and decorated FBI Special Agent,” the statement said.

The House Ethics Committee announced in November that Grimm was under investigation for possible campaign finance violations. That committee said it would defer its inquiry because of a separate Department of Justice investigation.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn said he could not confirm, deny or comment on the case.

FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report

Afghan Murders 3 American Doctors at Hospital

April 24, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan confirmed Thursday that three American doctors — including a father and son — were killed by an Afghan security guard who opened fire at a Kabul hospital.

“With great sadness we confirm that three Americans were killed in the attack at CURE Hospital,” said a statement posted on the Embassy’s Twitter page. “No other information will be released at this time.”

The shooting was the latest in a string of deadly attacks on foreign civilians in the Afghan capital this year.

Two of the dead Americans were a father and son, Minister of Health Soraya Dalil said, adding that the third American was a Cure International doctor who had worked for seven years in Kabul.

One of the doctors has been identified as Dr. Jerry Umanos, who practiced pediatric medicine at Lawndale Christian Health Center in Chicago, officials from the center said.

Dalil said an American nurse also was wounded in the attack.

“A child specialist doctor who was working in this hospital for the last seven years for the people of Afghanistan was killed, and also two others who were here to meet him, and they were also American nationals, were killed,” Dalil said. “The two visitors were father and son, and a woman who was also in the visiting group was wounded.”

The alleged attacker was a member of the Afghan Public Protection Force assigned to guard the hospital, according to District Police Chief Hafiz Khan. He said the man’s motive was not yet clear.

“The shooter, who was not an employee of CURE, has been identified as a member of the security detail assigned to the hospital, shot himself after the attack,” CURE Hospital said in a statement. “He was initially treated at the CURE Hospital and has now been transferred out of our facility into the custody of the government of Afghanistan.”

“Five doctors had entered the compound of the hospital and were walking toward the building when the guard opened fire on them,” Torkystani said. “Three foreign doctors were killed.”

According to its website, the Cure International Hospital was founded in 2005 by invitation of the Afghan Ministry of Health. It sees 37,000 patients a year, specializing in child and maternity health as well as general surgery. It is affiliated with the Christian charity Cure International, which operates in 29 countries with the motto “curing the sick and proclaiming the kingdom of God.”

The attacker had emerged from surgery in the afternoon and was in recovery at Cure International before being questioned, Dalil added.

The Afghan capital has seen a spate of attacks on foreign civilians in 2014, a worrying new trend as the U.S.-led military coalition prepares to withdraw most troops by the end of the year.

It was unclear whether the Taliban were behind Thursday’s shooting, though the insurgents have claimed several major attacks that killed foreign civilians this year, an escalation after years of mostly targeting foreign military personnel and Afghan security forces.

In January, a Taliban attack on a popular Kabul restaurant with suicide bombers and gunmen killed more than a dozen people, while in March gunmen slipped past security at an upscale hotel in the Afghan capital and killed several diners in its restaurant. Two foreign journalists were killed and another wounded in two separate attacks.

The hospital shooting is also the second “insider attack” by a member of Afghan security forces targeting foreign civilians this month.

On April 4, an Afghan police officer shot two Associated Press staff working in the eastern province of Khost, killing photographer Anja Niedringhaus and wounding veteran correspondent Kathy Gannon.

By FoxNews.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

GOP Warns BLM Eyeing Land Grab in Texas

April 23, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

Texas officials are raising alarm that the Bureau of Land Management, on the heels of its dust-up with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, might be eyeing a massive land grab in northern Texas.

The under-the-radar issue has caught the attention of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who fired off a letter on Tuesday to BLM Director Neil Kornze saying the agency “appears to be threatening” the private property rights of “hard-working Texans.”

“Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box,” wrote Abbott, also a Republican gubernatorial candidate.

CLICK HERE TO READ ABBOTT’S LETTER

At issue are thousands of acres of land on the Texas side of the Red River, along the border between Texas and Oklahoma. Officials recently have raised concern that the BLM might be looking at claiming 90,000 acres of land as part of the public domain.

The agency, though, argues that any land in question was long ago determined to be public property.

“The BLM is categorically not expanding Federal holdings along the Red River,” a BLM spokeswoman said in a written statement late Tuesday afternoon.

The spokeswoman referred to a 140-acre plot “determined to be public land in 1986” – an apparent reference to a 1986 federal court case. Breitbart.com, which reported Monday on the Texas land dispute, reported that a Texas landowner lost 140 acres to BLM in that case, and the agency is now using that decision as precedent to pursue more property.

Tommy Henderson, the rancher involved in that case, told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren on “On the Record” Tuesday that the BLM was “talking about taking another 90,000 acres by using my court case as the precedent to seize the other land…

“They won’t talk to us or be straight with us as to what their plans are,” Henderson said. “…So I have continued to pay for this land or the federal government would seize everything else I had.”

According to background materials put out by Texas Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry’s office, the BLM is revisiting its management plan for lands including those along a 116-mile stretch of the Red River. His office said the possibility has been discussed of opening that land up for “hunting, recreation and management.”

Gene Hall of the Texas Farm Bureau told Van Susteren, “we have seen an aggressive overreach by the federal government and in more than one instance, if you have got an agency like this that’s very well funded with a lot of people involved, then you shouldn’t be surprised if they are going to overreach and extend that aggressive approach.”

Abbott, in his letter to the agency, said “it is not at all clear what legal basis supports the BLM’s claim of federal ownership over private property.” He said private landowners have cultivated the property “for generations.”

The debate comes on the heels of a tense standoff earlier this month in Nevada, after BLM tried to round up cattle owned by rancher Cliven Bundy – the product of a long-running dispute over unpaid grazing fees. Hundreds of states’ rights supporters, some of them armed, showed up to protest, and BLM back off citing safety concerns.

In the Texas matter, the Supreme Court incorporated the Red River as part of the border with Oklahoma nearly a century ago.

Congress further clarified the boundaries of the two states in 2000.

It’s unclear how seriously BLM might be looking at laying claim to additional boundary land.

BLM said it is merely in the “initial stages of developing options for management of public lands,” as part of a “transparent process with several opportunities for public input.”

BLM Field Manager Stephen Tryon, in a March 17 letter to Thornberry, said officials would eventually look to “ascertain the boundary” between federal and private land and acknowledged residents’ concerns that new surveys could “create cloud to their private property title.”

But he said no new surveys are currently planned, and reiterated that there are no federal claims to Texas land “as defined by multiple rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

FoxNews.com’s Judson Berger contributed to this report.

The Spark of Revolution: Thoughts for Patriots’ Day 2014

April 21, 2014 By Editor 1 Comment

A single spark, sometimes as small as a shot of unknown origin, can explode long-simmering friction into open revolution.

Sometimes the spark comes with the rumble of tanks, as has happened this spring in Crimea and may still happen throughout the rest of Ukraine.

Whether the tanks came into Crimea in response to a local popular vote, which Moscow would have all believe, or whether they came to snuff out the progressions of a broader Ukrainian election cycle that appeared to be turning Ukraine more toward Europe and away from Russia, only time will tell.

Americans are no strangers to the spark of revolution or the uncertainty it brings. Early on the morning of April 19, 1775, a thin line of colonial militia stretched across the damp grass of Lexington Green.

Silhouetted by the rising sun, hundreds of red-coated regulars of the British army marched toward the position from two angles. But for steely resolve, the locals in homespun clothes might well have melted away back to their homes and farms. Except for confusion over a choice of roads, the regulars might have marched past them with no more insult than the tramp of boots.

America’s national experience is proof that it takes time to judge whether a revolution has been both successful and to the popular good.

Then a single shot rang out. History has long debated the party responsible. Companies of regulars quickly unleashed deafening volleys, while the militia – at first shocked that the troops were firing lead ball instead of bluff powder charges – reacted with sporadic return fire. In seconds, eight of their fellow townsmen lay dead or dying. The Redcoats gave three cheers and continued on toward Concord.

While there were many throughout the Thirteen Colonies that morning who had already decided which side they were on, the large percentage in the middle was suddenly forced to make a choice. But which was the “right” side?

To many, the government of King George III had been economically oppressive and unrepresentative of their interests, but it had not yet sought to suspend civil law or crush their dissent with mass murder.

Who was on the “right” side? The rebels who demanded a change in political structure or the loyalists who stood by the existing government of the king?

Advancing beyond Lexington, the British regulars encountered larger numbers of hastily assembled militia at a bridge north of Concord. Another skirmish occurred, provoked by a second shot of unknown origin.

The rebel spin later spoke of local defensive measures taken against the king’s troops because the intent of their actions was uncertain. But in a matter of minutes, as the British column marched back to Boston, the woods on either side filled with rebels and exploded with an offensive fury.

A tipping point had been reached. This was no defensive action; this was all-out war. Moderates on both sides spoke out for peace and reconciliation, but the dye had been cast.

The final judgment of the events set in motion on Lexington Green took some time to be rendered. The fighting continued for six and a half years. The political infighting over what the governmental results of that revolution would be continued for decades. Some might argue it continues still.

Who was “right” that morning? The “rebels” of that day – and, indeed, that is what they were called – became “patriots” only in hindsight. Had the American experience in representative government faltered – perhaps even failed with a despot in charge instead of an unselfish George Washington – history’s verdict might be different about who were “the good guys” on Lexington Green.

America’s national experience is proof that it takes time to judge whether a revolution has been both successful and to the popular good.

Sometimes the spark of popular revolution is snuffed out. Overwhelming military force crushed popular uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. A single act of courage in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989 became the face of a million protesters, but it met with a similar fate.

History still awaits a verdict on the Arab Spring of 2011. Some countries, such as Tunisia, where it all started with the spark of a street vendor setting himself on fire, have made strides toward democracy.

Others have stumbled.

Egypt attempted a democratic leap, fell backward under military rule and now once again contemplates elections. Syria is the worst-case result of the Arab Spring, a horrid civil war that has left hundreds of thousands dead or maimed and millions of others displaced. What does the spring hold for the people of Crimea and Ukraine?

On Monday, April 21, Patriots’ Day, we celebrate not only the resolve shown on Lexington Green – the determination to stand up for one’s beliefs, no matter the cost – but also the result of that revolution 239 years later.

If we are as determined as those patriots of 1775, that result is not a finished product, but a continuing evolution of hope, opportunity and equality.

We have only to look to the Boston Marathon bombing on Patriots’ Day last year for evidence that the price of liberty is an account never fully paid.

We must work at it every day. Let our celebration also be encouragement to other revolutions in progress with uncertain outcomes or those about to be ignited by a single spark.

Walter R. Borneman is the author of American Spring: Lexington, Concord, and the Road to Revolution, to be published May 6 by Little, Brown.

Independents Revolting Against ObamaCare Candidates

April 21, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

Most voters say ObamaCare will play an important role in their vote in this year’s elections, and over half are more inclined to back the candidate who opposes the health care law.

That’s according to a Fox News poll released Monday.

The new poll asks voters what they would do if the only difference between two congressional candidates is that one promises to fight for the health care law and the other promises to fight against it.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE POLL RESULTS

By a 53-39 percent margin, more voters say they would back the anti-ObamaCare candidate.

Independents, always a key voting bloc, would back that candidate by a 25 percentage-point margin (54-29 percent, with another 14 percent saying it depends).

In addition, Republicans and independents are more likely than Democrats to say the candidate’s position on ObamaCare will be an important factor in deciding their vote for Congress. That matters because majorities of Republicans and independents oppose the law.

Some 80 percent of Republicans say the candidate’s stand on ObamaCare will be an important factor to their vote, and 87 percent of Republicans oppose the law. Among independents, 72 percent say the law will be important in their decision, and 63 percent oppose it.

Fewer Democrats, 67 percent, say a candidate’s position on ObamaCare will be important. While most Democrats favor the law (71 percent), nearly a quarter opposes it (24 percent).

Nineteen percent of voters say a congressional candidate’s stance on ObamaCare will be the “single most important factor” in their vote decision, which is more than double the number who felt that way in 2012 (eight percent). Likewise, the number of Republicans who say it will be the “single most important factor” has almost doubled (21 percent today, up from 11 percent).

Overall, 79 percent of those opposing the law say it will be an important factor to their vote, compared to 67 percent of those favoring the law.

If the election were held today, 44 percent of voters would back the Republican candidate in their House district vs. 41 percent who would vote for the Democrat.

Results on the generic ballot test have bounced around in recent months. Last month the Democratic candidate had the edge by two points, while in January the Republican was up by two. In December it was tied at 43 percent each.

Meanwhile, Republicans (36 percent) are more likely than Democrats (25 percent) and independents (25 percent) to say they are “extremely” interested in this year’s elections.

Some 15 percent of voters approve of the job current lawmakers are doing. That’s the highest approval rating Congress has received this year. Still, 76 percent disapprove.

In general, the poll shows more voters continue to dislike than like the health care law — as has been the case in the Fox News poll going back to April 2010. Over that time support for the law has stayed between 36-40 percent. Today, 39 percent favor the law, while 56 percent oppose it.

President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, 2010.

How will it be viewed down the road? A slim 51-percent majority thinks 20 years from now ObamaCare will be viewed as “one of the worst” things Barack Obama accomplished as president. That includes one in five Democrats (19 percent), over half of independents (56 percent) and most Republicans (81 percent).

Overall, 37 percent think the health care law will be seen as “one of the best things” Obama did.

The president announced Thursday that eight million people had signed up for ObamaCare. Yet it’s still unclear how many of those have completed the transaction and actually paid for the insurance. By a 51-44 percent margin, the poll finds that voters are confident most of the people who signed up will follow through with payment.

Democrats (74 percent) are far more confident than independents (40 percent) and Republicans (31 percent) that most ObamaCare enrollees will pay.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,012 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from April 13-15, 2014. The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

By Dana Blanton

Western States Want Land Back

April 21, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

Lawmakers from Western states said Friday that the time has come for them to take control of federal lands within their borders and suggested the standoff this month between a Nevada rancher and the federal government was a problem waiting to happen.

“What’s happened in Nevada is really just a symptom of a much larger problem,” Utah House Speaker Becky Lockhart, a Republican, told The Salt Lake Tribune.

The lawmakers — more than 50 of them from nine Western states — made their proclamations at the Legislative Summit on the Transfer for Public Lands, in Utah, which was scheduled before this month’s standoff between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management.

The agency rounded up hundreds of Bundy’s cattle, saying he hasn’t paid more than $1 million in grazing fees he owes for trespassing on federal lands since the 1990s. But Bundy does not recognize federal authority on the land, which his family has used since the 1870s.

The agency released the cattle after a showdown last weekend with angry armed protesters whom Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid referred to as “domestic terrorists.”

Whether the federal government will use the courts system or other methods to try to resolve such disputes remains unclear. Reid, D-Nev., said earlier this week that he talked to Attorney General Eric Holder and that a task force might be formed, in response. However, a law enforcement official said Saturday that there are no plans for a task force.

The idea of Western states taking control of parts of wide tracts of federal land is nothing new. Those involved in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion and similar movements have argued for decades that states and local governments west of the Mississippi River often can best manage the land and that doing so would allow them to use it to improve their economies.

On Friday, political leaders from the nine states convened for the first time to talk about their joint goal of wresting control of oil-, timber -and mineral-rich lands away from the U.S. government, according to the paper.

“It’s simply time,” said Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, a Republican who co-organized the summit with Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder. “The urgency is now.”

Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee also spoke to the attendees.

Idaho Speaker of the House Scott Bedke argued that Idaho forests and rangeland managed by the state have suffered less damage and watershed degradation from wildfire than have lands managed by federal agencies, the newspaper reported.

FoxNews.com / The Associated Press also contributed to this report.

Feds Unwilling to Protect Against Devastating EMP

April 21, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

The catastrophic effects of an electromagnetic pulse-caused blackout could be preventable, but experts warn the civilian world is still not ready.

Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, both congressional advisory boards, said the technology to avoid disaster from electromagnetic pulses exists, and upgrading the nation’s electrical grid is financially viable.

“The problem is not the technology,” Pry said. “We know how to protect against it. It’s not the money, it doesn’t cost that much. The problem is the politics. It always seems to be the politics that gets in the way.”

He said the more officials plan, the lower the estimated cost gets.

“If you do a smart plan – the Congressional EMP Commission estimated that you could protect the whole country for about $2 billion,” Pry told Watchdog.org. “That’s what we give away in foreign aid to Pakistan every year.”

In the first few minutes of an EMP, nearly half a million people would die. That’s the worst-case scenario that author William R. Forstchen estimated in 2011 would be the result of an EMP on the electric grid – whether by an act of God, or a nuclear missile detonating in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

An electromagnetic pulse is a burst of electromagnetic energy strong enough to disable, and even destroy, nearby electronic devices.

By Josh Peterson

Emails Prove IRS, DOJ Pursued ‘Political’ Groups

April 16, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

Newly uncovered emails show Lois Lerner, the key figure in the IRS scandal, was talking with the Justice Department about going after groups seeking tax-exempt status, just days before she publicly acknowledged the agency was targeting Tea Party and other organizations.

The emails, obtained by Judicial Watch and first reported by TownHall.com, are another indication the targeting may have stretched deeper into the Obama administration. Lerner, the director of the agency’s Exempt Organizations division before retiring last year, initially said the targeting was limited to agents working in the IRS’ Cincinnati field office.

However, a series of inspector general and congressional probes since the scandal broke last year appear to show the targeting of mostly conservative-leaning groups seeking tax-exempt status was orchestrated in Washington.

In a May 2013 email, Lerner responded to a Justice Department inquiry about whether tax-exempt groups could be criminally prosecuted for lying about political activity.

“I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ,” Lerner reportedly wrote to the office of Steven Miller, the agency’s acting director at the time. “He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folk s [sic] could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who ‘lied’ on their 1024s — saying they weren’t planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures.

“DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs. I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS.”

Nikole C. Flax, Miller’s chief of staff, responded: “I think we should do it — also need to include CI [Criminal Investigation Division], which we can help coordinate. Also, we need to reach out to FEC. Does it make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate?”

House Republicans claimed after the emails were published that they were further proof of coordination among various agencies to target conservatives.

“The release of new documents underscores the political nature of IRS Tea Party targeting and the extent to which supposed apolitical officials took direction from elected Democrats,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said in a statement. “These e-mails are part of an overwhelming body of evidence that political pressure from prominent Democrats led to the targeting of Americans for their political beliefs.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said that if the targeting hadn’t been stopped, “Eric Holder’s politicized Justice Department would likely have been leveling trumped up criminal charges against Tea Party groups to intimidate them from exercising their Constitutional rights.”

The administration at the highest level denied the targeting, from 2010 through the 2012 presidential election cycle, was illegal or politically motivated.

President Obama told Fox News in February there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” in connection with the targeting.

And last week, emails obtained by the GOP-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform show the office of the committee’s top-ranking Democrat, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, contacted the IRS in January 2013 about True the Vote, one of the conservative groups that was targeted.

A Lerner staffer in response sent the group’s related 990 IRS forms to Cummings and his staff.

In another email, Lerner discussed with agency staffers the purpose of an upcoming, April 9 2013, hearing that also suggests the targeting went beyond the IRS.

“There are several groups of folks from the [Federal Election Commission] world that are pushing tax fraud prosecution for c4s who report they are not conducting political activity when they are (or these folks think they are),” she wrote.

“One is my ex-boss Larry Noble (former General Counsel at the FEC), who is now president of Americans for Campaign Reform. This is their latest push to shut these down. One IRS prosecution would make an impact and they wouldn’t feel so comfortable doing the stuff. So, don’t be fooled about how this is being articulated — it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity.”

Published April 16, 2014 / FoxNews.com

60% of Voters Believe Obama Lies on Important Issues

April 16, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

About six in ten American voters think Barack Obama lies to the country on important matters some or most of the time, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday.

Thirty-seven percent think Obama lies “most of the time,” while another 24 percent say he lies “some of the time.” Twenty percent of voters say “only now and then” and 15 percent “never.”

Click here for the poll results.

President Obama has been accused by political opponents and media fact-checkers alike of telling falsehoods. Frequently cited: His repeated claim that under Obamacare “If you like your plan, you can keep it” and his insistence that “the day after Benghazi happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism.”

The number of voters saying Obama lies “most of the time” includes 13 percent of Democrats. It also includes 12 percent of blacks, 16 percent of liberals, 31 percent of unmarried women and 34 percent of those under age 30 — all key Obama constituencies.

Yet some of those groups are also among those most likely to say Obama “never” lies to the country on important matters: blacks (37 percent), Democrats (31 percent), liberals (28 percent) and women (19 percent).

The poll also asks about the trustworthiness of a few possible 2016 presidential candidates. For comparison, about half of voters think former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton (54 percent) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (49 percent) are honest and trustworthy, while fewer think the same of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (41 percent).

On a more positive note for the White House, Obama’s overall job performance rating has improved. The new poll finds that 42 percent of voters approve of the job he’s doing, while 51 percent disapprove. That means he’s underwater by nine percentage points.

Last month the president was in negative territory by 13 points with a 40-53 percent rating (March 23-25).

Approval of the president is up six points among independents and now stands at 32 percent. Obama was near record-low approval among independents last month (26 percent). He also improved four points among Democrats and now stands at 80 percent among his party faithful.

How voters feel about Obama as a person closely matches his job ratings: 45 percent have a favorable opinion of him, while 51 percent have an unfavorable view. A year ago those numbers were reversed: 52 percent favorable, 46 percent unfavorable (April 2013).

By Dana Blanton

Jesus’ Wife Textual Fragment–No Sign of Fraud

April 14, 2014 By Editor 1 Comment

A firestorm of controversy surrounds a papyrus fragment recently unveiled by Karen King, a Harvard Divinity School historian. The textual fragment has sparked a heated debate over Christian history, archaeological accuracy and the role of marriage in the Christian church.

The fragment, which is about the size of a business card, contains just 33 words, including: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife . . .” and “she will be able to be my disciple.”

Recent carbon dating and chemical analysis testing by scholars at Harvard and MIT prove the papyrus and ink to be authentic, and dating back to possibly the First Century A.D. Other testing dates some of the materials to around 300-650 A.D.

The controversy arises because of the Catholic dogma that Jesus was not married, under the belief that marriage is an earthly, human, even lustful practice, not indulged in by the Son of God–God Himself. Of course, like most dogmas, there is no scriptural support for the belief. In fact, for 1,700 years the Catholic Church has not only taught its members that Jesus was unmarried, but that its own clergy must likewise remain celibate. For millennia the Catholic church vilified Jesus’ disciple, Mary Magdalene, as a repentant prostitute, attempting to tarnish early Christian beliefs that she was actually the wife of Christ. Only recently has the Catholic church publicly withdrawn the slanderous speculation. This fragment casts not only a serious shadow on the Catholic church’s view of marriage, but on its claim to proper understanding of Christ and His role as Savior and Redeemer.

Was Jesus actually married? The fact that this ancient Christian fragment indicates that He was is not proof positive. The fragment merely evidences that Christians at the time it was written, if authentic, thought he was. The apostles who provided the world with the written gospels specifically eliminated those details from their accounts. In fact, aside from Jesus’ birth, teaching as a young man in the temple, and an overview of his three year mission culminating in His crucifixion and resurrection, the scriptures offer very little detail about His life.

Would it have been common for Jesus to be married? Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi, and it was a strict requirement that Jewish Rabbis be married. The very first commandment is “Be fruitful and multiply,” and Jewish Rabbis, especially at the time of Jesus, adhered strictly to the law. Did Jesus adhere to Biblical laws? When Jesus told John the Baptist that He needed to be baptized, John hesitated, believing Jesus to be above the law. But Jesus instructed him: “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Further, the Apostle Paul explained the union of the man and the woman in true Christianity thus: “Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.” Indeed, history, tradition, commandments and scriptures all point to the high probability that Jesus was married.

Whether or not this particular fragment of parchment is accurate about Jesus being married, the news that He probably was should not shock anyone who is a Christian. Marriage is honorable, and bearing children is Godly. Because the Catholic church was formed by pagan emperors centuries after the demise of the original Christian church, many Catholic dogmas are plainly wrong. That doesn’t mean Christianity gets it wrong–just one branch of the tree. As the reformers left the Catholic church and attempted to correct its course, marriage of clergy was reinstated–correctly.

This fragment is probably accurate. Whether or not it eventually turns out to be authentic, the belief that Jesus was married is most probably true. What does that mean to Christians today? It means that dogmas created to control Christians should be abolished. What was the warning of Timothy? He told us to avoid those, “Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.” 1 Timothy 4:3

J.L. Thompson is a Christian writer, and holds a Juris Doctor degree. He is a professional ghostwriter. Volume One of his new novel series “The Coming Flood” has just been released, titled Enoch in the City of Adam. Visit J.L. Thompson on Facebook

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Federal Agency Retreats in Nevada Ranch Standoff

April 12, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

The Bureau of Land Management announced Saturday that it has concluded its mission to remove illegal cattle from a rural Nevada range after a tense week-long standoff with a rancher and militia supporters.

“Based on information about conditions on the ground, and in consultation with law enforcement, we have made a decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our serious concern about the safety of employees and members of the public,” the statement read.

Bureau officials had dismantled designated protest areas supporting rancher Cliven Bundy, who they say refuses to comply with the “same laws that 16,000 public land ranchers do every year.”

“After 20 years and multiple court orders to remove the trespass cattle, Mr. Bundy owes the American taxpayers in excess of $1 million. The BLM will continue to work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially,” the statement said. “We ask that all parties in the area remain peaceful and law-abiding as the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service work to end the operation in an orderly manner.”

A group of about 1,000 supporting Bundy cheered and sang “The Star Spangled Banner” when BLM made its announcement.

The standoff at the ranch, some 80 miles north of Las Vegas, became an increasingly tense issue the longer it lasted, prompting elected officials in several states to weigh in, militia members to mobilize and federal land managers to reshape elements of the operation.

The roundup started last Saturday after the BLM and National Park Service shut down an area half the size of Delaware to let cowhands using helicopters and vehicles gather about 900 cattle that officials say are trespassing.

Bundy, 67, and his large family cast their resistance to the roundup as a constitutional stand. He says he doesn’t recognize federal authority over state land.

The dispute that triggered the roundup dates to 1993, when the BLM cited concern for the federally protected tortoise. The agency later revoked Bundy’s grazing rights.

Bundy claimed ancestral rights to graze his cattle on lands his Mormon family settled in the 19th century. He stopped paying grazing fees and disregarded several court orders to remove his animals.

BLM officials, however, say Bundy owes more than $1.1 million in unpaid grazing fees.

BLM faced criticism when police used stun guns on one of Bundy’s adult sons during a Wednesday confrontation on a state highway near the Bundy melon farm in the Gold Butte area.

Video of that confrontation spread on the Internet, along with blog commentary claiming excessive government force and calls to arms from self-described militia leaders. Some have invoked references to deadly confrontations with federal authorities, including a siege of a ranch home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and the fiery destruction of a religious compound near Waco, Texas, that killed 76 people in 1993.

“Our mission here is to protect the protestors and the American citizens from the violence that the federal government is dishing out,” Jim Landy, a member of the West Mountain Rangers, who made the journey from Montana to Nevada, told Fox News Channel. “People here are scared.”

Arizona state Rep. Bob Thorpe of Flagstaff said he and state legislators weren’t arguing whether Bundy broke laws or violated grazing agreements. Thorpe said the Arizona lawmakers were upset the BLM initially restricted protesters to so-called free speech zones.

Sen. Dean Heller and Gov. Brian Sandoval, both Republicans, have also said they were upset with the way the BLM was conducting the roundup. After the areas were removed Thursday, Sandoval issued a new statement.

“Although tensions remain high, escalation of current events could have negative, long lasting consequences that can be avoided,” it said.

Amy Lueders, BLM state director in Nevada, said Friday that two protesters were detained, cited for failure to comply with officers at a barricade on Thursday and released.

That brought the number of arrests to three. Bundy’s son, Dave Bundy, was arrested Sunday on State Route 170 and released Monday with citations accusing him of refusing to disperse and resisting arrest.

Lueders said 380 cows were collected by Thursday. She declined to provide a cost estimate for the herding operation.

Fox News’ Edmund DeMarche, Matt Finn and The Associated Press contributed to this report

‘Gay Marriage’ a Leftist Anti-Marriage Trojan Horse

April 11, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

Abolishing all civil marriage is the primary goal of the elites who have been pushing same sex marriage. The scheme called “marriage equality” is not an end in itself, and never really has been. The LGBT agenda has spawned too many other disparate agendas hostile to the existence of marriage, making marriage “unsustainable,” if you will. By now we should be able to hear the growing drumbeat to abolish civil marriage, as well as to legalize polygamy and all manner of reproductive technologies.

Consider also the breakneck speed at which the push for same sex marriage has been happening recently. The agenda’s advocates have been very methodical in their organization, disciplined in their timing, flush with money, in control of all information outlets, including media, Hollywood, and academia. And perhaps most telling is the smearing of any dissenter in the public square, a stigma made de rigueur by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in his animus-soaked opinion that repealed the Defense of Marriage Act.

We’ve seen also how the Obama Administration’s push for same sex marriage has occurred in lockstep with policies that are hostile to marriage, such as the severe marriage penalty written into Obamacare.

Activist judges have taken their cues from Attorney General Eric Holder who used the DOMA repeal to proclaim open season on any state that recognizes marriage as an organic (i.e., heterosexual) union of one man and one woman. In their crosshairs are state constitutions, businesses, students, communities, churches, and all of those bogus “conscience clauses” that were written into same sex marriage legislation in order to sway wavering state legislators to vote “aye.”

The tipping point came soon after certain big name conservatives and pundits swallowed the bait on same sex marriage. Folks like Michael Barone, John Bolton, George Will, S. E. Cupp, and David Blankenhorn have played a huge role in building momentum for this movement, which, as we will see, is blazing a trail to the abolition of state recognized marriage. And whether they know it or not, advocacy for same sex marriage is putting a lot of statist machinery into motion. Because once the state no longer has to recognize your marriage and family, the state no longer has to respect the existence of your marriage and family.

Without civil marriage, the family can no longer exist autonomously and serve as a wall of separation between the individual and the state. This has huge implications for the survival of freedom of association.

The notion of marriage equality was never about marriage or about equality. It’s all about the wrapping paper. It’s been packaged as an end in itself, but it is principally just a means to a deeper end. It is the means by which marriage extinction – the true target — can be achieved. If marriage and family are permitted to exist autonomously, power can be de-centralized in society. So the family has always been a thorn in the side of central planners and totalitarians. The connection between its abolition and the limitless growth of the state should be crystal clear. So anyone who has bought into this movement, or is tempted to do so, would want to step back and take a harder look.

Six Indicators We’re Headed Directly for Abolishing Civil Marriage

We can sort out six developments that indicate we’re on the fast track to abolishing civil marriage. They include: 1) The blueprint for abolishing family, developed by the founder of feminist legal theory, Martha Fineman; 2) support and advocacy of Fineman’s model by facilitators and regulators in the Obama Administration; 3) the statements of prominent LGBT activists themselves, including their 2006 manifesto which in effect established the abolition of marriage as the goal of the same sex marriage movement; 4) the demographic shift to single rather than married households; 5) the growing shift in social climate from marriage equality to marriage hostility; and 6) the recent push to export the LGBT agenda globally, particularly targeting poor and developing nations of Africa.

1) The Gender Theorist Model: Replace civil marriage with government-regulated contractual relationships

Collectivist style parenting may still seem like the stuff of science fiction to a lot of folks, but the ground for it has softened a lot since Hillary Clinton’s 1996 treatise It Takes a Village and American Federation of Teachers president Sandra Feldman’s 1998 op-ed “The Childswap Society.” We now have MSNBC anchor Melissa Harris-Perry declaring open war on traditional families by announcing “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”

She envisages that the State will fill the vacuum left by the abolition of family

The abolition of marriage and family has been a longtime project of gender theorists. Among them is internationally renown feminist law theorist Martha Albertson Fineman whose 2004 book The Autonomy Myth argues strenuously for “the abolition of marriage as a legal category.” Her treatise is breathtaking in its brazen approach to ending family autonomy and privacy.

Fineman advocates for a system that would unavoidably result in the regulation of personal relationships through legal contracts. “Contract,” she writes “is an appealing metaphor with which to consider social and political arrangements. It imagines autonomous adults” hashing out the terms, etc. Yet she envisages that the State will fill the vacuum left by the abolition of family [emphasis added]:

“. . . in addition to contract rules, I anticipate that ameliorating doctrines would fill the void left by the abolition of this aspect of family law. In fact, it seems apparent to me that a lot more regulation (protection) would occur once interactions between individuals within families were removed from behind the veil of privacy that now shields them.”

Fineman operates on the apparent assumption that family privacy serves no purpose other than to afford institutional protection for men behaving badly. Her prescription is sweeping: “Once the institutional protection [is] removed, behavior would be judged by standards established to regulate interactions among all members of society.” [emphasis added]

There you have it. All of your social interactions judged by certain standards. Standards established by whom? The state. And lest our eyes glaze over at mention of it, we ought to think of the State for what it really is: a hierarchy of cliques, with one dominant clique at the top. (Think mean girls in charge of everything and everyone.)

Fineman replaces the word “spouse” with the term “sexual affiliate,” because, she professes, what we think of as “family” should be defined by its function, not its form. In other words, only “caretaker-dependent relationships” would be recognized in the sense that “family” is recognized today.

So the abolition of marriage, according to Fineman:

“would mean that sexual affiliates (formerly labeled husband and wife) would be regulated by the terms of their individualized agreements, with no special rules governing fairness and no unique review or monitoring of the negotiation process.”

Feel better? Fineman also states approvingly that:

“if the family is defined functionally, focused on the caretaker-dependent relationship, the traditionally problematic interactions of sexual affiliates (formerly designated “spouses”) are not protected by notions of family privacy.”

Indeed, no interaction could be protected by “notions of family privacy” in Fineman’s model. She elaborated further and more recently on all of this in an October 2013 article in the Chicago-Kent Law Review.

2) Friends in High Places promote Fineman’s Model of State-Regulated Contracts

Cass Sunstein, who served as President Obama’s regulatory czar from 2009 to 2012, has advocated strongly for the abolition of civil marriage and its replacement with contracts that would negotiate the terms of personal relationships.

In 2008 Sunstein published an article in the Cardozo Law Review arguing that there is no constitutional right to marry and suggesting that “states may abolish marriage without offending the Constitution.” And an entire chapter of a popular book Sunstein co-authored with Richard Thaler in 2008 is devoted to arguing for the abolition of civil marriage. This is from Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

“Under our proposal, the word marriage would no longer appear in any laws, and marriage licenses would no longer be offered or recognized by any level of government. . . . Under our approach, the only legal status states would confer on couples would be a civil union, which would be a domestic partnership agreement between any two people.*(*Footnote: We duck the question of whether civil unions can involve more than two people.)”

Sunstein and Thaler dub their approach “libertarian paternalism,” an odd jargon which seems contrived to win over readers by evoking a strange juxtaposition of moderation and a heavy touch of the archaic.

Clearly, Sunstein has been laying the groundwork for the abolition of civil marriage. He purports that this would get the government out of a “licensing scheme,” but his specious phrasing is a fig leaf covering up the predictable effects of his approach: greater government regulation of personal relationships. His popular writing on the subject comes in the guise of “privatization” of relationships – even as gender theorists like Fineman argue against America’s “obsession” with privacy and individualism. But this is not a difficult circle to square. Thaler and Sunstein argue, pretty much in line with Fineman, that people ought to make use of contracts to define the terms of their relationships. And contracts invite – indeed, for Fineman, they demand – that the government function as an intimate partner in this legal ménage a trois.

3) LGBT Activists Say So Themselves: The Goal is to Abolish Marriage

“Gay marriage is a lie,” announced gay activist Masha Gessen in a panel discussion last year at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. “Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we’re going to do with marriage when we get there.” [Applause.] “It’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.”

Gessen was merely echoing a message from an LGBT manifesto of 2006 called Beyond Same Sex Marriage. The manifesto is a blatant rallying cry to bring about a post-marriage society, one in which there is no room for state-recognized marriage.

“It’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.”

Ethics and Public Policy Institute scholar Stanley Kurtz wrote extensively about this document in two National Review articles, entitled The Confession and The Confession II. Kurtz noted that the intent of the sponsors of the manifesto – which as of 2006 had hundreds of prominent signatories, including Cornel West, Barbara Ehrenreich, Martha Fineman, and Gloria Steinem – was “to dissolve marriage by extending the definition to every conceivable family type.”

Sunstein needn’t have “ducked the issue” of more than two parties in a domestic contract because legalizing polygamy is central to the manifesto. And there can be no doubt that the legalization of polygamy would result in the abolition of all state-recognized marriage. Polygamy — repackaged in the now trendy term “polyamory” – comes with an array of configurations too dizzying and with too many moving parts to be sustained as state-recognized marriage.

Despite the existence of the manifesto, the official line of the LGBT community still seems to be that gay marriage is only about equal rights for couples who love one another. Their spokespersons have been disciplined – with a friendly media running cover for them – in maintaining the official line so as not to provoke a debate about the real agenda to abolish marriage.

Supposedly conservative gay activists like Jonathan Rauch have also run cover and protected the timing of the agenda by claiming that the manifesto was merely a “fringe” of the LGBT movement. It’s irrelevant whether or not Rauch really believes his own propaganda that gay marriage will somehow strengthen a marriage culture by bringing loving gay couples into it. The main effect of the Rauch meme is to accelerate the abolition of civil marriage by hastening a legal framework for genderless marriage that will pave the way for total abolition of civil marriage, and with it private family life.

It’s clear the gloves are coming off and timing has entered a new phase. The push for polyamory has gone mainstream, right on schedule. Supportive puff pieces on it are popping up in places like Atlantic Monthly and the erstwhile women’s magazine Redbook. In the end, polyamory serves only as a transitory way station between the legalization of same sex marriage and the abolition of civil marriage.

4) Growing Dominance of Singles

Recent decades have seen a sharp upsurge of unmarried households. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2012 there were 103 million unmarried people 18 and older. That’s 44 percent of all US residents over 18. And 62 percent of those 103 million had never been married. Unmarried individuals represented 56 million households in 2012. The rise in singles has had an undeniably huge impact on the electorate. In the 2012 election 39 percent of the voters were unmarried, compared to 24 percent of the voters in the 1972 election.

The “Communication League for Unmarried Equality,” is a coalition of singles’ rights organizations which argues that government benefits for marriage – including tax breaks and survivor benefits in social security — amount to marital status discrimination. Its advocates argue that civil marriage unjustly awards financial, social, and cultural benefits to married individuals at the expense of unmarried individuals who end up subsidizing marriage and children, without compensation. In addition, proponents of “unmarried equality” insist that the existence of these privileges serve to perpetuate prejudices and stereotypes about singles that inflict harm on them. (Sounds like a Supreme Court case brewing.)

Bella DePaulo spearheaded the movement as a blogger and author of Singled Out and Singlism: What it is, Why it Matters and How to Stop It.” According to DePaulo, the discrimination she calls “singlism” may seem more subtle than racism or sexism, but is just as damaging. She has tip-toed to the edge of advocating for the abolition of marriage, with a professor of feminist philosophy Elizabeth Blake, by saying that marriage should be “minimized” (for now) so that singles have the same benefits as married individuals. Which, naturally, means abolishing marriage.

“Singlism” itself is not yet considered a form of illegal discrimination. But DePaulo believes it should be:

“Because singlism is built right into American laws, it is not possible to be single and not be a target of discrimination. If you have followed the marriage equality debate, then you probably know that there are more than 1,000 federal laws that benefit or protect only those people who are legally married. Even if same-sex marriage becomes legal throughout the land, all those people who are single — whether gay or straight or any other status — will still remain second class citizens.”

5) Morphing of the Memes – from Marriage Equality to Marriage Ambivalence to Marriage Hostility

“Why would anyone get married?” That’s a quote from Nancy Pelosi in a Valentine’s Day interview last month, downplaying the importance of marriage. While some might say she’s simply courting the singles demographic, she’s mostly reinforcing and echoing a narrative that marriage is irrelevant or perhaps even harmful. She is contributing to the drumbeat to abolish civil marriage.

Let’s not forget Julia, the mascot of Obama’s reelection campaign who serves as a Stepford wife to the State.

Major cultural forces – the media, academia, and Hollywood – have already adopted an increasingly hostile view of marriage. We can see it in the use of the term “greedy marrieds” from a recent New York Times feature “The Changing American Family“: “Single people live alone and proudly consider themselves families of one — more generous and civic-minded than ‘greedy marrieds.’”

And look at NBC Sports in its coverage Olympic gold medalist skier David Wise. It described him as living an “alternative lifestyle” because he happened to be young and married with children. The clear inference was that he was abnormal.

The promotion and glorification of single parenting which got its start with the Murphy Brown TV series of the 1990s has gone into hyperdrive now. Check out online services such as Modamily, that matches people with “parenting partners,” with whom they can draw up a contract, arrange for artificial reproductive technologies, and forgo marriage.

And let’s not forget Julia, the mascot of Obama’s reelection campaign who serves, with more than a bit of irony, as a Stepford wife to the State. The narrative was clearly hostile to the idea of marriage and supportive of policies to abolish it.

6) LGBT Push for Same Sex Marriage in Developing Countries

The rush by LGBT activists and the Obama administration to lift bans on gay marriage in all 50 states is peculiarly fast and furious. Oddly so for a movement that seems to be gaining steam and social compliance. A reasonable question would be: What’s the rush if things are going so swimmingly your way? The only answer seems to be one of fragile timing.

The sudden LGBT push globally, especially in Africa, should give us pause as well. Why the abrupt shove into poor countries, threatening to cut off aid unless they comply with such a massive cultural shift and adopt the Western LGBT agenda? Why the laser focus on Uganda and Malawi instead of places like Iran where abuses of homosexuals are likely just as common?

We are witnessing a major strategy to export gay marriage – and all it entails for the abolition of marriage — worldwide. President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have made an example of Uganda by threatening to cut off its aid over the existence of its anti-sodomy laws. Other developing nations are expected to take note and fall into line, creating a cascade effect until any other nation who resists will feel the noose tightening.

We might reasonably ask why this particular agenda is getting so much attention while the world goes to hell in a hand basket. Syria is overrun with vicious terrorist gangs at least as bad as its president. Russia is flexing its muscles, having just invaded the Ukraine and Crimea. Christians are being exterminated in record numbers throughout the Middle East. We’re looking at nuclear weapons in Iran. There’s a nuclear threat from North Korea, which not only starves its own people but is run by a guy who, it was said, feeds his political enemies to starving dogs. And yet President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have been spending special quality time focusing on the LGBT agenda in in the poor countries of Africa?

Clearly the Western LGBT agenda represents a new brand of cultural imperialism that is not content to shape life at home, but intends to propagate itself – and all it entails – worldwide.

Ending Marriage Leads To A Centralized All Powerful State

The hard push for marriage equality was never about marriage. Neither was it about equality. It’s a convenient vehicle to abolish civil marriage, whether to rid the world of paternalism, evade responsibility for children, “privatize” relationships, or whatever. Abolishing marriage strips the family of its autonomy by placing it much more directly under the regulating control of the state.

Once the state no longer has to recognize the marriage relationship and its presumption of privilege and privacy, we all become atomized individuals in the eyes of the state, officially strangers to one another. We lose the space – the buffer zone – that the institution of the natural, organic family previously gave us and that forced the state to keep its distance.

Isn’t it ironic that feminists would replace the “paternalism” of marriage (what happened to strong women?) with the new paternalism of state regulation of personal relationships? Isn’t it ironic that singles in this scheme of things simply end up marrying the state?

At some point, we must conclude that freedom of association has its source in state acceptance of the core family as the primary buffer zone between the individual and the state. There is no escaping this fact, no matter a particular generation’s attitude or public opinion polling, or advances in medical technology, or whatever else comes our way.

Marriage Is The Template For Freedom Of Association

Without state recognition of – and respect for – marriage, can freedom of association survive? How so? On what basis?

Civil marriage provides the entire basis for presuming the rights and responsibilities of biological parents to raise their own children. It also assumes the right of spouses to refuse to testify against one another in court. It presumes survivorship – in guardianship of children as well as inheritance of property. If we abolish civil marriage, these will no longer be rights by default, but rights to be distributed at the pleasure of a bureaucratic state.

When a couple enters into a civil marriage, they are not inviting the government into their relationship, but rather putting the government on notice that they are a family unit. It’s the couple – not the state – that’s in the driver’s seat.Otherwise, they needn’t marry. Otherwise, central planners wouldn’t be so intent on abolishing marriage as a private and autonomous association from which the state must keep its distance, unless one partner wishes to exit by divorce.

Children – i.e., all of us born into a family – inherit that presumption of autonomy and broadcast it into society. We do so whether or not we ever get married ourselves. The presumption of family autonomy and privacy informs our right to freely associate with others – through romances, friendships, business contracts, and so on. It would be catastrophic to freedom if we threw it away.

State recognition of this autonomy cannot exist without state recognition of marriage. In fact, traditional marriage — just like traditional oxygen if you will – helps all of society breathe more freely.

If civil marriage is abolished, you can say hello to the government at your bedroom door because that comfortable little meme about “getting the state out of the marriage business” will have flown out your bedroom window while you were sleeping.

Stella Morabito can be followed on Twitter here. She blogs at www.stellamorabito.net

HHS Secretary Sebelius Resigning

April 10, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who was the face of the president’s health care law, is resigning from the Obama administration — a decision that closes one of the rockiest tenures in Obama’s Cabinet.

Sebelius leaves the administration after the tumultuous launch of the Affordable Care Act exchanges last fall. Despite calls for her ouster from Republicans at the time, she stayed on until the enrollment period ended at the end of March.

A White House official said President Obama will formally make the announcement on Friday, and nominate White House budget office director Sylvia Matthews Burwell to replace the outgoing secretary. The Senate would have to confirm Burwell to the position.

The administration has since touted the surge in enrollment in the last few weeks, with Sebelius saying Thursday that 7.5 million American have now signed up for coverage under the law.

But the technical difficulties surrounding the launch, as well as ongoing concerns about the implementation of the law, hung over her. She leaves just one week after the enrollment period ended, and as a tough midterm election cycle expected to focus heavily on ObamaCare begins.

Republicans quickly made clear that Sebelius’ departure will not temper their criticisms of ObamaCare.

“Secretary Sebelius oversaw a disastrous rollout of ObamaCare, but anyone can see that there are more problems on the way,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said. “The next HHS Secretary will inherit a mess — Americans facing rising costs, families losing their doctors, and an economy weighed down by intrusive regulations. No matter who is in charge of HHS, ObamaCare will continue to be a disaster and will continue to hurt hardworking Americans.”

Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Orrin Hatch said Sebelius “had one of the toughest jobs in Washington” because she had to implement the law, which he said is “flawed” and continues to fall short.

“While we haven’t always agreed, Secretary Sebelius did the best she could during the tumultuous and volatile rollout of the law,” Hatch, R-Utah, said in a statement.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi praised Sebelius’ leadership during the rollout, saying she had “been forceful, effective, and essential.”

“Her legacy will be found in the 7.5 million Americans signed up on the marketplaces so far, the 3.1 million people covered on their parents’ plans, and the millions more gaining coverage through the expansion of Medicaid,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said.

The White House official said Sebelius notified Obama of her decision to leave in early March.

“At that time, Secretary Sebelius told the president that she felt confident in the trajectory for enrollment and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and that she believed that once open enrollment ended it would be the right time to transition the department to new leadership,” the official said, adding the president “is deeply grateful for her service.”

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin praised the nomination of Burwell, a fellow West Virginia native, in a statement Thursday.

“I am confident that her leadership will ensure that we enact commonsense fixes to the Affordable Care Act to help improve the lives of millions of Americans,” Manchin said.

Sebelius, having served five years with the president, was among the longest-serving Cabinet secretaries in the administration.

But Sebelius’ relationship with the White House frayed during last fall’s rollout of the insurance exchanges that are at the center of the sweeping overhaul. The president and his top advisers said they were frustrated by what they considered to be a lack of information from HHS over the extent of the website troubles.

The White House sent management expert Jeffrey Zients to oversee a rescue operation that turned things around by the end of November.

Published April 10, 2014 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

House Panel Votes to Hold Ex-IRS Official Lerner in Contempt of Congress

April 10, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

A House committee voted Thursday to hold Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress, as Republicans escalated their bid to “get to the bottom” of the former IRS official’s role in the political targeting scandal.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 21-12 to hold Lerner in contempt. The vote followed hours of heated debate on the committee.

The contempt measure would next head to the House floor. House Speaker John Boehner predicted earlier this week that unless Lerner agrees to cooperate, the full House will support contempt — from there, the case would likely head to the courts.

“This is not an action I take lightly,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said before the vote. But he said lawmakers “need Ms. Lerner’s testimony to complete our oversight work and bring truth to the American people.”

The vote comes a day after the House Ways and Means Committee voted to refer Lerner’s case to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the committee claimed Lerner may have violated “one or more criminal statutes.” The Department of Justice is not obligated to take up the committee’s request.

Both committee actions divided Republicans and Democrats, who have decried the steps against Lerner as unwarranted and political.

Democrats argue that Lerner properly invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify last year, and again last month.

“Guilty or innocent, Ms. Lerner has a constitutional right to remain silent on this issue,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said. Further, she said if the committee were truly serious about pursuing this case, they would offer Lerner immunity.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said the case would “be laughed out of court.”

But Republicans, in bringing up the contempt measure, claim Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment right when, during a hearing in May, she gave a voluntary statement declaring her innocence. Lerner again refused to testify last month.

“The only path to the truth is through this committee,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Thursday.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the oversight committee, has compiled a growing list of constitutional experts who say the contempt case is weak. Issa countered with a memo from the House general counsel’s office that says he followed proper procedures.

Lerner has emerged as a central figure in investigations by two congressional committees into the IRS applying extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. Lerner’s lawyer, William W. Taylor III, said she has committed no crimes.

“If Lois Lerner continues to refuse to testify, then the House will hold her in contempt,” Boehner said Wednesday. “And we will continue to shine the light on the administration’s abusive actions and use every tool at our disposal to expose the truth and ensure the American people get the answers they deserve.”

Lerner is an attorney who joined the IRS in 2001. She retired last fall, ending a 34-year career in federal government, which included work at the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission.

Published April 10, 2014 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Nevada Officials Blast Feds for Persecuting Cattle Rancher Cliven Bundy

April 10, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

Two of Nevada’s top elected leaders are riding to the rescue of a rancher whose decades-long range war with the federal government has reached a boiling point in recent days.

The federal Bureau of Land Management has surrounded the Clark County ranch of Cliven Bundy with armed officers, helicopters and four-wheel drive vehicles. Last week, they began seizing cattle found grazing on adjacent federal lands in violation of a law meant to protect an endangered desert tortoise.

“No cow justifies the atmosphere of intimidation which currently exists nor the limitation of constitutional rights that are sacred to all Nevadans.” – Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval

Both Gov. Brian Sandoval and Sen. Dean Heller have condemned the BLS for what they characterize as heavy-handed actions involving Bundy and other Silver State residents.

“No cow justifies the atmosphere of intimidation which currently exists nor the limitation of constitutional rights that are sacred to all Nevadans,” Sandoval, a Republican, said. “The BLM needs to reconsider its approach to this matter and act accordingly.”

Heller, also a Republican, said he told BLM Director Neil Kornze the situation is being handled poorly.

“I told him very clearly that law-abiding Nevadans must not be penalized by an over-reaching BLM,” Heller said.

Bundy, 67, who has been a rancher all his life, told FoxNews.com last week he believes the federal agency is trying to push him to the breaking point and likened his situation to the 1993 disaster in Waco, Texas, in which federal and state law enforcement agencies laid siege to a compound of religious fanatics calling themselves Branch Davidians, a move that resulted in the deaths of 76.

“This is a lot bigger deal than just my cows,” Bundy told FoxNews.com. “It’s a statement for freedom and liberty and the Constitution.”

The fight involves a 600,000-acre area under BLM control called Gold Butte, near the Utah border. The vast and rugged land is the habitat of the protected desert tortoise, and ranchers whose cattloe graze there must pay fees. Bundy, a descendant of Mormons who settled in Bunkerville more than 140 years ago, claims an inherent right to graze the area and casts the conflict as a states’ rights issue. He said he doesn’t recognize federal authority on land that he insists belongs to Nevada.

BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon said agents on Saturday and Sunday rounded up 134 of an estimated 900 trespassing cattle in a vast 1,200-square-mile area of rangeland northeast of Las Vegas and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Cannon said the roundup was a last resort and blamed Cliven Bundy for “inflammatory statements,” including vows to fight and characterizations of the cow removal as a range war.

“Mr. Bundy has been in trespass on public lands for more than 20 years,” Cannon said, adding that he owes the federal government some $1.1 million in unpaid grazing fees.

The bureau last week announced the area would be closed through May 12 while contractors conduct the roundup using helicopters, vehicles and temporary pens. Cannon said the agency paid the contractors $966,000.

Bundy’s son, Dave Bundy, 37, was arrested Sunday for refusing to disperse as the roundup began, but freed the next day.

Federal officials tried to round up Bundy’s livestock two years ago, but he refused to budge.

Since then, he has lost two federal court rulings — and a judge last October prohibited him from physically interfering with any seizure or roundup operation.

Federal officials said BLM enforcement agents were dispatched in response to statements Bundy made that the agency perceived as threats.

“When threats are made that could jeopardize the safety of the American people, the contractors and our personnel; we have the responsibility to provide law enforcement to account for their safety,” National Park Service spokeswoman Christie Vanover told reporters Sunday.

The trouble started when Bundy stopped paying grazing fees in 1993. He said he didn’t have to because his Mormon ancestors worked the land since the 1880s, giving him rights to the land.

“We own this land,” he said, not the feds. He said he is willing to pay grazing fees but only to Clark County, not BLM.

“Years ago, I used to have 52 neighboring ranchers,” he said. “I’m the last man standing. How come? Because BLM regulated these people off the land and out of business.”

Published April 10, 2014 / FoxNews.com / FoxNews.com’s Robert Gearty contributed to this report.

House Panel Asks DOJ to Prosecute Lerner

April 9, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

A House committee voted Wednesday to formally ask the Justice Department to consider criminal prosecution against ex-IRS official Lois Lerner, the figure at the center of the political targeting scandal.

The House Ways and Means Committee voted 23-14 to send the criminal referral. The vote marked an escalation in Republicans’ push to confront Lerner over her role in the agency’s controversial practice of singling out conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny.

On another front, a separate committee will vote Thursday on whether to hold her in contempt of Congress for twice refusing to testify on the scandal.

The rare session on Wednesday to consider a criminal referral produced some partisan fireworks, as Democrats called the move against Lerner “unprecedented.”

Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich., initially tried to keep the deliberations open to the public and press, triggering a dispute with the chairman as he tried to raise a “point of order.”

Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., then told Levin to “chill out.”

“I’m very chilled out,” he responded.

Despite Levin’s objections — and opposition from the rest of the Democrats on the committee — lawmakers broke into closed session to debate the measure. After returning, they quickly approved the criminal referral.

A day earlier, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee formally laid out its case for contempt in a new report.

“Lois Lerner’s testimony is critical to the committee’s investigation,” the oversight report stated. “Without her testimony, the full extent of the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party applications cannot be known, and the committee will be unable to fully complete its work.”

The report repeatedly called out for Lerner for refusing to cooperate with the committee’s investigation.

During her first appearance before the committee last year, Lerner gave an opening statement and then invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination three times before being excused. Last month, she was before the lawmakers once more, once again exercising her Fifth Amendment rights.

Published April 09, 2014 / FoxNews.com

Hollywood Conservatives Blacklisted

April 8, 2014 By Editor 1 Comment

Kevin Sorbo, star of the film “God’s Not Dead,” ranked fifth at the U.S. box office, says he knows he’s on a blacklist in liberal Hollywood for being independent-minded.

When Beliefnet’s John W. Kennedy interviewed Sorbo about his role as an atheist professor in ”God’s Not Dead,” the actor opened up about his faith, political views, and career decisions colored by Hollywood’s antipathy toward conservatives.

“They scream for tolerance,” Sorbo said. “They scream for freedom of speech, but it you disagree at all with what they’re saying then they can blacklist you. They have the power to do that.”

These remarks came after Kennedy asked the actor if he’s experienced a backlash in Hollywood for his views and Sorbo responded:

Oh, sure. I mean I’m an independent in Hollywood. I’ve voted Democratic in my life, I’ve voted Republican in my life. I’m one of the few people I think in Hollywood who actually comes out and says, ‘Hey, you know what, I vote for who I think is the best person, period.’ I’m not a party guy. There are people on both sides of the political fence that I don’t agree with. To me, I look to see who I honestly think is going to be the best person. So, that, in itself, is enough to get me blacklisted in Hollywood …”

Sam Sorbo, the actor’s wife, says she experienced a backlash over her political views on education.

In a recent interview with The Blaze’s Dana Loesch, Sam remarked: “As naive as I was back then, I thought, ‘Well if I write about school, that’s not political!’ But of course school is the most political, because that’s where the progressive agenda is coming out the strongest and the hardest.”

With Kevin Sorbo’s starring role in “God’s Not Dead,” the family appears to have scored points despite the alleged blacklist. The movie took first place at the box office for films that opened in 1,000 or fewer theaters.

By Havilah Steinman

Sup Court: No Appeal for Photographers Who Won’t Shoot Gay Wedding

April 7, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from Christian photographers who were fined and admonished by the New Mexico Supreme Court for declining to work a same-sex ceremony, in what could be a blow to religious business owners.

The high court decision not to take up the appeal means the New Mexico ruling against them stands. That ruling is only binding in New Mexico, but could set a precedent that can be cited in subsequent cases.

In this case, Elane Photography, owned by Jon and Elaine Huguenin of New Mexico, was brought to court for refusing to photograph a same-sex couple’s commitment ceremony in 2006.

An attorney for the couple argued that the business openly advertises its wedding photography services, and as a public business is required to follow the same anti-discrimination laws as any other company.

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in August that the business’s refusal to photograph the ceremony involving two women did violate the state’s Human Rights Act.

Lawyers for the business, though, argued the ruling violates the business owners’ free speech rights by compelling them to “express messages that conflict with their religious beliefs.”

Elaine Huguenin said she also has a right of artistic expression under the First Amendment that allows her to choose what pictures to take, or refrain from taking.

Published April 07, 2014 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Parental Revolt Against Common Core Prompts States to Take Action

April 7, 2014 By Editor 1 Comment

Eleven-year-old Leo Tuttle is in fifth grade at an Indianapolis private school where the demanding curriculum forces him to struggle to keep up.

But it is where Leo’s mother, Erin Tuttle, wants him to be, rather than the public school or even the Catholic school he previously attended.

Mrs. Tuttle moved Leo to the private school when her home state of Indiana, along with 45 other states, agreed to follow the Common Core State Standards Initiative for all its public schools and those which are under the charter school program, such as the Catholic school. The Common Core standards are a set of guidelines for schools, initiated federally, to improve and make consistent education standards in math and English language arts.

The goal of Common Core is to “… articulate what students need to know in grades K-12 in order to be ready for college or a career after they graduate” said Mike Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools, which supports and promotes the standards.

Many students and teachers saw the standards for the first time this year, as the program was being phased in nationwide. And now that they’ve seen it, many are not happy with it, and they’re joining an ever-increasing group of critics who are lining up against it.

Teachers complain the program was pushed through too fast, that there wasn’t time for schools to make the adjustment, there wasn’t additional funding available for new textbooks, and that they just weren’t included in the process when the Common Core was created.

“You forgot some of the most important people in this whole process, and that was the educator” said Teresa Meredith, president of the Indiana Teacher’s Association. “The one person who could really help make or break this was the educator and you didn’t include the educator from the very beginning in terms of building an implementation plan” she said.

In addition, a growing number of parents nationwide, including Erin Tuttle, are joining forces to eliminate the Common Core, which they claim “dumbs down” their children’s education by using inferior methods than were used in the past.

Conservatives call it an extreme abuse of federal overreach, that limits the control states and local communities have on their education programs.

Indiana is the first state to pull away from the Common Core. Oklahoma lawmakers have passed a bill repealing that state’s participation in Common Core, and there are now some 300 bills in state legislatures nationwide that would slow down, reduce, or eliminate altogether implementation of the Common Core, according to the National Conference of State Legislators.

That would be a major blow to the program, which was strongly touted by the Obama administration as a way for children in the United States to be globally competitive.

“Education is an important component to the economic wellbeing of any nation” Casserly explains. “When the united states started to look at these international comparisons and saw that we were beginning to slip behind other countries like Korea and Belgium and Singapore and Malaysia and other entities… the united states really needed to raise its academic performance.” he said.

Michigan’s Gov. Rick Snyder agreed. “Isn’t it important that we’re globally competitive?” he asked. “We were lagging, we were getting behind. And what the common core does, presents a set of standards that will help us get back to that globally competitive place we need to be.”

While education levels in many parts of the country need improvement, critics concede, a one-size-fits-all approach to education is not the solution.

“Settling for a status quo of mediocrity for every state certainly shouldn’t be the answer,” said Tuttle. “We should be striving for something much higher than that, something that is internationally competitive, something that will allow our children to be competitive in a global economy.” But, Tuttle adds, “the common core simply won’t do that”.

Common Core supporters claim all the criticism is based on misinformation, that it’s not federal overreach because the program is voluntary. Indiana was able to back out without any penalty. The standards are more of a concept.

“The Common Core State standards are not a curriculum, they’re not a textbook, they’re not a set of lesson plans,” said Casserly. And they weren’t created in a vacuum, he said. While the standards were being created “some 10,000 comments” were submitted by parents and educators.

Now that Indiana has backed away from Common Core, Erin Tuttle may move her son back to his old school, but first she wants to see how far her state will stray from the federal standards, and whether it will go back to what she claims were the higher standards the state followed before Common Core.

“People across the country will be watching to see what Indiana does next,” she said.

By Ruth Ravve

Krauthammer Blasts Obamacare’s ‘Phony’ 7.1 Million Enrollment Number

April 6, 2014 By Editor Leave a Comment

Charles Krauthammer dismissed the 7.1 million number of Obamacare enrollees touted by the Obama administration yesterday as a “so-called” and “phony number.”

“It’s meaningless,” Krauthammer said on “Special Report” on Fox News, “because … we don’t know how many of them have paid, so it’s an enrollment number that’s not enrollment.”

“The more important [number] is how many were previously uninsured,” he added.

by Katrina Trinko

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