A Great Month for American Sovereignty

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American Sovereignty

via The Daily Caller

Property values in the global community took a hit this month after the United States twice declined invitations to surrender its sovereignty to the United Nations.

The first bit of good news came when Senators Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) announced a 34-member coalition pledged in opposition to the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty (L.O.S.T.). While more may join the effort, there are now enough votes to prevent ratification and protect the U.S. Navy and our oil and gas industries from answering to the United Nations and the International Seabed Authority (I.S.A.).

L.O.S.T. is a deeply flawed document that would transfer power, authority, resources and riches to employees at the U.N. whose credentials barely rise to that of flea market management.

The treaty empowers the U.N. to govern the world’s oceans and control activities on and below the water — including shipping, mining, exploration and fishing. It was opposed by President Reagan in 1982, and has been resurrected and rejected several times in the 30 years since.

Senators are right to be concerned about L.O.S.T.’s impact on American sovereignty. Ratification of the treaty would christen the Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority as a global entity authorized to lay and collect taxes on American businesses. The I.S.A. would determine which companies can drill, where and for what. It would lay claim to the associated royalties, which experts believe would amount to trillions of dollars, or roughly the equivalent of a Barack Obama annual deficit. Those monies would then be funneled through the ethically challenged United Nations rather than the ailing U.S. economy.

This is standard fare for the treaty’s chief proponent. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry is a U.N. man to the core. He backs treaties that add to global government, believes the U.N. Security Council must authorize America’s military actions and has voiced his desire to see the American military deployed around the world “only at the directive of the United Nations.”

Kerry’s friends at Turtle Bay suffered another setback last week when the U.N. Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty ended in failure, ensuring that the Second Amendment needn’t be excised from the Constitution just yet. On July 27 — the last day of the conference — the Obama administration told delegates meeting in New York that it needed more time to review the proposed text. The conference deadline came and went, and the U.N.’s strongest-ever effort to strip Americans of the right to own firearms was turned back.

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No Joke: What’s the Fuss Over VOTER ID Laws?

NO JOKE

via the Patriot Post

Fido, Casper the Ghost, and Juan Valdez walk into a polling place. No this isn’t the beginning of a joke it is a key part of the Chicago Plan to re-elect the worst President in American History.

The Voter Participation Center (VPC), a left wing organization whose work to register Democrat voters exemplifies the process used for generations in Chicago to ensure the Outfit/Machine maintains control of the government, the power, and the swag. The VPC is mass mailing pre-printed voter registration forms to selected voter blocks known to be part of the Democrat coalition, African-Americans, Latinos, young adults, and single women. In their effort to extend the Chicago system to the rest of the country VPC mailed nearly 200,000 third-party voter registration forms to Virginia residents in June. This has resulted in more than 15,000 new voters being registered.

However, there are a few problems with this exercise in Chicago-style democracy. They are violating rules set forth in the state code and the Virginia Constitution requiring that voters fill out their own form. The State Board of Elections, which the group says pre-approved their forms and their methods, has asked the group to stop filling in the forms prior to sending them to the people, and pointing to the errant forms they have also raised questions concerning how the group obtained lists of registered voters. In addition, according to Justin Riemer, the Virginia State Board of Elections’ deputy secretary, forms have been sent by the group to “deceased infants, out-of-state family members, and non-U.S. citizens, among others.” Given the fact that these forms can be mailed in and that the Federal Government will sue any State that has the chutzpah to require a photo ID to vote don’t be surprised if in this, the most crucial election of our lives Fido, Casper, or Juan cast their vote to continue the occupation of Washington by the Progressive Statists and their totalitarian plans.

The list of problems with Democrat voting procedures that have ensured their iron-fisted rule in the tottering hulks of our once great cities is as long as it is disturbing. There are the great Democrat machines that have used every form of voter fraud and intimidation to dominate the urban political scene in America for generations in places such as Philadelphia, Detroit, and of course the Mecca of corruption President Obama’s adopted hometown and political base, Chicago. In East St. Louis and Indianapolis there are actually more registered voters than eligible citizens.

As the Obama Justice Department circles the country like a bird of prey waiting to pounce on any jurisdiction that attempts to purge the dead the illegal immigrants or felons from the voting lists, it is apparent that voter fraud has been elevated from a crime to a national policy. So far Attorney General Holder has sued Florida, Georgia, and Texas while investigating Pennsylvania. Yet there is no time or resources spent on investigating sixteen counties in Texas with more voters on the rolls than in the census or sixteen jurisdictions in Illinois that also have more registered than eligible. There also was no interest in prosecuting the clear case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party who patrolled voting locations armed with clubs while making racist statements to voters. And the most reprehensible case of voter suppression of all is the campaign waged to limit the vote of our active duty military.

Any attempt to slow the growth of phantom voters is met vigorously by the Federal Government with strident accusations of racism saying that anyone who requires a photo ID to vote might as well burn a cross on the White House lawn. This is patently absurd. It takes a photo ID to do many things people do every day. You need a photo ID to:

• Get a Driver’s license

• Buy alcohol

• Buy cigarettes

• Apply for welfare

• Apply for food stamps


• Cash a check

• Purchase a firearm


• Make any large credit card purchase


• Open a bank account


• Rent an apartment

• Be admitted to a hospital


• Get a marriage license

And yet according to Attorney General Holder any jurisdiction that requires a photo ID to vote is placing an undue burden on minorities akin to a poll tax collected by a man in a white hood. But for security purposes you needed a photo ID to get into the NAACP meeting recently to hear Mr. Holder speak in a state he is currently suing over their requirement of a photo ID to vote. The irony never ends in a world that is fast becoming the theater of the absurd.

Add into the mix that most states offer free IDs and provisional ballots that are counted once ID is verified to anyone who shows up without an ID, and it’s easy to see the righteous battle against voter ID is really a reprehensible defense of voter fraud.

And just in case the actual living citizens of America show up to vote in great enough numbers to compete with Fido, Casper the Ghost, and Juan the Obama administration has retained the services of thousands of lawyers. These devil’s advocates will challenge the vote in any district that goes against them or to defend themselves in any jurisdiction with the gall to challenge their manufactured majority. > > > READ MORE

*ALERT* Scalia: Guns May be Regulated

Scalia: Guns May be Regulated

Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Supreme Court’s most vocal and conservative justices, said on Sunday that the Second Amendment leaves room for U.S. legislatures to regulate guns, including menacing hand-held weapons.

“It will have to be decided in future cases,” Scalia said on Fox News Sunday. But there were legal precedents from the days of the Founding Fathers that banned frightening weapons which a constitutional originalist like himself must recognize. There were also “locational limitations” on where weapons could be carried, the justice noted.

When asked if that kind of precedent would apply to assault weapons, or 100-round ammunition magazines like those used in the recent Colorado movie theater massacre, Scalia declined to speculate. “We’ll see,” he said. ‘”It will have to be decided.”

As an originalist scholar, Scalia looks to the text of the Constitution—which confirms the right to bear arms—but also the context of 18th-century history. “They had some limitations on the nature of arms that could be borne,” he told host Chris Wallace.

In a wide-ranging interview, Scalia also stuck by his criticism of Chief Justice John Roberts and the majority opinion in the ruling that upheld the Affordable Care Act this summer. “You don’t interpret a penalty to be a pig. It can’t be a pig,” said Scalia, of the court’s decision to call the penalty for not obtaining health insurance a tax. “There is no way to regard this penalty as a tax.”

Scalia, a septuagenarian, said he had given no thought to retiring. “My wife doesn’t want me hanging around the house,” he joked. But he did say he would try to time his retirement from the court so that a justice of similar conservative sentiments would take his place, presumably as the appointee of a Republican president. “Of course I would not like to be replaced by somebody who sets out immediately to undo” what he has spent decades trying to achieve, the justice said.

LOCKING UP BABY FORMULA? BLOOMBERG SLAMMED FOR NEWEST BREASTFEEDING INITIATIVE

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BREASTFEEDING INITIATIVE, Latch On NYC, Nanny Bloomberg

LOCKING UP BABY FORMULA? BLOOMBERG SLAMMED FOR NEWEST BREASTFEEDING INITIATIVE

Mayor Bloomberg, also known as “Nanny Bloomberg” thanks to his many regulations for New York City, has gone a step beyond banning sugary sodas and trans fats, according to the New York Post. Now, it seems he is also trying to regulate breast milk.

According to the Post, Bloomberg is actually pushing hospitals to keep their baby formulas “behind locked doors” so that new mothers will be more likely to breastfeed. Participating hospitals will begin on September 3d.

The New York Post has more:

The nanny state is going after moms.
[…]
Under the city Health Department’s voluntary Latch On NYC initiative, 27 of the city’s 40 hospitals have also agreed to give up swag bags sporting formula-company logos, toss out formula-branded tchotchkes like lanyards and mugs, and document a medical reason for every bottle that a newborn receives.
While breast-feeding activists applaud the move, bottle-feeding moms are bristling at the latest lactation lecture.
“If they put pressure on me, I would get annoyed,” said Lynn Sidnam, a Staten Island mother of two formula-fed girls, ages 4 months and 9 years. “It’s for me to choose.”

Under Latch On NYC, new mothers who want formula won’t be denied it, but hospitals will keep infant formula in out-of-the-way secure storerooms or in locked boxes like those used to dispense and track medications.

With each bottle a mother requests and receives, she’ll also get a talking-to. Staffers will explain why she should offer the breast instead.

“It’s the patient’s choice,” said Allison Walsh, of Beth Israel Medical Center. “But it’s our job to educate them on the best option.”

Read more about the “Latch On NYC” initiative by clicking here.

Like Bloomberg’s other regulations, the breast milk policy bears a resemblance to Cass Sunstein’s “nudge” theory. The Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (also known as the “Regulatory Czar“), Sunstein has long-advocated “nudging” Americans in the direction they really ought to go, by defining their choices and making the less desirable ones more inconvenient. No one is forcing you to do anything…just helping to guide your decisions.

But for many, regulating soda and regulating breast milk are two different matters entirely. The latter, obviously, feels much more invasive. > > > READ MORE

Combat medic shares story about ‘just doing his job’

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Warren Williamson Jr., a medic with the 18th Medical Operations Squadron, sits in his “office”, an ambulance, at Kadena Air Base, Japan, July 24, 2012. Williamson was recently awarded the Non-Commissioned Officers Association Vanguard Award, for his heroic actions that saved the lives of others during a deployment to Afghanistan last year.

“We were used to getting hit,” said Staff Sgt. Warren Williamson Jr., a medic with the 18th Medical Operations Squadron. “But that day…that day was different.”

Of the 300-plus combat missions he was a part of while deployed last year, Williamson recalls a day he will never forget, a day he could have lost everything, but gained so much more.

For his second 365-plus day deployment to Afghanistan, he was sent to a forward operating base located in the Laghman Province of Afghanistan to be the sole medic for a group of soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 181st Infantry Regiment, Bravo Company.

“I was the primary doctor, the sole provider there,” said the Chesapeake, Va., native. “Dismounted elements wouldn’t leave the truck without the doc, without me. I escorted all dismounted missions away from the convoy.”

Williamson said the day began like any other.

“That morning we headed out on a mounted combat patrol to a green district, meaning there wasn’t a whole lot of Taliban activity,” he explained.

“The mission was for our team to provide security for a few civil engineer officers to check out a courthouse in a local district that had been rocketed by the Taliban,” Williamson continued. “At the same time, I was to meet with the district hospital medical provider there and discuss some medical issues.”

The courthouse mission lasted roughly two hours. They parked the convoy inside the district and dismounted. The engineers walked the perimeter of the district, and measured it, ending the fairly smooth mission around 10 a.m.

“We were getting ready to mount back up and continue on for my mission to meet the doctor,” he said. “But first we had to maneuver our trucks so that they weren’t blocking traffic. So although some soldiers were in the trucks, most of us were still on foot, guiding the trucks and pulling security.”

“As we were prepping to move the trucks, we were caught off guard,” he continued. “Before we knew what was happening, an Afghan had gotten on his motorcycle, road right through our formation, and detonated a vehicle-borne IED, instantly killing himself, injuring my guys and killing a bunch of his.”

More than 10 people were killed that day.

“We were knocked unconscious. I’m not sure how many of us were on the ground, to be honest, but when I looked up, it was just…chaos. I can’t describe it any other way.”

He and his team were no strangers to getting attacked. But, Williamson said he knew this time was different. It was the worst they’ve experienced in the six months they had already been deployed.

“When I came to, the dust hadn’t even settled yet and all I could hear were screams and a group of my guys dragging one of the soldiers closer to me screaming ‘doc, doc!’,” explained the medic that spent two years training with Air Force pararescuemen. “As they got closer I got to my feet and helped get that soldier to the safest place I could to treat his wounds, because at that point we had started taking small arms fire as well.”

Behind a small dirt wall, shielded from incoming fire, Williamson did everything he could to keep his soldiers alive.

“I used gauze and bandages, gave him drugs and fluid, and right after I applied a tourniquet to his arm, that’s when,” he paused, this time with a deep breath. “I heard them calling for me again.”

“So I put on the tourniquet and ran over to my first sergeant, who I thought was dead,” he remembered. “I didn’t see him breathing, I didn’t see him yelling or screaming. I just saw huge holes in him. He was laid out.”

Williamson knew he had to take action, and quick. But as they started taking fire once again, Williamson did the only the only thing he could and hurled his body over his first sergeant, knowing he had to protect him.

“I didn’t know where the attack was coming from and it was just my first reaction,” Williamson humbly explained. “It’s my job to keep those guys healthy.”

“But we found a way to move my first sergeant to a safe place and I got to work, trying to save this man’s life,” he continued. “I used everything I had –QuikClot, tourniquets, bandages, drugs, and every last drop of the fluids I had. All I could think was ‘stop the bleeding, save this person’s life’.”

“Gosh, it’s been just over a year ago, now, and I’ve only ever told that story once,” he said.

The incident lasted about 10 minutes. Williamson said when he looks back on this event it feels like he’s watching an “old slow-motion movie reel,” but at the time it, it seemed like mere seconds.

Thanks to quick thinking, dedication and selflessness, not only did every soldier survive that day, they survived every mission, and returned home to their families. > > > READ MORE

Has ‘Baghdad Bob’ Moved to Tehran?

By Daniel Pipes

July 20, 2012 10:02 A.M.

American reporters gave Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi information minister under Saddam Hussein during the American-led invasion of 2003, the disdainful name “Baghdad Bob” (and the British called him “Comical Ali”). He spouted wildly inaccurate propaganda during his daily press briefings, praising the Iraqi troops and telling fabulous tales of how they had crushed the foreign invaders, even as those invaders could be seen on the screen moving in on him.

Well, Iranian brigadier generals seem to be emulating Bob. Two recent quotes (with some editing of the English):

Brigadier General Hossein Salami, lieutenant commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps: “The IRGC is never intimidated by the hugeness of the aircraft carriers and the roaring of missiles of U.S. and trans-regional enemies, and their equipment is nothing more than rusty iron in its eyes.” Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi, the minister of defense, in a telephone conversation with his Syrian counterpart just as he took over from his assassinated predecessor, paraphrased by the Islamic Republic News Agency: “Iran is confident that Syria’s powerful defense system will made the United States, its regional allies, and Israel back down from their plan of achieving their goals in the region. He said the Zionist regime and terrorists can not affect Syrian army’s strong will and can not build a stronghold for Israel through psychological operations in Syria.”

Comments: (1) One hopes that these remarks are not sincerely believed for, as Geoffrey Blainey convincingly argues in The Causes of War, the leading cause of fighting is over-optimism: “Wars usually begin when two nations disagree on their relative strength, and wars usually cease when the fighting nations agree on their relative strength.” (2) Even if not sincerely believed, such claims take on a life of their own and often lead to regrettable consequences.

AND for a little more fun, read Baghdad Bob Named New Head of DNC!

BEWARE: Islam is Coming

And to those who argue that Islam is a “religion of peace,” I can only reiterate what others in the know have said (from the intelligence community) … The fundamental Islamists are practicing what Mohammed defined as Jihad. Those who are living more peacefully, are actually in disobedience to the tenets of the faith. Until those tenets are changed, Islam will always be contrary to peace, and contrary to the US Constitution!

I applaud Sen Michele Bachmann for taking a courageous stand against those who oppose our way of life, our very existence! Have we forgotten 9/11 or been sucked into one of the many false conspiracy theories? Have we been blinded by the misleading mainstream media into wanting to appease these people? Is it OK that a known “terrorist” now associated with the Muslim Brotherhood is permitted to dine in the White House? What has happened to turn things upside down? What have they done that has cleared them as “good guys?”

Explorers find downed German U-Boat off Massachusetts nearly 70 years after it sank

July 23, 2012: This sonar image provided by GK Consulting shows a World War II-era German submarine U-550, found by a team of explorers. (GK Consulting)

BOSTON – Divers have discovered a World War II-era German submarine nearly 70 years after it sank under withering U.S. attack in waters off Nantucket.

The U-550 was found Monday by a privately funded group organized by New Jersey lawyer Joe Mazraani. It was the second trip in two years to the site by the team, some of whom had been searching for the lost U-boat for two decades.

Using side-scan sonar, the seven-man team located the wreck listing to its side in deep water about 70 miles south of Nantucket.

Sonar operator Garry Kozak said he spotted the 252-foot submarine during the second of an exhausting two days of searching. Kozak said the team asked him if they’d found it, then erupted in joy without a word from him.
“They could see it with the grin (on my face) and the look in my eyes,” Kozak said.

On April 16, 1944, the U-550 torpedoed the gasoline tanker SS Pan Pennsylvania, which had lagged behind its protective convoy as it set out with 140,000 barrels of gasoline for Great Britain, according to the U.S. Coast Guard website and research by Mazraani.

The U-boat slipped under the doomed tanker to hide. But one of the tanker’s three escorts, the USS Joyce, saw it on sonar and severely damaged it by dropping depth charges.

The Germans, forced to surface, manned their deck guns while another escort vessel, the USS Gandy, returned fire and rammed the U-boat. The third escort, the USS Peterson, then hit the U-boat with two more depth charges. The crew abandoned the submarine, but not before setting off explosions to scuttle it. The submarine hadn’t been seen again until Monday.

This April 16, 1944 photo provided by the U.S. Navy, posted on a U.S. Coast Guard web site, shows crewmen of German submarine U-550 abandoning ship in the Atlantic Ocean. (AP/US Navy)

The U-550 is one of several World War II-era German U-boats that have been discovered off the U.S. coast, but it’s the only one that went down in that area, Mazraani said. He said it’s been tough to find largely because military positioning of the battle was imprecise, and searchers had only a general idea where the submarine was when it sank. Kozak noted that the site is far offshore and has only limited windows of good weather.

The team towed a side-scan sonar vessel in a mow-the-lawn pattern over the search area and found the U-500 after covering 100 square miles of ocean, between the trip this year and last year, Kozak said.

Just the nose of U-boat was visible on sonar on the first pass, but the team was delirious after the second pass. when the sonar image made it obvious they’d found it, Mazraani said. Quick dives to the wreck to beat bad weather confirmed the find with pictures.

The other team members were Steve Gatto, Tom Packer, Brad Sheard, Eric Takakjian and Anthony Tedsechi
Mazraani is cagey about the vessel’s precise location, saying only that it’s in deep water. Mazraani’s said his best estimate was that the team spent thousands of dollars of its own money on the expedition. He joked that no one on the team, whose members range in age from the mid-20s to mid-50s, stands to make money from the find unless someone writes a book.

Mazraani said the next step is to contact any sailors or their families from the escort vessels, the tanker and the German U-boat to share the news and show the pictures. Another trip to the site is coming, he said, adding the investigation has just started.

“The history behind it all is really what drives us,” Mazraani said.

OBAMA COUNTING ON CIVIL UNREST TO WIN THE ELECTION…DHS PUTS OUT URGENT ORDER FOR RIOT GEAR!

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Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

OBAMA COUNTING ON CIVIL UNREST TO WIN THE ELECTION…DHS PUTS OUT URGENT ORDER FOR RIOT GEAR!

THIS IS OBAMA’S ONLY “HOPE” IN 20102…BRACE YOURSELF AMERICA!
(Please read to the end)

The Department of Homeland Security has put out an urgent solicitation for hundreds of items of “riot gear,” in preparation for expected unrest at the upcoming Republican National Convention, Democratic National Convention and next year’s presidential inauguration.

This is by no means the only indication that the Department of Homeland Security is gearing up for civil unrest inside the United States.

Back in March, the DHS awarded defense contractor ATK a deal to provide the DHS with 450 million rounds of bullets over a five year period.

The DHS has also recently purchased a number of bullet-proof checkpoint booths that include ‘stop and go’ lights.

Earlier this year, the federal agency also hired hundreds of new security guards to protect government buildings

In January, residents were stunned to see FPS agents armed with semiautomatic guns stationed outside a Social Security office in Florida checking ID’s as part of an exercise.

The Federal Protective Service has also been used by the DHS to track the political activities of peaceful advocacy groups. > > > READ MORE

Shocker of the Week: Illegal Immigrants Exploit Obama Amnesty Program to Stay in U.S.

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border security, Executive Order bypassing Congress, Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Napolitano, National Border Patrol Council

The press conference comes just days after the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-illegal immigration group, released a report claiming the administration has worked for the past three-and-a-half years to undermine immigration enforcement.

via The Foundry

President Obama’s unilateral decision to implement parts of the failed DREAM Act legislation has allowed “dreamers” to game the system and stay in the U.S. illegally, according to two union leaders representing immigration agents.

Chris Crane, who represents Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, explained at a press conference:

Prosecutorial discretion for dreamers is solely based on the individual’s claims. Our orders are if an alien says they went to high school, then let them go.… Officers have been told that there is no burden for the alien to prove anything.… At this point we don’t even know why [the Department of Homeland Security] has criteria at all, as there is no requirement or burden to prove anything on the part of the alien.

We believe that significant numbers of people who are not dreamers are taking advantage of this practice to avoid arrest.

George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council union, added that the Department of Homeland Security has made it impossible for agents to do their jobs, with Crane stating that it’s led to disorganization and “confusion” at ICE.

Obama via executive branch fiat has granted effective amnesty to any illegal immigrant who claims that he or she came to America as a child. With no way to verify such a claim, America’s immigration enforcement officers are left powerless to enforce the actual immigration laws passed by Congress and signed by a President.

Beyond the practical problems, as Heritage previously stated about the Obama Administration’s imperial immigration policy:

The fundamental problem is that the Administration is trying to implement laws that Congress hasn’t passed. The President himself has admitted that he doesn’t have the constitutional authority to implement the DREAM Act: “The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting, I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that’s not how our system works.”

One of the reasons our Founding Fathers separated the powers among the three branches of government is to ensure that laws have the majority support of the people’s representatives, who take due consideration of all the competing interests. By circumventing the legislative branch and its deliberative processes, President Obama made a decision that subverts the rule of law and makes enforcement a road riddled with pot holes.

NOTE: What is the point of having Laws, if money or power or Executive Order can supersede the LAW? What is the point of establishing borders if they will not be respected and maintained particularly by the arm of the government established for the sole purpose of “Homeland Security?” The pathetic thing about this administration and those who support it is their nullification of the historical greatness of the American people. We can handle anything, if only we know the TRUTH, but this administration doesn’t think we can handle the truth. Neither does he think we are able to take care of ourselves AND the poor and needy among us. He is very wrong … on both counts!

BTW … there is still nothing preventing the “RICH” from “donating” MORE of their income than the IRS requires of them if they choose … and that’s true for any of us. I’ll stick to “charity” in my own way, thanks!