CovenantNews.com

The Heller Misdirection

William Norman Grigg / Pro Libertate:
Like the inhabitants of other formerly free societies, Americans are content to define "freedom" in terms of those liberties we are permitted to exercise. Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (.pdf) is perfectly in harmony with this self-defeating concept of "freedom." It is entirely appropriate that the decision was written by Antonin Scalia, the most reliably authoritarian and consistently liberty-aversive member of the Court. With an air of regal condescension, Scalia allows that the Second Amendment acknowledges and protects an individual right to armed self-defense. He then explicitly limits the extent to which that "right" can be exercised, thereby redefining it as a State-conferred privilege. (Published by The Right Source)

Whistleblower: Spy Bill Will Create Police State

Ryan Singel / Wired.com:
Mark Klein, the retired AT&T engineer who stepped forward with the technical documents at the heart of the anti-wiretapping case against AT&T, is furious at the Senate's vote on Wednesday night to hold a vote on a bill intended to put an end to that lawsuit and more than 30 others. "[Wednesday]'s vote by Congress effectively gives retroactive immunity to the telecom companies and endorses an all-powerful president. It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution."

Who's Planning Our Next War?

Patrick J. Buchanan / Buchanan.org:
Of the Axis-of-Evil nations named in his State of the Union in 2002, President Bush has often said, "The United States will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." He failed with North Korea. Will he accept failure in Iran, though there is no hard evidence Iran has an active nuclear weapons program? William Kristol of The Weekly Standard said Sunday a U.S. attack on Iran after the election is more likely should Barack Obama win. Presumably, Bush would trust John McCain to keep Iran nuclear free.

Congress Approves Israel Aid Increase

AFP via Yahoo! News:
The US Congress has approved a 170 million dollar increase in security assistance to Israel as part of its new 10-year, 30 billion dollar defense aid commitment to the Jewish state. The money for Israel was part of a larger supplemental spending bill that included 162 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The legislation gained final approval in a 92-6 Senate vote late Thursday. America's pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, welcomed the congressional action, saying it would increase US aid to Israel to 2.55 billion dollars in fiscal year 2009, up from 2.38 billion dollars this year.

Rogue Nation

Charley Reese / LewRockwell.com:
One gets the impression that there are some people in Washington who believe that Israel or the U.S. can bomb Iran's nuclear reactors, fly home, and it will be mission complete. It makes you wonder if perhaps there is a virus going around that is gradually making people stupid. If we or Israel attack Iran, we will have a new war on our hands. The Iranians are not going to shrug off an attack and say, "You naughty boys, you." Consider how much trouble Iraq has given us. Some 4,000 dead and 29,000 wounded, a half a trillion dollars in cost and still climbing, and five years later, we cannot say that the country is pacified.

Christ-like Soldiers?

Laurence Vance / The LRC Blog:
Since this is the Sunday before the Fourth of July, many churches held their patriotic services today. On the way to church this morning I passed by another church and saw this sign: The American soldier and Jesus Christ. One gives his life for your freedom. The other for your soul. I can't think of anything more blasphemous than mentioning Jesus Christ, the Lord, the Son of God, the Prince of Peace in the same breath as a U.S. soldier who bombs, maims, kills, and then dies for a lie.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature

Murray N. Rothbard / LewRockwell.com:
For well over a century, the Left has generally been conceded to have morality, justice, and "idealism" on its side; the Conservative opposition to the Left has largely been confined to the "impracticality" of its ideals. A common view, for example, is that socialism is splendid "in theory," but that it cannot "work" in practical life. What the Conservatives failed to see is that while short-run gains can indeed be made by appealing to the impracticality of radical departures from the status quo, that by conceding the ethical and the "ideal" to the Left they were doomed to long-run defeat.

Bush Ended U.S. As a Republic

Gore Vidal / Press TV:
Gore Vidal, US novelist, historian and social critic says the Bush regime has killed all of the constitutional links that made the US a republic. On early Friday morning Iran time, in an exclusive interview with Press TV, Vidal said that President Bush has rid the country of the Bill of Rights, habeas corpus and the entire legacy of the Magna Carta in the name of war on terror. He also criticized the House of Representatives for not impeaching President Bush, over a wide array of subjects such as disclosure of CIA agent Valerie Plame's covert status. Vidal did however single out Rep. Dennis Kuchinich for drawing up articles of impeachment against the president.

'Compassionate Conservatism' & Hog-Trough Faith

Dan Eggen / The Washington Post:
President Bush focused attention on that signature phrase last week at a national conference for federal faith-based programs -- among his first, and still most controversial, policy initiatives. As he noted in his speech on Thursday, Bush began talking as long ago as 1999 about loosening restrictions on the participation of religiously affiliated groups in government programs. That led to his executive order creating the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the White House, and a proliferation of similar offices throughout the government. But controversies have erupted regularly, usually focused on allegations of improper favoritism for the religious right or improper proselytizing. Last week, the Justice Department fired an official under investigation for her role in doling out faith-based grants after she did not show up for a House hearing.

President Bush Attends Office of Faith-Based
and Community Initiatives' National Conference
Omni Shoreham Hotel - Washington, D.C.
White House Press Release

Disturbing Trends in the Evangelical Community

Rev. Jack Wyman / USA TODAY:
Religious faith in this country isn't what it used to be, according to the recent Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's survey ("Believers OK with many paths," Cover story, Life, Tuesday). While tolerance for diversity and the continued high levels of faith in God are encouraging, the data point to some disturbing trends within the evangelical community. It seems the church has struck an iceberg of disbelief in the sea of cultural postmodernism. Sound doctrine has become an anachronism. History and theology are ignored. Tradition is scoffed at. Evangelicals have been duped into allowing their faith to be politicized for partisan advantage, creating a widespread impression of bigotry, narrow-mindedness, self-righteousness and even hatred toward those who are different.

Evangelical movement touts 'Jesus for president'

Eric Marrapodi and Kate Bolduan / CNN.com:
They're spiritual misfits. Rabble-rousers. They packed the shell of the old Baptist church on Negley Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to hear author, Christian activist and fellow misfit Shane Claiborne stump on the campaign for a third party candidate, Jesus. The dreadlocked Christian activist from Philadelphia and his team parked a black school bus around the back. The hand-painted gold letters on the side read "Jesus for President." Claiborne is touring the country, packing churches and community centers, in support of the book he and Chris Haw co-authored, "Jesus for President."

PCUSA General Assembly Drops Ban on Gay Clergy

Eric Gorski / The Washington Times:
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), bitterly divided over sexuality and the Bible, set up another confrontation Friday over its ban on ordaining non-celibate gays and lesbians. The denomination's General Assembly, meeting in San Jose, Calif., voted 54 percent to 46 percent Friday to drop the requirement that would-be ministers, deacons and elders live in "fidelity within the covenant of marriage between and a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness."

Christian Teen Decapitated at Six Flags

Rhonda Cook / The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
The popular "Batman the Ride" rollercoaster at Six Flags Over Georgia remained closed Sunday while authorities continued investigating the death of a teenager who jumped over two fences and was struck by the ride. The 17-year-old South Carolina teen who died was identified as Asia Leeshawn Ferguson, of Springfield, S.C. He was on a church outing when the incident occurred about 2 p.m. Saturday. It was the second Batman ride-related death at the Cobb County park. Ferguson was decapitated when the ride struck him, police said. The teen was with a group from Oakley Spring Baptist Church in Salley, S.C., a small town about 50 miles east of Augusta. He had been in Six Flags earlier in the day, but he and another boy left the park property to get some lunch, according to Cobb County police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce.

Related:
Family Mourns Teen Hit by Roller Coaster in Ga.
The Associated Press
AUSTELL, Ga. -- The father of a South Carolina teenager decapitated by a roller coaster at a Georgia amusement park said Sunday that family members may never know why he hopped two fences to enter a restricted area. Police said Asia LeeShawn Ferguson IV, 17, of Columbia, S.C., died when he was hit by the Batman roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia on Saturday. The ride was to remain closed through Monday out of respect for his family.

Teen Was Taking Shortcut Back to Park
By Clif Leblanc / The State, SC
SPRINGFIELD -- The skies darkened and thundered, and raindrops fell on a pained Asia Ferguson as he gazed toward the cemetery where he buried his father in April and soon will inter his teenage son. Asia LeeShawn Ferguson IV, 17, died Saturday in a freak amusement park accident in Atlanta when he was struck by a roller coaster he was not riding and was decapitated. During the bus ride back Sunday to this Orangeburg County town where the Fergusons have attended Oakey Spring Missionary Baptist Church for five generations, the father said, "We still don't know what happened." All he could do was lament the gnawing loss.

A Trip to Gettysburg Raises Question

Michael Peroutka & Johon Lofton / The American View Radio:
Michael and I discuss my first bus tour recently of the battlefield at the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania -- a tour that completely ignored all the Confederate Memorials which made me something less than a happy camper -- though I did not actually camp out at the park. This tour did, however, make me wonder: Where does the Federal Government get the right to own or operate National Parks? Answer: There is no such right; such ownership is clearly un-Constitutional. Maybe, if the South had won, there would be no National Parks, no lawless land-grab by the national government; maybe, had the South won, there would be no national government, at least not as we have it now.

Prophecy, Secret Things, and Obedience

Chris Ortiz / Chalcedon Blog:
Prophecy is typically seen in these terms, a foresight or prediction of a future event usually disconnected from any present circumstances. Nostradamus is the epitome of such wizardry. It is laughable that people are still curious to see if contemporary events fulfill this false prophet's soothsaying. Biblical prophecy does not function in that manner. The prophets of the Bible spoke in terms of the covenant, and each prophecy was the historical development of either the obedience or disobedience of the past. This is not an attractive definition in the age of Charismania where charlatans sporting prolific gifts of prophecy make both individual and national predictions as signs of their authority.

OUT Magazine Lists Top Sodomites

Peter LaBarbera / Americans for Truth:
Below is the homosexual magazine OUT's list of its "Power 50" of influential homosexuals. OUT calls it "our first annual ranking of the homos who really make the world go round. These are queers you don't want to mess with.the 50 most influential homosexuals in America." We are intrigued by the fact that the same movement that once cried out for "privacy" and "to be left alone" feels free to publicly declare people's homosexuality for them (Anderson Cooper, No. 2, and Jodie Foster, No. 43). On the other hand, if OUT is right, it might explain Cooper's bias in his reporting on the homosexual issue: in a recent interview that the CNN host did with pro and con advocates on a "gay parenting" story, he blatantly favored the "gay" side in his questioning.

How Faggots Shape U.S. Politics

How God Shapes U.S. Politics
"And the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants."

"And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;)" Leviticus 18

Editor's note: The solution to the homosexual problem will not be solved by banning, or attempting to ban, "gay marriage". The "gay marriage" issue is a Snipe Hunt. To solve the homosexual problem we must obey the commandments of God concerning this filthy abomination (Leviticus 18:22). We must turn from our wicked way and obey the commandments of God, or, America will continue to be cursed until she is no longer a people. Proverbs 28: 9 says, "He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination." When we apply this proverb to Christians' rebellion of the commandments of God concerning homosexuality, it means we do not have a prayer until we repent from our wicked rebellion. -- Jim Rudd

Who's to Blame for High Oil Prices?

Stefan M.I. Karlsson / LewRockwell.com:
The long-term solution is to reduce or abolish taxation on oil production and to abolish all regulatory restrictions (whether motivated for environmentalist reasons as in the U.S. or nationalist reasons as in Mexico) on oil drilling. Opponents of drilling often reply to this that it won’t provide any short-term relief. But while that is true, but there won’t be any short-term relief without drilling either and the point of drilling is to provide long-term relief. Moreover, their preferred solution of having the government invest in research to invent more so-called renewable sources of energy is likely to take even longer to provide relief (if it ever provides relief). To provide short-term relief, different solutions are needed. This means, for example, that the U.S. government should start releasing the oil held in the so-called Strategic Petroleum Reserve, while the Fed should stop its inflationary policies.

Why Conspiracy Theories Should Exist

Bret McAtee / The Backwater Report:
In what is already old news, last week in Michigan, two Muslim women at Barack Obama's rally were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women's head scarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate. It seems the campaign was afraid of the image that such women would create for the Obama campaign. We already know how all of political theater manages the 'news.' This is something done by Republicans and Democrats alike. Images are arranged to communicate a particular spin.

Bush Pastor Linked to Dobson-Bashing

WorldNetDaily:
A campaign worker for Barack Obama and the Texas Methodist pastor who advises President Bush have been linked to a website that bashes prominent Christian leader and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. The site, called "jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme," appeared just days ago after Dobson criticized Obama's interpretation of the Bible during a 2006 speech and Obama responded essentially by calling Dobson a liar, accusing him of "making things up."

Anyone Can Cook, But Chefs Create

Eric Rauch / American Vision:
With the opening of the new Pixar film, WALL-E, I thought we might revisit their last film, Ratatouille. Pixar has not only consistently raised the bar for feature and short-length animation films in terms of visual quality, their films are also extremely well-written and usually contain moralistic themes and dilemmas. WALL-E looks to be no different in this regard, especially in light of this interview with director/writer Andrew Stanton.

Fine for Preaching in Public Challenged

WorldNetDaily:
A man arrested for preaching on a public sidewalk too close to the one of the nation's premiere representations of freedom, the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, is appealing his conviction and $400 fine. On Oct. 7, Michael A. Marcavage, director of the evangelistic organization Repent America, was arrested while preaching on the sidewalk outside the Liberty Bell Center and urging Americans to halt abortion. "We need to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ," he told the crowd.

Boise Slaps Christian Duo With Lien

Fox 12 Boise:
Two anti-abortion activists in Boise are asking supporters for $10,131 for legal bills, after the city of Boise slapped them with a lien on their property following their unsuccessful fight to return a Ten Commandments monument to a public park. Bryan Fischer, a lobbyist who heads up the conservative Idaho Values Alliance, and anti-abortion activist Brandi Swindell were ordered by a federal U.S. District Court judge to pay Boise's attorney fees in the 2004 case.

Related:
Cost of fighting for Ten Commandments: $10,000
A little more than four years ago, Brandi Swindell, Bryan Fischer and a group called Generation Life hoped to stop the city council of Boise, Idaho, from removing a Ten Commandments monument that had stood in a city park since 1965. The city council accepted no public input into its decision, so Generation Life was compelled to file a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order on the city's action.

GOA Hits the Airwaves on DC v. Heller Decision

Gun Owners of America:
Yesterday was a historic day for the gun rights movement. For starters, Gun Owners of America is pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court, in the DC v. Heller opinion, struck down the handgun ban and trigger lock requirement in the nation's capital. As a result, GOA experts have spent the last two days using radio, TV and print media to explain the Court's decision and its impact upon the future of the gun debate in America.

NRA Sues Chicago, San Francisco Over Gun Bans

Chicago Tribune:
A day after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision striking down a gun ban in Washington, the National Rifle Association on Friday sued Chicago and three suburbs to have their firearm bans repealed. The separate federal suits by the NRA target gun bans in Evanston, Morton Grove and Oak Park in addition to Chicago. On Thursday, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association also sued Chicago to overturn its 26-year gun ban.

Related:
NRA Sues to Overturn S.F. Gun Ban in City Housing
The Associated Press:
SAN FRANCISCO -- The National Rifle Association sued the city of San Francisco on Friday to overturn its ban on handguns in public housing, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in the nation's capital. The legal action follows a similar lawsuit against the city of Chicago over its handgun ban, filed within hours of Thursday's high court ruling.

A Review of The Shack

Susan Eby / The Chalcedon Foundation:
It's troubling that anyone who actually reads and loves the Bible would find reason to be even remotely interested in pursing an introduction to New Age philosophy, but apparently it's currently sweeping evangelical Christianity with an insidious vengeance. I confess, I wasn't paying attention, so therefore, having received glowing reports of how "The Shack" by William P. Young would revolutionize my perception of God, I got myself a copy with the eager, albeit naive assumption that it might have something constructive to contribute to my ever-growing faith. What I found instead, however, might just as easily have been titled, "New Age 101" or even, "The Gospel According to John Lennon." (Okay now, everybody hold hands across the aisle and sing together, "All You NEED-IS-LOVE..." But I digress.)

What Would Jesus Steal?

Gary North / LewRockwell.com:
If voters can be made to feel guilty about their economic success, they can be manipulated. This is why the politics of guilt manipulation is at the heart of the welfare state. In a systematic political program to make people feel guilty, the Social Gospel movement within Protestantism has played an important role for over a century. Economist-historian Murray Rothbard in a 1986 essay, "The Progressive Era and the Family," described this development.

Proud Pagan Witch Backs Obama's Poverty Bill

Cliff Kincaid / Accuracy in Media:
While Senator Barack Obama struggles to keep the public in the dark about the nature of his pro-U.N. Global Poverty Act, a recent "Bay Area Interfaith Leaders' Luncheon" was held to lobby for Senate passage of the bill, whose cost has been estimated at $845 billion. An actual witch who spoke at a "Pagan Pride" festival in San Francisco was one of the listed participants. The witch, known as the "Elder Donald Frew" of the "Wiccan Community," was interviewed by the Reverend Don Lewis of “Witch School International” for a "reality" show called "Magick TV" and is shown talking about his involvement in the United Nations-backed United Religions Initiative. Magick TV features a "daily spell."

Father's Day Banned In Scottish Schools

Jim Kouri / NewsWithViews.com:
Following the recent law in Britain prohibiting the use of the words mom ('mum') and dad in public schools, the politically-correct forces in Europe once again succeeded -- this time having fathers removed from their children's classrooms. According to reports coming out of Edinburgh, Scotland, children in public schools are prohibited from making Father's Day cards and related gifts as was customary in the past. The rationale given by school administrators for their action is their wish to avoid embarrassing school children who live with single mothers or lesbian partners.

Congress Passes Spending Bill for Bush's War

The Associated Press:
The Senate passed a $162 billion war spending plan Thursday, sending to President Bush legislation that will pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan until the next president takes office. The spending bill will bring to more than $650 billion the amount Congress has provided for the Iraq war since it started more than five years ago. For operations in Afghanistan, the total is nearly $200 billion, according to congressional officials.

Related:
Senate Passes Broad War Funding Measure
By Paul Kane / The Washington Post:
In a 92 to 6 vote, the Senate yesterday approved unrestricted funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that allows continuation of the current military course of action through the end of President Bush's term and beyond. In the end, the $257.5 billion emergency spending bill, which had been the subject of two months of intense debate and negotiation, won overwhelming support in the Senate and the House, where it was approved last Friday by 416 to 12. Bush is expected to sign the bill next week.

Ron Paul Speaks Out Against War With Iran

Michael Nystrom / Campaign for Liberty:
Ron Paul gave a speech on the House floor Thursday condemning the "virtual war resolution" soon to be considered by the House of Representatives. This bill already has 208 co-sponsors, and will likely be voted on after the 4th of July holiday. A related bill is being worked on in the Senate, with 29 Cosponsors. Many of the cosponsors are Democrats. Who says the Democratic Party is the anti-war party? You can see the video of Dr. Paul speaking out forcefully against this resolution here, sadly to a nearly empty House chamber.

Related:
U.S. Builds 4 Bases On Iran/Iraq Border
Press TV:
The US military has constructed four advanced bases 20 miles from Iraq's border with Iran, a senior Iraqi police officer has announced. al-Noor newspaper quoted the official as saying. He added that one of the bases has been located 30 km (20 miles) from the first border town with Iran and houses remote-controlled launching pads as well as radar systems similar to ones used in Kuwait during the first Persian Gulf war.

House Republicans Block Drilling on Federal Land

The Associated Press:
House Republicans blocked Democrats on Thursday from requiring oil and gas companies to drill on the millions of acres of government land and water on which they already own federal leases. Seeking to counter a push by congressional Republicans to lift a long-standing drilling ban on most offshore U.S. waters, Democrat leaders maintained the industry should first go after oil and natural gas in areas where they hold leases. But the measure was defeated 223-195, short of the two-thirds vote required, with only a handful of Republicans voting for it.

Oil Hits $142 Over Weak Dollar

John Wilen / AP Business Writer:
Oil futures climbed briefly to a new record above $142 a barrel Friday on expectations that the weakening dollar, a major factor in crude's stratospheric rise, will extend its decline and add to oil's appeal. Retail gas prices inched lower overnight, but are likely to resume their own trek into record territory now that oil futures have broken out of the trading range where they had been for nearly 3 weeks. Light, sweet crude for August delivery rose as high as $142.26 a barrel in premarket electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange before pulling back to trade up $1.46 at $141.10. On Thursday, the contract shot past $140 and rose more than $5 to a new settlement record.

Senate Postpones Vote on Illegal Wiretapping Bill

The Associated Press:
The Senate on Thursday put off voting on controversial electronic surveillance legislation, in spite of what appeared to be overwhelming support for the bill. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and more than a dozen other senators who oppose telecom immunity threw up procedural delays that threatened to force the Senate into a midnight or weekend session. The prospect of further delays was enough to cause Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to postpone the vote until after the weeklong July 4 vacation. The bill provides legal immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the government wiretap American phone and computer lines without court permission after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Related:
Senate Debates Rewrite of '78 Law
That Created Secret Intelligence Court
By Paul Kane / The Washington Post:
The Senate, clearing a key parliamentary hurdle, yesterday voted to begin debating a broad revision of U.S. intelligence laws that includes a controversial plan to grant immunity to telecommunications companies that assisted in the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. On a vote of 80 to 15, the Senate officially began debate on a sweeping rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, with an eye toward final passage of the bill as early as today. The large margin demonstrated that the bill's opponents -- the American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy rights organizations -- do not have enough support to derail the measure through a filibuster, which Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) had threatened.

Chuck Baldwin Tours Border Outposts

Constitution Party / News Wire:
Chuck Baldwin will visit California's southern border with Mexico in an effort to call attention to the need for ending the open borders policy that threatens our nation. "America's back is breaking from the burden of immigration policies that demand taxpayers pay to educate, incarcerate, medicate and house those who have broken into our country," said Baldwin. "There can be no compromise. While Obama and McCain are pandering for the Hispanic vote by promising more taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens, Americans are clear they want the borders sealed, and they want the gravy train to come to a screeching halt", Baldwin added.

Supreme Court Strikes Down D.C. Gun Ban

Todd J. Gillman / The Dallas Morning News:
The Supreme Court tossed out a handgun ban in the nation's capital on Thursday, holding for the first time that the Second Amendment does protect an individual right to self-defense and gun ownership. But in its first hard look at gun rights in nearly 70 years, the court also held – in a narrow, 5-4 ruling – that the right is subject to some reasonable limitations.

Maintaining Our Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Judge Roy Moore / Gun Owners of America:
When Washington, D.C., decided to pass a law essentially banning the ownership of handguns, even in one's own home, the stage was set for one of the most controversial issues to be considered by the United States Supreme Court in many years -- "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" as protected in the Second Amendment. The decision in District of Columbia v. Heller later this year promises to be a landmark ruling that will affect the lives of all Americans regarding one of the most basic liberties we enjoy under the United States Constitution: gun ownership.

How 'Human Rights' Commissions Erode Freedom

Lee Duigon / The Chalcedon Foundation:
A recent decision by the New Mexico Human Rights Commission, to punish a Christian photographer for not taking pictures of a lesbian "commitment ceremony," raises the specter of a Canadian-style "human rights" regime being imposed on the United States. As humanists labor to reconstruct society under a secular theocracy, an invaluable weapon in their arsenal will be the "human rights commission." "These commissions are being used more and more, definitely, as the weapon of choice against Christians," said Jordan Lorence, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund.

A Naked Public Square?

Bret McAtee / The Backwater Report:

"In more popular parlance, however, all three words, - 'secular,' 'secularization,' and 'secularism,' - have to do with the squeezing of the religious to the periphery of life. More precisely, secularization is the process that progressively removes religion from the public arena and reduces it to the private realm; secularism is the stance that endorses and promotes such a process. Religion may be ever so important to the individual, and, few secular persons will object. But if religion makes any claims regarding policy in the public arena, it is viewed as a threat, and intolerant as well."

D. A. Carson
Christ And Culture Revisited – pg. 116

Before getting to this quote I want to make it clear that I always find reading and listening to Carson stimulating. My posts here continue to critique him but that shouldn't be interpreted as meaning that I disagree with him at every point.

ACLU 'Threatens' Naval Academy Over Daily Prayer

Jacqueline L. Salmon / The Washington Post:
The American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to sue the U.S. Naval Academy unless it abolishes its daily lunchtime prayer, saying that some midshipmen have felt pressured to participate. In a letter to the Naval Academy, Deborah Jeon, legal director for the ACLU of Maryland, said it was "long past time" for the academy to discontinue the tradition. She said the practice violates midshipmen's freedom to practice religion as their conscience leads them. The Naval Academy rejected the ACLU's request that the prayer be eliminated.

America Needs Some Pioneers

Coach Dave Daubenmire / NewsWithViews.com:
Let me ask you something. What has happened to America? Where is that pioneer spirit? It flows through our blood, it is in our DNA, and we are a nation of achievers. What has become of our spunk? I remember a phrase that one of my coaches used on me one time. "If you think you can...or if you think you can't...you're right."

'Cleaning Toilet' E-Mailer Responds

Gary DeMar / American Vision:
The response to Monday's article was a hit! We've received nearly 200 replies from homeschool students and parents from all over the country, and they keep coming in. It's also been picked up by other web sites and homeschool organizations and distributed widely. I am amazed at the wonderful accomplishments of so many young people and the dedication of their parents. The e-mailer who made the "cleaning toilets" remark has no idea how diverse, accomplished, and hard working the homeschool community is. None of this matters to him.

Do Threats Make You Nervous?

Don Bacon / LewRockwell.com:
Randolph Bourne: "Wartime brings the ideal of the State out into very clear relief, and reveals attitudes and tendencies that were hidden. In times of peace the sense of the State flags in a republic that is not militarized. For war is essentially the health of the State. The ideal of the State is that within its territory its power and influence should be universal. As the Church is the medium for the spiritual salvation of man, so the State is thought of as the medium for his political salvation. Its idealism is a rich blood flowing to all the members of the body politic. And it is precisely in war that the urgency for union seems greatest, and the necessity for universality seems most unquestioned." Part of American militarization is the expanded US Border Patrol, which operates fixed and roving checkpoints, as well as random vehicle stops, within the United States and its territories. You may not see them where you live, but in the Southwest they have a highly visible presence, and no doubt they will be coming to a community near you eventually.

Senate to Pass Illegal Wiretapping Bill

The Associated Press:
The Senate signaled an end Wednesday to months of rancorous debate over surveillance legislation that would protect from civil lawsuits the telecommunications companies that helped the government wiretap American lines. By an 80-15 vote, the Senate turned back a last-ditch effort to kill the bill, setting up a vote to approve the measure on Thursday. Critics of the bill argue that immunizing the companies from lawsuits amounts to letting the Bush administration off the hook for nearly six years of warrantless tapping of phones and computer lines inside the United States following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

FISA Flippers See More Telecom Cash

Chris Frates / CBS News - The Politico:
House Democrats who flipped their votes to support retroactive immunity for telecom companies in last week's FISA bill took thousands of dollars more from phone companies than Democrats who consistently voted against legislation with an immunity provision, according to an analysis by MAPLight.org. In March, the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity. But last week, 94 Democrats who supported the March amendment voted to support the compromise FISA legislation, which includes a provision that could let telecom companies that cooperated with the government’s warrantless electronic surveillance off the hook.

SCOTUS: No Death Penalty for Raping Children In Louisiana

AFP / Yahoo! News:
The US Supreme Court rendered an opinion Wednesday that a Louisiana man convicted of raping a child cannot be sentenced to death, saying capital punishment must be reserved for murder cases. By a one-vote majority of 5-4 the justices said the US constitution which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment" bars the imposition of the death penalty "for the rape of a child where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim's death." The case before the Supreme Court involved an appeal by lawyers for Patrick Kennedy, 43, who was sentenced to death in Louisiana in 2003 for raping his girlfriend's daughter five years earlier, when she was eight years old. In a dissenting opinion, justice Samuel Alito and backed by Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, denounced the decision as too "sweeping." The Supreme Court was banning the death penalty "no matter how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime," Alito wrote.

Unbowed, Officials Vow to Execute Child Rapists

Deborah Hastings / The Associated Press:
Angry politicians vowed to keep writing laws that condemn child rapists to death, despite a Supreme Court decision saying such punishment is unconstitutional. "Anybody in the country who cares about children should be outraged that we have a Supreme Court that would issue a decision like this," said Alabama Attorney General Troy King. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal called the ruling "incredibly absurd,""a clear abuse of judicial authority" and said officials will "evaluate ways to amend our statute to maintain death as a penalty for this horrific crime." Oklahoma officials said they, too, weren't ready to give up, and would "certainly look at what options we have," state senator Jay Paul Gumm said. "I think the people of Oklahoma have spoken loudly that this is one of the most heinous of crimes."

Senate Agrees to Unconstitutional AIDS Bill

Jim Abrams / The Associated Press:
Senate negotiators said Wednesday they had reached a tentative agreement on a key obstacle to one of the most ambitious federal health initiatives ever, a $50 BILLION act to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa and other countries hard-hit by those diseases. The agreement sets the stage for the Senate to vote in the near future on the five-year bill that would more than triple the size of the $15 billion global AIDS bill that Congress, at the urging of President Bush, passed in 2003. The current act expires at the end of September.

Russia Frees US Pastor Jailed for Importing Bullets

The Associated Press:
An American pastor walked free Tuesday after spending nearly five months in a Russian jail for bringing hunting-rifle ammunition into the country. The release of Phillip Miles, 58, came a day after the Moscow City Court reduced his three-year sentence for smuggling and ordered him set free. Miles, a pastor at Christ Community Church in Conway, South Carolina, said he was well treated in custody.

Obama: Dobson Is 'Making Stuff Up'

The Associated Press:
Barack Obama said Tuesday that evangelical leader James Dobson was "making stuff up" when he accused the presumed Democrat presidential nominee of distorting the Bible. Dobson used his Focus on the Family radio program to highlight excerpts of a speech Obama gave in June 2006 to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal. Speaking to reporters on his campaign plane before landing in Los Angeles, Obama said the speech made the argument that people of faith, like himself, "try to translate some of our concerns in a universal language so that we can have an open and vigorous debate rather than having religion divide us." Obama added, "I think you'll see that he was just making stuff up, maybe for his own purposes."

Old Keynesian Dogs, Old Fiscal Tricks

Gary North / LewRockwell.com:
As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly (Proverbs 26:11). We are about to be thrown back into the tender mercies of Keynesian economists. In the current setting, this will push the economy lower rather than higher. The main Keynesian solutions to a faltering economy are federal budget deficits and monetary inflation. This two-part program assumes unemployment at 25% and annual deflation at 10%: the Great Depression in America. Problem: it's not 1936 any more. ... Keynesianism is based on two fundamental ideas: (1) sellers do not learn that something is better than nothing, and therefore will not lower their selling prices; (2) economists do not learn that government spending that is financed by debt is accomplished in one of only two ways: (a) money lent by savers, which could have been lent to businesses or consumers; (b) money lent by a central bank, which lowers the purchasing power of the currency unit. This is a philosophy of something for nothing.

$300 Billion Housing Bailout Passes Senate Test

Julie Hirschfeld Davis / The Associated Press:
A massive foreclosure rescue bill cleared a key Senate test Tuesday by an overwhelming margin, with Democrats and Republicans both eager to claim election-year credit for helping hard-pressed homeowners. The mortgage aid plan would let the Federal Housing Administration back $300 billion in new, cheaper home loans for an estimated 400,000 distressed borrowers who otherwise would be considered too financially risky to qualify for government-insured, fixed-rate loans.

Elites Seek Control Over Cashless Society

Lee Rogers / Rogue Government:
The terrorists in the federal government are continuing their push to implement a cashless economic enslavement system. According to a legislative notice from the U.S. Senate, a new Housing Bill (HR 3221) contains a provision that will require nearly every online credit card transaction to be reported directly to the Internal Revenue Service.

U.S. Army General: Bush Guilty of War Crimes

USA TODAY:
The U.S. general who led the Army's investigation of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal says the Bush administration "has committed war crimes" as a result of what happened to detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay "when the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture." Those declarations, by retired Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, are contained in the preface he wrote for a new report by Physicians for Human Rights, "Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact."

Pentagon Official: Test Weapons on Americans First

Jim Kouri / NewsWithViews.com:
An American military commander is advocating the testing of so-called nonlethal weapons on American citizens prior to using them on our enemies in the Global War on Terrorism. Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne told a Houston Chronicle reporter that nonlethal weapons such as high-powered microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield.

The Homeland Security State: Boyz With Lethal Toyz

William N. Grigg / Pro Libertate:
Couldn't the county simply have paid him for the damage to his well? That's the question that urges itself upon me as I sift through the rubble of last Spring's confrontation in rural Wisconsin between Robert Bayliss and ... well, at last count, roughly two dozen local, county, and state agencies. The anti-Bayliss coalition included elements from no fewer than six SWAT teams and the prominent use of three BearCat (Ballistic Engineered Armored Response and Rescue Counter Attack Truck) military assault vehicles.

Preparing For Battles to Come

Larry Pratt / Gun Owners of America:
For years Gun Owners of America (GOA) and its sister organization Gun Owners' Foundation (GOF) have worked tirelessly in support of a robust Second Amendment guarantee of the right of individual Americans to keep and bear arms. Fighting against gun control in the trenches -- in the state and federal courts, in the court of public opinion, in state legislatures, city councils and Congress -- every step of the way is a dog fight. And GOA has become known as the "no compromise" gun lobby. Our Supreme Court brief in the Heller case was recognized by USA Today as so distinctive that our GOF legal team was invited recently to write the counter-point to that paper's pro-gun control position. In our battle to defend the Second Amendment, we have encountered opposition of two types.

The Obama Campaign Racial Strategy

Bret McAtee / The Backwater Report:
Anybody who has ever worked in a affirmative action work environment has seen this Obama campaign technique a million times. A member of a minority community is caught in some kind of error or malfeasance and the immediate response on their part is the cry of 'racism,' thus seeking to shift the blame on the person who revealed their error. This premeditated technique moves the focus off of their error or malfeasance and makes the issue the motives of the one who revealed their error. The ‘post-racial candidate’ who is supposed to take us beyond race has now officially introduced race into the campaign.

Ron Paul Statement on FISA

Rep. Ron Paul, MD. / News Wire:
The main reason I oppose this latest version is that it still clearly violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution by allowing the federal government to engage in the bulk collection of American citizens’ communications without a search warrant. That US citizens can have their private communication intercepted by the government without a search warrant is anti-American, deeply disturbing, and completely unacceptable. In addition to gutting the fourth amendment, this measure will deprive Americans who have had their rights violated by telecommunication companies involved in the Administration’s illegal wiretapping program the right to seek redress in the courts for the wrongs committed against them.

Obama Supports Telecom Amnesty Bill

Ryan Singel / Wired.com:
Presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama supports the spy bill compromise passed by the House Friday, despite having opposed retroactive amnesty to telecoms that helped with the President's secret, warrantless wiretapping. The measure expands the government's ability to install blanket wiretaps inside domestic communication infrastructure and frees the nation's phone and internet companies from lawsuits accusing them of massive violations of their customers' privacy. The Senate is expected to take up and pass the Bush-approved bill next week.

Feingold & Dodd Fillbustering Wiretap Bill

David Edwards and Nick Juliano / The Raw Story:
In a last-ditch attempt to fix a surveillance bill critics say would essentially legalize President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, Sens. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) have promised to filibuster the bill as long as it offers telecommunications companies retroactive immunity.

Toll Roads Mean Billions in Extra Costs for Motorists

The Newspaper.com:
Revenue collection with toll roads is twenty-five times less efficient than the gas tax. With the promise of federal taxpayer subsidies, many states are rushing to embrace public-private toll road partnership deals as a means of boosting existing state transportation budgets. Our analysis shows, however, that when tolls are used to replace traditional funding sources like the gas tax, the out-of-pocket costs for motorists jumps by a factor of twenty-five.

Bush Ignores Supreme Court's Guantanamo Ruling

AFP Yahoo News:
Hearings for terror suspects before US military tribunals in Guantanamo are going ahead despite a Supreme Court ruling that affirmed detainees have a right to challenge their detention in a civilian court. Legal experts had described the high court's decision as the death knell of the special tribunals created by President George W. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress to try "war on terror" suspects. But Justice Department chief Michael Mukasey said the controversial tribunals at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba would continue their work and last week, two preliminary hearings were held as scheduled.

Antonin Scalia is Un-American

Thomas R. Eddlem / LewRockwell.com:
The following is my concurring opinion in the case recent Supreme Court case Boumediene et al. v. Bush et. al. ... or it would have been, had I been on the court. ``The dissents in this case by four Justices (Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Chief Justice Roberts) reveal a vital truth, that they vigorously disagree with Thomas Jefferson's fundamentally American proposition that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." All men, the Chief Justice's and Justice Scalia's dissents assert, are not equal. Some are more equal than others. And men's rights to liberty are not "inalienable," but rather quite alienable.' '

Related to "all men are created equal"
$10,000 Offer to Name 'One' Pro-Life Justice
DENVER -- "American Right To Life is offering attorney James Bopp $10,000 for National RTL," said the group's president Brian Rohrbough, "if he can name a single justice on the current U.S. Supreme Court who has ever acknowledged that the unborn child has a right to life, whether in a majority opinion or a dissent."

A License to Loot, a Permit to Plunder

William N. Grigg / Pro Libertate:
Digging up the planted axioms that litter our ordinary conversations can be a revealing exercise. We learn how deeply rooted our supposedly free society has become in collectivist and militarist assumptions. For example: How often do we hear or read language that draws a distinction between "police" and "civilians"? Our republican framework of government supposedly prohibits the use of the military in domestic law enforcement. Yet if a police officer isn't a civilian, he of necessity must be considered some variety of soldier: He bears arms, belongs to a force organized in a military hierarchy, issues orders, and expects immediate obedience to his demands.

Ron Paul: A Major Victory for Texas

Rep. Ron Paul, MD. / Texas Straight Talk:
I am pleased to report that last week we received notice that the Texas Department of Transportation will recommend the I-69 Project be developed using existing highway facilities instead of the proposed massive new Trans Texas Corridor/NAFTA Superhighway. According to the Texas Transportation Commissioner, consideration is no longer being given to new corridors and other proposals for a new highway footprint for this project. A major looming threat to property rights and national sovereignty is removed with this encouraging announcement.

Stephen Mansfield's Coming Book On Obama's Faith

Bret McAtee / The Backwater Report:
Steve Mansfield has written a book entitled "The Faith Of Barack Obama." On his blog he complains that people are consigning him to the nether realm for writing this book. He claims that this is unjust since nobody has yet read the book. But, even given his blog explanation for the book, one wonders what Mr. Mansfield was thinking unless he intended to write a book telling us about the pagan faith of Barack Obama.

Dobson Takes A Shot At Obama

Eric Gorski / The Associated Press:
As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement's biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democrat presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a "fruitcake interpretation" of the Constitution. The criticism, to be aired Tuesday on Dobson's Focus on the Family radio program, comes shortly after an Obama aide suggested a meeting at the organization's headquarters, said Tom Minnery, senior vice president for government and public policy at Focus on the Family.

Pew: Most Americans Have A 'Pagan' Faith

Jacqueline L. Salmon / The Washington Post:
Most Americans believe that angels and demons are active in the world, and nearly 80 percent think miracles occur, according to a poll released yesterday that takes an in-depth look at Americans' religious beliefs. The study detailed Americans' deep and broad religiosity, finding that 92 percent believe in God or a universal spirit -- including one in five of those who call themselves atheists. More than half of Americans polled pray at least once a day. But Americans aren't rigid about their beliefs. Most of those studied -- even many of the most religiously conservative -- have a remarkably nonexclusive attitude toward other faiths. Seventy percent of those affiliated with a religion believe that many religions can lead to eternal salvation.

Related:
Religious Americans: My Faith Isn't The Only Way
By Eric Gorski / The Associated Press:
America remains a nation of believers, but a new survey finds most Americans don't feel their religion is the only way to eternal life -- even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise. The findings, revealed Monday in a survey of 35,000 adults, can either be taken as a positive sign of growing religious tolerance, or disturbing evidence that Americans dismiss or don't know fundamental teachings of their own faiths. Among the more startling numbers in the survey, conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: 57 percent of evangelical church attenders said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life, in conflict with traditional evangelical teaching.

It's Not An Oil Problem

Paul Proctor / NewsWithViews.com:
As I was driving around town the other day, running errands and taking care of business, I noticed trucks, vans and SUVs, very similar in size to mine, absolutely everywhere -- many jammed full of kids, soccer moms, businessmen and blue collar workers, sitting in traffic between red lights with cell phones hanging off their heads. Knowing that their urban assault vehicles required at least as much gas as mine, I wondered: How in the world does a family paying a mortgage and a couple of car payments get by these days with prices being what they are? I’m not a tightwad by any stretch of the imagination, but I scratched one of the things I needed that day off my shopping list for one reason and one reason only -- it wasn't worth the gasoline it would take to drive across town and buy it.

Is Reflection & Rethinking Overdue?

Joan E. Battey / Ether Zone:
Life today is fast-paced. We resort to variations of the Mad Hatter's lament: "Hello/Goodbye, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late." We're led from fad to fad, excitement to excitement, by experts directing our focus. We're too busy to notice the downside of sales pitches -- particularly those "for the children." Isn't reflection and re-thinking long overdue, if it isn't too late? "For the children," hasn't been all good. It's been questioned, but fast-ticking clocks left little time to notice. Where have good intentions led us -- especially the children meant to be the beneficiaries? Sometimes reflection is triggered by noting the daily news aggregate from multiple sources. It can spur recall of similar news, hastily skimmed and forgotten. But, once remembered, it's easier to see cause/effect possibilities. Two recent news items might illustrate that.

The White Male Vote Swung The Democrat Race

Carey Roberts / NewsWithViews.com:
The 16-month Hillary-palooza has finally gone bust. Her website bravely instructs us to "Support Senator Obama Today." Mrs. Clinton's staff has been pared down to a skeleton crew. And she's finally getting around to paying off the health insurance bills. But Hillary’s campaign wasn't a presidential nomination effort in the usual sense. It was a massive exercise in feminist consciousness-raising foisted on an unsuspecting American public. Take Clinton’s June 7 concession speech that was billed as an endorsement of rival Barack Obama. In reality it was a neo-Marxist rant lightly disguised as a feminist pep talk.

Related:
Clinton to Join Obama As He Courts Female Vote
By Shailagh Murray and Anne E. Kornblut / The Washington Post:
ALBUQUERQUE -- As Hillary Rodham Clinton prepared to return to life in the Senate and announced that she will campaign with Sen. Barack Obama in New Hampshire on Friday, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee began reaching out to female voters who had formed the backbone of Clinton's support in the primary season. The Obama-Clinton event will take place in the town of Unity, in the southwest corner of a swing state that Obama hopes to carry in November. The symbolism goes beyond the town's name, as Clinton and Obama each won 107 votes there in the January primary.

Washington Post's Top Editor to Step Down

Howard Kurtz / The Washington Post:
Leonard Downie Jr. said yesterday he is stepping down as The Washington Post's executive editor, ending a 17-year tenure in which the paper became a major online force and won a slew of prizes for high-profile investigations, including one that Downie published over President Bush's objections.

'Homeschoolers Are Only Good for Cleaning Toilets'

Gary DeMar / American Vision:
The title for today's article is taken from a response to one of American Vision's daily articles. The respondent is an atheist who claims he can refute any argument raised in defense of the Christian faith. I have irritated him so much by answering his poorly researched responses he sends to me that his true character is spilling out in a public way. His personal emails to me are worse than what I have reproduced here.

The State of Iowa is Under Assault

Uncle Raisin:
The state of Iowa is under assault: four Boy Scouts killed by tornado, weeks of ravaging storms, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Des Moines, IA, along with dozens of smaller towns are under water, 83 of 99 counties given federal emergency status, roads and highways throughout the state are closed, water ways, railroads and airports cannot serve the transport needs of the people, courts and government services closed, and much more in addition. Does this mean anything beyond the obvious intrusions into the lives of the people in this region?

A Totally Lawless Regime

Paul Craig Roberts / LewRockwell.com:
Think about this question: In the 21st century what regime is more lawless than the Bush Regime? Everyone is entitled to his own answer. The only answer I can come up with is the Zimbabwe regime of Robert Mugabe. Voted out of power in the last election, the great man hasn’t left. Zimbabweans are going to have to vote again, and the great man has said that any vote that is not for him will be cancelled by a bullet. Does anyone remember how determined the British and the Americans and everyone else was to turn Rhodesia over to Mugabe in order to save Rhodesia from the evil Ian Smith? What a fool everyone was. But before we laugh at those fools, we had best laugh at ourselves, or cry.

FISA Is Only the Prelude to Nightmare

Arthur Silber / Power of Narrative:
I indicated the other day that, as odious and destructive of liberty and privacy as the new FISA "compromise" bill is, there is one perspective from which the momentous to-do about this legislation is very badly misplaced. The selective focus on FISA misses the crucial larger picture in a way that ensures that the ruling class's hold on increasingly tyrannical power will never be consistently or seriously challenged -- which is, of course, precisely what the ruling class wants. In one sense, I certainly won't criticize those who protest the FISA legislation so vehemently, because I favor almost anything that throws a monkey wrench into the operations of our monumentally awful and oppressive federal government.

McClellan: Bush Must Blame Himself for Mistrust

Laurie Kellman / The Washington Times:
If the nation doesn't trust the Bush White House, it's the president's and Dick Cheney's own fault, Bush's former spokesman told Congress Friday. From life-and-death matters on down _ the rationale for war, the leaking of classified information, Cheney's accidental shooting of a friend _ the government's top two leaders undermined their credibility by "packaging" their version of the truth, former press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Related:
McClellan Testifies About Bush Team
By Dan Eggen / The Washington Post:
Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman turned Bush administration critic, took to Capitol Hill Friday to decry an insular and secretive White House that he said lied about the leaking of a CIA officer's name and "overstated" intelligence in the rush to war in Iraq. McClellan, who served as President Bush's press secretary from 2003 to 2006 and is the author of a controversial new book, also said Bush squandered the public's trust by not following through on promises to fire those involved in disclosing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson and to publicly divulge details about the case.

Government Sued Over Seizure Of Liberty Dollars

Joseph Goldstein / The New York Sun:
A dozen people around the country filed suit in U.S. District Court in Idaho this week demanding the return of all the copper, silver, gold, and platinum coins -- more than seven tons of metal in all -- that the FBI and Secret Service seized in November during raids of a mint in Idaho and a strip mall storefront in Indiana. The Justice Department had decided that the coins, many of which bear the familiar symbol of Lady Liberty and the phrase "TRUST IN GOD," were being illegally marketed as government-sanctioned currency, according to the sworn affidavit of an FBI agent.

Exclusive Interview With Vince Bugliosi - Part II

John Lofton / The American View:
Vince Bugliosi Discusses God/Government, His Agnosticism, Our Constitution, Jesus & The Golden Rule - In Part I, Mr. Bugliosi discussed his new book "The Prosecution Of George W. Bush For Murder" (Vanguard, 2008). In this concluding part of our interview, we shift gears and discuss his views on a variety of topics including why, as an "agnostic," he thinks murder is wrong.

The Congressional Betrayal That Launched a War

David Brownlow For U.S. Senate:
You owe it to yourself to take a few minutes to read the "Authorization For Use Of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution Of 2002," the sorry excuse for a war declaration that was passed by Congress in October of 2002. This unconstitutional resolution essentially took the power to declare war - a power that Congress alone possesses - and turned that power over to the President. And we wonder why the occupation of Iraq has turned into such a bloody mess.

The Welfare-Warfare State - How It Works

Justin Raimondo / Ether Zone:
As I write, the House of Representatives is passing a "supplemental" war-funding bill -- an event that one would think ought to be the occasion for a renewed debate on the war, whether to end it or, as John McCain would like, to escalate it. One, however, would be quite wrong. The halls of Congress are virtually silent, this election year, as a war three-quarters of the American people oppose continues and threatens to spread. As for the discussion in the media: check out this piece in The Politico -- which is chock full of discussion about the bill's non-war related add-ons, and barely mentions the war as an issue, except as a bargaining chip.

Dr. Paul Comments on the Pork-laden Supplemental Bill

Veteran Guinea Pigs

Jon Christian Ryter / NewsWithViews.com:
The US government has a questionable history of using military personnel as guinea pigs to determine the potential health risks soldiers experience when they are exposed to caustic and sometimes deadly agents. During the period between the two world wars soldiers were deliberately exposed to mustard gas. Between 1945 to 1955 military personnel were exposed to radiation from nuclear bomb tests. In experiments conducted by the CIA and the US Army Biomedical Laboratory (under Project MKUltra), veterans were given the psychedelic drug Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, more commonly known as LSD.

Spy Bill Destroys Fourth Amendment

RawStory.com:
"Never appease political bullies, President Bush admonished at the Israeli Knesset," MSNBC's Keith Olbermann opened. "Oddly, House Democrats chose to ignore him on the subject of dealing with him." Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley sees a "very frightening bill" in a proposed "compromise," currently in the House, that would update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to effectively grant immunity from civil lawsuits to telecommunications companies that agreed to spy on their customers as part of the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, starting shortly before the World Trade Center attacks in 2001. If the White House asked a phone company to spy with its assurance that it was legal, the measure says, that's enough to dismiss a case.

Countdown: FISA Capitulation by Congress

Robo Cop On Rails

Kurt Nimmo / Infowars:
Noah Shachtman, writing for Wired, tells us the latest police state technological marvel may be used to secure the border. More than likely, it will be used to surveil you and me. Linceus GmbH is looking to turn miniature monorail cars into camera-equipped sentries, zipping around at nearly 50 miles per hour. And unlike human guards, Defense News’ Barbara Opall-Rome reports, these rail-riding robo-watchers are "impervious to bad weather; operate around the clock; and come equipped with dazzling spotlights, high-decibel acoustics and other nonlethal means of warn­ing the unwitting." A demonstration at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion Airport is planned for next week.

McCain's Posturing On Guantanamo

George F. Will / The Washington Post:
The day after the Supreme Court ruled that detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo are entitled to seek habeas corpus hearings, John McCain called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." Well. ... No state power is more fearsome than the power to imprison. Hence the habeas right has been at the heart of the centuries-long struggle to constrain governments, a struggle in which the greatest event was the writing of America's Constitution, which limits Congress's power to revoke habeas corpus to periods of rebellion or invasion. Is it, as McCain suggests, indefensible to conclude that Congress exceeded its authority when, with the Military Commissions Act (2006), it withdrew any federal court jurisdiction over the detainees' habeas claims?

Hanson Savages Buchanan - A Response

Bret McAtee / The Backwater Report:
Victor Davis Hanson is a neo-conservative historian. Recently, he took aim at Buchanan's book 'Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War.' This is my interaction with his critique.

Normandy, France -- Questioning the past is a good thing, but rewriting it contrary to facts is quite another. In the latest round of revisionism about the Second World War, the awful British and naive Americans, not the poor Germans, have ended up as the real culprits.

This is a willful misreading of Buchanan’s book by neo-conservative Victor Davis Hanson. Buchanan nowhere says that the British were 'awful' or the Americans were 'naive' or that we should take pity on the Germans. What he offers is a reading of history that is complex and refuses to see anybody wearing white hats.

Deal Struck to Extend Warrantless Wiretap Power

Dan Eggen and Paul Kane / The Washington Post:
Congress agreed yesterday on surveillance legislation that could shield telecommunications companies from privacy lawsuits, handing President Bush one of the last major legislative victories he is likely to achieve. The agreement extends the government's ability to eavesdrop on espionage and terrorism suspects while effectively providing a legal escape hatch for AT&T, Verizon Communications and other telecom firms. They face more than 40 lawsuits that allege they violated customers' privacy rights by helping the government conduct a warrantless spying program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The sharpest critics of the administration's surveillance policies were not mollified. Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said the legislation "is not a compromise; it is a capitulation." "Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity," he said. Caroline Frederickson, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "The telecom companies simply have to produce a piece of paper we already know exists, resulting in immediate dismissal."

Related:
House Prepares to Debate New Warrantless Surveillance Law
The Associated Press
For months the debate over whether telecommunications companies should face lawsuits for cooperating with the government's warrantless wiretapping program has been the sticking point for updating a surveillance law. With a compromise at hand, the House prepared Friday to vote on a measure that effectively protects telecoms from civil lawsuits but also sets out steps for investigating the wiretapping program to determine its scope and legality.

John Yoo, Totalitarian

Paul Craig Roberts / LewRockwell.com:
John Yoo stands outside the Anglo-American legal tradition. His views lead to self-incrimination wrung out of a victim by torture. He believes a president of the US can initiate war, even on false pretenses, and then use the war he starts as cover for depriving US citizens of habeas corpus protection. A US attorney general informed by Yoo’s memos even went so far as to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Constitution does not provide habeas corpus protection to US citizens. Yoo’s animosity to US civil liberties made him a logical choice for appointment to the Bush Regime’s Department of Justice (sic), but his appointment as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, shatters that university’s liberal image. Habeas corpus is a centuries-old British legal reform that stopped authorities from arbitrarily throwing a person into a dungeon and leaving him there forever without presenting charges in a court of law. Without this protection, there can be no liberty.

Treasury Secretary to Urge New Fed Powers

Neil Irwin / The Washington Post:
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. plans to call for the Federal Reserve to be given new, explicit powers to intervene in the workings of Wall Street firms to protect the financial system, adapting his vision of how the financial world should be regulated to reflect the lessons of the collapse of Bear Stearns. "We should quickly consider how to appropriately give the Fed the authority to access necessary information from highly complex financial institutions and the responsibility to intervene in order to protect the system," Paulson plans to say, "so they can carry out the role our nation has come to expect."

Related:
Administration Calls for Giving Fed More Powers
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says the government must move quickly to give the Federal Reserve more powers to regulate the financial system. Paulson said Thursday that the central bank's powers should be expanded in the wake of the near collapse earlier this year of Bear Stearns, the giant Wall Street investment firm. He said there was a need to consider quickly how to give the Fed the power it needs to obtain information from investment banks and the responsibility to intervene to protect the overall financial system. His comments were provided by the Treasury Department as excerpts from a speech he was to give later in the day.

Prosecuting the Wrong People

William L. Anderson / LewRockwell.com:
When I heard that federal authorities had arrested the people that the government tells us were responsible for much of the subprime meltdown, I anxiously awaited the perp walk that would befall some notorious characters. Would we see Ben Bernanke wearing handcuffs, still dressed in his cams after having thrown even more money from the helicopter? Would the person shuffling before the media be Alan Greenspan, the architect of 18 years of legal counterfeiting? Had the federal authorities finally come to their senses and arrested the people most responsible for the chicanery and outright theft of the savings and investments of millions of people?

Now You Know Why Your Gas Is So Expensive

Chris Ortiz / Chalcedon Blog:
As I suggested back in November of 2007, the likely motive behind the rising oil prices was to convince the majority of Americans and their lawmakers to allow domestic drilling. This should have been a simple prediction for anyone. Crises of this magnitude don't just happen overnight. One day you're paying $1.50 per gallon, and two years later you're over $4.00 per gallon. C'mon folks, smarten up! The game is rigged. The push is on. Out of nowhere President Bush is calling on Congress to lift the ban on off-shore drilling; John McCain wants 45 new nuclear reactors; and now Newt Gingrich is compounding Bush's demand--although with a twist. He's placing the blame on Congress, not oil companies, or the Saudis.

Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back

Andrew E. Kramer / The New York Times:
Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP -- the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company -- along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

Extreme Environmentalism Is Stealing Our Land

Dr. Laurie Roth / NewsWithViews.com:
The terms "environmentalism" "carbon emissions" "global warming" "heritage areas" "scenic areas" "historical areas" "water ways" are really the front words and terms for global elitists and Government control regarding our land, our food supply and our guns. Over the last few years alone we have seen our Government try and swoop in and seize millions of acres of privately owned land. Much of this aggression and distortion has fallen under the headings of “national trails and parks."

Group Files Suit Over 'I Believe' Plates in SC

The Associated Press:
A group that advocates separation of church and state filed a federal lawsuit Thursday to prevent South Carolina from becoming the first state to create "I Believe" license plates. The group contends that South Carolina's government is endorsing Christianity by allowing the plates, which would include a cross superimposed on a stained glass window. Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed the lawsuit on behalf of two Christian pastors, a humanist pastor and a rabbi in South Carolina, along with the Hindu American Foundation.

Oral Arguments Loom in Homeschool Case

Pacific Justice Institute:
California's Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles will hear oral arguments this coming Monday in the Rachel L. homeschool case that has attracted nationwide attention. The court has set aside two hours for oral argument -- significantly more time than is typically allotted at the appellate level.

The Greatest Threat Facing America

Bobby Franklin / The American View:
Recently a friend asked me to listen to a debate that he had just heard concerning the "war on terror." One side took the view that we need to fight the terrorists over there so that we won't have to fight them over here. The other side took the view that while Islam is a threat, and that possibly someday we will be fighting them over here, we have no business nation-building and besides, there has been no constitutional declaration of war against either Iraq or Afghanistan. I believe that both sides ignored the main issue. If Islam is a new threat to us, how has it changed from its founding principles? It hasn't. Islam is no more violent or militant today than it was 1300 years ago. Islamic terrorism is not the greatest threat facing America. God is.

'Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War'

Bret McAtee / The Backwater Report:
A Book Review: I just finished Pat Buchanan's recent release entitled Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. It is not the first book on this subject I have read, though I am certainly no expert on the subject. One thing that Buchanan does is to take off the halo from above Winston Churchill's head. One doesn't have to do much reading to realize that it is usually a fool's delusion that invests itself with inventing heroes out of leaders of nation states or mammoth organizations.

Don't Let Critics Make the Rules

Gary DeMar / American Vision:
Critics of the Bible begin with the premise that they know more about the geography and times of the Bible than those who actually lived during the history of the period. Dogmatic claims are often made based on incomplete archeological evidence. This has been happening for a long time. How many years have we heard there was no mention of David outside the Bible? In 1987 archeologist Kathleen Kenyon claimed, “To many people it seems remarkable that David and Solomon still remain unknown outside the Old Testament or literary sources derived directly from it.

Hispanosupremacists Infiltrate Evangelical Movement

Frederick Meekins / Ether Zone:
Minority activists and other guiltmongers often whine that 11 am Sunday morning is often the most segregated hour of the week. I wonder what the we-are-all-one-big family agitators have to say about the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which bills itself as the National Hispanic Association of Evangelicals. While prominent Christian leaders are correct that all of mankind descends from one set of parents, interesting, isn’t it, how these speakers only expect Whites of a more Northern European extraction to abide by such radical color-blindness. For if a group of Caucasians a little to wrapped up in their pigmentation ratios established the Nordic Christian Association, it would not be tolerated in contemporary Evangelical circles, and rightfully so.

Foreign Corporation Gets US Money for Toll Road

The Newspaper.com:
The US Department of Transportation announced last Thursday that it had issued $589 million in tax-free bonds for the benefit of a foreign corporation that will use them to create High Occupancy Toll lanes on the Capital Beltway in Northern Virginia, just outside Washington, DC. This represents the first time that federal transportation officials have used private activity bonds, a controversial funding method created by state governments to provide tax exemptions to private entities developing public projects.

Politicking Time Bombs

Morris Beschloss / The Desert Sun:
Farm, Energy and Housing Bills Will Blow Up Deficit: With the next five months providing the twilight zone of Congressional inactivity, indiscriminate expenditures may reach a peak as congressmen and senators attempt to maximize the programs they can display to the voters back home during electioneering. With the $160 billion fiscal stimulus safely tucked away in recipients' accounts, a $500 billion 2008 fiscal budget deficit (first of October) is a sure thing. But with a presidential veto easily overridden by re-election seeking members of both parties, there are three major bills that could cost hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of dollars of debt added to the near $10 trillion accumulated by the end of the year.

Congress to OK $165 Billion for Bush's War

The Associated Press:
Democrat and GOP leaders in the House announced agreement Wednesday on a long-overdue war funding bill they said President Bush would be willing to sign. The agreement on the war funding bill, announced by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, provides about $165 billion to the Pentagon to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for about a year. That's enough time for Bush's successor to set Iraq policy. [It] also paves the way for a quick infusion of emergency flood relief for the Midwest, an extension of unemployment payments for the jobless and a big boost in GI Bill college for veterans.

Socially Engineering the Public for Martial Law

Lee Rogers / Rogue Government:
The terrorists in the federal government are continuing their push to have a fully functioning martial law apparatus. The city of Denver was recently invaded by a large number of military helicopters without any sort of warning given to the general public. It was originally speculated that this training exercise had something to do with the upcoming Democratic National Convention, but a spokesman with Special Operations said that it wasn’t related and that the exercises would last all week. It is interesting that this spokesman said it had nothing to do with the upcoming DNC. If that’s the case, than what is the real purpose of this exercise?

The Rise of the New Spirituality

Gary DeMar / American Vision:
"Is God Dead?" With a black background and bright red lettering, Time magazine's April 8, 1966 cover dared to question the existence of God in a nation where "In God We Trust" is its motto. Screenwriter Edward Anhalt, quoted in the Time issue, sums up the worldview of the God-is-dead worldview: "God is an infantile fantasy, which was necessary when men did not understand what lightning was. God is a cop-out." The materialists tell us that God is dead because we no longer need Him to explain our world and the way it works. The God-is-dead theologians claim that "God is Man. Or God is the Universe." The results are the same: With the death of God, man becomes God. As James Herrick argues in The Making of the New Spirituality, "The fall of one god is often the precondition for the rise of another". There is nothing new under the sun (Gen. 3:5).

Joan Veon Speaks to 'Institute On The Constitution'

John Lofton / The American View:
Speaking to a packed house at "Institution On The Constitution's" monthly "First Friday" lecture series, Joan Veon urged her audience to reject fear and instead walk in Christian faith to fight plans by the United Nations and others to control our lives. She has attended more than 100 U.N. meetings all over the world. Veon said that according to the U. N.'s "sustainable feudalism" ideas, "you and I are responsible for pollution. We are subordinate to the earth and all other living creatures. All of this is a perversion of God's Word and our Constitutional principles."

Ron Paul Applauds Chuck Baldwin, Bob Barr

YouTube.com CNN.com / News Wire:
CNN's Wolf Blitzer talked to Ron Paul about a rally he has planned in the same city as the Republican convention. Paul told Blitzer that his rally would pose a philosophical challenge to the Republican's convention. Paul told Blitzer that he had no intention of supporting John McCain. Paul said, "I don't plan to endorse John McCain unless he changed his views on the war and was interested in the Federal Reserve and all these other things, which is not likely to happen."

Return of the Censors

Patrick J. Buchanan / Buchanan.org:
Freedom of the press is on trial in Canada. The trial is before a court with the Orwellian title of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. The accused are Maclean's magazine and author Mark Steyn. The crime: In mocking and biting tones, they wrote that Islam threatens Western values. Had Steyn written that, given the Crusades, colonial atrocities in Africa and the slave trade, Christianity had been on balance a curse, he would not be in the dock. In the United States, these charges would have been tossed out by any federal judge, who would have admonished the plaintiffs that, here in America, we have a First Amendment.

Patriotism vs. the Military Industrial Complex

Jim Quinn / LewRockwell.com:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children." These must be the words of some liberal Democrat Senator running for President in 2008. But no, these are the words of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II, five decades ago. The United States, the only superpower remaining on earth, currently spends more on military than the next 45 highest spending countries in the world combined. The U.S. accounts for 48% of the world’s total military spending. Where did the peace dividend from winning the Cold War go?

Obama Grovels to Lobby - GOP Grovels to Tyranny

Paul Craig Roberts / VDARE.com:
As articles by John Pilger, Alexander Cockburn and Uri Avnery make clear, by groveling before the Israel Lobby, Obama has dispelled any hope that his presidency would make a difference. Obama told the Lobby that, in order to protect Israel, he would use all the powers of the presidency to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. As in the case of Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," the conclusion whether or not Iran is making a nuclear weapon will be determined by propaganda and not by fact. Therefore, there is no difference between George W. Bush, John McCain, Obama and the Lobby with regard to the Middle East.

You Want Change? Don't Hold Your Breath

Justin Raimondo / Ether Zone:
The pundits agree that this election is all about "change," so naturally we have two presidential nominees who present identical positions on the major foreign policy issue of the day: the looming prospect of the U.S. launching a "preventive" war against Iran. Shmuel Rosner, the U.S. correspondent for Ha'aretz, notes: "The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has just published the final version of a report by the Task Force on the Future of U.S.-Israel relations. The title is appealing: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge. But no less appealing is the list of people endorsing this report: Tony Lake and Susan Rice of the Obama campaign, Vin Weber, James Woolsey of the McCain camp."

McCain's at War With Himself

Paul Mulshine / NJ.com:
Now that Hillary Clinton has conceded the Democratic contest, we are faced with the prospect of another round of boring, scripted party conventions. The only sign of life is the alternative convention scheduled for September in St. Paul, Minn., by Ron Paul. The losing candidate for the Republican nomination has hired a hall so he can put on a show for the libertarian wing of the party as the big GOP show goes on nearby. This promises to be fun. But it would be more fun if the Republicans had simply given the Texas congressman a speaking role at the convention and thereby brought his supporters into the fold. John McCain certainly needs them in what promises to be a close election. But why doesn't he want them?

CFR: Preparing Kids For The New World Order

GlobalPolitician.com:
America is still preparing our children for life in a unipolar world, and as described by Richard Haass and Fareed Zakaria in separate essays which appeared in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, we are living in an emerging nonpolar world. The ability of the United States to adjust, survive, and prosper in this new world order will depend upon successful preparation of the next generation for the evolution of the international power structure already happening.

Comments At 4th Annual North America Forum

News Blaze:
Remarks As Prepared for Delivery for U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. The way I see it, this event could not come at a better time. With its focus on enhancing cooperation among the United States, Canada and Mexico -- and on bringing together representatives of our governments and the private sector -- you are helping to develop and achieve real and lasting solutions to some of our world's most significant challenges. And when it comes to the global energy landscape, the challenges we face are certainly massive and pervasive. I don't need to remind you of where we stand.

Congress Pushes Another Federal Land Grab

Juliet Eilperin / The Washington Post:
With little fanfare, Congress has embarked on a push to "protect" as many as a dozen pristine areas this year in places ranging from the glacier-fed streams of the Wild Sky Wilderness here to West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest. By the end of the year this drive could place as much as 2 million acres of unspoiled land under federal control, a total that rivals the wilderness acreage set aside by Congress over the previous five years. The administration has generally favored expanding wilderness acreage, letting Congress determine which areas should be protected and how. Part of this stems from the fact that nearly all of these bills have broad constituencies, which include local faith, business and hunting groups as well as GOP officeholders. And as Bush approaches the end of his second term, he is eyeing opportunities to leave his mark on the nation's landscape.

Vatican Accuses Jewish Groups on WWII Archives

Philip Pullella / Reuters:
Jewish groups have no cause to complain of the Vatican restricting archives on Pope Pius XII, accused by some of ignoring the Holocaust, and should open all their own files, a Vatican official said on Tuesday. Jewish organizations expressed surprise and said there was nothing secretive about their archives. Critics accuse Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of turning a blind eye to Nazi persecution of the Jews and have asked that more Vatican archives for the period before and during World War II be opened up.

Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, True American Patriot

YouTube.com:
ABS-CBN News.com -- A month after US army reservist Matthis Chiroux publicly refused to deploy to Iraq, the former sergeant on Sunday (Father's Day) set himself up for possible prosecution by failing to report for active duty with his unit in South Carolina. "Tonight at midnight, I may face further action from the army for refusing to reactivate to participate in the Iraq occupation," Chiroux told reporters in Washington.

Statement by Sgt. Matthis Chiroux