Via CFP: “Stand up for Religious Freedom” rally in Chicago, June 8, 2012
This is in lieu of the Friday Free-For All I was unable to do, yesterday, because of the Bloggers
Day of Silence.
So. Much. Going. On…
Yesterday Americans Ralled Nationwide, Demanded Obama HHS Mandate Reversal..
LifeNews reported:
Tens of thousands of Americans rallied today in more than 160 cities against the Obama HHS mandate that requires religious groups to pay for birth control and abortion -causing drugs for their employees. In the nation’s capital, they demanded that the Obama administration roll back the controversial mandate.
The rallies are intended to send a message to the federal administration that the mandate is over-reaching, is an attack on the First Amendment rights of American religious institutions and significantly damaging to religious freedom and rights of conscience. Citizens across the country, national and regional rally organizers are concerned about closure of services to the poor, the sick, the elderly, the most vulnerable in society, because the Mandate would distinctly violate religious charitable institutions’ belief systems.
Atlas Shrugs: Obama removes Religious Freedom Section from Its Human Rights Reports:
We should be importing whole Christian communities or Hindu communities, etc., living (and dying) under the boot of the sharia. This should be a presidential campaign platform for Romney.
State Department Purges Religious Freedom Section from Its Human Rights Reports CNS
(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.
The new human rights reports–purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered–are also the human rights reports that include the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath.
Thus, the reports do not provide in-depth coverage of what has happened to Christians and other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that saw the rise of revolutionary movements in 2011 in which Islamist forces played an instrumental role.
For the first time ever, the State Department simply eliminated the section of religious freedom in its reports covering 2011 and instead referred the public to the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report – a full two years behind the times – or to the annual report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which was released last September and covers events in 2010 but not 2011.
Leonard Leo, who recently completed a term as chairman of the USCIRF, says that removing the sections on religious freedom from the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights is a bad idea.
Obama’s own administration would have to be added as one of the abusers of religious freedoms….
Mandy Nagy of Big Government: Report: 70 House Members to Call on DOJ to Investigate SWATting of Conservative Bloggers:
on his own radio show, Erickson played a recording of the 911 call that triggered the visit from law enforcement to his home. He went on to describe the series of events that occurred on the evening of May 27th. As he discussed the recent letterssent by Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss and Texas Congressman Kenny Marchant calling on the Department of Justice to investigate the SWATting incidents, Erickson announced a breaking development regarding Congressional actions:
I have been told that Monday, the House of Representatives will engage on this and seventy or more members will formally be sending a letter to Eric Holder, asking him on behalf of these members of the house to also get the FBI involved.
During the latter half of Erickson’s program, Breitbart News contributor Lee Stranahan phoned in as a guest. In the early morning hours of May 28th, only hours after Erickson’s SWATting incident, Stranahan hosted a live online podcast to discuss the SWATtings. As Breitbart News reported earlier:
Keep reading….I think the FBI will be closing in on this guy, soon.
The Conservatory: Ace of Spades Gets Sh*t from Conservatives, I’m Pissed Off
I don’t think that I’m pulling rank by proxy when I say that, it’s likely in my view, just perhaps, that Ace may already have accomplished more on this issue than you ever will.
Valor doesn’t consist in being insensible to evident danger; it consists in carrying on despite it.
I don’t know what’s going on at AoSHQ, but Ace has had to close his comments, apparently due to recklessness among some of the commenters.
An ExCon’s View: Withdrawing Support for National Bloggers Club:
As an ex-convict, I believe it is important to publicly and thoroughly expose and confess my own wrongdoing as part of my reparations to society. I must be honest about my previous activities, firstly to myself and secondly to the public, and I must never withhold such information from anyone, for any reason. To do otherwise is obfuscation, and risks recidivism into prior dishonest and unethical patterns of behavior.
If I am being interviewed for a job, I must inform my employer of my crimes. Even if I have not been directly asked! Otherwise, my employer’s reputation may itself be damaged, and I have thus created a new innocent victim.
One can run, but one can never hide.
Therefore, as someone with a great deal of personal experience in unethical behaviors, I find the public explanations, hidden criminal activities and apparent lack of honesty from the National Bloggers Club’s President Ali Akbar troubling. It is far less than the level of honesty required by such a position, which demands public trust and fiduciary responsibility.
The Daily Caller: Former EPA ‘crucify them’ administrator avoids testifying before House panel:
The official who compared the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement philosophy to Roman crucifixions will not make a planned appearance before a House panel to explain his comments.
The former EPA Region 6 Administrator, Al Armendariz, had been scheduled to appear Wednesday morning before a House Energy and Power Subcommittee hearing, titled “EPA Enforcement Priorities and Practices.” But on Tuesday afternoon, counsel representing Armendariz notified the committee that he will not be appearing.
RS McCain celebrates: TEN MILLION HITS! and Presenting … Our Top 20 Most Commented Posts:
FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Remember when an alleged “singer,” performing under the name Champagne Dream, recorded an unspeakably wretched version of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”?Alas, the video has been removed from the Internet, so that readers can no longer experience the weird combination of insane laughter and projectile vomiting that Champagne’s performance invariably produced. More than two years later, however, the April 2010 blog post about that bizarre musical monstrosity – “VIDEO: Hate Crime Caught on Camera! – retains the all-time record for the most-commented post in the history of TheOtherMcCain.com.
“The big challenge we have in our economy right now is state and local government hiring has been going in the wrong direction,” Obama said.Christie argued that New Jersey has more government workers per square mile than any other state, but said the trend is reversing under his leadership. Midway through his first term, the state now has fewer people on its payroll than it has since Republican Christie Todd Whitman was governor more than a decade ago, he said.”That’s the right direction, Mr. President, not the wrong direction,” Christie said.”It is an outrage to have the president of the United States stand up and say to hard-working governors — Democrats and Republicans in this country — that state and local government hiring is moving in the wrong direction, and we’re to blame,” Christie said.
Unnerved by an unspoken mix of political bias and racial queasiness, the major media have chosen to know as little about Trayvon Martin as they know about Barack Obama.
As a case in point, consider this boy vs. man fable spun by the New York Times‘ Charles Blow:
A boy’s blood had been spilled on a rain-soaked patch of grass behind a row of mustard-colored condominiums by a man who had pursued him against the advice of 911 dispatchers. That man carried a 9-millimeter handgun. The boy carried a bag of candy.
Blow was writing seven weeks after Trayvon’s death. He had no excuse for missing the actual story. Worse, since he is a writer for the Times, his reporting has helped set the media tone worldwide
The media’s willful ignorance was on display again this past week. In reporting this news of George Zimmerman’s return to jail, more than a few media outlets showed the dangerously deceptive image of Trayvon as 11-year-old cherub. They did so in the assumption that the narrative was still theirs to control. It is not. The blogs, which have been doing the real detective work on this case, have long since taken control away from them.
Could there be an orchestrated campaign between government and media entities to see this man imprisoned, or even executed? Despite the physical evidence of which we’re aware, an apparent lack of credible witnesses on either side of the case, and expert legal opinion belittling Florida’s case against Zimmerman, the FBI has launched a hate crime investigation against him. And it could stick.
We might logically believe that the Fifth Amendment’s protection against double jeopardy would compel the Justice Department to abandon the case if Zimmerman is acquitted. Not necessarily. According to Cleveland State Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich, Supreme Court precedent has established a narrow threshold for claiming double jeopardy. “The double jeopardy clause would not prohibit a federal prosecution of Mr. Zimmerman, even if he were acquitted in Florida state court,” Prof. Rich states, although he believes that the likelihood of federal prosecution following a state acquittal is small.
However, FBI involvement means Department of Justice involvement, which in turn means Eric Holder involvement. Mr. Holder’s idea of judicial impartiality is, shall we say, conflicted.
CDN: The Eye-Popping Wisconsin Story You Didn’t Read:
News reports of the union-orchestrated, DNC-backed, month-long occupation of the Wisconsin state capital last year were ubiquitous. This was followed by a flurry of recall efforts last summer and this winter against 16 senators (8 Republicans and 8 Democrats) – every senator that was eligible for recall – as well as Governor Scott Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. This recall was unprecedented. There have been only three times in history when more than one legislator has been recalled over any single issue.
What is less known is that the recall effort against Governor Walker – indeed, the entire attack – was far from spontaneous. Within days of his election the left began contemplating a recall, and it began in earnest in February of 2011, before his controversial budget bill was even passed. The left had him in its sights from day one.
Following the announcement of Governor Walker’s “Budget Repair Bill,” last February, unions went on a rampage. Beginning around February 15, 2011, protesters began massing around the state Capitol building in Madison.
Keep reading – it will make their defeat even sweeter.
A group of three publicly financed charter schools in Georgia run by followers of Fethullah Gulen, a prominent Turkish imam, have come under scrutiny after they defaulted on bonds and an audit found that the schools improperly granted hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts to businesses and groups, many of them with ties to the Gulen movement.
The audit released Tuesday by the Fulton County Schools near Atlanta found the schools made purchases like T-shirts, teacher training and video production services from organizations with connections to school officials or Gulen followers. Those included more than $500,000 in contracts since January 2010 with the Grace Institute, a foundation whose board has included school leaders. In some cases the awards skirted bidding requirements, the audit said.
“I would just question how those vendors were selected when price in many instances wasn’t part of the decision making,” said the Fulton County superintendent, Robert Avossa, who criticized the schools for conflicts of interest. “And those are public dollars.”
More at AJC: Audit reveals ‘egregious’ conduct by charter school:
An Alpharetta charter school has spent taxpayer money to hire workers from overseas, run international field trips without proper supervision and give business to a related non-profit, an audit released Tuesday shows.
Smitty at The Other McCain: Will Jesse Kelly Surf A Wisconsin Wave In The Arizona-8 Special Election 12Jun?:
Eternal political vigilance is the price of freedom, and we’ve got a multi-trillion dollar tab to show for how we, as a whole, have flaked off these decades. Signs of life such as yesterday’s recall in Wisconsin are necessary, but not sufficient. Continuous engagement is the new rule. Thus, attention shifts to a special election in Arizona’s 8th District, which holds a special election next Tuesday to replace the incredibly tough Gabrielle Giffords, wounded amidst the tragedy of January 8, 2011.
President Obama at a press conference this morning insisted that high-level national security leaks are not coming from the White House. “The notion that my White House would purposefully release classified information is offensive,” President Obama said.
But a Republican memo from the Senate Republican Policy Committee maintains that either the president or the New York Times is wrong.
“It would appear the President’s statement and the New York Times statements directly conflict with each other and cannot both be true at the same time,” the memo states.
For proof, the memo highlights Obama’s denial that the White House is responsible for the leaks and certain statements in the Times‘s stories.
Doug Ross: All the President’s Leaks [Updated]:
To avoid a special prosecutor, the Department of Justice has assigned two U.S. attorneys to investigate the leaks.
It is increasingly likely that President Obama is responsible for the most catastrophic leaks of national security secrets since Bill Clinton sold classified missile technologies to the Chinese in exchange for campaign cash. Please consider the following stories, all of which are from the last few months alone:
Keep reading – where’s the media outrage?
Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin: Holder orders investigation of recent leaks:
Senator John McCain has wondered aloud if recent national security leaks have come from the highest levels of the White House for political purposes, comments the White House called “grossly irresponsible.” In yesterday’s press conference, President Obama said he was “offended” by those kinds of accusations. The administration is so adamant to track down who is responsible for the leaks that Jay Carney told reporters they would… oppose an independent probe.
Enter Attorney General Eric “if you see a reference to ‘Fast & Furious’ in my memos I might have been talking about the movie or something but definitely not the gun running operation” Holder, who last evening named two federal prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into the source(s) of the leaks. It’s Saturday and my skepticism is on vacay until Monday, so we’ll leave it at that and let ABC News take it from here:
Keep reading, and color me skeptical, as well.
UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin recounts another case of outrageous lawfare in Arizona: Bloggers under fire: Arizona conservative lawyer/activist targeted by left-wing Arizona State Bar
Doug Ross: We are now watching the Democrat Party implode, right before our eyes
Linked by Michelle Malkin, thanks!
Nice Deb 
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