"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views."

--- William F. Buckley Jr.

"With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people." --economist Fredrich von Hayek

"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone."

--French economist, statesman and author Frederic Bastiat

"If black people continue to accept the corrupt blame game agenda of liberal whites, black politicians and assorted hustlers, as opposed to accepting personal responsibility, the future for many black Americans will remain bleak." --economist Walter E. Williams

IT'S OBAMA SPREADING PANIC

By DICK MORRIS

Why does Obama preach gloom and doom? Because he is so anxious to cram through every last spending bill, tax increase on the so-called rich, new government regulation, and expansion of healthcare entitlement that he must preserve the atmosphere of crisis as a political necessity. Only by keeping us in a state of panic can he induce us to vote for trillion-dollar deficits and spending packages that send our national debt soaring. Read more.

DON'T WASTE A CRISIS

"Anyone who thought the recession and financial market turmoil would moderate President Obama's policy ambitions discovered the opposite last night. Far from suggesting limits on Congress or federal spending, the new President made clear in his first State of the Union address that he believes in government power as the answer to our current difficulties, and he intends to use it. ... Mr. Obama is slowly revealing himself as a President who meant what he said going back to the primaries. He believes in the power of the state to drive prosperity, to reform the financial system and health care, and even to transform the entire energy economy. Mr. Obama said at one point that he didn't believe in government for its own sake, but his policy emphasis showed otherwise. ... Mr. Obama clearly believes the recession has created a political moment when Americans are frightened enough to be open to a new era of expanded government. The question is whether his vast ambitions will allow the private economy to grow enough even to begin to pay for it all." --The Wall Street Journal

"[G]overnment, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one." --Thomas Paine

Obama’s Deficit Charade
By Terence P. Jeffrey

President Obama posed as a fiscal conservative Monday when he hosted a “fiscal responsibility summit.” Close inspection reveals that what he is actually proposing, however, is a massive increase in government debt—thus raising the already unsustainable burden of government that is certain to fall on our children unless the welfare state is somehow curtailed. The truth is this: Our federal government has been wading ever deeper into red ink for a full half-century, and President Obama is now planning to wade deeper and faster than any president who has gone before him.

Lawmakers Try New ‘Biblical, Moral’ Approach to Immigration Reform

Washington (AP) - Latino lawmakers and others who are pushing for changes in U.S. immigration policy are taking a new approach to the issue, making a humanitarian appeal to Americans to support fellow citizens who have relatives living in fear of detention and deportation.

Democrats Boosting Domestic Spending Atop Stimulus

Washington (AP) - Now that they have one of their own in the White House, Democrats in Congress are moving to give domestic government agencies 8 percent more money, on average, to spend this year atop the whopping $787 billion in economic stimulus funds.

HEADLINE NEWS

Democrat Barney Frank Wants to Cut Military Spending
Congress should cut U.S. military spending by $160 billion, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, proposed at a press conference Tuesday. That same day, however, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who controls the House floor schedule, distanced himself and the majority leadership from Frank’s proposal -- and both the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services declined to endorse Frank’s plan.

Congressional Democrats Target D.C. School Choice Program for Elimination
Washington – School choice advocates are trying to save the District of Columbia's voucher program, which is targeted for virtual elimination in Congress’ proposed $405-billion omnibus spending bill. School choice supporters think the termination of the D.C. program could have a national impact.

Obama’s Cap on Carbon Pollution Is A Huge Tax Increase, Republican Says
In his speech to Congress Tuesday night, President Barack Obama “committed himself to the largest annual tax increase in the history of America,” warns Republican Rep. James Inhofe of Oklahoma. A cap-and-trade program essentially creates a tax where none exists.

Gitmo in Conformity with Geneva Convention, Obama-Ordered Report Confirms
The Guantanamo Bay prison where terror suspects are held was examined by a special task force appointed by President Barack Obama. In its 81-page report, released Monday, the task force concluded: “After considerable deliberation and a comprehensive review, it is our judgment that the conditions of confinement in Guantanamo are in conformity with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.”

4.5 Billion ‘Green Building’ in Stimulus Is Wasteful Partisan Spending, Critics Say
The Democrats’ $787-billion stimulus package includes $4.5 billion designated to help transform functioning federal government facilities into “high-performance green buildings.” Advocates for green policy in the U.S. told CNSNews.com that the spending is both a sound investment and environmentally responsible, but conservatives watchful for government waste said the expenditure is an example of partisan spending in the stimulus package.

Pro-lifers Call HHS Candidate Sebelius ‘The Most Pro-Abortion Governor in the Country'
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), the leading candidate to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has often stirred controversy within Kansas due to her history of vetoing abortion legislation -- and her alleged connections with Wichita-based late-term abortionist George Tiller. “There’s absolutely no doubt that she is the most pro-abortion governor in the country,” said Cheryl Sullenger, senior policy analyst at Operation Rescue in Wichita.

Senate Will Vote on Constitutionally Controversial Bill Allowing a Non-State to Have a Member in the House of Representatives
The U.S. Senate voted Tuesday to allow floor debate on a bill that would grant the District of Columbia a full-fledged congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill advances a controversial item on the agenda of congressional Democrats, but which many Republicans say is unconstitutional. The Constitution says: “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.” It says nothing about members of the House being elected by anything other than a state.

"The beatings will continue until morale improves."

BAM'S BOLD GAMBLE - AN ENORMOUS BET ON BIG GOV'T

By DICK MORRIS

"With a speech to match the most eloquent of State of the Union Addresses, with strains of FDR and JFK and a touch of Winston Churchill thrown in, President Obama has clearly staked his presidency on the outcome of the economic crisis.

Whether or not you agree with his prescription for recovery (I don't), it's clear that he's not hedging his bets. If it works, his place in history is assured. If it fails, so is his early retirement.

The speech made it apparent that the Obama administration's response to this crisis will either go down in history as a success that Americans will admire for decades, or become a case study in economic failure that students and scholars will study and pick apart for generations.

The speech began where it needed to begin, with a bold affirmation of faith in the rebuilding and recovery of America. Then Obama listed some of the more popular parts of his spending-stimulus program.

The specific items he recalled from the package were attractive. But Americans know, by now, that much of the program (largely unmentioned last night) is a mountain of pork - money spent for the sake of spending it to spur recovery, not to achieve particularly important ends.

Obama did not seek to justify the spending for the specific purposes to which it is dedicated. Courageously, he said that he passed it because it will work. For his sake, it better. But I doubt it."  (Read more.)

Nationalization: It's Not Just for Communists Anymore

It used to be synonymous with authoritarian regimes, now politicians threaten it and media call it a 'necessary evil.'

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute

In America, “nationalization” used to be a dirty word. But that was prior to this era of government intervention to save industries and institutions deemed “too big to fail.” Now, state involvement in – and even ownership of – certain sectors of the national economy is called a “necessary evil.”

The Long Arm of the Lawless

Stratfor
Global Security and Intelligence Report
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Last week we discussed the impact that crime, and specifically kidnapping, has been having on Mexican citizens and foreigners visiting or living in Mexico. We pointed out that there is almost no area of Mexico immune from the crime and violence. As if on cue, on the night of Feb. 21 a group of heavily armed men threw two grenades at a police building in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero state, wounding at least five people. Zihuatanejo is a normally quiet beach resort just north of Acapulco; the attack has caused the town’s entire police force to go on strike. (Police strikes, or threats of strikes, are not uncommon in Mexico.)

Mexican police have regularly been targeted by drug cartels, with police officials even having been forced to seek safety in the United States, but such incidents have..... (Read more.)

The Geert Wilders Ban
By David Aikman

How cowardly is the British government going to get? A few days ago it banned entry into England by Geert Wilders, a Dutch member of Parliament, because it feared some British Muslims might become violent. Wilders has produced a short documentary called "Fitna" which draws the connection between verses in the Koran advocating violence and recent acts by Islamic terrorists.

The Wilders documentary does not urge violence or hatred against Muslims and the Dutch government itself criticized the ban. But it seems that today freedom of speech is automatically withdrawn from visitors to Britain if an offended minority threatens violence convincingly enough.

Of course, some of Britain's Muslims in the recent past have not just threatened violence, they have carried it out. Is the British government frightened that "Fitna" may be true?

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States."

--Noah Webster

"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, - who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia."

--George Mason

Heather Higgins : Obama's Schadenfreude

The seeming indifference of this Administration to the steady and precipitous decline of the market since President Obama’s election should surprise no one. One has only to look at the President’s past to gauge the prism through which he sees the present… and the future. Read on.

Ed Feulner : Still Waiting for Open Government

“Today does not mark the end of our economic troubles,” President Barack Obama announced as he signed the so-called stimulus bill. “But it does mark the beginning of the end.”

It’s not clear whether he was intentionally paraphrasing Winston Churchill’s famous 1942 speech that included the phrase “the end of the beginning.” But the passage of this law certainly marked the end of at least one thing: Obama’s promise to bring transparency to the legislative process. Read on.

Thomas Sowell : A Fatal Trajectory

An increasing number of recent letters and e-mails from readers strike a note, not only of unhappiness with the way things are going in our society, but a note of despair.

Those of us who are pessimists are only a step away from despair ourselves, so we may not be the ones to offer the best antidote to the view that America has seen its best days and is degenerating toward what may well be its worst. Yet what hope remains is no less precious nor any less worthy of being preserved.

First of all, the day-to-day life of most Americans in these times is nowhere near as dire as that of the band of cold, ragged and hungry men who gathered around George Washington in the winter at Valley Forge, to which they had been driven by defeat after defeat.

Only the most reckless gambler would have bet on them to win. Only an optimist would have expected them to...... [more]

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."

--Patrick Henry

OBAMA'S 3 BIG LIES AND PLAN TO DESTROY GOP

By Scott Wheeler

Let me tell you the real reason Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid pushed through the biggest spending bill in history -- without proper debate, without Republican input, and without any public scrutiny at all.

Simply, they are trying to turn the United States into a one-party country and to put the Republican Party out of business once and for all.

The massive appropriation called a stimulus -- some $787 billion of your money -- is really a political war chest for the Democrats.

They want to change the face of American politics forever, and they want to use your taxpayer money to do it. READ MORE.

Illiberal Stimulus

The massive bill poses a threat to individual freedom.
By Alexander Benard & Anthony Dick

As President Obama chides Congress for its delay in passing a $900 billion stimulus bill, the largest lump-sum government expenditure in U.S. history, the country would do well to reflect on one of the basic lessons of human experience: Any excessive concentration of power in the hands of government—not just political or military, but also economic—is a threat to the precious and fragile liberty that we have so painstakingly achieved.
Read more.

How the D.C.-Utah House Voting Rights Act violates the Constitution.

By Hans A. von Spakovsky

When the D.C. voting-rights bill comes up for a cloture vote in the Senate this Tuesday, senators will face one overriding question: Will they uphold their oaths to support and defend the Constitution? If they give the District of Columbia a voting representative in Congress, they will break those oaths.

Article I specifies that “Representatives . . . shall be apportioned among the several States,” and this is confirmed in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment. One of the qualifications to be a congressman is to “be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.”

Congress itself has recognized that the only way the District of Columbia could get representation was through a constitutional amendment — Congress passed one in 1977 (the amendment failed to gain the approval of 38 states, and thus didn’t take effect).

It also took an amendment — the 23rd Amendment, ratified in 1961 — to provide District residents the right to.... more.

Two Lost Decades? Why Japan’s Economy Is Still Stumbling and How the U.S. Can Stay Upright

by Derek Scissors, Ph.D. and J.D. Foster, Ph.D.


A weak Japanese economy is again making Americans nervous. For the fourth quarter of 2008, Japan reported a painful 12.7 percent annualized drop in GDP—a low point in a disappointing economic performance that stretches back to the early 1990s.[1]

The extent of Japanese stagnation has been understated—much more than a decade has been and is still being lost. The relevance of this stagnation to America's current economic crisis therefore goes beyond how the Japanese handled their financial crisis almost 20 years ago to a continued failure to revitalize the Japanese economy in sustainable fashion. This traces back to Japan's failure to move its economy away from structural reliance on exports and trade surpluses. The U.S. has the mirror problem: a reliance on imports, including imported savings. Read more.

Tustin man with possible tie to bin Laden is arrested

Man lied about Pakistan trip, officials say, to cover connections.
The Orange County Register
OCRegister.com

By SALVADOR HERNANDEZ

TUSTINA - local man lied to obtain citizenship, a U.S. passport, and about a trip to Pakistan in 2005 – information he is believed to have falsified to hide alleged connections to terrorists and terrorist organizations abroad, authorities said.

Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, a 34-year-old man from Tustin who was born in Afghanistan, was taken into custody by federal authorities this morning in the 13000 block of Charloma Drive, officials said.

Al-Qaeda founder launches fierce attack on Osama bin Laden
Telegraph.co.uk

One of al-Qaeda's founding leaders, Dr Fadl, has begun an ideological revolt against Osama bin Laden, blaming him for "every drop" of blood spilt in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The terrorist attacks on September 11 were both immoral and counterproductive, he writes. "Ramming America has become the shortest road to fame and leadership among the Arabs and Muslims. But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy's buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours?" asks Dr Fadl. "That, in short, is my evaluation of 9/11."

He is equally unsparing about Muslims who move to the West and then take up terrorism. "If they gave you permission to enter their homes and live with them, and if they gave you security for yourself and your money, and if they gave you the opportunity to work or study, or they granted you political asylum," writes Dr Fadl, then it is "not honourable" to "betray them, through killing and destruction".  Read more.

Jindal rejects stimulus money

Politico

"'We must be careful and thoughtful as we examine all the strings attached,'" the gov says.

Alan Keyes: Stop Obama or U.S. will cease to exist

Claims 'communist usurper' plunges country into chaos
By Drew Zahn

Alan Keyes, a 2008 presidential candidate who is also a plaintiff in one of the many lawsuits challenging Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility to occupy the Oval Office, charged at a pro-life rally that unless Obama's social and economic policies are stopped, the United States as we know it is over.