Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Egyptian army’s financial coup: 12 billion petrodollars from Saudi, UAE, Kuwaiti fans

Via NC Renegade

Arab petrodollars pour in for Cairo

In a dazzling display of monetary muscle, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates poured $8 billion in a single day into the coffers of Egypt’s army rulers in cash, grants, loans without interest and gifts of gas, a dizzying life-saving infusion into its tottering economy. Forking out sums on this scale in a single day – or even month - is beyond the capacity of almost every world power – even the US and Russia - in this age of economic distress. The Arab oil colossuses managed to dwarf Iran’s pretensions to the standing of regional power.

Tuesday, July 9, just six days after the Egyptian army overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi, a UAR delegation of foreign and energy ministers and national security adviser landed in Cairo. They came carrying the gifts of $1 billion as a grant and $2 billion in long-term credit.

In well-orchestrated moves, Saudi Arabia then stepped forward with a $5 billion package, of which a lump sum of $2 billion was drafted to Egypt’s state bank that day, followed by another $2 billion as a gift of Saudi gas, and a further $1 billion for propping up the sagging Egyptian currency.

The delivery by two Arab governments to a third of financial assistance on this scale and on a single day is unheard of in the Middle East, or, indeed, anwhere else.

As they celebrate Ramadan, 84 million Egyptians can start looking forward to a square meal at the end of their month of fasting.

This river of largesse was the outcome of a development first revealed by debkafile last week:

More @ DEBKA File

“This Is Who We Are”

Via WRSA

Paul Weston, standing in front of Salisbury Cathedral, talks about the origins of British culture, Western Civilization, and the collaboration of the Left with Islamic fundamentalists with the aim of destroying Britain.


Paul Weston is a British-based writer who focuses on the damage done to Western Civilisation by the hard left’s ongoing cultural revolution, which seeks to destroy the Christian, capitalist and racial base of the West. He is the leader of Liberty GB, his website may be found here, and his political Facebook page here.

For links to his previous essays, see the Paul Weston Archives.







I'SE GWINE BACK TO DIXIE - 1874 - Tom Roush

Via Cousin John


This post Civil War song became a minstrel show 'standard.' First published in 1874, this is one of probably little more than 20 American songs composed in the 1870's that remained popular through the next century. American folk music historians have termed the period between 1865 and 1900 as the 'dead zone,' claiming that new and original music had all but ceased to exist. They believe that most 'new' music of the day was simply recycled from the first half of the 1800's.

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As I understand it, this song was written in response to the many blacks who wanted to return to the South after the war. Many folks in the North hated slavery but still disliked the blacks.

Colorado Man, Continues Running Despite Fighting Stage 4 Cancer For A Decade


Dewey Gerk looked up at the top of the hill. The hill, like some of the chemotherapy treatments he'd received in the last 10 years, was deceiving. One moment, as the race started, he felt great. The next moment, as time went on and he began to climb the hill, he felt drained, near death even.

He wondered if he would finish the Run 4 Greeley. The top of the hill seemed a little too far away. He wondered at times, too, if he could go on with the treatments, especially after years of feeling sick and tired.

But his family was here, 30 of them, brothers and grandparents and bunches of nieces and nephews and their kids, and so he would finish.

Doctors gave him, at most, a year to live after they diagnosed his rectal/colon cancer in 2003. But he had too much to live for. There were graduations and weddings and first communions. All those family milestones and events like this one, a July 4 race that inspired a family reunion of sorts, were the things that made life worth living.

Gerk, 51, of Greeley, acknowledges that he has Stage 4 cancer, the worst kind. But he doesn't how much time he has left. Gerk, who's carried a dark sense of humor far longer than the death sentence doctors assigned to him, likes to say he's in denial about his disease. But sometimes ignorance really is bliss, or in his case, it may mean some additional years. He's had Stage 4 since he was diagnosed.
"I've never asked," Gerk said. "I don't want to know. I can't live like that."

Gerk may mean that literally.

OPEC to lose market share to shale oil in 2014


OPEC's share of the world market will shrink in 2014 as rising supply of U.S. shale oil gives the exporter group little comfort from the fastest growth in world demand in four years.

In a monthly report, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries forecast demand for its oil in 2014 would average 29.61 million barrels per day (bpd), down 250,000 bpd from 2013 and 770,000 bpd less than it produced in June.

"This would imply a further build in global crude inventories, which currently stand at high levels," OPEC said in reference to the market outlook for next year.

The report is a further illustration that technology for extracting oil and gas from shale is reducing dependence on OPEC. Rising output will make it harder for the 12-member group to keep its own output at high rates without risking a drop in prices below $100 a barrel, its preferred level.

More @ Reuters

Marine Vet-Turned-Country Singer Stuns With ‘Coal Keeps The Lights On’


Man Raised by Two Lesbians Speaks Out Against Gay Marriage

 Man Raised by Two Lesbians Speaks Out Against Gay Marriage



Nat Turner's Rebellion, A Gruesome Tale

Via mind jog by whatever on John Brown was the First “Domestic Terrorist”

http://i2.blogs.indiewire.com/images/blogs/shadowandact/archives/slaverevolt.jpg


 “The Land They Fought For”, by Clifford Dowdy, Pages 19 – 26

The twenty-first of August was a Sunday, in the season when the white people spent the day away at camp meetings. The weather was not hot for the season and the day was lazy on the quiet Travis farm. In The Preacher's cabin, his wife was fixing Sunday dinner for their child. In the woods below the fields, six of The Preacher's disciples were gathered in a glen, where to a Sunday feast they added some of the apple brandy which was always handy to acquire. Only one of them belonged to Mr. Travis-Hark Travis, a magnificently and powerfully built black man. Two others, Sam and the ferocious Will Francis, be­longed to one of Mrs. Travis' brothers. As farms were relatively few in the sparsely settled and wooded country, all the Negroes were in­timately acquainted.

The Preacher, after his custom of keeping himself aloof, joined the frolic in the middle of the afternoon, when several hours of feasting and drinking had his followers in receptive humor. From then until full night he coached them in the details of his predestined mission in which they were to be allowed to participate.

At ten o'clock they left the woods and silently approached the dark farmyard of the Travis house. All lights were out in the house, where the family, tired from their trip to the camp meeting, were asleep. In the farmyard stood a Negro named Austin, who joined them, and brought The Preacher's band to eight.

The seven followers went to the unlocked cider press while The Preacher studied the situation. When the silent men returned, The Preacher directed Hark, the Apollo, to set a tall ladder against an upper-story window sill. The Preacher climbed the ladder, stepped through the open window, and tiptoed through the familiar house down to the front door. When he opened it, his disciples crept in. The fear­some Will Francis held a broadax and one of the men gave The Preacher a hatchet. Without any other weapons, the eight men crept into the master bedroom, where Mr. and Mrs. Travis were asleep.

When The Preacher stood over them, he paused, looking on the face of the kindly man who had given him so many privileges. The other Negroes told him that the leader must strike the first blow. An­other pause, The Preacher struck suddenly and awkwardly down at the sleeping man.

The hatchet glanced off, giving a blow on the side of the head. Mr. Travis, startled into wakefulness, struggled out of bed, sleepily calling to his wife. When his bare feet touched the floor, Will Francis, with no confusion of purpose, brought the broadax down on his head in a single long stroke. Without another sound, Mr. Travis fell dead to the floor. Whirling, Will came down with the broadax again, and Mrs. Travis died in her bed without ever coming fully awake.

The sounds had not aroused the two sixteen-year-old boys - Mrs.Travis' son, Putnam Moore, and the apprentice, Joel Westbrook-asleep in the same bed in a room in another part of the house. They were killed before they were awakened.

Last The Preacher went into the baby's room. He had often played with the child and fondled it, and the baby smiled at him when he woke up. The Preacher backed out, unable to touch the child, and sent in Will and another follower to knock the baby's brains out against the brick fireplace.

With the house theirs, they took four shotguns, several muskets, powder and shot, and exchanged their clothes for garments of the dead men. To give a dash to the new costumes, they got some of the red cloth with which the top of the gig was lined and tore that into sashes to go around their waists and over their shoulders. The material gave out and they made other strips from sheets, which they dyed in the freely howling blood. The Preacher felt that this unit was now ready to serve as the nucleus around which all the slaves of the county would rally.
With some of the force mounted on the Travis horses, they went to the small farm owned by Mrs. Travis' brother, who was also the brother of the owner of Sam and Will. This younger Mr. Francis, a bachelor who lived with his one slave in a single-room house, came to the door when Will and Sam called to him that they had a message from his brother.

When he opened the door they grabbed him. He was a strong man and he fought, calling to his loyal slave for his gun. One of The Preach­er's men shot Mr. Francis' slave, Nelson, who managed to stagger to the back door and escape in the darkness to the woods. He started out to give the alarm to his master's brother, the owner of Will and Sam, but he didn't make it that far. Mr. Francis was finished off before Nelson had reached the woods, going down under repeated blows from the hatchet.

From there The Preacher's band walked on through the night to the home of Mrs. Harris, a widow with several children and grandchildren. Unbeknownst to themselves as they slept, this family was spared through the agency of their slave, Joe, who joined The Preacher on the condition that his people be spared.

With their first recruit, the band descended on the home of the widow Reese, whose front door was unlocked. They killed her in her sleep, her son as he awakened, caught the white farm manager who tried to escape in the darkness. He got off with his life by feigning death, though he was forever after crippled.

By then other slaves, too frightened to defend the whites but unwill­ing to join the insurgents, had fled before the band, and nearby planta­tions were warned. Not willing at that stage to risk losing any of his eight followers, The Preacher changed his course.

At sunrise on Monday morning they reached the substantial home of the widow Turner, set in a grove and flanked by a row of outbuildings. Mrs. Turner's manager was already at work at the distillery beside the lane to the house. He was shot and stripped, his clothes going to the last recruit, the Joe who had saved his own people. Mrs. Turner and a kinswoman were awakened by the shot and came downstairs to bolt the door. The fearsome Will battered the door down with several strokes of his ax, and the two women were grabbed in the hallway.

While they pleaded for their lives, Will went about his skillful work of execution on Mrs. Turner, and The Preacher pulled Mrs. Newsom, trembling violently, out of the door. He kept striking her over the: head with a sword he had acquired. The edge was too blunt to kill the screaming woman and Will, turning from the corpse of Mrs. Turner, methodically finished off The Preacher's victim with his ax.

They got silver there and more decorations for their costumes, and when they left the silent plantation at full daylight their number had spread to fifteen.

They divided, those on foot under The Preacher swinging by the Bryants', where they paused to kill the couple, their child, and Mrs. Bryant's mother, before joining the mounted force at the pleasant es­tablishment of Mrs. Whitehead.

When The Preacher's force got there, Mrs. Whitehead's grown son had already been hacked to death in a cotton patch while his own slaves looked on. Inside the house three daughters and a child, being bathed by his grandmother, were dead. Will was dragging the mother of the family out into the yard, where he decapitated her, and a young girl who had hidden was running for the woods. The Preacher caught her and, his sword failing him again, beat her to death with a fence rail. Another daughter, the only member of the family to survive, had made it to the woods where she was hidden by a house slave.

When they left the seven dead and mutilated bodies at the White­heads', The Preacher's band had grown and acquired more weapons and horses. They had also drunk more cider and brandy, and they moved boldly ahead to continue the massacre although they knew that the alarm was out by then. Several of the next small plantations in their line of march were deserted. The band divided again, with Will the executioner leading the mounted force toward the house of his own master, Nathaniel Francis, the brother of The Preacher's Mrs. Travis and of the bachelor whose slave, Nelson, had been among the first to give the warning.

Though the warning had not reached the Francis plantation, a Negro boy had told Mr. Francis a wild tale of the slaughter of his sister's family. Having heard nothing of The Preacher's band, Mr. Francis and his mother were on the way to investigate the grisly scene awaiting them at the Travis household.

Two of Mr. Francis' nephews, eight- and three-year-old boys, were playing in the lane as the Negroes rode silently toward them. The three-year-old, seeing the familiar Will, asked for a ride as he had many times before. Will picked him up on the horse, cut off his head, and dropped the body in the lane. The other boy screamed and tried to I hide, but they were too fast for him. Henry Doyle, the overseer, seeing this, ran to warn Mrs. Francis. He was shot dead in the doorway of the house, but not before he had warned Mrs. Francis. A house slave hid her between the plastering and the roof in one of the "jump" rooms, and kept The Preacher's band away from her hiding place by pretending to hunt for her. When the Negroes had gone on, the house slave of necessity with them, Mrs. Francis came down to find the other house women dividing her clothes, including her wedding dress. One attacked her with a dirk and another defended her. She escaped to join her husband and be taken to safety.

When the band left the Francis plantation, the alarm by then was general and the Negroes were beginning to get drunk. They headed for the road to the county seat. They found more deserted houses, where faithful slaves had left to hide their masters, and met other slaves who had waited to join the insurrectionists. At young Captain Barrow's the warning had been received and the overseer had escaped, but Mrs. Barrow, a woman of beauty, had delayed to arrange her toilet before appearing abroad. She tarried so long that the Negroes reached the house before she left. Her husband called to her to run out the back door while he fought from the front.

In leaving, Mrs. Barrow had the same experience with her house slaves as had Mrs. Francis. A younger one tried to hold her for the mob, while an older one freed her and held the young Negro woman while her mistress escaped. In front, Captain Barrow emptied a pistol, a single-shot rifle, and a shotgun, and fought with the butt of the gun across the porch, through the hall, and into the front room. He was holding them off when a Negro on the outside reached through the window and, from behind, sliced his throat with a razor.

The Preacher's men had a great respect for Captain Barrow's brav­ery. They drank his blood and spared his corpse mutilation. Instead, they laid him out in a bedquilt and placed a plug of tobacco on his breast.

It was ten o'clock Monday morning when they left there, and the two bands soon reconverged. They then numbered over fifty. The Preach­er's vision of a mass insurrection was coming true. White men were trying to form a force ahead of the band but some of the men, on seeing the bleeding and mutilated bodies of women, hurried back to their farms to hide their own wives and children. Hundreds of women and children were gathering in the county seat at Jerusalem, unaware that the band's winding course was directed there.

On the way The Preacher's formidable force passed more deserted places, but got its biggest haul at Waller's, a country comer. A children's boarding school was there and a large distillery, a blacksmith shop, and the wheelwright, and it had taken some time to gather all the people in the neighborhood. Before they could start for Jerusalem, the Negroes were on them. Some escaped to the screams of those being chased and butchered. More than ten were killed there, mostly chil­dren.

From the Waller massacre, the band headed directly for Jerusalem. By then eighteen white men had gathered with arms at some distance from the town, where four hundred unarmed people had collected. The Preacher's band of sixty would have reached the town first except that his lieutenants overruled him when they passed the famous brandy cellar at Parker's deserted plantation, three miles from town. They tar­ried there to quench their thirsts.

The eighteen white men came on them in Parker's field and opened fire. In a short, pitched battle the boldest Negroes, leading a charge, fell, and most of the insurrectionists fled. The Preacher escaped with twenty of his most faithful followers, and headed toward the Carolina border.

He was seeking new recruits then. They were slow coming in and victims were getting scarce. Late in the afternoon The Preacher, still supported by the Apollo-like Hark and Will with his broadax, allowed a single armed planter to hold off his band from a lady with two children. That planter's family had already escaped to safety. In that family was a fifteen-year-old boy who, thirty-odd years later, was to duplicate his father's indomitable stand-at Chickamauga-and immortalize the Southampton County name of Thomas among the Union's heroes.

Below the Thomas' fine plantation home, near dusk, the Preacher's faithful score of followers turned back north and at night made camp in the woods. At dawn, The Preacher started for the large and handsome home of Dr. Blunt, one of the county's few plantations of the legend, and on the edge of the district of yesterday's triumph. Not seeking victims then, The Preacher wanted fresh supplies and recruits to put heart and strength back into the insurrection.

His band of twenty reached the Blunts' yard fence just before day­light. Unlike the smaller houses, Dr. Blunt's house was set back in a grove a hundred yards from the front fence-a stout affair, with a locked gate. A precautionary shot was fired to determine if the darkened house was deserted, as expected. Then the powerful Hark broke down the gate, and the group advanced toward the house, looking for slaves to join them. The band was within twenty yards of the house when firing broke out from the front porch.

Hark Travis, one of the original conspirators and one of the bravest of the subleaders, fell wounded in the first volley. When The Preacher, shaken but grown desperate, tried to rally his force for an attack, an­other volley dropped two more. His men broke. At that moment Dr. Blunt's slaves came swarming out of hiding places, armed with grub hoes, and rushed the insurrectionists. The Preacher fled with his men. Dr. Blunt's slaves rounded up several prisoners, including the wounded Hark, crawling toward a cotton patch.

Dr. Blunt, his fifteen-year-old son, and his manager had done the firing, while the women loaded single-shot rilles and shotguns. Before The Preacher's men arrived, Dr. Blunt had given his own slaves the choice of fighting with his family or leaving. They chose unanimously to fight.
The Preacher had been disappointed earlier when other Negroes, more than had joined him, had helped hide their white people or es­caped with them. When his own people fought against him, The Preacher lost faith in his insurrection.

More in desperation than purpose he led the dozen remaining follow­ers to retrace their triumphant steps of the day before. At the first plantation, the Greensville County cavalry militia rode them down. They killed Will, the ax-executioner, and killed or captured all except The Preacher and two others. The insurrection was over then, though the alarmed neighborhood did not know it.

Following the Greensville cavalry, other militia units poured into the county during the next two days, and U. S. Marines from Norfolk. At Fortress Monroe Robert E. Lee, a young army officer, prepared to leave with his company if needed. No more forces were needed. The two men who had escaped with The Preacher were captured. Many who followed the leader during the successful stages of Monday had re­turned to their homes. They were hunted down, some killed and others taken to jail. But The Preacher eluded them until the beginning of October.

While changing hiding places on another Sunday, he encountered a poor farmer in some woods. Like his neighbors, this Mr. Phipps was carrying a gun when he came upon the ragged, emaciated, and wretched-looking Preacher, who immediately surrendered. No demonstration was made against The Preacher when he was brought to jail or when he and fifty-two others were brought to trial. Of these, seventeen were hanged and twelve transported. Of five free Negroes among them, one was acquitted, the others sent to Superior Court, where one more was acquitted and three convicted. All con­victions were based upon cross-evidence given by white people and the Negroes participating. The Preacher confessed fully to his leader­ship and to the details of the murder of more than fifty white people.

With The Preacher's execution. the case was closed and entered the record books as Nat Turner's Rebellion. In history, the unelaborated reference to "Nat Turner's Rebellion" has been made so casually for so long that the tag has no association with the terror and horror of mass murder. Also, to the population of the United States today the slave insurrection in Haiti is a remote thing, part of the inevitable and the just march of events. But to the South, where white refugees had fled-at least one to Southampton County-the Haiti massacre was the dread reminder of what could happen to them. With Nat Turner, it had happened. The deep fear of the blacks' uprising against them had been implanted. It was never to leave.

$NAACP$ to Lee County: Remove Gen. Robert E. Lee portrait (Poll)

Via SHNV

 A portrait hangs above

Poll: Should the portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee be removed from Lee County Commission chambers? 

Local $NAACP$ Chapter President James Muwakki asked the Lee County Commission to remove a painting of late Confederate Army Gen. Robert E. Lee from a wall where it hangs above public meetings.

In a letter to commissioners, Muwakkil stated that Lee fought for slavery; thus, his image stands contrary to contemporary beliefs.


“That painting is a symbol of racism,” he said. “It’s a symbol of divisiveness, and it doesn’t unify Lee County, it divides Lee County.”

More Marxism @ News-Press 

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Editorial: Much bigger issues than Robert E. Lee portrait

Gun porn

Via grossfater_m

House Republicans push to slash IRS budget by 24 percent, cite abuses and sequestration

 

House Republicans want the IRS to pay for targeting political groups and are pushing legislation that would cut the tax collecting agency’s budget by $3 billion -- nearly a quarter of what it received last fiscal year.

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to start “marking up” the spending bill Wednesday.

While it’s unlikely that such a severe cut will pass both congressional chambers, it does give lawmakers another opportunity to verbally punish the agency for unfairly scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

The bill would place additional restrictions on spending at the IRS and prohibit employees from implementing the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act – commonly referred to as ObamaCare. It also bans conferences, the production of videos and curbs what lawmakers see as a number of abuses at the IRS. 

More @ Fox

FOIAed again: ‘Gun map’ newspaper seeks more info on firearms owners

 http://patriotupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/th8-150x150.jpg

The suburban New York newspaper that created a firestorm earlier this year when it published the names and addresses of gun permit holders has requested more data regarding legal owners of firearms, apparently to determine if handgun ownership patterns have changed in the last six months.

The Journal News, a Gannett-owned paper that covers suburban counties just north of New York City, requested more personal information in May. This time, it included statistical data, as well as names and addresses of gun permit holders from Rockland, Putnam and Westchester counties. Out of the paper's reach are the names of those that opted out of the public records under the NY SAFE law, passed after the Journal News published an interactive map showing the address of every registered handgun owner in two counties it covers.

“The request indicated that it was in relation to a ‘news event,’” Westchester County spokeswoman Rosia Blackwell Lawrence told FoxNews.com.

The latest document request, made on May 15, sought the names and addresses of all permit holders in the Westchester database, along with other data that pertained to some 9,996 opt-out requests, including reasons for the requests, total number of requests received, and the total number of requests approved.

More @ Fox

John Brown was the First “Domestic Terrorist”


John Brown, the famously violent abolitionist, attacked a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859. He took possession of its armory, and fully intended to use the weapons from the armory to arm slaves for a revolt. He was stopped by the U.S. Army (led by then Colonel Robert E. Lee), tried in a local civil court, found guilty, and hanged.

As much as people like Ralph Waldo Emerson,1 Victor Hugo,2 and the writer of “John Brown’s Body”3 tried to immortalize him after his death, he died like any common criminal.

Fast forward to now. If John Brown did now what he had done then, what would we call him? A domestic terrorist. And under the Patriot Act, he could be tried in a military court as an enemy combatant. Forget that. They might just drone strike him down. His body wouldn’t be “mouldering in the grave.” It would be smoldering in a crater.

Obama Commits to Signing UN Arms Trade Treaty While Congress at Summer Recess

Via Billy

un-att

The number one goal of the United Nations is to become the political entity that rules all nations or in other words, the one world government.  To accomplish that goal, they have to continue to exert their authority and power over individual countries and they have been quite successful at doing this in recent years.

One of the key pieces of international law that needs to be in place before the UN can take over the world is to control all weapons, including handguns, rifles, shotguns, semi-automatic and automatic weapons and ammunition.  Over the past few years, the UN has been pushing one treaty that will help to accomplish that goal.  It is the UN Arms Trade Treaty.

The UN Arms Trade Treaty is a treaty that would regulate the international sale and transfer of all conventional weapons throughout the world.  Conventional weapons are sea and land mines, rockets, missiles, cluster munitions, non-nuclear bombs, shells, small arms and light weapons.  By small arms, they mean handguns, rifles and shotguns of all kinds, regardless of their use or design.

A number of Second Amendment supporters and gun rights advocates believe that this treaty could be used to further regulate guns in the US and infringe on the rights of Americans to bear arms.  One hundred and thirty members of Congress jointly signed a letter to President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, insisting that they reject the UN Arms Trade Treaty, saying:

Republicans Accuse Obama of Trying to Stack Key US Appeals Court


 https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.politifact.com/politifact%2Fphotos%2FSupreme_Court_cartoon.jpg

 Republican senators on Wednesday accused President Obama of trying to stack an influential U.S. appeals court with friendly judges in the hope they would approve forthcoming federal regulations.

In June, Obama named three lawyers to serve as judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which often weighs industry challenges to regulations issued by such agencies as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Wednesday's hearing was for Patricia Millett, a Washington lawyer in private practice who has argued 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, said Obama wants more Democratic-appointed judges on the court as he focuses on issuing regulations, including closely watched rules addressing climate change, which will almost certainly be subject to legal challenges that will be heard by the court.

The president is hoping to "stack the deck to his advantage," Lee said.

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz adopted a similar line, saying the White House is trying to "pack the court."

Senate Republicans acknowledged that Millett had strong credentials but said there was no need for additional judges on the court because the case load was not sufficiently high. The court currently has eight active judges, equally divided between Republican and Democratic appointees. The court has 11 judgeships in total but all the positions have not be filled since a brief period in 2005 when Republican George W. Bush was president. At that point, Republicans controlled the White House and Senate and Democrats said the court did not need additional judges.

The senior Republican on the committee, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, has introduced legislation that would strip the court of the three vacant seats, saying they are not needed.

More @ Newsmax

Frock coat of LTC Francis W. Bird CSA mortally wounded at Reams Station August 25, 1864


Docs: Justice Department facilitated anti-Zimmerman protests

Via avordvet

 

A division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was deployed to Sanford, Florida in 2012 to provide assistance for anti-George Zimmerman protests, including a rally headlined by activist Al Sharpton, according to newly released documents.

The Community Relations Service (CRS), a unit of DOJ, reported expenses related to its deployment in Sanford to help manage protests between March and April 2012, according to documents obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch.

CRS spent $674.14 between March 25-27 related to having been “deployed to Sanford, FL, to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain.” CRS spent another $1,142.84 for the same purpose between March 25-28.CRS spent $892.55 “to provide support for protest deployment in Florida” between March 30-April 1, and $751.60 “to provide technical assistance to the City of Sanford, event organizers, and law enforcement agencies for the march and rally on March 31.”

Sharpton, who promoted the Tawana Brawley hoax in the 1980s and in 1995 led a protest against the “white interloper” owner of a Harlem clothing store that ended in a deadly shooting rampage at the store, was a featured speaker at the March 31 rally, called “The March for Trayvon Martin,” where he advocated for Zimmerman’s prosecution.

Europe's New 'Time Bomb' Is Ticking in Syria

 

They come from the suburbs of Paris, from the East End of London, from the cities along Germany's Fulda River, and even from the small towns of Ireland: a small army of up to 1,000 European irregulars joining the Syrian civil war to help rebels topple President Bashar al-Assad.

But while ministers from these irregulars' governments say they too are in favor of toppling Assad, these same officials are doing everything they can to stop these fighters -- or at least develop new laws to criminalize their activities. The reason: fear that these irregulars will one day return to Europe, equipped with deadly military skills, trained in the tradecraft of international terrorism, and steeped in the extremist anti-Western ideology of al Qaeda and its Syrian brethren, the al-Nusra Front. On a single day in April and in a single country, Belgium, the authorities launched 48 raids on suspected jihadi recruiters believed to be luring Belgians to fight in Syria.

Gun Rights Activist Adam Kokesh Arrested in Va.

Via avordvet

View more videos at: http://nbcwashington.com.

Kokesh posted a video of himself on the Fourth of July loading a shotgun with live ammunition at Freedom Plaza in D.C. He is refusing to leave his cell.

A gun rights activist who uploaded a video of himself loading a shotgun in downtown D.C. was arrested and is refusing to come out of his cell for an arraignment.

Adam Kokesh was arrested late Tuesday after U.S. Park Police searched his Herndon home. He is charged with possession of a Schedule I or II drug and possession of a Schedule I or II drug while in possession of a firearm.

Kokesh had been scheduled to be arraigned at 9 a.m. Wednesday. A coworker close to him told NBC4 Washington's Adam Tuss that Kokesh's refusal to leave his cell is meant to be an act of civil disobedience.

It is unknown whether Kokesh has a lawyer yet.

 

40 Minutes In Benghazi

Via Conservative Byte

 
THE INFERNO The U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi, Libya, in flames, on September 11, 2012. The attackers seemed to have detailed knowledge of the mission's layout and even to know there were jerry cans full of gasoline near the compound's western wall, which they would use to fuel the fire.

When U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was killed in a flash of hatred in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, the political finger-pointing began. But few knew exactly what had happened that night. With the ticktock narrative of the desperate fight to save Stevens, Fred Burton and Samuel M. Katz provide answers.

Adapted from Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi, by Fred Burton and Samuel M. Katz, to be published in September by St. Martin's Press; © 2013 by the authors.

After the fall of Colonel Qaddafi, in 2011, Libya had become an al-Qaeda-inspired, if not al-Qaeda-led, training base and battleground. In the northeastern city of Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city, men in blazers and dark glasses wandered about the narrow streets of the Medina, the old quarter, with briefcases full of cash and Browning Hi-Power 9-mm. semi-automatics—the classic killing tool of the European spy. Rent-a-guns, militiamen with AK-47s and no qualms about killing, stood outside the cafés and restaurants where men with cash and those with missiles exchanged business terms.

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Poll: Hispanics Want Border Security, Interior Enforcement Before Amnesty

 

A new poll shows that a majority of registered Hispanic voters believe any immigration legislation that becomes law should deal with border security and interior immigration law enforcement before legalization of America’s at least 11 million illegal aliens begins.

“Among all Hispanics, six in ten, 60%, support granting legal status to those already here only when the 90% goal is reached; 32% oppose,” GOP pollster John McLaughlin’s group said in a release. “Among Hispanic voters, 60% support, 34% oppose.”

The "90% goal" McLaughlin’s group is referencing is the target of ending 90 percent of current illegal immigration through border security and interior enforcement.

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Boy Scout defectors announce plans for a new scouting program


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A groups of conservative former Boy Scouts have announced the formation of a Christian alternative to that quintessential American institution.

John Stemberger, founder of OnMyHonor.Net, a coalition of former Boy Scout leaders and participants, has announced the formation of a new soon-to-be-named scouting organization for young men.

“We have direct communication from over 30,000 leaders, parents, and people within the scouting movement who have specifically said ‘we want to be involved,” Stemberger told reporters on a Tuesday conference call announcing the endeavor. 

Power-tripping cop has colorful history

 

The power-tripping cop whose ranting at a driver at a DUI checkpoint has been seen by millions in an Internet video already has a colorful history with the sheriff’s department that includes facing termination for failing to appear in court to testify, according to a new report.

WSMV-TV in Nashville sent investigative reporter Nancy Amons into action when the video of Rutherford County Sheriff’s Deputy A.J. Ross turned into an Internet sensation.

Millions of people have now seen him order a driver at a DUI checkpoint to lower his window and then shout when the window went down only a few inches. The video also shows the officers directing a dog to jump at the driver’s car, which caused damage to the vehicle.

The student alleged he was illegally detained by the officer, as he was violating no law and had no obligation to answer questions.

WSMV reported that Ross had been targeted by prior complaints over his work with the department. For example, he was on the force during 2002-2004 but resigned suddenly just as he was facing termination for failing to show up for court appearances in a number of DUI cases.

The report said he also failed to appear before a grand jury.

Then, the report said, he hit another vehicle with his personal pickup truck in 2003. He then “lied” about having personal insurance.

More @ WND