Scalia: Justices 'Not Qualified' to Decide Moral Issues

 

Judges should stop setting moral standards concerning homosexuality and other issues, according to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who believes constitutional law is being threatened by a growing belief in the "judge moralist."

The conservative jurist, speaking at a meeting of the North Carolina Bar Association on Friday, just days before the Supreme Court is to hand down its decisions on California's Proposition 8  this coming week, told attorneys that judges are being bestowed with expertise to determine right vs. wrong on moral issues, The Charlotte Observer reports.

As moralists, judges are tasked with determining matters such as abortion, doctor-assisted suicide and same-sex marriage.

But Scalia said the courts have no "scientifically demonstrable right answer," and that it's the community's job to determine what it finds morally acceptable, not courts.

More @ Newsmax

First Lady's vacation costs equal 1.3 years of White House tours

Via Cousin John

 

When the Obama sequester closed the White House for tours this past March, the President said there was no money in the federal budget to cover the cost, which amounted to $74,000 a week. Despite offers from Donald Trump, Sean Hannity, and Eric Bolling to cover the costs of several weeks of tours, the doors of the White House have remained closed to schoolchildren visiting Washington, D.C.

 Despite criticism over the move, the Obama administration has managed to find funding for a number of other personal projects, including a two day vacation to Ireland this week for First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha. According to the Washington Times, the cost of the trip is estimated at $5 million, not including the costs for the President's travel. The cost of the First Family's two day vacation is enough to cover nearly 68 weeks of White House tours, roughly 1.3 years.

More @ Examiner

GOA Action Alert: Harry Reid Buys Anti-gun Votes from his "Secret Room"

This battle is ObamaCare II 

“The most annoying thing is the phone calls.” - a Senior Senate Staffer commenting on the effectiveness of thousands of phone calls pouring into their offices (June 21, 2013)

 

URGENT ACTION:  A key vote in the Senate will be occurring later today or tomorrow morning.  Please call your Senators at 202-224-3121 to register your opinion, and if you live in a state with two anti-gun Senators, then use the contact list below to call Senators who are on the fence. Urge your pro-gun friends and family to do the same.

 

Making them “An offer they can’t refuse.”

Thursday night last week was like a scene from the Godfather.

One by one, senators shuffled into Harry Reid's "secret room" in the Capitol, and each one (figuratively) kissed his ring and (again, figuratively) received his payment from Reid's stack of bills.

And, by the end of the night, Reid had presumably bought enough votes to pass his anti-gun immigration amnesty bill.

Things haven't changed a bit from ObamaCare.  Same secret room.  Same procession of supplicants.  Same massive secret bill, revealed at the very same moment Reid filed his motion to cut off debate.  Same morally challenged senators who were more than willing to have their votes bought.

Either later today or tomorrow morning, the Senate will vote on whether to cut off all debate on the massive amendment which didn't exist until Friday morning.

There are two things to remember:  The liberal (and demonstrably partisan) Congressional Budget Office looked at the long fences, copious border agents, and Orwellian E-Verify in the base bill -- and decided it would have little impact on illegal immigration, reducing it by only 25%.  This, in exchange for 8,000,000 new, largely anti-gun voters.

If Hoeven, Corker, and Schumer claim that their "super-secret probation" amendment (fences, agents, e-verify) will have any more of an impact, let's get a CBO estimate of that.

Second, the one thing Schumer has consistently refused to do is to condition his 8,000,000 new Democratic voters on the statistically demonstrable success of border security.  What does that tell you?

It says this bill is more about turning this country blue than it is about securing the border.

ACTION:  Call your Senators at 202-224-3121, especially if they are listed below.  Tell them to vote against cloture on Harry Reid's "Godfather amendment."  

 

NOTE:  For those of you who live in California, New York (and other states with two anti-gun Senators), you could use this opportunity to call some of the Senators on the Target List below.

Senators Up for Grabs.  According to media reports (and Senate intelligence), the following Senators are either on the fence or are leaning towards voting “yes” on the Hoeven amendment:

 

Alaska

Mark Begich (D) (202)224-3004

Lisa Murkowski (R) (202)224-6665

 

Georgia

Saxby Chambliss (R) (202)224-3521

Johnny Isakson (R) (202)224-3643

 

Indiana

Dan Coats (R)(202)224-5623

 

Kansas & Kentucky

Jerry Moran (R-KS) (202)224-6521

Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (202)224-2541

 

Maine & Missouri

Susan Collins (R-ME) (202)224-2523

Roy Blunt (R-MO) (202)224-5721

 

Mississippi

Roger Wicker (R)(202)224-6253

 

Montana

Max Baucus (D) (202)224-2651

Jon Tester (D) (202)224-2644

 

North Carolina

Richard Burr (R) (202)224-3154

Kay Hagan (D) (202)224-6342

 

Nebraska

Deb Fischer (R)(202)224-6551

Mike Johanns (R)(202)224-4224

 

New Jersey & Nevada

Jeff Chiesa (R-NJ) – Call the switchboard (202)224-3121

Dean Heller (R-NV) (202)224-6244

 

Ohio & Oklahoma

Rob Portman (R-OH) (202)224-3353

Tom Coburn (R-OK) (202)224-5754

 

South Dakota

Tim Johnson (D) (202)224-5842 

 

Tennessee

Lamar Alexander (R) (202)224-4944

 

Utah

Orrin Hatch (R) (202)224-5251

 

Wisconsin

Ron Johnson (R) (202)224-5323

 

West Virginia

Joe Manchin (D) (202)224-3954

Jay Rockefeller (D) (202)224-6472

----- Talking Points for Senate Offices -----

1. Vote no on the Hoeven amendment.  Vote against cloture on the Hoeven amendment.

 

2. Even the liberal (and very partisan) Congressional Budget Office said that the underlying amnesty bill would have little impact on illegal immigration, reducing it by only 25%.  This would be true -- even after building long fences, adding more border agents, and establishing an Orwellian E-Verify system for workers.

 

3. Given that all the Hoeven amendment would do is fund more of the same agents, fences, and e-verify that CBO just said wouldn't stop illegal immigration, you would be foolish to pass it without getting a new CBO estimate.

4. The one thing that Senator Chuck Schumer has consistently refused to do is to condition his 8,000,000 new (mostly anti-gun) voters on the proposition that the border will first be secured in a statistically demonstrable manner.

 

5.  According to Breitbart, for all of the tens of billions of dollars of (non-offset) money Hoeven spends, it proceeds to newly make it lawful for illegal immigrants to PROSPECTIVELY overstay their visas and nevertheless get green cards under Gang of Eight amnesty provisions.  Hence, it rewards illegals who PROSPECTIVELY violate our immigration laws, making it worse than the Gang of Eight draft.   

6.  Also according to Breitbart, Hoeven now contains a laundry-list of non-germane Cornhusker Kickback-style giveaways -- intended to buy votes in exactly the same way Reid did on ObamaCare.  Hence, Hoeven has correctly been billed as ObamaCare 2.0.

 

7.  Please vote against cloture on the Hoeven amendment!

What We Have Learned From Afghanistan

Via Nancy

 

 by Ron Paul

Last week the Taliban opened an office in Doha, Qatar with the US government’s blessing. They raised the Taliban flag at the opening ceremony and referred to Afghanistan as the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" – the name they used when they were in charge before the US attack in 2001.

The US had meant for the Taliban office in Doha to be only a venue for a new round of talks on an end to the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban opening looked very much like a government in exile. 

The Karzai government was annoyed that the US and the Taliban had scheduled talks without even notifying Kabul. Karzai’s government felt as irrelevant to negotiations on post-war Afghanistan as they soon will be on the ground. It seemed strangely like Paris in 1968, where the US met with North Vietnamese representatives to negotiate a way out of that war, which claimed nearly 60,000 Americans and many times that number of Vietnamese lives.

More @ LRC

Group Forms To Amend VA’s Next-Of-Kin Rules

Via Susan 

 

53rd North Carolina, Fort Mahone/ "Fort Damnation" Petersburg, Virginia

 Brock

Saw the video had to replay it several times, as these pictures unlike the thousands we all have viewed, caused me to sense these deaths in a more personal AND heartfelt sorrow.

For all who view this wonderful site, please remember:

THEY MAY HAVE TAKEN THESE LIVES OF OUR CONFEDERATE ANCESTORS AND PERHAPS IT WILL COME TO THAT THEY WILL TAKE OUR LIVES, BUT THEY WILL NEVER TAKE OUR FREEDOM.

For, as long as but a hundred of us remain, alive, never will we on any condition be brought under Union rule.

Thanks,

Jerry Wells

*******************************************

Group Forms To Amend VA’s Next-Of-Kin Rules
(July 2013 Civil War News)

"A new organization that aims to change a federal regulation making it difficult to get government headstones for unmarked veterans’ graves has started an online petition campaign. According to Mark Their Graves, the Department of Veterans Affairs began enforcing a rarely-used regulation last year that, in effect, shuts down its Headstones and Markers Program.

The rule – Code of Federal Regulation section 38.632-(1) – precludes veterans’ groups, cemeteries, researchers and others from applying for government markers that identify the final resting places of military veterans unless they have permission from the veteran’s next of kin.  “This creates an impossible and unnecessary burden for groups seeking to honor veterans who served generations ago in conflicts like the Civil War, Spanish American War and even World War I,” says the group. Committee members ask the public to sign the petition at www.marktheirgraves.org and to contact their representatives in Washington and urge them to change the regulation. 

The effort is supported by the Civil War Trust, Ohio Historical Society, New York State Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee and the North Shore Civil War Roundtable.  Members include: Jeffrey I. Richman, Green-Wood Cemetery historian and North Shore Civil War Roundtable trustee; William Finlayson, president, Civil War Round Table of New York and North Shore Civil War Roundtable trustee; Robert MacAvoy, co-author of Our Brothers Gone Before and member, New Jersey Sesquicentennial Committee; Also, George J. Weinmann, vice president and instructor, Greenpoint Monitor Museum;  Vance Ingram, president, New York State Sesquicentennial Committee and Friends of the New York State Military Museum; Andrew Athanas, president, North Shore Civil War Roundtable; And, William Styple, author, Kearny (NJ) town historian; member, New Jersey Sesquicentennial Committee and Co. E, 15th New Jersey Infantry; and Bruce L. Sirak, president, Camp Olden Civil War Round Table & Museum; member, New Jersey Sesquicentennial Committee. 

The regulation’s effect can be seen at Brooklyn’s Historic Green-Wood Cemetery. In the past it successfully applied for and received 2,000 gravestones for Civil War veterans who researchers found to be in unmarked graves. Now, Green-Wood’s applications are being rejected, as are those of other researchers.

The petition is addressed to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki. It protests the redefinition of “applicant” as “next of kin” and implores the VA to limit the new regulation by “making it inapplicable to veterans who served more than 62 years ago — so that the veterans who now lie in unmarked graves can have a thankful nation mark where they lie, in tribute to their service.”

Within one week of the Mark Their Graves launch, almost 500 people had signed the petition. At presstime it had more than 900 signers.  Although Steve Muro, under secretary  for memorial affairs at the Veterans Administration, on April 10 told a Congressional subcommittee “We are actually looking at that reg. And we are going to do some rewrites of it … they made it over restrictive,” the committee says pressure must be brought to bear on the VA to amend the regulation.

Among the veterans denied government markers because of the regulation were Civil War veterans George Stillie and William Peter Strickland. Stillie (1839-1919) served in the United States Navy aboard the USS North Carolina, USS Valley City, USS Fernandina and USS Roebuck. He is buried in Melbourne, Australia. His wife predeceased him and their only child died in New Zealand in 1912.  Strickland (1809-1884), chaplain of the 48th New York Infantry for two years, believed that serving the Union was “the most sacred duty of every liberty-loving American citizen.” He is interred in Green-Wood Cemetery." 

Something My Dad Taught Me: Why Schumer-Rubio Immigration Insanity Must Be Defeated

Mike Scruggs

     One day several months before my eighth birthday, I started pestering my father to promise me that I would get a bicycle for my birthday.  I kept saying, “Promise me, promise me.”  We were not poor, but there was not much room in the family budget in those days for more than the basic necessities.  Buying something like a bicycle required saving for months, and the times were uncertain.

     After a little more of my pleading for his promise to get me a bicycle, my dad took me aside for a little talk. “Son,” he said, “I would like to get you a bicycle, but I cannot promise you one, because I might not be able to keep that promise.  It is very important to keep your promises.  Promises should not be given lightly, and they must not be broken.”

     I did get a bicycle on my birthday, but that little talk with my father is remembered and appreciated far more than any bicycle. 

     Twenty-seven years ago, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act. of 1986. It had three main objectives: amnesty for just over one million undocumented immigrants who had been here continuously since 1982, securing the border between the U.S. and Mexico, and strict enforcement of laws prohibiting employers from hiring illegal immigrants. The bill passed, but because of a tremendous “underestimate” of the number of illegal immigrants then in the U.S., widespread fraud by applicants, and widespread laxity in processing the applications, the number of amnesties actually came to about 2.8 million. Six follow-up amnesties gave over 3.0 million additional amnesties. The promises to secure the border and enforce immigration laws at the workplace were subsequently ignored and actively undermined by most of its sponsors. The border is still not secure, and immigration enforcement at the workplace is practically zero. Our internal enforcement policy has become “don’t ask, don’t tell.” We have even come to the place where public demonstrations are staged by unlawful immigrants and their allies against any attempt to enforce our immigration policies. The 1986 amnesty was a terrible political decision wrapped in deception and promises that many never intended to keep.

     Now we have an estimated 11.5 million illegal immigrants in the country, and the annual net cost after taxes collected is estimated by the Heritage Foundation to be $14,685 per illegal immigrant household. Amnesty would bring the cost to more than $28,000 annually due to additional healthcare benefits and social security benefits kicking in. Yet we have Federal budget deficits of over $1.0 Trillion being added yearly to our already dangerous national debt of $16.5 Trillion. Like it or not, the U.S. has become a welfare state. It is easy for Congress to vote yes on more welfare but almost impossible to take it away. Unless we secure the border, strictly enforce immigration laws at the workplace, and limit legal immigration to reasonable numbers of fairly well-educated and productive people, we are going to go bankrupt and everybody’s Social Security check and Medicare coverage is either going to be shut off or be made insignificant by inflationary government creation of increasingly worthless money.

     Times are going to get very tough for Americans unless we stop making immigration a sacred cow that politicians are afraid to control. The Schumer-Rubio immigration bill, S.744, is not about control. It is about giving a huge amnesty and bringing 3 to 4 million more legal immigrant workers per year into the country to provide dream profits for commercial special interests that are already making huge profits at the expense of American workers and taxpayers. The present practice is already depressing the wages of U.S. workers about $2,800 per year. Most of that and substantial state and local taxes are essentially being transferred to the pockets of the users of imported foreign labor, legal or illegal. The most reputable economic studies indicate that immigration levels in access of 500,000 to 550,000 per year hurt American workers. Yet Schumer-Rubio advocates want to bring in six to ten times that number.

     In April, the Heritage Foundation released a report estimating the long-term cost of amnesty to be $6.3 Trillion. The bill is, however, deceptively structured to delay most of the fiscal impact until a fiscal dooms-day in 10 to 13 years. There is every reason to doubt, however, that Shumer-Rubio’s Democrat majority sponsors have any intention of sticking with such a major delay in new immigrant benefits. After all, they intend them to be Democrat voters as soon as possible.

     No one outside of a madhouse believes that any significant immigration law enforcement would result from Schumer-Rubio. Senator Schumer was a major mover in killing enforcement provisions of the 1986 amnesty. President Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and U.S Attorney General Eric Holder have little regard for the Constitution or Congressional authority. No matter what enforcement measures are in the bill, it will not be enforced because they do not want enforcement. They want more Democrat voters and more profits for their friends.

     Republican Amendments to increase border security are useless eyewash. There will be no enforcement beyond public relations smoke and mirrors, and they should know it.  Even without amnesty, the massive increases in legal cheap labor will devastate American workers and taxpayers.

     Even with the deceptive and disingenuous delays in amnesty implementation, a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report just released indicates that the immediate results of Schumer-Rubio will be higher unemployment, adding to the 21 million Americans who want a full time job and cannot find one; lower wages; and higher interest and mortgage rates for Americans. It would double annual legal immigration to around 2.0 million but only cut illegal immigration by 25 percent. Additional amnesties would probably follow.

     Schumer-Rubio is an economically devastating, anti-American, Corporate Lobbyist Dream Act that will bankrupt the American people and solidify Radical Democrat Party rule for the foreseeable future. It is wrapped in outrageous attempts to deceive and promises its sponsors have no intention of keeping.

Mr. Jefferson Visits The White House

Via Pitsnipes Gripes

 I understand, my dear sir, that you recently gave a very confused speech to university students upon their graduation.

You seemed quite fretful at the time.  Perhaps it was because you felt the winds of change rustling against your brow.  You lamented, nay, chillingly suggested to these impressionable young men and women that they had grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that you felt was at the root of all the problems of this great republic.

You sir, went on to say that those same voices would warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.

I thought I should pay you a visit in an attempt to school you on the subject of tyranny; something about which, I am intimately familiar.

Need I remind you sir that the arduous work of the Founding Fathers to resist tyranny established the brave, creative and unique experiment in self-rule to which you referred?

More @ Political Clown Parade

NC: Call Burr @ 888-995-2097 and tell him no on the Corker-Hoeven amendment & no on final passage of S.744

Gun porn

Via Doubletapper

The Constitution

Via Marc