Feigning Powerlessness to Retain Power

William J. Olson, FloydReports.com

There once was a time that elected leaders wanted to be seen as powerful to gain the confidence of their constituents. But many House Republicans, who now have in their hands total power to end runaway government once and for all, are feigning powerlessness.

These House Republicans claim to be just one-third of the legislative process, unable to achieve anything useful without compromise and a bipartisan consensus. They grouse that the Democrats in the Senate and President Obama are forcing them to settle for what they can get in exchange for an inevitable and necessary increase in the debt limit. They claim to need even greater electoral victories in 2012 before they can stop the spending.

The truth is that House Republicans already hold all the cards. The debt ceiling is already fixed in law, and will remain fixed unless they capitulate. Rather than just saying no to an increase in the debt limit which would end deficit spending, the GOP has developed “Cut, Cap, and Balance” which it sells as a principled proposal. Yet, with CC&B, the House Republicans propose to end the deficit spending by the curious method of increasing the national debt by $2.4 trillion (almost 17 percent) to $16.7 trillion.

In increasing the debt ceiling, the House Republicans leaders are doing what comes naturally. The House leadership historically has not wanted to stop spending — with entitlements like Medicare Part D they have used our own money to buy our votes just like the Democrats. The motivation behind CC&B is not about cutting current spending, capping future spending, or balancing the budget — it’s about what it’s always been about — the politics of reelection.

It could be that the House Republicans are acting out of fear that in holding fast to principle they would not be seen as being “responsible” in the eyes of the media and Wall Street….

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Picture: The House of Representatives, Now Under New Management

The Top Stories We Broke in 2010

Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com

As we end 2010 and begin a new year, the media take a look back at the year gone by. We too wish to look back at all the stories this website has broken in the few months of our existence. Some have been ignored, others have been reported nationally — without credit to those of us who discovered them. Nonetheless, we are happy the information has spread and look forward to leading the charge in 2011. We want to take this time to celebrate all we have accomplished in so little time by highlighting a baker’s dozen of stories that we broke. Counting down our stories, from least to greatest.

13. Obama Apologizes to Guatemala for a Guatemalan Government Experiment (story). On October 1, Barack Obama phoned Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom with a heavy heart. He learned that from 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service had tested the effectiveness of penicillin in treating syphilis by infecting Guatemalan prisoners and soldiers with the disease, then treating them. Guatemalan politicians howled for “compensation,” and Obama promised “a thorough investigation.” The experiments — discovered by Susan Reverby of Wellesley College and revealed in the January issue of the Journal of Policy History — were inhumane. However, Reverby noted one fact Obama overlooked: The Guatemalan government approved of the experiments at the time. The story shows Obama’s focus on what he describes as America’s “tragic history” and absurd reflex to apologize for American behavior. In this case, the courageous leader of the free world apologized to the president of a third world backwater for experiments both their governments approved and conducted before either one of them was alive.

12. Oklahoma’s Muslim Law Ban Struck Down by Clinton Diversity Pick (story). On election day 2010, more than 70 percent of Oklahoma voters approved State Question 755, which forbids state courts from considering Islamic religious law, Shari’a, in pending court cases. However, federal judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange of the 10th Circuit Court issued a series of injunctions against the measure. In her tangled view, a law prohibiting judges from deciding cases based on religious law constituted an attack on the First Amendment. As we alone exposed, Miles-LaGrange, whom Bill Clinton appointed in 1994 as “first African-American federal judge in the six states that make up the 10th Circuit,” is a thoroughgoing mediocrity who has spent her entire career benefiting from or promoting Affirmative Action. She now sees Muslims as the next victims of an oppressive Christian America. Remember this the next time someone calls Bill Clinton a “moderate.”

11. Left-Winger Confirms Obama’s “Covert Propaganda” Scandal (story). In August, Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a 36-page report accusing Barack Obama of engaging in “covert propaganda” activities that were “inappropriate and sometimes unlawful.” The White House, Issa wrote, would enlist third parties to promote its talking points without mentioning its connection to Obama, a move he alleges is illegal (and thus impeachable). Within days, far-Left activist Sally Kohn confirmed another facet of this story on The Huffington Post. I reported the administration invited Kohn to a May 2009 “cultural policy summit” with five dozen other radical activists and extremists. Kohn wrote this was the beginning of the Obama administration’s weekly “Common Purpose” meetings, where “the White House dictated its agenda and appealed to the professional left for back-up.” Kohn, a onetime Ford Foundation employee, is a self-described “Jewish lesbian” who once wrote a DailyKos diary entry entitled, “Why I Have a Little Crush on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” Her allegations that the president used them in a covert propaganda campaign are worthy of inclusion in an investigation of this scandal. To date, no one else has noticed them.

10. Obama’s Stimulus Put Microchips in Your Trash (story). Nearly half-a-million dollars of the stimulus bill went to….

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Muslim Law Ban Halted by Clinton Diversity Pick

Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com

On election day 2010, more than 70 percent of Oklahoma voters approved State Question 755, which forbids state courts from considering international law or Islamic religious law in pending court cases. However, that measure has been held in judicial limbo by a judicial activist appointed to the federal bench by Bill Clinton. The ridiculous decision can only be explained by the fact that the chief district judge of the western district of Oklahoma, Vicki Miles-LaGrange – who serves for life – is a lifelong beneficiary of Affirmative Action, a thoroughgoing mediocrity, and a committed devotee of reverse discrimination.

Prohibiting Theocracy is Unconstitutional?

Whatever controversy the election has sparked, it was not provoked by the text of the law itself. The amendment requires courts to:

rely on federal and state law when deciding cases. It forbids courts from considering or using international law. It forbids courts from considering or using Sharia Law.

Although media coverage has focused on its banning of Islamic law, known as Shari’a, its first clause is as important. An ever-increasing number of judges – including a five-member majority of sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices – cite foreign law as the equal of the U.S. Constitution. This serves the Obama administration and the Legal Left’s purpose of replacing the constitution with globalist economic and social views. Oklahoma acted prudently in banning the practice from its state courts. The amendment simply requires judges to use the law and the constitution as their guide instead of importing foreign legal sources that advance judicial activist aims.

Prohibiting judges from using Islamic religious law to decide secular cases should be less controversial yet. Any attempt to substitute religious tradition – especially the religion of a tiny minority of Americans that conflicts with the historical Christian faith of this nation’s Founding Fathers – would be a glaring violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. State law, the state constitution, and the U.S. Constitution are the legally binding authorities in Sooner State courts.

Muneer Awad of the Oklahoma state chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) immediately sued to keep the state from implementing the overwhelmingly popular measure. And so far, he has won.

Somehow Vicki Miles-LaGrange saw in this measure, not an attempt to protect the legal basis of her profession, but an insidious attack on innocent Muslims….

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Cartoon of the Day: Donkeys, an Endangered Species