Monday July 1, 2013 Items 7/01 - Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy – In this issue: 1. Immigration 2. Sexual Assaults 3. CO2 4. Voting Rights 5. Marriage 1. Immigration. The Senate last week passed out their comprehensive immigration reform bill by a 68 – 32 vote. 14 Republicans joined the majority. The Bill was yet another bait and switch, with a 1,200 page “amendment” rolled in on Wednesday before the cloture vote the next day and passage on Friday. Reid and the democrats pressed for quick passage the instant they thought they had the votes for passage. The importance of the Corker – Hoeven amendment was a fig leaf that supposedly called for construction of a border fence, hiring additional border security agents, and a securing of the border. Unfortunately like everything out of Washington DC these days, these promises are more boob bait for Bubbas than anything else. The legislation actually calls for the immediate legalization of 11 million illegals. The CBO analysis of the previous version pointed out that it will not stop the influx of illegals; instead actually increasing the flow to an expected 46 – 48 million new illegals over the next couple decades. I expect them all to be registered as democrats. This legislation can best be called the “You Are All Saps” Act, as it further penalizes every single legal immigrant trying to get into the US under the legal process with significantly higher fees and longer waits while rewarding the self-identified criminals (as illegal immigration is a federal crime) with green cards and an instant “path to citizenship” not open to those who are trying to enter the country legally. The legislation also raises taxes and fees on legal immigrants by some $38 billion. Note also that this is yet another example of new taxes originating in the senate rather than the House. The legislation gives the Secretary of DHS, who has steadfastly refused to close the border, the authority to designate whether the Mexican border is secure or not, which is one of the so-called triggers that allow the immediate naturalization process to commence. Like the 1986 immigration reform which turned California from a reliable conservative state into a teeming third world, union dominated cesspool that votes for democrats incessantly, this legislation has Chucky Schumer’s fingerprints all over it. This is not an accident. Here in Alaska, both our US Senators Murkowski and Begich voted for both cloture and the final bill. The game now being played by proponents of this disaster is to beat the House leadership about the head and shoulders until they pass something comprehensive, then roll them in Conference substituting the senate-passed legislation essentially unchanged. The House is slowly making their response through the committee system, with a total of five bills moving though the process. Should they choose not to combine them, instead passing different pieces, they should be able to avoid the conference committee trap. Still, with the sort of money and corporate push behind the Senate bill, I would not count on the House leadership to maintain their backbone for an extended period of time, leaving it once again up to the rest of us to supply it. Appears we conservatives have 14 Republican senators to remove from office the next time they run for reelection. 2. Sexual Assaults. Over the last couple of weeks we have once again been treated to overheated rhetoric from leftists over sexual assaults against women in the military. Outside of the incredulous question: “What did you clowns expect when you injected tens of thousands of young women into the active duty military?” one wonders about the over the top reaction by congress to the news. They even managed to haul members of the JCS in front of congressional committees to beat them about the head and shoulders about men being beastly to women in a profession that kills people and breaks things for a living. Keeping that in mind, it turns out that sexual assaults are indeed up in the military, but it isn’t the women being targeted. Rather the highest rate of sexual assaults these days in the military are men on men, meaning gays in the military has had the expected impact on discipline and readiness. In a report released last week, from 2010 to 2012, sexual assaults are up from 19,000 to over 26,000 events, with 53% of them being men on men. One of the punishments that Washington had for the Continental Army was sodomy was a hanging offense. Appears to be time to bring it back. You can find the article at the following link: http://www.adn.com/2013/06/23/ 2950917/pentagon-most- military-sex-assaults.html 3. CO2. Obama announced a renewed War on Coal last week in a speech at Georgetown University. The speech was fully lies, half truths, dissembling, demagoguery and self-serving moral preening – in other words, the standard Obama speech. It was staged with the best Tim Wirth – James Hansen stagecraft as the air conditioning was turned off, the room stifling and Obama wiping sweat off his face continually during the speech. Note that Tim Wirth (D, CO) and NASA’s chief global warmer James Hansen staged the first manmade global warming show with a hearing in June 1988 in a room with the air conditioning turned off. If I were sufficiently snarky, I would suggest that readers purchase stock in mining companies and coal fired electrical generation given the smashing success of federal War on Poverty (much more poverty) and the War on Drugs (lots more drugs) over the last half century. With the war on coal being declared because in Obama’s mind plant food – carbon dioxide gas – CO2 – is a pollutant, we have another story that the higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are responsible for a measurable increase in the greening of the deserts by 11% since 1980. The improvement in plant growth was observed by comparing satellite photos of arid regions in Australia, Africa, the Middle East and North America. Over the last 30 years, plants in marginal arid regions have been growing just a little bit better, covering a little more ground, producing a little more crop per unit energy and water used in their care, eventually feeding a few more people. Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – plant food – increases the ability of the population of this planet to feed itself, making it just a little easier. A war on CO2 is essentially a war on plant life, a war on the ability of people to feed themselves, and ultimately a war on the poor. Nice going, greens. Nice going democrats. Nice going, Obama, declaring war on people who are unable to defend themselves and who are not doing anything to the rest of us. http://www.natureworldnews. com/articles/2219/20130601/ increase-carbon-dioxide- levels-greening-deserts-study. htm 4. Voting Rights. SCOTUS invalidated part of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that contained the metrics upon which covered states are measured by the Department of (In)Justice last week. This section essentially is the data upon which (In)Justice uses as their excuse to meddle in the drawing of district lines or the ability of states to run their own elections. That data was gathered in the late 1960s and that world no longer exists. The opinion makes more difficult the ability of democrats to commit voting fraud in southern states and here in Alaska. The rationale for the SCOTUS action was that it has been 50 years since the conditions leading to the passage of the Act and the practices it was intended to stop have been illegal at the state and local levels for over 40 years; two solid generations. One of the things that the VRA was intended to address was the suppression of minority voting. Over the decades that suppression has reversed itself, as today the only minorities being suppressed in the inner cities are conservatives. This was a good opinion and should help the states clean up their voting roles. Texas, one of the covered states, immediately announced a photo ID requirement for voting that has been on hold pending the opinion in this case. Here in Alaska, there is a conflict between state constitutional requirements for redistricting and (In)Justice requirements. The new map has been around the loop a few times since 2010. Looks like the final map will be just a bit easier to finalize this time around. 5. Marriage. SCOTUS handed down a pair of awful opinions regarding homosexual marriage to end their year. The first found that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional. The 5 – 4 opinion was particularly nasty, written essentially calling everyone who does not think this is such a good idea a bigot. Justice Scalia read his dissent from the bench. It was particularly cutting. The second opinion was potentially more damaging, as the Court found that supporters of California’s Proposition 8 which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman did not have standing to defend the proposition in court. Prop 8 was a constitutional amendment passed twice, most recently in 2008 when Obama was elected. When the inevitable lawsuit was brought to overturn it, Governor Schwarzenegger and then Governor Jerry Brown refused to defend it in court, so supporters raised money and stepped up to defend it. The Ninth Circus initially refused to grant them standing to defend the Prop. The defenders went all the way to the State Supreme Court which affirmed their standing to defend the Proposition. The federal trial was presided over by a homosexual federal judge who used his position and his sexuality to badger, intimidate, and generally make the lives of the defenders miserable. He should have recused himself from the proceedings, but was too much of a coward to do so. Of course, the defenders lost and appealed all the way to the SCOTUS. The significance of the standing portion of the opinion is this: individual citizens, from whom the power to govern originates, no longer have the ability to defend a ballot initiative in federal court. All that needs to happen is that opponents need to wait until someone from their party gets elected, bring the expected lawsuit, the new governor / Attorney General of the state refuse to defend the initiative, and it goes away, no muss, no fuss. Like the disgusting Kelo decision, the solution is for states to pass legislation giving citizens standing in all courts to defend ballot initiatives. I think the left is not going to like the push back on both of these opinions, for the same games being used by the left on this issue are also available to those of us on the right. http://spectator.org/archives/ 2013/07/01/scalias-literary- dissent More later - - AG "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776. Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations: Our Home Page http://interestingitems.org/ Archives can be found at http://home.gci.net/~agimarc Anchorage Daily Planet http://www. anchoragedailyplanet.com/ MatSu Valley News http://matsuvalleynews. blogspot.com/ Subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress. com/ Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/
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