The inspirational life of the oldest Holocaust survivor whose genius for the piano enabled her and her son to survive a Nazi death camp.
It can happen here. We must remember, it can happen here.
Finding out what’s in it: After six months of trying and failing to cancel an unwanted Obamacare health insurance plan, a Florida man is now considering shutting his bank account to prevent the plan from automatically withdrawing money from his account.
Remember, the Democrats in Congress and President Obama refused to negotiate any changes to Obamacare in October, thereby forcing the government shutdown. They also were the only ones to vote for Obamacare. These facts must not be forgotten come November.
Working for the Democratic Party: Just hours before she was scheduled to testify about IRS harassment of conservatives at a House hearing, the head of a conservative organization was called by an IRS official, telling her that her organization’s tax exempt status had finally been approved, after waiting more than 3 years.
As she noted, “And this is not political?”
The spoiled rotten kids of DC’s elite.
The article documents in great detail how elected officials use their power to get great jobs for their kids. Not surprisingly, since this article is written by a modern journalist who favors this corrupt elitism, it starts out by describing the corruption involved with this favoritism, then shifts into finding excuses for it.
Bad news for free speech: A federal appeals court has ruled that schools can ban the American flag in order to prevent violence.
The court’s ruling: School administrators can force you to remove your American-flag tee if the alternative is a classmate punching you in the face. That’s because, per the Supreme Court, students don’t have the same free speech rights at school that adults do on other public grounds. At school, the name of the game is order and instruction; you’re entitled to free expression to the extent you don’t interfere with those goals, but once you do, the school’s entitled to limit your expression accordingly.
In other words, a bully can get the principal’s office to silence you by promising to beat your ass if they don’t.
This is, as Eugene Volokh notes, a classic “heckler’s veto” in that it rewards a violent actor by suppressing the speech that’s irritated him instead of punishing him for being violent.
So, according to this ruling, the only people who will have free speech will be those willing to threaten, and even use violence. A foolish and mindless ruling, if I ever saw one.
Working for the Democratic Party: Even as the IRS was admitting last year that its harassment of conservatives was a mistake, the agency was working up its new rules to make the harassment official policy, under pressure from Democratic elected officials.
And what about the new official policy?
The tax agency has floated an outline of new rules that would limit those groups’ ability to host candidates, distribute voter guides or conduct voter registration or get-out-the-vote drives. A three-month period for public comments closed on Thursday, and the IRS had posted more than 115,000 comments. They were overwhelmingly opposed to the proposed rules, with both conservative and liberal-leaning groups saying the rules would stifle their ability to participate in important public debates.
One joint comment, filed by a dozen groups ranging from the immigration advocacy America’s Voice and the liberal American Civil Liberties Union to the right-leaning American Conservative Union and tea party-aligned FreedomWorks, asked the Obama administration go back and start over on the rules.
The Obama administration’s Interior Department has decided to let the people in a remote Aleut community die rather than risk the lives of the birds in a wildlife refuge.
The Aleuts have tried for three decades to get permission to build a 11 mile long gravel road to connect their village with the nearest hospital. The federal government has repeatedly denied them permission because part of that road would go through a wildlife refuge. During that time 19 people have died because they couldn’t get to adequate medical facilities due to the lack of transportation. The quote below from Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is quite amazing, revealing starkly how little she (and the rest of the Obama administration) cares about the lives of others.
During an August visit to Alaska, Jewell was told that building a road that connects King Cove and Cold Bay was vital. But in December, Jewell rejected the road saying it would jeopardize waterfowl in the refuge. “She stood up in the gymnasium and told those kids, ‘I’ve listened to your stories, now I have to listen to the animals,” Democratic state Rep. Bob Herron told a local television station. “You could have heard a pin drop in that gymnasium.” [emphasis mine]
The comments about this story on this webpage are right on the money. The Aleuts should build that road anyway, and dare the federal government to do something about it.
But I like this comment the best: “I’ve been saying for years that progressives LOVE humanity–they just hate actual people.”
Working for the Democratic Party: The harassment of conservatives by the IRS was instigated by Democratic elected officials in Congress and the White House, in plain sight for all to see.
Read it. The author documents numerous examples of Democrats from 2010 to 2013 demanding the IRS do exactly what it ended up doing, harass and shut down the activities of their opponents. And they did it publicly, with pride. And they are still doing it.
Modern cop to person filming him: “You just lost your free speech rights!”
Watch the video at the link. Quite offensive.
Just in case Harry Reid might actually be listening, here is another round of Obamacare train wrecks.
The treasure trove of gold coins found by a California couple on their property might be the gold coins stolen from a 1901 heist of the San Francisco mint.
This article also explains why the couple has remained anonymous, as they fear the federal government is now going to step in and steal their find from them.
An image of North Korea taken from ISS illustrates starkly the failure of a state-run top-down dictatorial society.
As is typical for today’s leftwing political correct journalism, this reality is attributed not to communism but to vague generalities. North Korea is a “rogue state” or “North Korea stands alone as an unusually isolated nation, where residents live under a familial dictatorship,” statements that embarrassingly avoid the truth. The rulers of North Korea, like Cuba, refused to reject communist when the Soviet bloc fell in 1991 and have thus left their countries and the people trapped within them poor and bankrupt.
Aren’t you glad that today’s Democratic Party here in the United States considers leftwing dogma the height of progress and a goal worthy of emulation?
“So we do live in a jackboot society.”
The video, also below the fold, is long but worth watching to the end. It will send chills up your spine. You will also never want to visit Electra, Texas.
» Read more
Modern American intellectualism: Harry Reid insists in a speech on the Senate floor that the Obamacare horror stories being reported daily “are all untrue.”
He then attacks the sick patients themselves for telling these stories, calling them liars.
I call this modern American intellectualism because it jibs with the typical level of open-mindedness seen in modern intellectuals when it comes to climate science and any data that throws doubt on the theory of global warming.
Former IRS official Lois Lerner has been recalled to testify again before a House committee in regards to the IRS’s harassment of conservatives.
She took the fifth in her first appearance, while also making a statement announcing her innocence. According to numerous experts, this statement voided her ability to take the fifth. There might or might not be fireworks on March 5, when she has been called to return, as she will likely do nothing but cite the fifth amendment in her answers. How the congressmen respond to her non-answers will be interesting.
I wonder if this means anything: A district that the Democrats won by a big margin in 2013 voted big for a Republican in a special local election on Monday.
The Democrat in this district loudly ran in support of Obamacare. He not only lost bad, the Republican came with a hair of winning the most liberal urban areas in Norfolk City.
Freedom dies: A Florida judge has ruled that it is illegal to live completely off the grid.
The judge stated that a woman, who has been trying to live without using any utilities, has to reconnect her water line, though she won’t be forced to use it. He also admitted that the law is outdated and should be changed. This quote however is revealing.
The widow and former real estate agent now has two choices. She can either restore her hookup to the water system by the end of March or appeal Eskin’s ruling to the courts. It is not known what action the city will take but city officials told Fernandez that they would be willing to let Speronis stay in her home if conditions are “sanitary.” At the hearing, Eskin noted that city officials have not actually been in Speronis’s home to make that determination.
It is so nice the government is “willing to let her stay in her home.”
Thugs.
The student who was stopped from handing out copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day has won a $50,000 settlement from the college that tried to stop him.
At the first link I had posted the video the student had taken of the event. It is worth watching again because it is so egregious. That he won so handily is a wonderful outcome.
Finding out what’s in it: A report released by the Obama administration on Monday estimates that health insurance premiums for small and medium business will rise significantly in 2014 because of Obamacare.
The report claims that about one third of these businesses will see a decrease in cost, but the article points out that this is likely a very big overstatement and that the increases will likely be much higher than predicted. Based on history, we have every reason to believe this pessimistic prediction and dismiss the hopeful prediction of the Obama administration.
R.I.P. astronaut Dale Gardner.
Gardner was a astronaut during the early eighties during the heyday of the shuttle’s commercial satellite operation. He was part of the 1984 shuttle mission where he and Joe Allen each flew out to a stranded commercial satellite and took control so that the shuttle’s robot arm could grapple them. Both satellites were brought back to Earth, refurbished, and launched back into space again.
Gardner’s most remembered moment might be when, at the end of his spacewalk, he held up a “For Sale” sign (on right), referring to the commercial availability of both recovered satellites.
