The non-admissibility decision a fortnight ago by the European Court of Human Rights was welcomed as "historic" by the Turkish press and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, but it might be premature to pop the champagne corks. In fact, it is probably former Turkish Ambassador Tulay Uluçevik who struck the right note when he described the Court's ruling as "a Pyrrhic victory."

Apart from the issue of security, that of property can be considered a major stumbling block for a solution to the Cyprus question, and the Annan Plan did little to assuage Greek Cypriot concerns. The right to restitution and return was effectively limited by a number of restrictions so that the majority of displaced Greek Cypriots were faced with compensation in the form of what Tassos Papadopoulos called "dubious paper."

The Property Board that the Annan Plan envisaged, which would have settled claims from both sides, would for the most part have been funded by the Greek Cypriots, so it would have been the merchant from Kayseri who fed his donkey with its own tail all over again.

However, the Immovable Property Commission, or IPC, which "the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" ("TRNC") established in December 2005 to deal with Greek Cypriot property claims, will in effect be funded by Turkey, as the "TRNC" has the status of "a subordinate local administration" under Turkish jurisdiction.

The legal status of the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus", which was proclaimed in 1983, has been a bone of contention for previous property cases appearing before the European court, but it has been established in admissibility decisions (for example, Loizidou v. Turkey in 1995 and Xenides-Arestis v. Turkey in 2005) that Turkey is the respondent state.

In the latter case, an attempt was made to avoid a judgment against Turkey by establishing an "Immovable Property Determination, Evaluation and Compensation Commission" in July 2003, so as to provide a domestic remedy that should be exhausted. Nevertheless, this only provided for compensation but not restitution, and as there were doubts about the impartiality of the Commission, the remedy was found to be neither effective nor adequate.

So, seen in those terms, the IPC must be considered an improved model as its provisions provide for restitution, exchange or compensation in return for rights over the immovable property and compensation for loss of use if claimed. Furthermore, two of the IPC's five to seven members are independent international members, and persons who occupy Greek-Cypriot property are expressly excluded.

Consequently, on the basis of the 85 cases concluded by last November, the Court found that the IPC provides an accessible and effective framework of redress for property issues "in the current situation of occupation that it is beyond this Court's competence to resolve."

In view of the redress offered by the Annan Plan, it must be a disappointment for Greek Cypriots that the Court maintains its view that "it must leave the choice of implementation of redress for breaches of property rights to Contracting States" and that, from a Convention perspective, "property is a material commodity which can be valued and compensated for in monetary terms." In fact, in more than 70 cases claimants opted for compensation.

A further bone of contention in the current talks between Dimitris Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat is whether it is the legal or the current owner of the property who should decide whether redress should be in the form of restitution, exchange or compensation.

On this issue, the Court states, "It is still necessary to ensure that the redress applied to those old injuries does not create disproportionate new wrongs." Finally, the Court concludes that this decision is not to be interpreted as requiring that applicants make use of the IPC. They may choose not to do so and await a political settlement, but in the meantime the Court's decision provides a legal basis.

Davutoglu believes the Court's decision has boosted the international legitimacy of the "TRNC", in which case he has neglected to read the small print. "The Court maintains its opinion that allowing the respondent State to correct wrongs imputable to it does not amount to an indirect legitimization of a regime unlawful under international law."

Furthermore, "Accepting the functional reality of remedies is not tantamount to holding that Turkey wields internationally-recognized sovereignty over northern Cyprus." The European Parliament has, in a resolution, called on Turkey to immediately start to withdraw its troops from Cyprus and address the issue of the settlement of Turkish citizens as well as enable the return of the sealed-off section of Famagusta to its lawful inhabitants.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has indicated he is willing to withdraw Turkish troops in the event of a solution, but his chief EU negotiator, Egemen Bagis, has boasted that Turkey has not withdrawn a single soldier or given away territory.

Considering that not only the future of Cyprus but also Turkey's prospects of EU membership hang in the balance, that kind of attitude is singularly unhelpful.

Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and international press.

 Government Health Care was meant to implement control over the people. The second was to be Cap and Trade, which would implement government control over American industry and turn the financial markets into a government program to push the environmentalist agenda.

The third was an overhaul of immigration that would aggressively seek remake the American population and replace the base type of American with a more amenable and controllable type.

Government Health Care went first, because it seemed like the potentially most popular and least enraging of the three. Democratic lawmakers seriously thought that it would be a breeze and that its popularity would serve to deter Republican opposition. And having achieved a decisive legislative victory on those grounds, Obama and the left would have intimidated any potential opposition when it came to taking on the next two items on the agenda.

Additionally government health care was supposed to prepare the ground for Cap and Trade and Immigration, by buying public trust for the former and creating an incentive for immigrants in the latter scenario. But as is so often the case with politicians and their ambitions, the Democrats were tripped up by the very situation that they had leveraged to seize power. The economy.

By pushing health care as their number one priority, the Democrats were very clearly ignoring the number one concern of the public-- the economy. And selling an expensive health care boondoggle was going to be much more of a challenge at a time when people were being much more budget conscious, both in their budgets which would be strained by such provisions as mandatory health insurance, and the national budget, which was already unworkable to most people. But if government health care couldn't be sold in tough economic times, Cap and Trade which would kill uncounted numbers of jobs, and immigration, which would wreck an already tight job market, certainly couldn't be sold.

And that is why Obama refuses to back down from his big health care push. It isn't simply Rahm Emanuel's borrowed testosterone at work, though obviously the collapse of health care would be a severe blow to his credibility. But if Obama folds on health care, he folds on everything. Where Bill Clinton could deftly retreat from an unpopular program and do whatever he had to do to stay in office, Obama is a manufactured candidate, elevated for a specific purpose. He has never fought his own battles. His agenda is being set by the people who got him this far, and they didn't get him this far just to keep him in office. They did it to radically change America.

Where Bill Clinton was a sleazy politician always looking out for himself, Obama is an ideological figurehead for a team effort whose overall price tag is likely to be in the billions. And those billions were not invested in the man, but in the idea. Hope and Change. A dramatic recreation of America that tosses out the old ways and transforms the country into another declining European socialist hive state that the likes of Soros can rob and that Muslim immigrants can turn into a charnel house.

So the only way is to push ahead. For the Obamanites, health care has become not a Waterloo, but a Stalingrad, and they are determined to break through, one way or another. They may be starving and running low on ammo, but they have no choice but to win, because there is no going back. If Rahm Emanuel is trying to position himself as the voice of reason, while looking for a way to transition to a safe Illinois Senate seat, it's because he sees himself surrounded by compulsive ideologues... and like his old boss Bill, Rahm is only out for himself. He has no interest in killing his career for the cause.

Meanwhile his current boss, Barry, has led too charmed a political life to understand that he can lose. Because he has never been allowed to lose. He's the kid whose parents never let him play kickball and whose home runs were all scored for him. He's overflowing with self-esteem but while he poses with the ball, he has no idea what to do when things aren't going his way. His reaction to any setback is to launch a political hate campaign, deliver a speech or schedule a conference. He has no conception of other people as independent entities, and so is incapable of listening to them. All he does is talk over them, talk down to them or try to win a debate with them. All of which make sense with his background, but they aren't how you win the game.

What's even more disastrous is that he's surrounded by people who think just like him, the privileged left wing elite. Golden children who waited for a decade or two for the chance to get into the White House and rewrite all the rules, again without understanding any of them. The sloppy command structure and the poor damage control typical of the White House right now are endemic to most left wing organizations, which are good at offense, but terrible at defense, and while calling for everyone else to be accountable, lack the basic skills to get their own house in order. Even when it's the White House.

The left spent a lot of money putting these Brightest Boys and Girls in the Room into a position where they could implement all their bright ideas. And it never occurred to them that a populist movement could threaten them, that congress would bog them down, or that the people would have anything to say about it. Like most amateur generals, they could only see the endgame, not the hard work in between. And like Obama, they could not see people as individuals, only as counters in a political game between them and the Republicans.

For all the sloppy history fed out of buckets to American students, it was not JFK's vaguely idealistic poses that radically changed America, but the canny LBJ who was a practical politician in a way that JFK was not. But Obama has been much too arrogant to allow an LBJ anywhere near him. Instead he has Joe Biden, who has LBJ's gift of gaffe, but not his political horse sense. Obama wanted someone who would make him look strong and smart, and Biden accomplishes that just by showing up. But politics is a team effort, and most of Obama's team is as out of touch as he is. They can't help him, because they don't even understand the problem.

Health care seemed like a slam dunk to them, because of the ideological logic. They had no ability to relate to its end results. Only to the ideological purity of their aims. And so like the tone deaf ideologues that they were, they treated each setback as a teachable moment, telling the American people repeatedly, "What we've got here is a failure to communicate", without realizing that this very approach was not only condescending, but betrayed their inability to hear what was being said to them.

Customer service representatives are taught to deal with angry customers by assuring them that they hear what they're saying, only to then repeat their policy again. The theory is that once the customer understands that he or she is being heard, they will stop feeling frustrated and accept whatever they are told. This theory doesn't work too well in customer service, and it works very badly when the people who are angry are not your customers, but your bosses. And a constant diet of, "We hear that you're confused and angry, but we want to tell about a great new service that the government will provide for you for the trifling sum of only 2 trillion dollars" only made the situation worse.

Yet the Obama Administration, this great Empire of the Out of Touch, is the logical outcome of a political system in which politicians increasingly have to appeal to their patrons, more than to the voters. Obama got as far as he did, to the highest office in the land, without ever once learning how to understand people. And that happened because he got there on fraud, smear campaigns and a whole lot of money backing his cult of personality. More importantly he got there because powerful people were standing behind him all the way up, paving the way for him, clearing away the roadblocks and moving him up the red carpet escalators to the sky. But how do you clear away a roadblock as big as the American Electorate?

So far no one in Obama's Empire of the Out of Touch has found an answer for that.

From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News

Today the socialists in the US House of Representatives will pass (or by the time you read this tome will have passed) National Healthcare Reform - that which we have chosen to refer to as ObamaCare.  It will forever have HIS name on it as well it should, because it was his campaign to "fundamentally change America" and his use of the ignorance of most publicly educated Americans that brought us to this reintroduction of slavery in America. 

Yes, ObamaCare, by any other name, would still be slavery.  Why?  Because it is pure, flat-out, socialism, and socialism is the enslavement of a people until communism takes over a nation's government.

I may have loss one of the best friends I have ever had in my entire life as a result of our own debate over ObamaCare and socialism in America today.  His belief in a strong central government and my belief that a strong central government is pure evil, and my persistent belief in "state's rights" as granted by the US constitution, drove us to a heated debate.   Later, I reminded myself that for the socialists in our government today they NEED Americans at each other's throats.

You know, ObamaCare is scary enough all by itself.  But when one understands that it is only the BEGINNING, only the very first step in total control of the lives of Americans, in is not only frightening, it is terrifying.  Freedom loving Americans must, somehow, stop this socialism.

Freedom loving Americans must begin the campaign to repeal ObamaCare right now, today.  Actually, I have already begun my personal campaign to have the "law from hell" repealed.  I urge you to do the same.

I was thrilled to see the crowds of Americans in Washington yesterday demonstrating against socialized medicine.  It was a great event for the Tea Party.  I thought as I watched on TV that we have to bring this same level of energy toward defeating as many of the socialist and RINO's in Congress as we possibly can this coming November in the Mid-Term Election.   America will need a fresh start and she cannot get it if the incumbents remain in power in our national legislature.  What is even more important -- we won't have a snowball's chance in hell of repealing ObamaCare if we do not remove the incumbents and replace them with representatives and senators sworn to support repeal of ObamaCare.

Repealing ObamaCare will certainly not be easy.  Some fellow commentators are questioning the fortitude of the GOP members of Congress when the chips are down and the battle rages for repeal.  I must tell you, I have the same concerns. Remember, even if we manage to gain control of both houses of the Congress this November, Obama will STILL be in the White House and he will most certainly VETO any bill that repeals ObamaCare should it ever reach his desk.  Yes, repeal will be an uphill battle - all the way.

Repeal of ObamaCare will be one of the most difficult tasks ever undertaken by the American people.  For once a government program wraps its tentacles around the freedoms and, yes the wallets, of the American people it is near impossible to loosen them enough to forcibly extract them and return America to its free state.

We have a most difficult job ahead of us. It begins now, today.  We absolutely must see that the democrats are defeated at the polls in the Mid Tern Election this coming November.  Between now and then we have to locate and encourage candidates who believe in freedom for Americans and candidates who hate socialism to run for the offices up for election. And, somehow, we must only elect that candidate who will not fold when the going gets rough in Congress. 

Bipartisanship be damned. It was bipartisanship that got us to this point in American history where the country has adopted socialism.  In order to repeal ObamaCare and return America to its "constitutional republic" form of government, we cannot afford to elect a single limp-wristed, weak-spined, candidate.   We will be engaging in a war in our national legislative body and we will need WARRIORS!

I urge you to begin your personal efforts today to Repeal ObamaCare. 

J. D. Longstreet is a conservative Southern American (A native sandlapper and an adopted Tar Heel) with a deep passion for the history, heritage, and culture of the southern states of America. At the same time he is a deeply loyal American believing strongly in "America First".  He is a thirty-year veteran of the broadcasting business, as an "in the field" and "on-air" news reporter (contributing to radio, TV, and newspapers) and a conservative broadcast commentator. 

Longstreet is a veteran of the US Army and US Army Reserve. He is a member of the American Legion and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  A lifelong Christian, Longstreet subscribes to "old Lutheranism" to express and exercise his faith.

Articles by J.D. Longstreet are posted at: "INSIGHT on Freedom",  "Hurricane Alley... by Longstreet",  "The Carolina Post" and numerous other conservative websites around the web.  

BREAKING NEWS Marshall's Law Townhall Dateline - The following is perhaps most heart breaking security consulting report Texas Drifter has ever had to deliver. Life of America's Constitution depends on three principles:
1. Legislative (House and Senate) constitutional due processes;
2. Executive Branch (President) constitutional due processes;
3. Judicial (Supreme Court) constitutional due processes.

When all three branches of federal government abandon their respective constitutional due processes, America's Constitution is dead and America's Constitutional Republic is in reality nothing more than a memory of history. Example if three following events occur America's constitutional Republic is dead.
1. Leninist Democrats violate constitutional due process to enact contemporary health care statues;
2. Obama signs off on unconstitutional legislative due processes to enact health care statutes;
3. Supreme Court upholds unconstitutional due processes of Leninist Democrats and Obama.

If America's Constitution is defacto murdered by Leninist Democrats, Obama, and Supreme Court; be warned, violence will sweep across America that makes anarchy in Mexico along America's Southern Border seem like children playing good guys and bad guys. With Roman history as our guide, when the ashes settle; America will have evolved from constitutional republic to empire.

Some may say America is only following life cycles of Greek and Roman republics: born, grow, mature, and decay from too much public bureaucracy and citizens' welfare, then die. Positive thought before moving on to this writing exercise's primary theme, even if Obama his bureaucrats, Leninist Democrats, and Obama's Zombies do murder America's Republic; Constitution can be resurrected by providing accused government domestic terrorists constitutional due processes including: indictments, arrests, trials, appeals followed by due process punishments including capital punishment when juries' verdicts.

Title: Never Depend On Sunshine Patriots

Marshall's Law Townhall Dateline - First Amendment includes right of people peacefully assemble. The inalienable right also includes choice of with who to not  peacefully assemble. Top of list would in addition to those trying to murder by destroying America's values, traditions; culture, predominantly ethical capitalist society, constitutional republic, and national security assets would definitely include sunshine patriots.

Origin of this writing exercise was an associate asking me to assemble a few words to "cheer up" those "stressed out" by Obama and Leninist Democrats efforts to destroy Heaven's favorite republic.

First thought was to compare bad days by past generations of Americans to contemporary bad days. Started with some obvious bad days:
1. President Lincoln's emotions when learning of atrocities Americans committed on each other at Gettysburg;
2. Sam Houston's emotions on learning fates of those serving at Alamo and Goliad;
3. Presidents Madison's emotions when having to leave America's capital to being looted, ransacked, and burned by British in 1814;
4. General Washington's emotions after being forced to retreat from battle during early part of America's War for Independence from English royalty.

Purpose of writing exercise was to write cheering up words; sometimes words do not come easy. I just kept thinking how America's baby boomers had brought their problems on their selves by electing Leninist Democrats to highest federal offices. Also thought baby boomers seem like professional cry babies when compared to earlier American generations.

Sometime during my non-productive process, I must have dozed off. Several unknown how many hours later, I halfway opened my eyes and noticed that entry door to my Free Spirit fifth wheel was open. More asleep than awake; moved to close at least screen door to keep unwanted South Texas brush thicket, also known as monte, critters outside.

Still more asleep than awake, maybe even dreaming; as I simultaneously saw I also heard an old man in the shadows say the words you are looking for, have already been written.

My only proper response seemed, "How do you know?"

The fading response as his apparition dissolved into the mist, "I wrote them in 1776. Find "The Day of Freedom" in pamphlet FROM THE CRISIS. Sometime during the old man's visit I had managed to become wide awake.

Stumbled  to my small library and removed AMERICAN PATRIOTIC PROSE By Augustus White Long Published 1917 by D.C. Heath @ Co.

There in the Contents Part III INDEPENDENCE DEVELOPED was The Day Of Freedom ....... Thomas Paine.

Parts of his work are as follows:

[It was hastily written during Paine's short service as a trooper in Washington's army during its retreat across New Jersey. The hour was dark, but Paine's stiff courage put new heart into the army. Washington ordered the pamphlet to be read before every company of his soldiers. Augustus White Long]

(Texas Drifter Note: changed few names and titles to relate Paine's message to contemporary times.)

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot, will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his (their) country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; 'tis dearness that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price on its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

Obama, and Leninist Democrats with an army of fascist bureaucrats to enforce their tyranny, has declared a right to not only tax but to "bind us in all cases whatsoever," and if bound in that manner is not slavery, then there is no such thing upon earth. Even the expression is impious, for so unlimited a power can belong only to God ...

The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his (their) children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole ... If a thief breaks into my house. Burns and destroys my property, and murders or threatens to murder me, or those in it, and to bind me in all cases whatsoever to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?

What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a Marxist Democrat Party elected official acting outside constitutional law, or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain or an army of them? If we reason the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in one case and pardon in the other. End of T. Paine's words entitled "The Day of Freedom."

Tomas Paine truly a patriot inspired by Heaven, Paine's same words motivated General Washington and his troops; now two-hundred thirty plus years later show conservative American patriots how to resurrect America's Constitution with Judicial processes including due process punishments for individual villains and those in the army of villains who are trying to murder the Constitution they took an oath to uphold, protect, and defend.

Thomas Paine was right, what could I add to the words he has already written?

-------------------------------------------------

Texas Drifter writes at Marshall's Law.

I have been telling friends for days that it doesn't matter if Obamacare is somehow "passed" by the House and sent to the White House for the President's signature. It is as dead as Marley's ghost.

The law will be challenged by law suits or possibly nullified because of the manner of passage and elements of its content that require citizens to buy health insurance. That is manifestly unconstitutional.

I know the common wisdom among the Democrat denizens of Washington, D.C. is that once Obamacare becomes law the great heaving mass of ignorant and unwashed citizens will quickly forget about the whole thing. They are wrong.

Obamacare is the equivalent of the Confederate States declaring secession and the first shots fired at Fort Sumter. That time it took a war to restore the Union, but this time a huge majority of people, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, independents, and every other political flag other than the Communist and Socialist Parties USA is opposed to this 2,700 page monstrosity.

Truly, Barack Hussein Obama has brought us all together. Against him!

With regard to the States, one after another is passing resolutions and laws to exempt themselves from the authority of Obamacare and it is likely to reignite and vivify the Tenth Amendment as nothing has in decades.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The people. That's us.

The people who got Prohibition repealed. The people who finally granted suffrage to women. The people who volunteer to be in our Armed Forces. The people in our police and fire departments. The people in the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. The people who drive trucks providing goods to the rest of us. The people who marry and raise kids. You know who they are. They are your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers.

In his iconic novel, "On the Road", Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) wrote, "This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do."

That's how the Tea Party movement exploded out of nowhere and suddenly was everywhere. It's all those people jamming the phones on Capital Hill, burning up its fax machines, overheating its email system. It is quintessentially American.

And, as for the States, they are all sovereign republics! They have their own constitutions. And they will fight back, too.

There isn't a governor breathing who (a) doesn't know his State is broke and (b) knows Obamacare will aggravate that condition to a point where they no longer will have any budget over which they can exercise any control because this "entitlement" is the ultimate deal-breaker.

So let Madame Pelosi babble away about leaping over fences and parachuting in as if America was some enemy nation to conquer. It does not matter whether she gets Obamacare "passed" or not.

For now, I am going to assume that it will be defeated in the House.

Even if Obamacare passes the House and is sent to the President, Obamacare will still be a dead man walking.
-------------------------------
© Alan Caruba, 2010

This week the Democratic Party is scheduled to commit suicide. Their intention to ram ObamaCare, a socialized medicine bill, down the collective throats of a highly P.O.ed America will finish them off for the remainder of 2010 and most likely return them to the wilderness whence they came. For the record, we'd like to say: "Good Riddance!"

Susan Ferrechio, of the Washington Examiner, in an article entitled: "Democrats lack health care votes, but not bravado," says the following: "Even though Democrats control 253 votes in the House, more than 40 in their party are refusing to vote for the bill because they don't like its tax on expensive insurance policies, subsidies for insurance policies that cover elective abortions, lack of cost containment and sweetheart deals for some senators." Ms Ferrechio also says: "Congress intends to take up a second bill that corrects some of the provisions in the Senate bill that House members don't like, but that bill would have to be passed using a politically divisive parliamentary maneuver called budget reconciliation, which would require just 51 votes in the Senate." You may read the entire article HERE.

Can you say "gridlock?" Why is the term gridlock important? Well, after ObamaCare is passed or killed, there will be an onset of gridlock on both sides of Capital Hill. There will be a dash for the goal line, at the Mid Term Election, this coming November. The Republicans will be charged by their constituents with blocking any moves by the Democrats, boxing them in, hemming them in, and generally neutralizing them until the nation can vote them out of office in November. THAT will be the primary job of the GOP now until November.

The Democrats, on the other hand, will be extremely busy "backing and filling" in a vain attempt to repair all the damage they will have done to their party. Plus, they will be trying, as best they can, to distance themselves from the their president, who, as it turns out, is the worst president in the history of the republic.

Out here in the hinterlands, the explosive conservative movement known as the Tea Party will be growing exponentially, and devising new ways to unseat unresponsive congresspersons and senators in the Mid Terem Election. (By the way the word "TEA," as in TEA PARTY, is an acronym. It stands for TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY!) But most of you knew that, already.

If the Kamikaze Congress does, indeed, pass ObamaCare into law, the battle cry from the voters of America will immediately become "REPEAL OBAMACARE." Public relations campaigns are already being planned around the concept. Candidates who subscribe to a repeal of ObamaCare, and promise to work towards such a goal, will be virtual "shoo-ins" at the polls in November.

The democrats are deviously plotting a way, some way, ANY way to sneak ObamaCare through the US House without Democrats actually having to vote for it! They are scared "witless" of what they know is coming - a purge of the Congress.

They can possibly pass the bill by using the process of "self-executing" which entails attaching ObamaCare to another bill so that recorded votes will only show the democrats voted for the bill to which ObamaCare is attached, although ObamaCare would be passed at the same time as the bill to which it is attached. Not only is the concept confusing and devious, it is most likely unconstitutional.

As usual, the democrats think the American people are stupid. They REALLY think we will not discover who voted for ObamaCare. Of COURSE, we WILL -- and we will publish those finding for the world to see.

As we watch a vast number of political careers in Washington, DC come to an end this week, remember, we are watching history unfold right before our eyes.

In the months ahead more history will unfold as a citizen's movement, of the conservative persuasion, reshapes the political landscape of America. When the dust settles, finally, after the election in 2012, the New America will resemble the Old America -- the Old America, which was more aligned with the US Constitution (as The Founders of this nation intended) and NOT as a socialist nation more akin to the socialist states of Europe.

ObamaCare MUST be defeated and the Congress and White House must be purged of the Socialists, Marxists, Progressives, and Communists if the union is to be preserved. That is the bottom line NOBODY wants to speak publicly about. The uncomfortable fact is, this nation cannot continue as 50 "united" states if she continues on the path our current crop of leaders have chosen for us. The differences are far too deep and the chasm is far to wide to ever be filled or bridged. A house divided cannot stand.

America must be rescued at the polls this coming November. May God, in his infinite wisdom, lend his assistance to the effort to preserve this noble experiment we call America.
---------------------------------------------------

J. D. Longstreet is a conservative Southern American (A native sandlapper and an adopted Tar Heel) with a deep passion for the history, heritage, and culture of the southern states of America. At the same time he is a deeply loyal American believing strongly in "America First".

He is a thirty-year veteran of the broadcasting business, as an "in the field" and "on-air" news reporter (contributing to radio, TV, and newspapers) and a conservative broadcast commentator. 

Longstreet is a veteran of the US Army and US Army Reserve. He is a member of the American Legion and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  A lifelong Christian, Longstreet subscribes to "old Lutheranism" to express and exercise his faith.

Articles by J.D. Longstreet are posted at: "INSIGHT on Freedom" and at: "Hurricane Alley... by Longstreet"; also at "The Carolina Post" at and at numerous other conservative websites around the web.

I trust Carroll would have loved to watch his move in 3D, to make a point about mathematics too. Melanie Bayley, a doctoral candidate in English literature, understands that some of the book's characters were real people in Carroll's life at Oxford. But think numbers too, she writes.

Bayley notes:
In the mid-19th century, mathematics was rapidly blossoming into what it is today: a finely honed language for describing the conceptual relations between things. Dodgson [Carroll] found the radical new math illogical and lacking in intellectual rigor. In ‘Alice,' he attacked some of the new ideas as nonsense - using a technique familiar from Euclid's proofs, reductio ad absurdum, where the validity of an idea is tested by taking its premises to their logical extreme.

In this respect, Alice is conservative and I'd also draw number-centric nerds to Carroll's card soldiers and militant chess-pieces.

The viewer is almost killed with laughter however, when he gets to know the Red Queen (Helen Bonham Carter) and one very charming porker under her feet, in this Halal-unfriendly movie. Or as the tyrannical ruler cheekily states: "I love a warm pig belly for my aching feet."

And yet, the queen's - sorry Queen's - penchant for chopping heads off and scaring her submissive monkey servants, though is offset by Alice's innocence. While Carter's character appeals to her own authority, Mia Wasikowska is simply appealing, like the film's complimentary computer-generated objects that seem to fly into our laps.

Familiar voices, from the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen) to the unforgettable Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry) also add to the movie's very British appeal. And even when the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) switches from English to Scottish accents, I'm sure this is a sign of his delightful madness, and not a pointless exercise, as one reviewer claimed.

Of course, some human beings are prone to imposing politically-correct values on storybook characters, raising yet more questions for conservative-minded viewers. "So, does Disney's movie succeed in highlighting Alice's individualism over the Hollyweird's desire to present antiseptic girl power characters?" I hear some people ask. "Yes," I'd answer. "Alice is strong - but not in the annoying sense of the word."

But here's what I really love about Alice. I love the fact that Disney's movie captures Carroll's disdain for groupthink, double-speak, and folly as illustrated in "Through the Looking-Glass" before Orwell's day:

"When I use a word, "Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it too mean - neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

While, Disney's Alice isn't Carroll's word-for-word Alice, the character's spirit lives on, thanks to writer Linda Woolverton. And to Burton's credit again, her father, a merchant trader and seafarer isn't presented to us an evil free-trading, worker-bashing capitalist, with wicked patriarchal plans. In truth, he's actually very nice.

What's more, Alice the neoconservative dreamer also offsets Matt Damon's smug antiwar flop of a movie, Green Zone. For in addition to her free-trade tendencies - which become more apparent near the film's conclusion - she taps into her inner crusader. Blood will spill. Wars will liberate. 

Ben-Peter Terpstra is an Australian satirist and cartoon lover. His works have been posted on numerous sites from American Thinker (California) to Quadrant Online(Sydney, Australia). His commentary has been linked to such popular websites as Ann Coulter, WorldNetDaily,Rush Limbaugh and Big Hollywood.

In recent days your Administration has unleashed an unprecedented barrage of criticism at Israel, our most reliable ally in the Middle East. The ostensible reason for this assault was a municipal zoning decision permitting construction to continue on a housing division inside Israel's capital city.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly and immediately apologized to the United States and to Vice President Biden personally for the announcement's awkward timing, which occurred during Biden's visit. Between two allies, that should have ended the matter. But in the 72 hours that followed, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senior White House advisor David Axelrod all turned up the rhetorical heat in what the press reports is a concerted effort directed by your Administration to manufacture a crisis that weakens Israel on the eve of new peace talks.

Friends handle disagreements privately. Your public escalation sends a clear message of hostility and has increased tensions in the region. Your actions are likely to delay the resumption of peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis. You are now demanding that Israel make concessions to you on issues that are to be negotiated with the Palestinian Authority.

The building authorized by Israel, as we are sure you know, is not a "settlement," in the minds of anyone other than Israel's most committed enemies. Ramat Shlomo is a neighborhood in northern Jerusalem where more than 18,000 people already live. It is clearly understood by everyone, Palestinians included, that Israel regards this area as inside Jerusalem's municipal borders and would not be included as part of any future Palestinian state.

Were it not so dangerous, the very idea that allowing Israel to build homes in this Jerusalem neighborhood can in any way threaten the peace process would be laughable. Alas, the only ones laughing are Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. We are left to wonder why you have chosen to create a public diplomatic crisis over a zoning issue in Jerusalem.

Adding to our concern is the fact that at the same time you are bludgeoning Israel, your Administration has yet to present any viable policy to stop Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons. You have repeatedly extended an open hand of friendship to Iran, even after Ahmadinejad responds with a clenched fist and poisoned tongue. He is furiously rushing to develop the nuclear weapons he promised to use to destroy Israel and weaken the U.S. through blackmail and intimidation.

Yet you save your own vitriol for Israelis building homes for Jewish families in the Jewish capital. You offer Iran extension after extension for each deadline it fails to meet. You were the last Western leader to condemn Iran's human rights outrages last June, but the first and only leader to condemn Israel's decision to build homes for Israelis to live in Jerusalem.

Mr. President, on September 11th, 2001, Americans watched in horror as demonstrations broke out in Palestinian neighborhoods, celebrating the death of 3,000 Americans. In contrast, in Israel they declared a day of mourning, lowered their flag and cried with us. The American people cherish our alliance with Israel because it is based upon our shared experiences and shared values of liberty, freedom and the right to self-defense.

We call on you to immediately stop your attempts to weaken our ally and turn your efforts to the real security threat facing the U.S. and Israel - the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Sincerely,

Gary L. Bauer
President of American Values

American Values is a non-profit organization committed to uniting the American people around the vision of our Founding Fathers. Centuries ago, our Founders boldly proclaimed to the world a distinctly American faith in democracy; a faith rooted in the self-evident truths that "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." We believe these liberties need to be upheld and cherished, especially given how closely divided our country seems...Read More.. 

If they had enough bathrooms and cool air circulating, three hours delay in an airplane on the tarmac wouldn't be so bad. But they don't, and it's bad. Real bad. Somebody should do something.

Somebody should also do something about those big bad banks charging overdraft fees at the checkout counter without first asking permission.

And those big bad insurance companies shouldn't be putting profits ahead of people, as the President accused them of during his latest rant against business. They should increase their payouts and lower their rates.

Well, our government is on the case. The Department of Transportation is set to impose fines up to $27,500 per passenger for tarmac delays over three hours. Let's see now: $27,500 times 300 passengers is approximately $8,250,000 per delayed flight. Did I get that right? My frequent flyer carrier, American Airlines, suggested that it would save a ton of money by cancelling the flight instead. Spoil sports! They should be willing to sacrifice some of the enormous profits we all know airlines are making.

Bank of America said it would end the practice of honoring overdrafts on debit cards at the checkout counter for a fee. No money, no honey. It seems that getting permission from the over-draught customer, as a new Fed regulation would apparently require, is not feasible. (If it's not a word, it should be.) In this case, the outcome of eliminating a priced "service" because the regulation is difficult or impossible to implement is being taken as a victory by consumer advocates. Maybe the unintended consequence was intended in this case.

Now, I've been stranded on sitting airplanes way too long, but probably not three hours. And, like everyone else on the planet, I've had insurance companies deny claims I thought they should have honored. It would be better if they didn't deny claims and if they never uttered the words, "preexisting condition." Make them pay.

You see, banks, airlines, and insurance companies all have printing presses in their back rooms. Their ability to pay is limited only by their willingness to pay. Why they don't all just do right and put people ahead of profits, I don't know. Why do they have to be so churlish?

The impulse to legislate or regulate desirable outcomes by forcing Paul to pay Peter assumes that Paul has unlimited resources. So, Paul should put people first, not profits. Paul's unlimited budget should be put in the service of mankind. Paul should provide free lunches.

Economics may be defined many ways. The definition I usually think of has to do with unlimited wants and limited means. It deals with scarcity. Unfortunately, economics exists because there are no free lunches. That is obviously not true in politics. In politics, we can all benefit at the expense of others.

The serial over drafters have caught a break, assuming they don't mind having to abandon their lattes at the cash register due to insufficient funds. Overdraft fees were a source of revenue to banks that will be replaced on different products and different customers. At some point my "free" checking account won't be free any more.

At some point the increase in flight cancellations to avoid potential $8,250,000 fines will add to the real burden on the flying public, especially those whose airlines have hub and spoke systems. Cancellations spread and multiply throughout the system. Cancellations are costly to the airlines too, and those costs will have to be made up by higher prices or reduced services. Customers will not only pay more for tickets, but will incur extra costs by having to schedule earlier flights to guarantee arrival times. Or, airlines can just eat the cost. We all know how profitable they are.

Bob McTeer is a Distinguished Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), covering macro-economic issues, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, tax and education policy. NCPA is a nonprofit, nonpartisan market-oriented public policy institute headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with offices in Washington, D.C. See www.ncpa.org.

Prior to joining the NCPA in January 2007, Bob was Chancellor of the Texas A&M University System from November 4, 2004 through November 22, 2006. The Texas A&M University System is composed of 9 universities, 7 state agencies and a statewide health science center. The system has approximately 25,000 employees and budgets totaling $2.5 billion. Its universities have approximately 102,000 students, including about 45,000 at its flagship, Texas A&M University in College Station.  www.BobMcTeer.com.  Writings by Bob McTeer 

In some specialized markets, however, providers actively seek more customers, often advertising directly to patients - on TV, in magazines, etc., sometimes in other cities and sometimes nationwide. For example, New York's Mount Sinai Medical and Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Massachusetts General in Boston are all aggressive advertisers on cancer care.

In these markets, third-party payment significantly exceeds the marginal cost of care, and supply often exceeds demand.

Providers in these markets typically compete for patients based on quality. They need patient-pleasing services in order to attract their clientele in the first place and to retain them as ongoing customers. And their activities raise an obvious question: Why can't we have quality competition system-wide?

Here's a personal experience: Standing in the foyer, I see the head of the hospital hugging a patient. Hugging? Yes, hugging. It happened more than once on my visit there; and it gave me new insight into a little-understood phenomenon in health economics.

I am visiting a Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and from the moment I entered the foyer it is clear this is not an ordinary hospital. It's different. And it has to be. The average patient travels some distance to get to one of these facilities and has already been treated at two other hospitals before coming to CTCA. (Full disclosure: CTCA is a modest contributor to the NCPA.)

So who are the customers? They are mainly Stage III or Stage IV cancer patients. They are in a life-and-death struggle with a deadly disease. One thing they get at CTCA is first-rate traditional care. In fact, the facility in Tulsa claims to have every piece of equipment you would find at the Mayo Clinic. And CTCA boasts that it has significantly better survival rates than the national experience. But I'm not sure this is the main reason why patients come to CTCA.

Most cancer centers operate like ordinary hospitals. They get patients by referrals from doctors. What they do for patients is influenced by their third-party insurance. For these facilities, the patient is not really the customer. The real customers are doctors and insurance companies. But CTCA patients have to get on a plane and travel an average of 500 miles to get there. Then CTCA has to motivate them to return for future treatments. Clearly, this requires a different business model.

Under a system now being introduced at the Tulsa facility, every patient who comes to CTCA sees an oncologist, a nutritionist, a naturopath and a care manager. Nutritionist? Naturopath? Yes. And more. Patients at CTCA routinely get acupuncture, chiropractic services and mind/body counseling.

Do naturopathy, chiropractic care and spiritual counseling cure cancer? Probably not. But these services meet other patient needs. And in doing so, they may indirectly help cancer survival.

As it turns out, cancer therapy patients have to cope with nausea, sleeping disorders, fatigue and pain - just to name some of the more obvious problems. Two-thirds of patients are malnourished when they arrive at CTCA. Some are more likely to die of starvation before they die of cancer. These are issues that traditional medicine, focused only on tumors, too often ignores.

Nutrition, vitamin supplements and even acupuncture help patients deal with the side effects of cancer. In fact, it is estimated that, nationwide, from 80% to 85% of cancer patients seek out naturopathic therapies - usually on their own.

Without any prompting from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), CTCA has electronic medical records and what seems to be state-of-the-art coordinated care. And these features are not reflecting the latest fad. They are part of the company's business model.

CTCA gets very few referrals from doctors. Insurers won't pay for some of the therapies they provide. The company finds patients by advertising and word-of-mouth, patient-to-patient referrals. It attracts patients and retains them by meeting needs that other facilities do not meet. It provides us with a small glimpse of what the market for medical care might look like were it not dominated by impersonal, third-party payer bureaucracies.

[An interesting sidebar here concerns restrictions on the flow of information in the medical marketplace. Basically, a hospital can say almost anything (boast of higher cure rates, etc.), constrained only by the common law strictures against fraud. By contrast a drug maker, regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cannot make any claim unless it is backed up by a mountain of evidence and cannot promote "off-label" uses, no matter how much evidence there is. Whereas a hospital can trot out patients for testimonials at the drop of a hat, testimonials by clients of weight loss clinics are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Here is Natasha Singer on these issues in The New York Times and here is a critical study of hospital advertising.]

I've saved for last the issue that is surely at the back of everyone's mind. Don't we all agree that our health care system spends too much money on people who are terminally ill? Aren't CTCA facilities examples of wasting resources that at most add a few more months to peoples' lives?

As it turns out, we don't all agree on that. A fascinating new paper by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker and his colleagues at the University of Chicago makes a strong case that the traditional economic approach undervalues terminal care. Based on the century-old principle of diminishing marginal utility, the Chicago economists argue that a year or a month of life becomes more valuable for all of us, the less time we have left. Also, there is the "hope value" of survival. During the interim, new discoveries can be made that extend life even longer (as was the case with AIDs).

Space does not permit me to do justice to the full richness of this paper. So I invite readers to read it on their own.

John C. Goodman is president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis. The Wall Street Journal and the National Journal, among other publications, have called him the "Father of Health Savings Accounts," and the Media Research Center credits him, along with former Sen. Phil Gramm and columnist Bill Kristol with playing the pivotal role in the defeat of the Clinton Administration's plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system. He is also the Kellye Wright Fellow in health care. The mission of the Wright Fellowship is to promote a more patient-centered, consumer-driven health care system.

Dr. Goodman's health policy blog is the only right-of-center health care blog on the Internet. It is the only place where pro-free enterprise, private sector solutions to health care problems are routinely examined and debated by top health policy experts throughout the country-conservative, moderate and liberal. 

In a major speech on March 4, Kerlikowske denounced the use of marijuana, including its "medical" version, and cited facts and studies linking the weed to all kinds of health problems. "The concern with marijuana is not born out of any culture-war mentality, but out of what the science tells us about the drug's effects," he said. "And the science, though still evolving, is clear: marijuana use is harmful.

 It is associated with dependence, respiratory and mental illness, poor motor performance, and cognitive impairment, among other negative effects." 

This has to be perceived as a tremendous setback for Nadelmann and the rich liberals, led by George Soros and Peter Lewis, who have financed the drug legalization and "medical marijuana" movements. The Kerlikowske speech constitutes belated recognition that the drug wars south of the border are inexorably linked to the growing use of marijuana in California, where some of the same Mexican drug gangs are planting and harvesting their crop. 

A report, Organized Crime in California Annual Report 2007-08, prepared by the California Department of Justice, states that "Mexican drug trafficking organizations [DTOs] command a large portion of the illegal drug trade in California." Those DTOs, which "dominate the outdoor cultivation of marijuana in California," are, in turn, linked to criminal street gangs and organized crime groups. 

Maryland Considers Pro-pot Bill 

Despite the wake-up call from Obama's own Drug Czar, the well-financed movement to legalize dope continues on many fronts. On Thursday, March 18, Joyce Nalepka, former President of Nancy Reagan's favorite charity, the National Federation of Parents for Drug-Free Youth, will testify in hearings before the Maryland State Legislature in Annapolis. She says that Maryland Senate Bill SB 627 would allow use of marijuana under the guise of "medicine." 

Thursday will mark the ninth time Nalepka has testified on this issue in Maryland. "There is nothing new to say, except the marijuana that kids are using today is so much more potent, they refer to it as 'Skunk.' Eighteen nations, including the U.S., now link 'Skunk' marijuana to depression, psychosis and schizophrenia," she says. 

On the national level, supported by Soros and Lewis, then-candidate Barack Obama adopted the soft-on-drugs approach. As President, his Attorney General Eric Holder decided to withhold federal resources from the war on drugs in California, at least as they apply to the growing "medical marijuana" program. But that was before a psychotic pothead named John Patrick Bedell came all the way from California with a "medical marijuana" card and opened fire on the entrance to the Pentagon, wounding two guards before getting killed himself. 

Ironically, on the same day that Bedell was preparing his assault, Kerlikowske was getting ready to speak to the California Police Chiefs Association Conference in San Jose, California. His topic: "Why Marijuana Legalization Would Compromise Public Health and Public Safety." The speech was so powerful, in terms of the facts he presented about the problems associated with marijuana, including "medical marijuana," that it is somewhat shocking to consider that he has a job in the Obama Administration. 

The editorial board of the Christian Science Monitor was pleasantly surprised, saying that "The Obama White House has finally laid out its most thorough, reasoned rebuttal to arguments for marijuana legalization-countering a campaign that is gaining alarming momentum at the state level." Its editorial headline highlighted that this position had "finally" been articulated, reflecting frustration with the silence and confusion on the matter of drug legalization coming from the Obama Administration. 

The editorial referred to the "well-financed, well-organized pro-marijuana effort," without noting that billionaires Soros and Lewis, major Democratic Party donors, are behind it. 

Obama should be asked at his next news conference, when and if he ever holds one, if he agrees with his Drug Czar about the dangers of dope, which he smoked as a young man, along with snorting cocaine. 

But the President has apparently been too busy with national health care legislation to take an interest in the health impact of illegal drugs and the drug wars that are resulting in part from its cultivation and use in the "Golden State." 

Pot Linked to Mental Problems

In its editorial, "Marijuana legalization? A White House rebuttal, finally," The Christian Science Monitor made prominent mention of John Patrick Bedell's marijuana use and mental problems, which gave urgency to Kerlikowske's remarks. It said, "The recent 'Pentagon shooter,' John Patrick Bedell, was a heavy marijuana user. The disturbed young man's psychiatrist told the Associated Press that marijuana made the symptoms of his mental illness more pronounced." 

There is a contrast, as noted by the publication, between Kerlikowske's tough talk to the California police chiefs and the Holder policy of withdrawing from a big part of the war on drugs in California. Attorney General Holder insists that the Department of Justice just doesn't have the "resources" to do anything about the "medical marijuana" problem. 

Kerlikowske alluded to "the problems associated with medical marijuana dispensaries," where people get their dope with the simple approval of a pro-pot doctor, and said that "We've seen the problems of medical marijuana here in this state but also in places like Colorado, too, where kids are given the message that since marijuana is a medicine, it must be safe." 

Although he failed to say anything about the Administration having basically given up on doing anything about those dispensaries, his comments have put him on a collision course with Holder and perhaps Obama himself. 

In California, anti-drug activists are examining what can be done about the pro-pot doctors behind the "medical marijuana" scam.

The Warning

As the Christian Science Monitor pointed out, some of the best material in the speech came in a jam-packed footnote. The paper said, "As Kerlikowske pointed out, marijuana is harmful-and he has the studies to back it up. Read the footnotes in his speech; they're sobering, especially No. 8." That footnote describes the scientific studies linking marijuana to respiratory illnesses, lung injury, and mental illness, including psychosis. 

Little did Kerlikowske know that, as he was speaking to the police chiefs, a crazed California pothead was on his way to try to kill people at the Pentagon because he thought the U.S. military was involved in a conspiracy of some sort. Of course, this is just one aspect of the mental problems associated with marijuana use. Simply put, the weed reduces the ability of people to think and act clearly. 

On the matter of why drug legalization will increase and not solve any marijuana-related problems, Kerlikowske said that "it is clear that the social costs of legalizing marijuana would outweigh any possible tax that could be levied. In the United States, illegal drugs already cost $180 billion a year in health care, lost productivity, crime, and other expenditures. That number would only increase under legalization because of increased use." 

Regarding the claim that legalization would eliminate the black market, reduce crime and strike a blow against the drug trafficking organizations, he explained that the evidence indicates that there would still be a "profit motive for the existing black market providers to stay in the market, as they can still cover their costs of production and make a nice profit." As a result, he noted, legalization would "saddle government with the dual burden of regulating a new legal market while continuing to pay for the negative side effects associated with an underground market whose providers have little economic incentive to disappear." 

In practical terms, he added, "Legalization means the price comes down, the number of users goes up, the underground market adapts, and the revenue gained through a regulated market will never keep pace with the financial and social cost of making this drug more accessible."

Now Under Attack 

Predictably, Kerlikowske is being attacked by the illegal drug lobby. The Peter Lewis-funded Marijuana Policy Project called his speech "supremely uneducated." 

Like John Patrick Bedell, the potheads won't rest until society recognizes their right to smoke, grow and even worship pot. Do they have an ally in President Obama? "Yes we Cannabis!" they say.

But the public, concerned about a generation literally going to pot under a President who inhaled and liked it, may have something to say about that. 

With all the criticism of Obama's various "Czars," at least one of them, Gil Kerlikowske, has taken a bold stand that is out of step with what Obama's "progressive" base has been demanding. It will be interesting to see how long he lasts.

            Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

My fellow Americans, America is faced with a formidable enemy.

This enemy has a name:  Islam. I think it is time to revisit the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and see if Islam is qualified as a religion. Is this an outlandishly absurd proposal? Not at all, serious problems require equally serious solutions. The call for evaluation of the First Amendment may be seen as an attempt to curb Islam or other militant cults. The truth is: it is. It is truly a matter of survival of the United States and the free world.

It is time to take a stand and shift the debate to orthodox Islam.  We do not have to investigate every other religion on earth in order to compare them or offer opinion about their relative "goodness" in order to declare that on the whole Islam perpetuates evil.  Let others devolve into religious disagreements.  But for those commentators who would respond:  "OK great, so now what...you claim Islam is evil.  How do we combat that?"  Your response is already clear:  Through the spread of truth, not deceit.  Through voluntary social sanctions and laws in every civilized country that forbid evil practices like Sharia, coercion and violence against women, threats against those who disagree, honor killings, apostasy  and other hate crimes.  Let the world know the truth and decide for itself.  Let Muslims who come to their senses opt out.

America, with a long history of protecting religious freedom, still clings to the "hands off" practice of leaving alone any doctrine or practice billed as religion. A thorny problem is in deciding what constitutes a religion and who is to make that call. The dictionary supplies a sociologically useless definition for religion: "The expression of man's belief in and reverence for a superhuman power recognized as the creator and governor of the universe." Just about anyone or any group under this definition can start a religion, and they indeed do-and some do so at significant costs to others.

Muslims, under the banner of religion, are infringing blatantly on the rights of others, not only in Islamic countries, but also in much of the non-Muslim world. By their acts of dogmatic barbarity, Muslims are slowly awakening the non-Muslim democracies to the imminent threat of Islamofascisim keen on destroying their free secular and free societies.

As more and more Muslims arrive in American land, as they reproduce with great fecundity, as they convert the disenchanted and minorities, and as petrodollar-flush Muslims and Muslim treasuries supply generous funds, Muslims gather more power to undermine  a serious challenge to the American system of governance-democracy. As for democracy, the rule of the people, Muslims have no use at all. Muslims believe that Allah's rule must govern the world in the form of Caliphate-a theocracy. Making mockery of democracy, subverting its working, and ignoring its provisions is a Muslim's way of falsifying what he already believes to be a sinful and false system of governance invented by the infidels.

A consortium composed of pandering liberal politicians, blinded by short-term self-interest and egotism, attention and fund-seeking self-proclaimed prima donna professors; and, bastions of useful idiots, are the witting or unwitting promoters of Ummah-ism.

Unlike some peaceful religions such as Baha'i, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity which advocate universally understood principles of good within their Holy books, and perhaps other religious doctrines (with which I am not personally familiar), Islam cannot be reformed.  An example, when the Christian Catholic church was reformed, it was the church that was found to be in violation of Biblical teachings.  It had in many ways become anti-Christian.

Reform restored orthodoxy to the plain and well-understood concepts revealed by Christ and the disciples (one of the reasons it took so long was the church forbade lay-people from reading the bible or translating it from the dead language Latin...so Europeans were largely ignorant except for what they were told...see the story of Martin Luther).  Some evolutionary ideas such as abolition of slavery were not addressed in the Bible (in part because Christ was after the souls not the bodies), but the other teachings such as compassion, forgiveness, non-violence, and brotherly love are and were always incompatible with slavery.  Therefore it should be no surprise that eventually Christians in Europe and America led the abolitionist movement (they were scripturally correct).  If a Christian bombs an abortion clinic, there is no scriptural commandment supporting this.  It is unchristian (however, it is not unchristian to denounce abortion and seek to make it illegal and thus prevent abortionists from practicing their craft).

It is sad when the counter-argument to this definition of Christianity is lame references to Old Testament violence.  Old Testament stories are taught in Christianity as historical fact, not prescriptions based on Christian ethics.  If to a Christian, God is sanctioned a violent act, it is 100% irrelevant to the New Covenant that is taught by Jesus.  So to say...yeah but the Bible has violence in it too is insultingly banal and misleading.

If some Christians abused their doctrine and hid behind the Cross to justify their personal desire to kill, enslave, and conquer, then they are and always were sinners and they are wrong; and this is why Christianity has taken the natural form it has today...as a religion of peace and compassion (even if many supposed Christians continue to sin).  This is not to say that Christians are unable to defend themselves, or intervene to stop injustice.  Christians are taught to hate the sin and love the sinner...period!  The decision to become aggressive is always a burden on the Christian conscience.

But Islam does not tolerate revisionism in its beliefs or practices over time. Reform is not at play, because one cannot point to Jihadists or terrorists and say Muhammad did not advocate it.  He most certainly did, and delighted in his evil thoughts.  Islam is a literal religion, taking unabrogated scripture as eternal and absolute.  Moreover, there are no calls in Islam for compassion, forgiveness, non-violence, and brotherly love.  Instead there are specific prescriptions for retain evil with evil, eternal warfare, religious hegemony, slavery, killing Jews, taxing nonbelievers, stoning, promulgating terror, establishing a caste social system, and perpetuating discrimination against women.  The only way to reform Islam is discarding Sharia, but also purging the Quran itself of enormous suras that are not only patently false, but totally repugnant to a civilized humanity. This line of thinking, to sanitize Islam is explicitly forbidden in the Quran:

Quran 2:85:"Do you, then, believe in some parts of the divine writ and deny the truth of other parts? What, then, could be the reward of those among you who do such things but ignominy in the life of this world and, on the Day of Resurrection; they will be consigned to most grievous suffering? For God is not unmindful of what you do."

Therefore there is no such thing as "radical Islam."  And those who take a "liberal" view of Islam should be forced to back up their nouveau interpretation with unabrogated scriptural facts.  Unless such "reformists" can denounce fascist Islam with scripture, they are the true radicals, which is why we never see them pointing to scriptural arguments against jihad...they cannot because they are lying. Islamic terrorists are only doing exactly what Muhammad demanded, and his demands were not suggestions and they where not ephemeral.  They were "perfect," eternal ultimata.  Let us not forget that the terrorists are faithful and true to what is written in their holy book.

The notion that only those who denounce what is plainly Islamic (and just as plainly repulsive) are therefore the tools of Jews, or right-wing, paranoid, NASCAR-loving, gun-rights-worshipping, evangelical Christians must be exhaustively combated and rejected.  This politicizing and obscuring reality only keeps people confused, inured, and numb.

But because both those who believe Islam is defective and those who believe it has been hijacked are equally in opposition to terrorism and coercion, there is confusion about how Islam should be regarded.  Perhaps the contrasting viewpoints should be named so they can be referred to as valid concepts.  

The notion that Islam is peaceful, but that only "radicals" are usurping and distorting the "peace-of-Islam" should be called:  Islam-revisionism and advocates called Islam-Revisionists

The notion that Islam is inherently violent, coercive, harsh, Jihad-oriented...and that it advocates slavery, intolerance, and inequality...and that such traditional and realistic interpretations cannot be reformed should be called Islam-realism and such advocates called Islam-realists.

Once the side of realists has a name and can distinguish itself from wishful revisionists, the public can begin to see that there are many voices which (without advocating a specific competing religion) can denounce Islam per se, and can speak to the real reasons. Islam continues its onslaught, and can counter any senseless position, such as reforming them and bringing democracy and tolerance to their lands (the RINOS position).

Recall how many times former President George W. Bush praised Islam?  Recall President George Bush's love affairs with the Sheikh Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Obama's bow to the Saudis' Sheikh?  Apparently, both presidents were/are unaware of the existence of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasans in the United States military, though the entire 8 years of the presidency of George W. Bush consumed around the 9/11 tragedy and Islamic terrorism.  Next in line to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Saudi Arabia is the largest sponsor and supporter of Islamic terrorism in the world. Go figure!

Please tell the American people what has been done since this Muslim-American Maj. savagely killed 14 people while shouting Allah-o-Akbar (one unborn child) and hurting 30 others? As I noted, the recent dastardly mass murder at Fort Hood, committed by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan will be forgotten by the public before very long. Life will continue on its deadly course, pushed along in a variety of ways by agents of death, Islamists. Only the families who lost their loved-ones and those who survived the bullets have to live the rest of their lives with incapacitating injuries and, in the main, won't be able to put the episode behind them.

Those who claim that they want to reform Islam want to transform it by stripping it of a great many provisions that are anathema to civilized humanity. These people are, in fact, trying to make a new religion out of the old with no divine authority that was, supposedly, bestowed upon Muhammad to launch his religion.

If I am right, then Islam will always be a bête noire to the West.  Even dopey secularists and leftists will realize that fact one day, perhaps only after their delusions sink all of us.  But realizing the fact that this religious power is at eternal war with you is not an act of hopelessness, and therefore it is not a call to pollyanishness.  It simply means we must always be on our guard and never self-deluded.  It may mean we have to leave the Islamists alone and hope that their people slowly convert to another religion or become unaffiliated.  Until then, we should keep our powder dry.

I have refused to accept several organizations that seek to combat or expose the antics of "radical" or "extreme" Islam, because I know that it is not extremism that is causing the violence...it's mainstream, typical, normal, traditional, specified, canonical Islam.

There are those who with a wink and a nod understand this but continue to work as revisionists because they are afraid of starting a religious war, even as they feel compelled to do something.  They tell me, "You can't openly accuse an entire religion of being evil!  That would just incite them and make them hate us even more.  My response: the war started in the 7th century, and if in the 21st century we still refuse to accept that reality, then there is perhaps is no hope at all for civilization.  Nothing good can come from deception.

I argue that any belief system that licenses murder in the name of Jihad and the conquering and subduing of the world of the infidels by the Ummah, should be outlawed. Prophet Mohammed brewed up a militant, radical and extremely irrational imperialistic cult that sought world dominance. My fellow travelers, let us make one thing clear; Islam is no more a religion deserving our respect or legal recognition than is cannibalism.  

It is time for the Americans to call upon the lawmakers of the United States of America to immediately create a safety board and commissioner to study and examine the dangers of Islamic dogma in our society. In the monumental task of dealing with Islam, every individual, group and government must combine their resources and energies to prevail. The destiny of the civilized life hangs in the balance. Shirking responsibility is an unpardonable act of every enlightened human being and organization that values human liberty and dignity.

"John Kerry Supports Gay Blood" declared a column on a pro-homosexual website.

Kerry, Franken and 16 other liberal senators insist they want the blood supply to remain safe and that donated blood must undergo two "highly accurate" tests that make the risk of tainted blood entering the blood supply virtually or nearly zero.

But writer and researcher Dale O'Leary says that male homosexuals, or men who have sex with men (MSM), as the FDA describes them, "expose themselves to such a wide variety of pathogens that medical professionals can never be sure that they have a test to identify every one of them. There could even now be something lurking out there, hidden in the blood of apparently healthy men, waiting."

O'Leary, the author of One Man, One Woman, and The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality, is writing a forthcoming report on the medical and health impact of admitting open and active homosexuals into the U.S. Armed Forces. 

"Senator Kerry argues that this policy is now arcane because we have tests to determine if donated blood carries the HIV, but the problem is not the diseases we know of and have tests for but the diseases which we haven't identified as sexually transmitted and blood borne and don't have tests for," O'Leary points out.

If the ban on gay blood is lifted, she warns, "The lives of all those who receive blood products are at risk. Hemophiliacs have every right to be worried, in the 1980's they saw their community virtually destroyed by contaminated blood. We simply can't be too careful. MSM are not at risk because they can't donate blood. In fact, the prohibition may serve as a warning to them and others that certain behaviors carry an unacceptable risk."

Tom Fahey, a man with hemophilia and HIV, formed an organization called the Committee of Ten Thousand to represent the estimated ten thousand people in the U.S. with HIV as a result of the blood transfusions needed to ensure clotting. In the past, this group, as well as the National Hemophilia Foundation, have defended the ban on gay men donating blood.

The proposed policy change is being driven by Senators Kerry and Franken and supported by Kirsten Gillibrand, Dick Durbin, Daniel Akaka, Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, Frank Lautenberg, Bob Casey, Bernie Sanders, Russ Feingold,
Mark Udall, Maria Cantwell, Carl Levin, Tom Harkin, Mark Begich, Roland Burris, and Michael Bennet.

They urged FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg in a March 4 letter to review and modify the current law banning men who have had any homosexual sex since 1977 from donating blood. In response, the FDA released a statement to the press defending the ban.

"Our decision to maintain the deferral policy is based on current science and data," the agency said.

Angry over the restatement of official and long-standing policy and apparently willing to manipulate science for political purposes, Kerry then fired off another letter on March 9, once again demanding a review of the ban in order to accommodate the homosexual rights lobby. On March 12, last Friday, federal officials caved to Kerry's demand. The FDA said it would reexamine the issue, taking into account whether the current body of scientific information would allow "alternative strategies that maintain blood safety."

The liberal political pressure worked because FDA commissioner Margaret "Peggy" Hamburg is a physician with "progressive" connections who served as Senior Scientist at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation funded by left-wing crackpot Ted Turner. She is also a former board member of the Drug Strategies group, which is supported by the Open Society Institute of billionaire George Soros and other liberal-left foundations.

The liberal campaign to lift the ban on gay blood comes only three years after the federal agency reaffirmed the ban after reviewing the scientific data. The FDA states that, "Male to male sex has been associated with an increased risk of HIV infection at least since 1977. Surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that men who have sex with men and would be likely to donate have a HIV prevalence that is at present over 15 fold higher than the general population, and over 2000 fold higher than current repeat blood donors (i.e., those who have been negatively screened and tested) in the USA. MSM continue to account for the largest number of people newly infected with HIV. Men who have sex with men also have an increased risk of having other infections that can be transmitted to others by blood transfusion."

The Family Research Council argues that Kerry and his fellow liberals "care more about the homosexual agenda than American safety..." For his part, Kerry in 2008 received a score of 100% on a scorecard issued by the Human Rights Campaign, a major homosexual rights lobbying group.

At the same time that Kerry called on the FDA commissioner to lift the ban, he wrote a column for a homosexual paper in Massachusetts called "Bay Windows" arguing that changing the policy "won't be easy" but that current law is "discriminatory" against homosexuals.

Kerry's move has been praised by the media, especially the homosexual press, with even Fox News running a story failing to quote any critics of the proposed change in policy.

However, Cheryl Wetzstein of The Washington Times wrote a story about Kerry's push for gay blood in which she quoted Mark Skinner, president of the World Federation of Hemophilia, as saying that "Blood-donor rules are discriminatory by design" but that the rules are grounded in science and intended to protect the end users, not target a group.

According to federal government information, "To date, no other population has been so greatly targeted by the AIDS epidemic as Americans with hemophilia, who have the highest infection rate of any population world-wide. Between the years 1978-1985 the blood supply and therefore much of the clotting factor hemophiliacs use to treat bleeding episodes became contaminated with HIV; as a result more than 5.0% of the estimated 20,000 hemophiliacs in the United States are HIV+ and as many as 90% of people with severe hemophilia are infected with HIV according to the Federal Centers for Disease Control."

Senator Kerry was also behind the congressional decision to authorize the lifting of the ban on foreigners infected with HIV/AIDS from traveling to and living in the United States, despite the increased federal costs associated with that change in policy. The Obama Administration officially lifted the ban last October.

"While the AIDS epidemic no longer has media attention," O'Leary argues, "the fact is that the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases among MSM continues unabated. In the 1980's HIV infection was a death sentence and many MSM modified their behavior, but with the introduction of antiretrovirals HIV became a chronic disease. MSM experienced condom fatigue and returned to sex with multiple partners. They seek sexual partners on Internet sites like Manhunt. They attend circuit parties, at which thousands of men engage in 3-day orgies of music, sex and drugs. The epidemic is fueled by drugs and alcohol, including crystal meth, poppers, ecstasy and Viagra. In spite of the risks, MSM openly solicit partners interested in bare-backing-unprotected anal sex."

O'Leary said that lifting the ban on gay blood could return us to what happened in the late 1970's when men who have sex with men "were allowed to donate blood even though public health officials knew that the gay male community was in the midst of an ongoing epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including syphilis, gonorrhea, Chlamydia tra­chomatis, herpes, hepatitis, Shigella sonnei, Shi­gella flexneri, Campylobacter enteritis, Campy­lobacter jejuni, Salmonella enteritis; Giardia lamblia, Enta­moeba histo­lytica (amebic dysentery), and Entamoeba coli."

Currently, she noted, "HIV infection rates among MSM continue to rise, particularly among young MSM. Other STDs are rampant among both those who are HIV positive and those who are HIV negative. An outbreak of syphilis was traced to men seeking sex on the Internet. There was an epidemic of MRSA-the so-called flesh-eating bacteria among MSM. There have been outbreaks of Shigella in several urban areas."

While liberals like Kerry and Franken insist that diseases will be picked up by blood screening, O'Leary says that a new strain of Chlamydia that was not picked up by standard tests emerged in Sweden, "a warning that given the way epidemics of STDs spread we cannot be sure we have an accurate test for everything that is out there."

            Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

So, what you are about to read, I am afraid, is something you are unlikely to find in any other place.

Suppose the government nationalizes the school system and makes schooling available for free. Without knowing any institutional details, could you predict in advance which students will end up in the classroom of the best teacher? How about the worst teacher? And how will the other students be sorted in between?

I certainly could not predict with any accuracy. But I can almost guarantee you the students will not be distributed randomly. I can also almost guarantee you that the distribution will not be independent of the parents' income, wealth and social status.

Similarly, suppose the government nationalizes the health care system and makes medical services available for free. Without knowing any institutional details, could you predict in advance which patients will be seeing the best doctors and entering the best facilities? How about the worst doctors and the worst facilities?

Again, I can virtually guarantee you that the patients will not be distributed randomly and that the distribution will not be independent of income and social status.

 Brother Can You Spare a Dime

What brings all this to mind is a post by Uwe Reinhardt at the Health Affairs blog the other day:

In the ideal world envisaged by the policy-making elite left of center of the ideological spectrum, the individual's health care experience is independent of that individual's socio-economic class... Access to needed and locally available health care is viewed as an individual's inherent right... Rationing health care by income class has no place in this picture. Heavy government involvement to enforce the implied redistribution of income does.

Now, this is interesting on several levels, so let me make four quick points. (1) I am not aware of any serious proposal (as opposed to, say, daydreaming) made by anyone, anytime, anywhere, to make health care available to people in a way that is truly independent of socio-economic class; (2) I do not believe it is possible to design a system in which access to care is independent of socio-economic class; but even if I'm wrong about that (3) I am fairly confident that no country in the world is seriously trying to do it; and (4) there is nothing in the science of public choice which would lead me to believe that any country ever will do it.

Health care is a complex system in which 300 million potential patients, 800,000 doctors and countless other paramedical personnel interact in complicated ways. Government cannot possibly control, or even observe, most of what goes on. The best it can do is change a few parameters. But after they adjust, people will mainly pursue their own self interests just as they did before the change.

Economists have spent 200 years developing tools that enhance our ability to understand the complex system we call "the economy." But we have very few tools to understand complex bureaucratic systems - especially the health care system. So with humility, I will cautiously propose three principles:

1. On the demand side, the same skills and attributes that allow people to do well in the marketplace also allow people to do well in bureaucratic systems. (The idea that the market favors one group of people and bureaucratic systems favor a completely different group is an illusion.)
2. On the supply side, if providers cannot ration based on price, they will ration based on other considerations and these other considerations almost always will favor consumers with higher socio-economic status.
3. Provided they have the money (or can make sacrifices to get the money) the price system is almost always better than bureaucratic systems for consumers with low socio-economic status.

Take the market for restaurants. A poor person in Dallas can have dinner at any of thousands of restaurants in the city without any bureaucratic hassle. Granted, he could drop a week's pay at some of the pricier establishments. But if he is willing to make the sacrifice, no bureaucratic obstacle stands in the way. Yet this same poor person is probably trapped in a Medicaid system in which about his only option is the Parkland Hospital emergency room or one of its satellite clinics. And his children are probably trapped in poor-performing public schools without any avenue of escape.

Think about that. In the capitalist restaurant sector, the individual has easy access to everything the market has to offer. But in the socialistic health and education systems (defended on the grounds that poor people need them), the individual has almost no choice whatsoever.

Here is the little understood (and surprising) bottom line: Markets do not empower rich people; they empower poor people. In a bureaucratic system, the rich person will find his way to top-notch doctors and he will find a way to enroll his children in one of the best schools. But a poor person almost never can be assured of these results unless he can pay with money.

Before I move to a consideration of the evidence, consider one more assertion Prof. Reinhardt makes about other developed countries:

All these nations have an escape valve for a small, moneyed minority who either buy private insurance or, in the case of the UK and Canada, travel outside their countries' borders to get health care either not available to them at all in their country or for which they must wait in a queue. But for the great bulk of the population in these countries - 90 percent or so - the health care experience of the individual is largely independent of their socio-economic status.

Now, if I had read only the literature on why there should be public education and had never taken a close look at how it actually works, I would be tempted to say the same thing about America's public schools. After all, about 10% buy private education and everybody else is part of the free system. Yet (as I hope everyone knows), public schools do not offer equal opportunities to all children. Nor does socialized medicine.

My foreign language limitations have constrained my ability to delve deeply into what's happening in a lot of European health systems. What I know most about are the English-speaking countries - Britain, Canada, New Zealand (socialist systems) and Australia (a mixed system).

Of these, Britain has made the greatest effort to find out who gets what from the health care system and why. In fact, contrary to my earlier assertion that socialists generally have very little interest in understanding how socialism actually works, the Brits seem to have an obsession about studying inequality of access to care. Here's what I wrote in Lives at Risk:

Britain's ministers of health have long assured Britons that they were leaving no stone unturned in a relentless quest to root out and eliminate inequalities in health care. But more than thirty years into the program (in the 1980s), an official task force (the Black Report) found little evidence that access to health care was any more equal than when the National Health Service was started. Almost twenty years later, a second task force (the Acheson Report) found evidence that access had become less equal in the years between the two studies.

Across a range of indices, NHS performance figures have consistently shown widening gaps between the best-performing and worst-performing hospitals and health authorities, as well as vastly different survival rates for different types of illness, depending on where patients live. The problem of unequal access is so well known in Britain that the press refers to the NHS as a "postcode lottery" in which a person's chances for timely, high-quality treatment depend on the neighborhood or "postcode" in which he or she lives.

"Generally speaking, the poorer you are and the more socially deprived your area, the worse your care and access is likely to be," says The Guardian, a staunch defender of socialized medicine. Scholarly studies of the issue have come to similar conclusions.

Now if I substituted "education" terms for "health" terms, I could leave all the other words pretty much the same and I believe I would have a very accurate description of the public school system in the United States and in the other four countries as well.

C'est la vie.

John C. Goodman is president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis. The Wall Street Journal and the National Journal, among other publications, have called him the "Father of Health Savings Accounts," and the Media Research Center credits him, along with former Sen. Phil Gramm and columnist Bill Kristol with playing the pivotal role in the defeat of the Clinton Administration's plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system. He is also the Kellye Wright Fellow in health care. The mission of the Wright Fellowship is to promote a more patient-centered, consumer-driven health care system.

Dr. Goodman's health policy blog is the only right-of-center health care blog on the Internet. It is the only place where pro-free enterprise, private sector solutions to health care problems are routinely examined and debated by top health policy experts throughout the country-conservative, moderate and liberal.