A new and dangerous attempt by the IRS to prevent free speech

An email from illegal immigration critics Numbers USA:

IRS would make us take down grade cards and faxes! Please help us STOP them.

We are especially proud of our grade cards that, for the past 17 years, have tracked most actions in Congress that impact overall immigration numbers. Our grade cards are widely sourced and often used by activists to paint a clear picture of how a Member of Congress has acted on immigration.

But if the Internal Revenue Service has its way, we'll be forced to shut down our grade cards and many of the other features on our website in the months leading up to federal elections.

The IRS has proposed a new rule for non-profit organizations that is supposedly meant to respond to a recent political scandal. But instead of focusing on the rather narrow types of organizations and activities reflective of the scandal, its rule appears ready to punish all 501(c)4 non-profit organization and would cripple organizations whose primary mission is to educate the public on various issues in Congress.

The rule would prohibit the simple mention of a candidate's name within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary - even if the mention has nothing to do with the election! If your Member of Congress introduces a great immigration bill or a terrible amnesty bill within 30 days of his/her primary, under the proposed rule, we wouldn't be able to tell you about it.

The IRS thinks it's shutting down inappropriate electioneering by certain 501(c)(4) groups, but in reality, it's granting elected officials immunity from public accountability. Non-profits like NumbersUSA, the Sierra Club, the National Rifle Association, the League of Conservation Voters, and even the pro-amnesty National Council of La Raza would all be silenced, and we're all speaking out against it.

We've joined a small coalition of groups that have launched the website ProtectC4FreeSpeech.com. This site provides additional background on the rule, links to relevant news stories, and a way to submit public comments to the rule.

Under federal law, the IRS needs to read and respond to every unique comment made to a proposed rule, so our goal is to send them more than 1 million comments!

Email from Numbers USA

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Paglia: Duck Dynasty uproar ‘utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist’



The suspension of Phil Robertson from A&E’s Duck Dynasty is outrageous in a nation that values freedom, according to social critic and openly gay, dissident feminist Camille Paglia.

“I speak with authority here, because I was openly gay before the ‘Stonewall rebellion,’ when it cost you something to be so. And I personally feel as a libertarian that people have the right to free thought and free speech,” Paglia, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, said on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Thursday.

“In a democratic country, people have the right to be homophobic as well as they have the right to support homosexuality — as I one hundred percent do. If people are basing their views against gays on the Bible, again they have a right of religious freedom there,” she added.

Robertson has been suspended from Duck Dynasty due to comments he made to GQ that have been deemed “anti-gay.” According to Paglia, the culture has become too politically correct.

“To express yourself in a magazine in an interview — this is the level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic Party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades,” Paglia said. “This is the whole legacy of free speech 1960’s that have been lost by my own party.”

Paglia went on to point out that while she is an atheist she respects religion and has been frustrated by the intolerance of gay activists.

“I think that this intolerance by gay activists toward the full spectrum of human beliefs is a sign of immaturity, juvenility,” Paglia said. “This is not the mark of a true intellectual life. This is why there is no cultural life now in the U.S. Why nothing is of interest coming from the major media in terms of cultural criticism. Why the graduates of the Ivy League with their A, A, A+ grades are complete cultural illiterates, etc. is because they are not being educated in any way to give respect to opposing view points.”

“There is a dialogue going on human civilization, for heaven sakes. It’s not just this monologue coming from fanatics who have displaced the religious beliefs of their parents into a political movement,” she added. “And that is what happened to feminism, and that is what happened to gay activism, a fanaticism.”

 SOURCE

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Judge: Obama Administration Assisted in Criminal Conspiracy to Smuggle Illegal-Alien Children into U.S.

In a court order, Federal District Judge Andrew Hanen accused the Department of Homeland Security of helping to smuggle an illegal-alien girl into the U.S. to live with her mother. Judge Hanen said this was the fourth recent case in which the Border Patrol apprehended a “coyote” smuggling a child, then delivered the child to illegal-alien parents. In each case, taxpayers covered the expense.

In the case, Patricia Elizabeth Salmeron Santos, an illegal alien, paid a coyote to smuggle her 10-year old daughter from El Salvador to Virginia, where she resided. When Border Patrol Agents apprehended the smuggler and the girl, they prosecuted the smuggler but brought the child to the mother, who they knew was an illegal alien.

Judge Hanen wrote, "Salmeron Santos admitted that she started this conspiracy by hiring alien smugglers to transfer her child from El Salvador to Virginia. She agreed to pay $8500 for these human traffickers to smugger her daughter. The criminal conspiracy instigated by Salmeron Santos was temporarily interrupted when Nava-Martinez was arrested. Despite this setback, the goal of the conspiracy was successfully completed thanks to the United States Government. This Court is quite concerned with the apparent policy of the Department of Homeland Security completing the criminal mission of individuals who are violating the border security of the United States.”

Judge Hanen continued, "The DHS could reunite the parent and child by apprehending the parent who has committed not one, but at least two different crimes. It would be more efficient for the Government to arrest the individuals who are not only in the country illegally, but while in the country illegally are also fostering illegal conspiracies. It would also be much cheaper to apprehend those co-conspirators and reunite them at the child's location. Yet it neither prosecutes nor deports the wrongdoer."

“The DHS, instead of enforcing our border security laws, actually assisted the criminal conspiracy in achieving its illegal goals,” Judge Hanen wrote. “It completed the mission of the conspiracy initiated by Salmeron Santos. In summary, instead of enforcing the laws of the United States, the government took direct steps to help the individuals who violated it. A private citizen would, and should, be prosecuted for this conduct…The DHS is rewarding criminal conduct…More troubling, the DHS is encouraging parents to seriously jeopardize the safety of their children.”

“In the last year, this Court has seen instances where aliens being smuggled were assaulted, raped, kidnapped and or killed. Time and again this Court has been told by representatives of the Government and the defense that cartels control the entire smuggling process. These entities are not known for their concern for human life....The Government is not only allowing them to fund the illegal and evil activities of these cartels, but is also inspiring them to do so,” the order states.

The Washington Times reports that border crossings by “unaccompanied alien children” are a growing problem. Between 2010 and 2012, apprehensions of these children increased 81 percent. That suggests that more illegal-alien parents are risking the lives of their children to bring them into the U.S., perhaps to qualify for the Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program or in anticipation of a congressional amnesty.

Since Homeland Security officials told Judge Hanen that the drug cartels control smuggling operations, he said the department’s actions are helping the criminal entitles they are trying to disrupt. “The big economic losers in this scenario are the citizens of the United States who, by virtue of this DHS policy, are helping fund these evil ventures with their tax dollars,” the judge wrote.

Judge Hanen’s order also addressed the plight of Border Patrol Agents under the Administration's prosecutorial discretion policy. “These men and women, with no small risk to their own safety, do their best to enforce our laws and protect the citizens of the United States,” Judge Hanen wrote.” It seems shameful that some policymaker in their agency institutes a course of inaction that negated their efforts. It has to be frustrating to those that are actually doing the work of protecting Americans when those efforts are thwarted by a policy that supports lawbreakers …To put this in another context, the DHS policy is as logical as taking illegal drugs or weapons that it has seized from smugglers and delivering them to the criminals who initially solicited their illegal importation/exportation. Legally, this situation is no different.”

 SOURCE

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Some thoughts in this Holy season

By Rich Kozlovich

Here is the correct response to questions about evolution and creation:

“I wish to state categorically that I believe in the Theory of Evolution because that theory presents clear and incontrovertible scientific evidence there must be an Intelligent Designer!” Wow! I’m willing to bet that’s a shocker for many – on either side of the aisle - so let’s explore this?

For years I’ve been saying; “everything is the basics”. What does that mean? It means that in order to understand anything we must explore the foundational thinking of what it is we’re trying to understand. If the foundation is flawed, then the entire structure of thinking that it’s built on is a false premise, and will collapse under scrutiny from its own weight; that is if we wish to really see the truth. And that is the crux of the matter isn’t it?

Believing takes on many forms. For some it has to do with a higher power. For others it can take on the worship of oneself, for others it can take on the worship of some philosophy or other; but humanity has the desire to look to some higher explanation for existence, and human existence in particular. But one thing seems clear; ‘believing’ is inherent to our genetic code. Otherwise how can anyone explain why so many have believed so much over so long a time of human history, and in so many different cultures? Of course, the problem for the unbelievers among my readers with this explanation is that they would then have to explain how that genetic code was designed in that manner - or designed at all for that matter - if there is no higher power.

I do find it fascinating how some can believe that Intelligent Design is “a pig that won’t fly”! The design is so complicated that it defies explanation as to how infinitely small mutations over millions of years could bring us (and all else in the universe) to what now exists. Whether one disagrees or agrees with evolution, I question how anyone can say that there is no designer. Some feel that an intelligent designer used evolution. Some feel evolution is a mistake constantly making more mistakes and changing everything all the time all by accident. I wonder how anyone can explain how this can happen by accident and develop successful organisms since "geneticists estimate that 99 out of 100 mutations are harmful, and about 20 out of the 99 are lethal."

Then there are those who state there is so much “statistical data that they were at last able to confirm what they had suspected all along: Mutations were not 99 percent harmful to the DNA and the organism; they were 100 percent harmful! It was discovered that in EVERY instance, mutations caused some kind of damage—always! Out of it all, the researchers learned that DNA coding in the genes simply will not tolerate much change. More than just the slightest amount will ruin the code and the organism will be greatly weakened.”

According the Theory of Evolution life started when electricity, in some form such as lightening, charged some molecules existing in a chemical rich ocean soup and thus became cellular life. There is absolutely no evidence that this ever occurred, and there is no evidence that it can occur since no one has been able to duplicate this mythical event in a lab - ever. They have been able to get molecules to group together, but it isn’t life, especially since no one has ever been able to generate more than four of the twenty amino acids needed for life. These “cells” are all lacking in all the things that make life possible,including a DNA molecule which can’t form without a preexisting protein. Protein molecules are amazingly complex, and are absolutely necessary for life.

Furthermore, in order for a cell to function it takes 2000 protein enzymes. If life started in the ocean in some chemical rich soup, through some accidental electrical discharge; how did that cell, or group of cells, survive long enough to replicate themselves?

Evolutionally thought would require millions of years of mutations before the next step to propagation would come into being. If that’s so - how did they replicate? If we are to believe what proponents of evolutionary theory claim, then we have to recognize that these mythical cells would have died within seconds, minutes or days; but they would have ceased to exist long before they could have reproduced.

Much more HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

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