LQQKING's Newsroom

Louisiana Politicians Flee in Terror



Politicians in Louisiana are suddenly discovering a sudden, hitherto unnoticed, urge to retire from public life and become private citizens once again. This eureka moment for about 140 (and growing by the hour!) politicians just “happens” to coincide with the approach of the date when Louisiana’s new ethics laws will come into effect. Perhaps the politicians are nervous—and for good cause.

A 1996-2007 study of all states with a population greater-than 2 million found Louisiana to be the most corrupt state, based on public official convictions. The average between the 35 states surveyed was just under 3 convictions per 100,000 population. Louisiana had 7.67.

Indeed, even before the debacle of Hurricane Katrina, the state had a reputation for high-profile corruption. Which may help explain why, in a recent poll, 75 percent of Louisiana residents responded “no” to the question, “In your opinion, does the state government spend tax dollars wisely?” Even the most unobservant Louisianian likely doesn’t equate padding a politician’s pockets with spending tax dollars wisely.

Enter Bobby Jindal. Riding into office on a wave of popular support, Governor Jindal pushed through the legislature a massive ethics reform measure. It would require greater accountability and transparency on the part of government officials, by forcing them to disclose their personal financial information. Any politician affected by the measure (and that’s most) who chooses to remain on the job after July 1st will have to comply with the new full disclosure regulations.

And so the panic-stricken politicians are dropping like flies.

Already, the Emergency Response Network Board, Garden District Security District, Louisiana States Art Council, Louisiana Geographic Information Systems Council, Louisiana Education Television Authority, Louisiana Board of Ethics, Millennium Port Authority, and the New Orleans City Park Improvement Board have all seen multiple members resign. In some cases, such as the ethics board, nearly all have left. A member of the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors—and former union leader—resigned. Even the Culture, Recreation, and Tourism Secretary has left office (perhaps to avoid the risk the cultural and recreational pitfalls of a lengthy tour of the state prison).

Granted, it’s possible that some of these politicians simply consider their financial information personal, and do not wish to disclose it. That might be plausible, if there were only a handful of resignations. But not when the numbers hit the triple-digits. Maybe, just maybe, the resignations are indicative of the depth of corruption in the state. Too bad Gov. Jindal wasn’t in charge of evacuating New Orleans.

ALG Perspective: Whatever Louisiana just passed, Congress needs to do the same thing on the federal level. Then, the next session of Congress can be held in a bread box.

ALG News praises Governor Jindal and the LA Legislature for passing these much-needed ethics reforms. While perhaps not perfect, they go a long way towards ensuring real accountability of the taxpayer money that so many crooks have squandered, and transparency in the dealings of these politicians. .

The timing of the resignations is proof that the reforms are working: The anti-corruption measure is sending the money-grabbing politicians scurrying for cover, lest their dastardly deeds be exposed for all to see. And that’s good news for the people of Louisiana.

Like I've always maintained The Politicians will respond to your wishes only when they are scared into it   --LQQKING--

PS As I am originally from New Orleans It is funny to watch this

High-Stakes Courts

SOURCE:The Conservative Voice

By Thomas Sowell

Recent landmark court decisions are reminders that elections are not just about putting candidates in office for a few years.

The judges that elected officials put on the bench can remake the legal landscape, change fundamental social policies and even affect the way wars are fought, long after those who appointed them have served their terms and passed from the scene.

The Supreme Court recently created a new "right" out of thin air for captured enemy soldiers and terrorists-- the right to seek release in the federal courts, something that neither the Constitution nor the Geneva Convention provided.

The High Court has also struck down gun control laws as violations of the Second Amendment. Whatever the legal merits or the policy merits of that decision, it is a major change, created by judges.

The point here is that federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, wield enormous-- and growing-- power. What that means is that when we vote for the candidates who will nominate and confirm judges, we are making decisions not only for ourselves but for generations yet unborn.

Recent momentous decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court have been decided by 5 to 4 votes, including the votes of justices appointed by presidents who are no longer living-- Justice John Paul Stevens, appointed by President Ford, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, appointed by President Reagan.

Whoever is elected to the White House this November is expected to appoint two or three new members of the Supreme Court-- justices who will be making major decisions affecting the future of American society, long after that president is gone.

Your children will be living during the lifetime tenure of those justices, and your grandchildren will be living in a world shaped by the precedents that those justices set.

In a year when dissatisfaction has been expressed by both Democrats and Republicans with the presidential candidates chosen by their own parties, it is worth keeping in mind the high stakes involved in judicial appointments-- and therefore in presidential elections.

This is especially important to be kept in mind by voters who are thinking of venting their frustrations by voting for some third-party candidate that they know has no chance of being elected.

There will be a president chosen this November, and he will appoint Supreme Court justices during his term, regardless of whether you stay home or go to the polls.

His choices for the High Court will have a major impact on history, whether you vote after a sober consideration of many facts or vote on the basis of the candidate's rhetoric, style or demographics.

Even more important than the particular issues that courts will decide is the more fundamental issue of what a judge's role is in our system of Constitutional government.

In the gun control decision, for example, there were justices who read the history and meaning of the Second Amendment differently. What was most dangerous, however, was Justice Stephen Breyer's opinion that it was up to judges to weigh and "balance" the pros and cons of gun control laws.

If we have Constitutional rights only when judges like the end results, we may as well not have a Constitution.

Is the right to free speech to be put aside, and a journalist put behind bars, whenever a judge thinks that journalist went "too far" in expressing an opinion about some politician or bureaucrat?

Is someone to be tried over again for the same crime, even after having been acquitted, if judges regard the Constitutional ban on double jeopardy as just a suggestion to be weighed and "balanced?"

We have already seen what happens when a 5 to 4 majority decides that politicians can seize your home and give it to somebody else, if judges don't think your property rights "balance" whatever politicians choose to call "the public interest."

When deciding which candidate you want in the White House for the next 4 years, it is worth considering what kind of judges you want on the federal courts for the next generation.

Vets for Freedom Support Allen West

Source Vets for Freedom

Vets for Freedom is proud to announce its support of Allen West for United States Congress in the 22nd District of Florida. With a 20 year career as an officer in the Army, LTC West proudly served with distinction in Operation Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom, earning a Bronze Star, three Meritorious Service Medals, three Army Commendation Medals (one with Valor), and a Valorous Unit Award. Vets for Freedom applauds Allen’s commitment to continue his public service as a member of the United States House of Representatives........................................
MORE

You may not recall LtCol West but I'd bet you remember his story. LtCol West was the Officer that discharged his pistol alongside the head of an enemy terrorist. Causing fear,  but NO INJURY to the terrorist

 By doing so he obtained information that surely saved his men's (and your sons and daughters) lives .He also earned himself an article 32 hearing.......a prelude to a Courts Martial for the act.

Please read the full story here at nationalreview.com

We blog here every day with little hope of actually changing anything. Please spread the word on LtCol West and if you know anyone down in the Boca Raton - Oakland Park - Cooper City area of Florida an extra good word never hurts.

We are always whining that their are no good politicians in Washington it  appears our southern neighbors have a chance to make a correction to that.

--LQQKING-- 

LIARS' ROUND-UP

Source The New York Post

ON SECURITY, FACTS MATTER

By Ralph Peters

THE facts about your security are being torn to shreds by activist liars. And they think that you're too stupid to know the difference.

Let's lay out the worst current examples of media make-believe and election-year truth-trashing:

Whopper No. 1: America is less safe today than it was on Sept. 10, 2001. Oh, really? Where's the evidence? The Clinton years saw New York City attacked and Americans slaughtered by terrorists around the globe. Nothing was done to protect us.

And the true end of the Clinton era came on 9/11.

A record to be proud of.

Countless aspects of the Bush-Cheney administration deserve merciless criticism. But fair is fair: Since 9/11, we haven't suffered a single successful terrorist attack on our homeland. Not one.

Explain to me, please, how this shows we're less safe. What factual measurement applies, other than the absence of attacks?

God knows, the terrorists desperately wanted to strike our homeland. And they couldn't. Are we supposed to believe that was an accident?

Whopper No. 2: Al Qaeda is stronger than ever. Al Qaeda just suffered a strategic defeat in Iraq that may prove decisive. It can't launch attacks beyond its regional lairs. The cowardly Osama bin Laden can't show his face (remember his Clinton-era pep rallies?).

Yes, terrorists can still murder innocents on their home court. I personally prefer that to them killing Americans in Manhattan and Washington. Even in Iraq, al Qaeda's been beaten down to violent-fugitive status.

By what objective measurement is al Qaeda stronger today than it was when it had an entire country for its base and its tentacles reached all the way to Florida and the Midwest?

Whopper No. 3: Success in Iraq is an illusion - the surge failed. Folks, this is something only a New York Times columnist could believe.

Every single significant indicator, from Iraqi government progress through the performance of Iraqi security forces to the plummeting level of violence, has changed for the better - remarkably so.

If current trend-lines continue, it may not be long before Baghdad is safer for Iraqi citizens than the Washington-Baltimore metroplex is for US citizens. Iraq's government is working, its economy is booming - and its military has driven the concentrations of terrorists and militia from every one of Iraq's major cities.

And our troops are coming home. Where's the failure?

Whopper No. 4: Iran is stronger than ever. Tell that to the Iraqis, who've rejected Iranian meddling in their affairs, who've smashed the Iran-backed Shia militias and who didn't take long to figure out that Tehran's foreign policy was imperialist and anti-Arab.

The people of Iraq don't intend to trade Saddam for Ahmadinejad. Iran has lost in Iraq. At this point, all the Iranians can do is to kill a handful of innocent Iraqis now and then. Think that wins them friends and influence?

Whopper No. 5: The US-European relationship is a disaster. In fact, Washington and the major European capitals have built new, sturdier bridges to replace old ones that badly needed burning.

The Europeans grudgingly figured out that they need us - as we need them. The big break in 2003 cleared a lot of bad air (there was no break with Europe's young democracies). Relations today are sounder than they were in the fiddle-while-Rome-burns Clinton era.

Oh, and NATO has become a serious military alliance - fighting in Afghanistan, patrolling the high seas and conducting special operations against terrorists. The Germans announced this week that they're sending another thousand troops to Afghanistan. France is re-engaging with NATO's military side. Where's the disaster, mon ami?

Whopper No. 6: As president, Barack Obama would bring positive change to our foreign policy - and John McCain's too old to get it.

Hmm: Take a gander at Obama's senior foreign-policy advisers: Madeleine Albright (71), Warren Christopher (82), Anthony Lake (69), Lee Hamilton (77), Richard Clarke (57) . . .

If you added up their ages and fed the number into a time-machine, you'd land in Europe in the middle of the Black Death.

More important: These are the people whose watch saw the first attack on the World Trade Center, Mogadishu, Rwanda, the Srebrenica massacre, a pass for the Russians on Chechnya, the Khobar Towers bombing, the attacks on our embassies in Africa, the near-sinking of the USS Cole - oh, and the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

Their legacy climaxed on 9/11.

You couldn't assemble a team in Washington with more strategic failures to its credit.

Whopper No. 7: Our troops are all coming home as psychos victimized by their participation in military atrocities.

Tell it to the Marines.

Play Video

Rep. Kevin Brady, R-TX, challenged Democrats to name an acre of land where vast reserves of oil are underground and an oil company refuses to explore it. Democrats were unable to produce information for Brady's request.

Yes we can elect Barack Obama president, but... if we do

Source Renew America.com

BY Edward Daley

• No we can't mention his middle name.
• No we can't win the war in Iraq.
• No we can't expand oil exploration, drilling or refining.
• No we can't build nuclear power plants.
• No we can't convert coal to oil.
• No we can't extract oil from shale.
• No we can't punish companies for knowingly hiring illegal aliens and conspiring with them to commit tax fraud and identity theft on an unprecedented scale.
• No we can't build a security fence on our southern border.
• No we can't deport people who've entered our country illegally.
• No we can't allow a small percentage of social security funds to be held in individual retirement accounts.
• No we can't reduce government spending, waste and corruption.
• No we can't adopt a less complicated tax system that would help to expand the economy.
• No we can't allow medical professionals and their patients to control the healthcare system.
• No we can't create a voucher program that would allow millions of poor children to attend schools that are capable of teaching them how to read and write.
• No we can't allow parents to be involved in the reproductive decisions of their minor children.
• No we can't fund technologically advanced weapons systems for our military.
• No we can't thin out our nation's forests in order to prevent massive wildfires from erupting on a regular basis.
• No we can't tolerate free speech on talk radio.
• No we can't cut off government funding to "artists" who use our money to insult our religious beliefs.
• No we can't allow the general public to determine the definition of marriage.
• No we can't prevent the government from seizing private property for the purpose of selling it to large corporations which generate greater tax revenues than individuals.
• No we can't scrutinize the scientific evidence behind the man-made global warming hypothesis.
• No we can't tolerate religious leaders who denounce homosexuality.
• No we can't smoke cigarettes on private property.
• No we can't outlaw the murder of unborn children.
• No we can't allow Christian symbols to be displayed in public squares at Christmas time.
• No we can't employ terrorist profiling techniques at airports.
• No we can't fire Marxist teachers from institutions of higher learning who spew anti-American rhetoric in class and seek to erode the moral foundation of their students.
• No we can't carry handguns for personal protection.
• No we can't order foods that contain trans fats at our favorite restaurants.
• No we can't stop Iran from building nuclear weapons.
• No we can't question the patriotism of neo-communist radicals and terrorist sympathizers.

Yes we can vote into the highest public office in the land a completely unqualified liberal activist just because he happens to be half black, but no we can't live as our forebears intended, with limited government interference in our lives, an expectation of equality under the law, and genuine pride in our country.

BUSH'S RESIGNATION SPEECH

Original Author Unknown

Source:Free Republic.com

The following 'speech' was written recently by an ordinary Maineiac [a resident of the People's Republic of Maine ]. While satirical in nature, all satire must have a basis in fact to be effective. This is an excellent piece by a person who does not write for a living.

The speech George W. Bush might give:

Normally, I start these things out by saying 'My Fellow Americans.' Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer.

I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: There's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.

The reason I'm quitting is simple. I'm fed up with you people. I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.

Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media. Polls show that the majority of you think the economy is in the tank. And that's despite record numbers of homeowners, including record numbers of MINORITY homeowners. And while we're mentioning minorities, I'll point out that minority business ownership is at an all-time high. Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton administration. I've mentioned all those things before, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in.

Despite the shock to our economy of 9/11, the stock market has rebounded to record levels and more Americans than ever are participating in these markets. Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security.

We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this 'blood for oil' thing. If I were trading blood for oil I would've already seized Iraq 's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don't give me this 'Bush Lied; People Died' crap either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty.

Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named ' Clinton ' established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you? Now some of you morons are considering another and more evil Clinton for president !!!! Go figure that one!! She wants to take your kids away and let the ' Whole Village ' raise them! i.e. governmental indoctrination .. Look this one up you dumb asses!

The rest of you morons want to be led by a junior senator with no understanding of foreign policy or economics, and this nitwit says we should attack Pakistan , a nucular ally. And then he wants to go to Iran and make peace with a terrorist who says he's going to destroy us. While he's doing that, he wants to give Iraq to al Qaeda, Afghanistan to the Taliban, Israel to the Palestinians, and your money to the IRS so the government can give welfare to illegal aliens, who he will make into citizens, so they can vote to reelect him. He also thinks it's okay for Iran to have nucular weapons, and we should stop our foreign aid to Israel. Did you sleep through high school?

You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to out spend and out-tech them.

That's not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you, and the bastards are all over the globe.

You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11. But you're not. That's because you've got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement, and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor.'

Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.

Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well FedEx a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.

In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times, USA Today, or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch American Idol or Dancing with Stars.

I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching.

I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.

So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient for years. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.

Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.

So that's it. God bless what's left of America .

Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you, kiss off.

PS - You might want to start learning Farsi, and buy a Koran.

How Congress Can Keep Us Safe from Court

by Rep. John Shadegg

 Source Human Events.com

The Taliban is celebrating in the mountains of Afghanistan. Not because of a military victory or successful terrorist attack in the name of Jihad, but because of a decision by the United States Supreme Court. Last week, the court decided that habeas corpus, which is the right to question one’s detainment, applies to enemy combatants captured overseas in the War on Terror and held at Guantanamo Bay. And, furthermore, that appointed civilian, not military, federal judges are best suited to determine their habeas corpus petitions. Our enemies know that the Boumediene v. Bush ruling has made our nation less secure, why doesn’t the Supreme Court?

The right of habeas corpus was not granted to the soldiers of the Axis Powers captured in World War II or even to Confederate soldiers captured in the Civil War. Are the detainees at Guantanamo Bay more deserving of rights because they seek to kill and terrorize American armed forces and civilians alike? Or is it because they do not wear a uniform? The Supreme Court of the United States has endangered innocent American lives so Guantanamo Bay detainees can experience the rights and freedoms of the society they seek to destroy.

American soldiers and Marines risk their lives daily to find and capture the most dangerous, ruthless terrorists. By allowing civilian judges inexperienced in terrorism and national security to have the final say on whether a detainee should be released, the Supreme Court has rewarded the valiant efforts of our servicemen and women by ensuring that they will face these terrorists again on the field of battle, or worse, on our nation’s streets.  

The Founding Fathers did not intend for enemy combatants, captured abroad, and held outside U.S. borders to possess the same rights as Americans. Any assertion to the contrary is ludicrous. Decision-making powers during a time of war rest with the executive and legislative branches. And, suspension of habeas corpus is one of these powers. As Justice Scalia wrote in his dissenting opinion, “What competence does the court have to second-guess the judgment of Congress and the President on such a point? None whatever.”

Although the founders did put into place a system of checks and balances to prevent abuse of power by any one branch, the Supreme Court must wait until legislation is at least given a test run—this did not happen here. The court acted prematurely. In 2006, Congress put a process into place to hear the appeals of suspected terrorists detained in Guantanamo Bay. The Supreme Court did not believe this procedure was worthy of the opportunity to prove effective or ineffective. In last week’s overreaching decision, the court baselessly concluded that the current system was not sufficient.

The Boumediene v. Bush decision is wrong. Unfortunately however, it will not be overturned in the near future. I have therefore introduced legislation, the Boumediene Jurisdiction Correction Act, which would grant military courts, with expertise in terrorism, detainees, and national security, exclusive, original jurisdiction to determine the habeas corpus petitions of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

 In the court’s majority opinion, the current system was deemed inadequate as a substitute for habeas corpus. The Boumediene Jurisdiction Correction Act satisfies this requirement as it grants the detainees the same rights given under a civil habeas corpus petition. In addition, the appellate process of military courts will give the Supreme Court final review of detainees’ habeas corpus petitions while ensuring that military personnel, rather than a civil court with appointed judges, will be the adjudicators.

This way, the American military can continue to keep us safe from foreign terrorists and Congress can keep us safe from the Supreme Court.   

Mr. Shadegg is a Republican congressman from Arizona.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED READ

Thanks Mater GREAT POST

No Profits,No Oil

Source: FoxNews.com

By John R Lott Jr.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

By John R. Lott, Jr.By John R. Lott, Jr.If a product is in short supply and if you really wanted more to be produced quickly, would you want companies to think that they could earn a lot of money making it?

You would think that the answer is pretty obvious: No profits, no oil. To encourage more production, companies need to think that there are more profits to be made. With all the anger over high oil prices, more production to lower prices would seem to be a high priority.

But outside of most congressional Republicans, particularly those in the Senate who successfully filibustered a new wind-fall profits tax on oil companies, no one wants to admit what profits do.

Unfortunately, both the Democrat and Republican presidential candidates are both attacking oil company profits. Barack Obama promises, "We've got to go after the oil companies and look at their price-gouging. We've got to go after windfall profits." John McCain says, "I am very angry, frankly, at the oil companies. Not only because of the obscene profits they've made, but their failure to invest in alternative energy to help us eliminate our dependence on foreign oil."

Not to be outdone, congressional Democrats are just as upset. New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer claimed: "Oil companies are racking up obscene profits left and right while American families are stretched to the limit by skyrocketing gas prices. It's time for Big Oil to pay its fair share . . . ."

The defense of oil companies has been much to, well, defensive. Some pundits and those in the industry point out that energy companies aren't really making that much money. While the energy companies during the first quarter of this year had an average profit margin of 7,4 percent, the average Dow Jones Industrial Average company earned 8.5 percent. For example, ExxonMobil, which Obama has singled out for particular criticism, made an “obscene” $40 billion in profit, but that is on $404 billion in sales.

Much of the discussion concerning record high profits is misleading as it focuses on the dollar amount of the profits not the profit rate. As sales have also gone up over time, of course total profits have gone up, too. Nor are looking at just a couple of years particularly useful.

Others point out federal, state, and local governments have made more from gasoline taxes than the large U.S. oil companies have earned in total U.S. profits.

But all this assumes that companies should prove that their profits aren’t “too large.” That high profits aren’t good. Do customers want more gas? Higher profits increase production, driving down both prices and profits.

Ironically, at the same time politicians are complaining about corporate greed, they understand the importance of incentives. If Obama didn’t think that companies responded to incentives, why else would he propose that $150 billion be spent by the government on developing alternative energy?

McCain’s anger about the failure of oil companies “to invest in alternative energy” neglects to ask why companies aren’t investing enough in this on their own. Why do we need massive subsidies, as proposed by both Obama and McCain? The answer is simple: those alternative energy sources cost more than the benefits that they produce. If they were profitable, no subsidy would be necessary.

Would you take money from investments that are currently making a 9.7 percent return and putting them into projects that generate a negative return? Presumably not, and neither would Obama nor McCain if his own money was at stake. It would make you poorer, it would make him poorer.

Besides the politicians who are bashing the oil companies and pushing for wind-fall profit taxes understand that more oil would mean lower prices. Senator Schumer insists that "If Saudi Arabia were to increase its production by 1 million barrels per day that translates to a reduction of 20 percent to 25 percent in the world price of crude oil . . . “ Schumer is so angry that he is blocking selling military supplies to Saudi Arabia until they increase production.

Unfortunately, all this oil company bashing means that prices will rise even if wind-fall taxes are never imposed. Just the threat of the taxes will dissuade some oil companies from drilling today.

Despite all the concerns about reducing our dependence on foreign oil producers, the last things many politicians seem to want is more oil production by American oil companies. While forcing firms to apologize for their profits is bad enough, the Democrats push for a wind-fall profits tax seems to prove that they have no desire for more oil production and no desire to do what they can to lower prices.

John Lott is the author of Freedomnomics and a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland.

The Coming Amnesty Disaster

Source The Conservative Voice

By Michelle Malkin

Last month, President Bush signed off on a few dog-and-pony illegal immigrant employment raids. Whoop-de-doo. Politically expedient holiday gestures over, the White House is now back to work pushing its long-planned, massive alien amnesty. The state of the borders, green card process and entrance system for visitors and tourists? Porous. Chaotic. Understaffed. And overwhelmed.

But no matter. Mouthing his same old, bogus platitudes about the need to allow "undocumented workers" to do the job Americans won't do (never mind all those Americans who immediately lined up to apply for those meatpacking jobs after the December raids), Bush wants to pile millions of new "guest worker" illegal alien applicants onto the teetering homeland security bureaucracy.

The results will be disastrous. What President Bush didn't mention in the State of the Union address is that every part of the current legal immigrant applicant machinery that would be tasked with implementing the "guest worker" illegal alien amnesty is backlogged and broken.

Last November, congressional investigators reported that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had lost track of 111,000 files in 14 of the agency's busiest district offices and processed as many as 30,000 citizenship applications last year without the required files. Poof! I have heard first-hand from adjudicators in Texas and southern California who have piles of files in backrooms that have yet to be read. The application backlog remains in the millions. Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, called for a Government Accountability Office review that uncovered at least one case in which an applicant with ties to the terrorist group Hezbollah was granted citizenship without a check of his primary file.

"It only takes one missing file of somebody with links to a terrorist organization to become an American citizen," Grassley, who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, noted in The Washington Post. "We can't afford to be handing out citizenship with blinders on."

Or legal status. Multiply that by several million in the case of Bush's guest worker program. Can you spell d-i-s-a-s-t-e-r?

The FBI's background check backlog for legal immigrant applicants stands at a reported 100,000 files, which have been waiting for action for a year or longer. At least they didn't shred them all (uh, as far as we know) -- which is what federal contractors did at the immigration center in Laguna Niguel, Calif., over the last several years. To rid itself of a 90,000-document backlog, supervisors ordered workers to destroy passports, birth certificates, approval notices, change of address forms, diplomas and money orders. Then they reported that they had reduced the backlog to zero. Poof!

Michael Cutler, a veteran of the immigration bureaucracy who worked as a senior special agent at the former INS, says working at the agency is like the comedy scene out of "I Love Lucy" where Ethel and Lucy -- overwhelmed at a candy factory by an out-of-control conveyor belt -- try eating the candy bars and stuffing them down their dresses to stay on top of the flood:

"The situation is reminiscent of what happens to beleaguered adjudicators at the USCIS every day, and it is not the least bit funny. The adjudicators cannot eat the applications, nor can they stuff them down their clothes. In order to get good evaluations, they need to move these applications as quickly as possible. The easiest way to do this is to approve them. Needless to say, this means that fraud-laden applications are often not detected and aliens receive a wide variety of benefits, including United States citizenship to which they would not be entitled if the relevant facts were known. As more aliens get away with committing fraud, the 'word' spreads through the communities and more aliens are emboldened to commit fraud, further eroding any integrity that might have still remained in the process. To make things worse, when an application is denied, the alien is virtually assured that no special agent will be looking for him to seek his removal from the United States."

We are incapable of imposing order and handling the current crush of legal immigrant applicants in a fair and timely way. You want "comprehensive immigration reform"? Start with border control, reliable adjudications, consistent interior enforcement, and efficient and effective deportation policies. And don't pretend that piling on is going to fix a darned thing.

Michelle Malkin is author of "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone                                      Her e-mail  address is writemalkin@gmail.com .
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Thank You Big Oil

SOURCE: The American Thinker

BY  Todd Keister

So, you hate "big oil" and the soaring gasoline prices they are forcing on you?  You've bought into the Democrats and Republicrats rhetoric about greed and "unjustified" profits, and you can't wait for someone to be elected president and get even with those evil corporate robber barons that are profiting at your expense.

Well before you get all excited about tearing down the energy industry, stop and think for a moment about what makes your comfortable life possible.  Your heat and most of your electricity are provided through the burning of oil and natural gas.  The thousands of plastic items in your home, car and office are all made from crude oil.  Much of your clothing is woven of fibers made from petroleum.

Without the hard work and ingenuity of the men and women who work for the energy companies, we would be living in the 17th century - no electricity, running water, cars, trucks, airplanes, ships, factories, waterproof clothing, soda bottles, safety glass, sterile food and medical containers, air conditioners, televisions, microwave ovens, X-Boxes, I-Pods, or any of the millions of other products made using power generated from the burning of fossil fuels.

You would have to grow your own food, or ride your donkey to a nearby market, where there would be no refrigerators or electric lights.  You'd have to kill and clean your own meat and cook it over an open fire.  You'd have to chop down the trees for your home, and provide your own light by making candles from the fat of animals.  Every single thing in your modern life is utterly and completely dependent upon a steady supply of oil.  Without it, the entire Western world would collapse completely in a matter of weeks; tens of millions would perish from starvation, exposure, and disease.

Exxon-Mobil, the world's largest energy company, provides jobs directly to nearly 84,000 people and indirectly to tens of thousands of others in industries from merchant shipping to retail shops.  Their record profits in 2006 returned more than $111 Billion in equity to their millions of stockholders, which likely include yourself if you receive pension benefits or have a 401k, IRA, or other investment account.  Do you still want them to make less money?  They and the other oil companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars of their evil profits exploring for new supplies of oil and gas to keep us alive and comfortable; scouting and drilling under difficult and often dangerous conditions on six continents.

Perhaps you agree with Hillary Clinton, who said that there is "...no basis for the huge profits..." of the oil companies because they are "...not inventing anything."  While you're nodding your head in agreement, sitting in your comfortable house, warmed, cooled, clothed, entertained, and fed by the burning and remanufacturing of petroleum, take a moment to think what it takes to invent a method to extract crude oil from five thousand feet below the floor of the North Sea, which itself is more than two miles under stormy, frigid water, bring it to the US, turn it into gasoline, and deliver it to your corner convenience store.  How much does it cost?  How can it even be done?

Oil prices are determined the same way stock prices are; by supply and demand, and the information available about future market conditions.  Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum, Chevron, and the rest only produce and sometimes refine the oil, the price is set on the open commodities market where traders, ranging from individual investors to brokerage firms, buy and sell contracts on barrels of oil at particular prices.  When the supply decreases or demand increases, the prices rise and the oil companies consequently make more money.  They do not control the supply or the demand - they simply produce the product.

All three presidential candidates have endorsed confiscation of the income of the energy companies to one degree or another.  Having your government steal the profits of the oil companies is not going to make the price of gasoline fall.  What do you think Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain are going to do with their plunder?  Give it back to you to offset your gasoline costs?  Reduce your taxes by the amount they steal from the energy companies?  Use it to find new sources of oil?  Of course not.  The money will go to the general fund that congress will squander as they always have and always will. 

 In the meantime, the government will continue to rake in billions of dollars in taxes from you for every gallon of gas you buy.  If the federal and state governments would stop taking their unfair profits from oil, the price of gasoline would drop forty cents per gallon today.  Ms. Clinton has said that the profits of the oil companies should have a "baseline" over which the government would take the rest.  Before you endorse the idea of government confiscation of what John McCain calls "obscene profits", remember that if they can set a ceiling on how much money a corporation is allowed to make, then they can one day set a limit on how much you are permitted to make.

Blame for the high cost of gasoline and diesel lies squarely with the United States Congress and the legislatures of the several states.  Congress has denied the energy companies access to the hundreds of billions of barrels of oil available right here in America - off the coast of California, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and elsewhere.  Their environmental regulations have prevented the construction of even a single new refinery in this nation for three decades, and have made the construction of nuclear power plants virtually impossible.  Thus they have vastly reduced oil supplies, choked off the supply of refined gasoline, and prevented nuclear power from alleviating the demand for fuel oil.

State government regulations require refineries to produce more than a dozen different types of gasoline for various regions of the country - raising costs and meaning that a shortage in one area cannot be compensated for by shipping gas from another state.  The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 require refineries to produce "Reformulated Gasoline" that contains either Ethanol or the highly carcinogenic MTBE.  These regulations forced the refining industry to spend more than $44 billion between 1989 and 1998 to comply with congress.  Thousands of other crushing regulations on the production, refining, transportation, and storage of oil and gas impose tremendous burdens and increase the cost of fuel.

These same politicians who have deliberately caused the high fuel prices now look you straight in the eye and say that they feel your pain and are going to help.  They believe you're stupid enough to not realize that they have caused the high oil prices, or will be placated by the looting of the oil companies' profits.  They intend to distract you by blaming the oil companies and pointing to the high salaries of their CEOs, while they continue to pick your pocket with fuel taxes and do nothing to solve the problem.

Ms. Clinton says, "We need a president who's a fighter, who will take on the oil companies."  What we need is a president who will take on the US Congress and get them to stop strangling both the American public and energy companies with taxes and regulations; a president who will call congressional leaders of both parties on the carpet, publicly expose their hypocrisy, and demand that they take immediate action to repeal the smothering burdens they have shackled all of us with and which have caused skyrocketing oil prices. Unfortunately, no such candidate exists.

So the next time you feel like blaming the oil companies for the price of gas, why don't you call your congressman instead; or go out and try to produce some oil yourself - if you can't, I suggest that you get down on your knees and thank God for the brilliant minds of oil company engineers, geologists, chemists, and executives who - in spite of the US Congress - have the creativity and courage to provide the energy that keeps all of us alive and enjoying our modern way of life.

Of Fathers and Flags

By Oliver North

SOURCE : The Conservative Voice

WASHINGTON -- Just about everyone in America knows that Sunday, June 15, is Father's Day. The day for dads has been celebrated on the third Sunday of June since 1966, when President Lyndon Johnson decreed it to be so. Those who make and sell power tools and greeting cards have been grateful ever since. Somehow, it just isn't the same for June 14, which is Flag Day and, by no coincidence, the U.S. Army's anniversary.

Father's Day traditionally is memorialized with gifts, cards and calls for dear old dad. Flag Day is all but forgotten. But this year, with the holidays as close as they ever get, there is good reason to celebrate both. As you read this column, tens of thousands of American dads are wearing our country's flag on their shoulders, helmets or flak jackets while serving far from home under some of the most difficult and dangerous conditions imaginable.

Scores of books have been written about the diminished respect accorded to American fathers in our culture. Dads are derided and denigrated in everything from cartoons to commercials. For decades, our entertainment industry and mainstream media have been depicting dads as everything from bumbling buffoons to pathological predators. The dads of "Little House on the Prairie" and "Bonanza" all have passed from the scene. And just like those iconic, heroic dads of yesteryear, waving the flag has gone out of style.

Oh, sure, there was that brief flurry of flag-waving in the aftermath of 9/11. We still can find on the Internet images of soot-covered firemen hanging the Stars and Stripes at the shattered wreckage of the World Trade Center or on the fire-scorched west wall of the Pentagon. And some of us still can recall commuting to work beneath bridges and overpasses on which patriots had draped Old Glory in defiance toward those who brought terror to our shores. But like good fathers, that too has passed. We even have a candidate for president who is acclaimed for refusing to wear an American flag on his lapel.

It sometimes seems as though the only place where you can see our flag and a good strong dad together is on -- and in -- a uniform. Rest assured, neither will get the respect or admiration they deserve from Hollywood or the so-called mainstream media.

Despite today's depressing portrayals of paternity and patriotism, there is actually hope for the future, and it comes from those now serving in our armed forces. In the process of conducting hundreds of interviews for my book "American Heroes" -- both here in the United States and overseas -- it became clear that today's military dads have a lot going for them that their civilian counterparts simply don't. Though recent headlines have hyped spiraling divorce, child abuse, suicide and domestic violence rates in our armed forces, the actual statistics for all these "adverse factors" are considerably lower in our military than they are for a similar age group in the civilian population.

When I visit U.S. military bases with our Fox News' "War Stories" documentary unit, I frequently have the opportunity to ask schoolchildren, "What does your dad do?" Though their dads may have been gone for months and 10,000 miles from home, the responses are overwhelmingly affirmative: "My dad drives a tank," "My dad flies a plane," "My dad makes a ship go." At Camp Lejeune, N.C., two weeks ago, a 7-year-old told me, "My dad is a Marine platoon sergeant. He's fighting for our country in Afghanistan."

You don't have to be old enough to remember Art Linkletter's "Kids Say the Darndest Things" to know that unless dad is a fireman or a cop, most young people haven't the foggiest idea what dad does all day at work. While these anecdotes are hardly scientific evidence, they do tend to amplify real differences between military and civilian dads.

Today's military dads are all volunteers. They are brighter, better-educated and in far better physical condition than their civilian peers. Notwithstanding the extraordinary hardship of repeated long separations, the inevitable stress of combat, and the danger and uncertainty attached to their work, they generally express greater job satisfaction than their nonmilitary counterparts. Though wartime deployments shift most of the burden for child rearing onto their mothers, the children of military dads express greater certainty and admiration for what their fathers do than their nonmilitary peers.

Does any of this make a military dad better than a civilian father? Certainly not. But in an age when our media disparages fatherhood in general and defames those who wear uniforms in particular, this would be a good weekend to go ahead and wave the flag and thank God for fathers who are willing to serve.

Oliver North is the host of "War Stories" on Fox News Channel, the founder and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance, and the author of "American Heroes." To find out more about Oliver North and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

BUSH'S AMERICA: 100 PERCENT AL-QAIDA FREE SINCE 2001
June 11, 2008

SOURCE: Ann Coulter.com

In a conversation recently, I mentioned as an aside what a great president George Bush has been and my friend was surprised. I was surprised that he was surprised.

I generally don't write columns about the manifestly obvious, but, yes, the man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents.

Produce one person who believed, on Sept. 12, 2001, that there would not be another attack for seven years, and I'll consider downgrading Bush from "Great" to "Really Good."

Merely taking out Saddam Hussein and his winsome sons Uday and Qusay (Hussein family slogan: "We're the Rape Room People!") constitutes a greater humanitarian accomplishment than anything Bill Clinton ever did -- and I'm including remembering Monica's name on the sixth sexual encounter.

But unlike liberals, who are so anxious to send American troops to Rwanda or Darfur, Republicans oppose deploying U.S. troops for purely humanitarian purposes. We invaded Iraq to protect America.

It is unquestionable that Bush has made this country safe by keeping Islamic lunatics pinned down fighting our troops in Iraq. In the past few years, our brave troops have killed more than 20,000 al-Qaida and other Islamic militants in Iraq alone. That's 20,000 terrorists who will never board a plane headed for JFK -- or a landmark building, for that matter.

We are, in fact, fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them at, say, the corner of 72nd and Columbus in Manhattan -- the mere mention of which never fails to enrage liberals, which is why you should say it as often as possible.

The Iraq war has been a stunning success. The Iraqi army is "standing up" (as they say), fat Muqtada al-Sadr --the Dr. Phil of Islamofascist radicalism -- has waddled off in retreat to Iran, and Sadr City and Basra are no longer war zones. Our servicemen must be baffled by the constant nay-saying coming from their own country.

The Iraqis have a democracy -- a miracle on the order of flush toilets in that godforsaken region of the world. Despite its newness, Iraq's democracy appears to be no more dysfunctional than one that would condemn a man who has kept the nation safe for seven years while deifying a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about "change."

(Guess what Bill Clinton's campaign theme was in 1992? You are wrong if you guessed: "bringing dignity back to the White House." It was "change." In January 1992, James Carville told Steve Daley of The Chicago Tribune that it had gotten to the point that the press was complaining about Clinton's "constant talk of change.")

Monthly casualties in Iraq now come in slightly lower than a weekend with Anna Nicole Smith. According to a CNN report last week, for the entire month of May, there were only 19 troop deaths in Iraq. (Last year, five people on average were shot every day in Chicago.) With Iraqi deaths at an all-time low, Iraq is safer than Detroit -- although the Middle Eastern food is still better in Detroit.

Al-Qaida is virtually destroyed, surprising even the CIA. Two weeks ago, The Washington Post reported: "Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaida, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

It's almost as if there's been some sort of "surge" going on, as strange as that sounds.

Just this week, The New York Times reported that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in Southeast Asia have all but disappeared, starved of money and support. The U.S. and Australia have been working closely with the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, sending them counterterrorism equipment and personnel.

But no one notices when 9/11 doesn't happen. Indeed, if we had somehow stopped the 9/11 attack, we'd all be watching Mohammed Atta being interviewed on MSNBC, explaining his lawsuit against the Bush administration. Maureen Dowd would be writing columns describing Khalid Sheik Mohammed as a "wannabe" terrorist being treated like Genghis Khan by an excitable Bush administration.

We begin to forget what it was like to turn on the TV, see a tornado, a car chase or another Pamela Anderson marriage and think: Good -- another day without a terrorist attack.

But liberals have only blind hatred for Bush -- and for those brute American interrogators who do not supply extra helpings of béarnaise sauce to the little darlings at Guantanamo with sufficient alacrity.

The sheer repetition of lies about Bush is wearing people down. There is not a liberal in this country worthy of kissing Bush's rear end, but the weakest members of the herd run from Bush. Compared to the lickspittles denying and attacking him, Bush is a moral giant -- if that's not damning with faint praise. John McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance.

COPYRIGHT 2008 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
4520 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64111

Congress Get Off Your Gas and Drill

Source Townhall.com

by Chuck Norris

Last Thursday, oil prices increased $5.50 per barrel in one day. Last Friday marked the biggest single-day surge in oil price history, rocketing $11 more to $138 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In just two days, oil costs increased 13 percent.

Average Americans literally are driving to the poorhouse on financial fumes. With gas at $4 per gallon, roughly two cars in every household, and the average annual gas usage at 700 gallons, you do the math. Americans are being forced to use their hard-earned money that once put food in their stomachs to put petroleum in their tanks and to drive the exact same distances they drove a decade ago for four to five times the price.

As oil and gas prices skyrocket, Congress continues to play the blame game. In April 2006, with the Democrats poised to take over Congress with Nancy Pelosi at the helm, she released a statement saying, "With skyrocketing gas prices, it is clear that the American people can no longer afford the Republican Rubber Stamp Congress." She followed that with a commitment, "Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging." So, has the Democrats' common-sense plan worked? Average gas prices were about $2.50 a gallon at the time. Now they're $4 a gallon and rising. Some crackdown plan.

Look at the energy chaos that our government has allowed. While we remain at the mercy of oil companies, cartels and OPEC, our government has tied the hands of states and citizens to tap even temporary energy relief from our own land. Here are a few key vistas on the oil and energy landscape:

-- Though we have more oil in the shale of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming than there is in the Middle East (800 billion barrels), liberals and environmentalists have made it illegal to touch it.

-- It's illegal to drill in northern Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or off the coasts of Florida or California.

-- There's enough natural gas beneath America (406 trillion cubic feet) to heat every home in America for the next 150 years, but we can't tap it all.

-- We have the largest supply of coal in the world, but it's Germany who is planning to build 27 coal-fired power plants by 2020.

-- Etc.!

Bill Clinton once said, "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren." That is the type of mentality that got us in this trouble. We're saving the planet but killing our economy and nation.

Congress needs to take some practical steps now to stop the insanity at the pumps, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, open up some temporary energy production avenues for economic relief (such as shale development), and focus more on developing alternative energy (coal, natural gas, hydrogen, solar, nuclear, wind, etc.). There is simply no reason or justification for us to be dependent on foreign fuels that we can produce in our country.

If you're sick and tired of giving away $2 of every gallon of gas to foreign dictators -- making other oil-producing countries, cartels and tycoons rich beyond their imagination -- and watching the federal government flail for energy solutions and bow to international powers -- all of whom are sucking the very life out of the American people, economy and threatening national security -- I implore you to sign and pass along the petition at Newt Gingrich's "American Solutions for Winning the Future" Web site (www.AmericanSolutions.com). We're hoping to send millions of signatures to Congress demanding an immediate emergency session and resolution to our economic and national security crisis revolving around soaring oil and gas prices.

Our message: It's time to drill here and drill now! The petition is simple. It states, "We, therefore, the undersigned citizens of the United States, petition the U.S. Congress to act immediately to lower gasoline prices (and diesel and other fuel prices) by authorizing the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries."

Speaking of unstable countries, did I mention that Iraq's oil minister just reported oil production is at prewar levels (2.5 million barrels a day), yielding earnings for Iraq of $28.5 billion in just the first five months of this year? What that means is soon we likely will be dependent and in debt to yet another Middle Eastern oil-producing country that we've helped stabilize and become wealthy while ours is going straight down the tubes.

Congratulations, Congress; you're failing us completely.