CONSERVATIVE RIGHT- "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

Monday, May 20, 2013

Troubles have GOP hoping for Senate - NYPOST.com

After one very bad week for President Obama, Republicans are hoping that three administration scandals will equal six Senate seats, the number the GOP needs to win in 2014 to capture the chamber.

As anyone who observed the last two election cycles knows, predicting the outcome of an election this far in advance is dangerous. At this point in 2009, Senate Republicans appeared headed for further losses, yet ended up flipping seven seats, including in reliably Democratic states. At this point in 2011, the GOP looked prime to win back the Senate, yet the Democrats actually picked up two seats on Nov. 6 of last year.

But independent analysts say that if Republicans do win control of the Senate in 2014, this last week could prove pivotal. Even if the three issues that have Obama under fire fail to fatally wound his presidency, their ability to motivate the Republican base could be crucial developments.

“Democratic senators and candidates running in red states already had to walk a fine line. They need the president to be popular enough to turn out the Democratic base and not so unpopular that he enrages the Republican base,” said Nathan Gonzales, deputy editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. “These controversies have the potential to tilt the entire landscape against the president and make it more difficult for Democratic candidates to run against the tide in Republican states.”

Democrats are defending 21 seats in 2014, compared to just 14 for the Republicans, with each party having to protect a seat that is up in a special election — Hawaii for the Democrats; South Carolina for the Republicans.

At first blush, that might appear to put the Republicans in the driver’s seat, particularly because they’re targeting Democratic-held seats in conservative states that voted heavily against Obama last year. Those target rich seats are in states like Alaska, Arkansas, Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia (the latter three are open seats.) But the Republicans early fundraising woes, and trouble with recruiting, have cast an early pall on their prospects.

Similar problems cost the GOP prime opportunities last year, while strong Democratic campaigns overwhelmed Republican Senate challengers in Montana and North Dakota, states that voted strongly against Obama. The Democratic money advantage remains strong.

But Republicans claim plenty of reasons for optimism.

In South Dakota and West Virginia, they landed as candidates their best possible challengers, including popular ex-Gov. Mike Rounds and well-known, well-liked Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, respectively.

Of course, if the GOP takes the Senate, it will likely control all of Congress — as it has very good shot of holding onto the House. In terms of new liberal legislation, Obama will be a lame duck for two years.

“ObamaCare implementation and a smorgasbord of scandals are making Democrats toxic and politically paralyzing a president unable to use his bully pulpit effectively,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Scandal after scandal not only motivates the conservative base, but it demoralizes Democrats.”

David M. Drucker is the senior congressional correspondent for the Washington Examiner.

Sitting across from the IRS - NYPOST.com

‘If you think it’s uncomfortable sitting over there, you ought to be a private individual when the IRS is across from you questioning.”

These words ought to be emblazoned across the entryway of every IRS office in America. They are part of a stinging rebuke delivered by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) to the acting IRS commissioner during Friday’s hearings before the House Ways and Means Committee. Kelly wasn’t buying the idea that IRS targeting of conservative groups was a “foolish” mistake by low-level underlings.

His fellow Republican, committee Chairman Dave Camp, says he wants more hearings because there are many more questions. We might start with complaints that Republicans are politicizing the issue. One way to find out if that’s true is to have the relevant IRS officials answer — under oath — whether letters asking for investigations from, say, our own Sen. Chuck Schumer or the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, encouraged the IRS to do what it did.

Getty Images

Mike Kelly

There’s also the White House angle. When asked Thursday whether anyone in his White House knew, the president hedged. But on Friday, Clinton White House counsel Lanny Davis said he’s hearing from reporters that Obama’s counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, knew about the IRS allegations for some time before the president said he found out. If true, says Davis, she ought to resign for not having told him.

He’s right. But Chairman Camp had it even more right when he said resignations alone won’t solve these troubles

“This is not a personnel problem,” said Camp. “This is a problem of the IRS being too large, too intrusive, too abusive.”

Amen. We will not have a better IRS until we have a smaller IRS — and a much simpler tax code.

Chief IRS Counsel Got Jeremiah Wright's Church out of IRS Probe Before Joining Agency

News reports from the time indicate the now-chief counsel of the IRS, William Wilkins, helped a church connected to President Barack Obama’s friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright get out of an IRS probe in 2008 while working as a private attorney.

“Lawyers from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have won the dismissal of an IRS case against United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama's denomination,” The American Lawyer’s Zach Lowe wrote on May 22, 2008.

The IRS initiated an investigation early this year after a speech by Obama at a 50th anniversary celebration of the church last June. It was a reference by Obama to his presidential candidacy in a talk otherwise focused on faith that caught the agency's attention. Tax laws prohibit non-profits--including churches--from engaging in political speech or promoting candidates. The IRS can withdraw an organization's tax-free status if the organization is found to violate the rule.

Lowe noted that Obama had been a “member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago--a UCC congregation--for more than 20 years. The church has been in the headlines for several months now as the congregation lead by the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright.”

William Wilkins, then a WilmerHale law firm partner, said, “We were so interested in the case we offered to do it pro bono."

Abortion Murder Mills | CNS News

Murder Mills | CNS News

Roe v. Wade was passed by the Supreme Court in 1973 among a flurry of controversy and was presented to the American people as a fairly benign, little-used medical procedure to aid in the case of a woman's life being endangered or some other catastrophic and unforeseen set of circumstances that couldn't be remedied in any other way.

Now 40 years later, the law has been liberalized, augmented, amended and abused until it has become a tool of unabashed birth control, and if its momentum is left unabated, it will eventually become a means by which babies both inside the womb and outside the womb can be destroyed legally.

Its defenders call it "a woman's right to choose" and nowhere on the books can you find another law that gives latitude to one human being to end the life of another with no judge, no jury - which now brings up the highly controversial proposition of when life begins.

With me, that's no problem because my Bible tells me that our Creator knew us in our mother's womb.

End of subject.

But, even the most radical of the abortion proponents should be willing to agree that a baby who is capable of living outside the womb is a human being with a heart, a soul and the potential to become a productive member of the human race.

Considering the recent expose of events at Kermit Gosnell's Woman's Medical Society in Philadelphia and his heartless murder of delivered, living babies by severing their spinal cords, I can't help but wonder if this is really an isolated case or if there are others around the world who are willing to perform these totally illegal and immoral procedures for no other reason than the blood money they receive.

And, how much latitude is taken by abortionists behind closed doors and why isn't this, the bloodiest and most despicable of all medical practices, not strictly controlled and regularly overseen by the Powers That Be?

Abortion is presented as benefiting the health of women and yet filthy, incompetent slaughter mills like Gosnell's are allowed to operate without any regular supervision. Is this beneficial to the health of women or has the convenience of abortion become so prevalent among American females that the politicians just keep hands off?

Are you listening, ex-Governor Tom Ridge? What about that bill you signed into law in Pennsylvania all but exempting abortion clinics from regular inspection and supervision?

Speaking of politicians, somebody said that President Obama has never seen an abortion bill he didn't like. While in the Illinois State Senate, he voted against the Born Alive Act which would have required babies that survived botched abortions to receive medical care.

He is also a big supporter of Planned Parenthood, which is strange since it's an organization that was founded by Margaret Sanger, whose interest in abortion was not only for giving women "a right to chose" but also for eugenics, which would - in her words - "assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit" which also included races deemed inferior, African Americans included.

America is barely meeting the replenishment ratios required to prevent losing population in the coming generations and many of the Western European nations and Japan are well below that line, which is not surprising when you consider the fact that the equivalent to the population of a medium-sized town is being lost to abortion every year.

More unborn children are aborted every year in America than have been lost in all the wars this country has ever fought put together.

There is a price to be paid for America's abortion sins and the bill will come due soon.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

CURL: Benghazi is the only scandal that matters - Washington Times

“What difference, at this point, does it make?”

SPECIAL COVERAGE: Benghazi Attack Under Microscope

— Hillary Rodham Clinton, in House testimony on Benghazi

“Well, I got a couple of thousand goddamn questions, you know. I want to speak to someone in charge.”

— Roy Neary, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”

Spoiler alert: The IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal — they go nowhere. In September, we’ll all be looking back thinking, “Huh, that was a big waste of time.” It will be — in fact, it already is.

Just when Benghazi has reached critical mass, the Obama administration, which has had only one scandal (Fast and Furious early in term 1, and that fizzled fast and furiously), suddenly has two more scandals? Coincidence, yes?

No. Not at all. They were dropped, on purpose, at a most convenient time, and they’re already played out. Exactly according to plan.

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