ThoughtRogue:  Apparently, some people, especially liberals in Canadian Parliament, cannot understand the incredibly vital distinction between the Right to Freedom of Speech, and how a person with that right chooses to exercise it.  The liberally concocted “Hate” obsession has fostered the self-delusion to extraordinary levels.  Government prosecution for “hate”, i.e. deciding to be offended by someone else’s speech, then pretending this has caused them great bodily harm, finally culminating in the reading of people’s minds and then condemning them, not only for the criminal use of Free Speech but also for preventing future crimes that certainly MAY occur (perhaps, maybe.. waaaahh!), does not apparently strike a leftist Canadian as loony – not to mention literally uncivilized and dangerous.

Perhaps, just as a fish will never admit that they are all wet, a liberal, leftist MP will never admit that their own use of “Free Speech” and their self-proclaimed ability and authority to adjudicate it is evermore dangerous than mere hate-speech itself.  These kangaroo commissions of goodness which Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn have recently tangled with is of the same strain of virulent liberal sickness which is now attempting to entrap Dr. Paul L. Williams within its blood-sucking tentacles.  What kind of society would attempt to criminalize opinion – by those who disagree with just that certain opinion, of course (the working definition of “hateful” speech!)?

I watched these vids last night and became somewhat mesmerized by Ezra and Mark’s incisive, cogent smackdown of Canada’s wussy kangaroo commissioners regarding the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission.  I suspect a couple of the parliamentarians on the committee panel understood what “freedom of speech” really means, but most of these loons were clearly blinded by their own wishy-washy political-correctness fantasies.  As an evil opinionated U.S. Citizen myself I must ask, Is it a requirement for a Canadian politician to come across at all times as completely wussified and obtuse while as downright BLAND as possible?  HATE!!  Arrest HIM!!  Call in the Free Speech Mounties!

Steyn and I testify before Parliament

By Ezra Levant

Today, Mark Steyn and I testified before Parliament’s Justice and Human Rights Committee, in support of their investigations into the Canadian Human Rights Commission and their discredited censorship powers.

Later this week I’ll share some of my views about how it went, including my assessment of the questions from the MPs. (In a word, I was quite encouraged.) In the meantime, here are YouTube videos of the whole hour, courtesy of SDA Matt. I’m curious how you thought it went: feel free to leave a comment not only about what Steyn and I said, but what the MPs said, too.

Click here to view the rest of the videos of Ezra and Mark’s testimony.

Yet Another Washington Flop in the Making

Obamacare will be one of many federal failures.

By Deroy Murdock, National Review Online

Don't Tread on US!

As the health-care reform debate roars on, Uncle Sam resembles a restless college senior who is flunking economics, finance, and management. Despite a report card full of Fs, he suddenly announces: “I want to go to medical school!”

Similarly, Pres. Barack Obama stood before a joint session of Congress Wednesday night and re-embraced a government option for health insurance. As he explained, “Sometimes government has to step in to help deliver” on the promise that “hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play.”

Alas, too often when Washington steps in, failing grades follow.

• Medicare, the Great Society’s shining jewel, is a battered gem. Its hospitals program already bleeds ruby-red ink. “Medicare Part A again will spend more in benefits than it receives in revenues” this fiscal year, observes Heritage Foundation analyst Bob Moffitt. Its Trust Fund is an accounting fiction, but even that fantasy disappears in eight years, with depletion in 2017. Even worse, Heritage’s Brian Riedl calculates that between 2009 and 2083 Medicare’s budget will zoom from 3.1 percent to 14.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Its unfunded liabilities (promises backed by campaign balloons instead of cash) equal $36.3 trillion.
• Social Security, the New Deal’s cornerstone, is as cutting edge as a 78 RPM record. In 2016, barely six years away, it will begin paying more in pension checks than it collects in payroll taxes. Congress then will be unable to use Social Security’s surplus like a ShamWow to absorb red ink. Social Security’s unfunded obligations equal $17.5 trillion — again not financed by anything but congressional speeches.
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: These two government options in the home-mortgage arena are widely considered the twin jet engines that flew the economy into a hillside. These were supposed to be money-making, quasi-private companies, with no federal involvement beyond an implicit guarantee that government would cover their losses. Emboldened by this cozy federal safety net, these enterprises embarked upon financial acrobatics they otherwise might have avoided. Rather than generate profits between 2009 and 2019, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, Fannie and Freddie will cost taxpayers $389 billion.
• The Hope for Homeowners program began last October 1. Congress gave it a hefty $300 billion to help some 400,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure. According to an August 10 Newsday editorial, “It has produced exactly one refinanced loan.” One down, 399,999 to go.
• “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right?” Obama asked in August. “It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” Yes, indeed. Its two-year fiscal deficit approaches $8 billion. It has pried some 60,000 mailboxes off of America’s streets, the Lexington Institute reports. It also is weighing the cancellation of Saturday services. Even as e-mail, digitally attached documents, and online banking decrease demand for first-class snail mail, the Post Office keeps hiking the cost of stamps. What sort of business actually raises prices while customers walk away?
• The Internal Revenue Code is like John Donne’s poetry: It means something different to everyone. Perhaps flummoxed by its 67,000 pages, even IRS advisers offer conflicting answers to identical questions. But today’s U.S. Tax Code will be a triumph of window-like clarity compared with the U.S. Health Code that Obamacare would trigger. Just wait until every medical lobby — from the American Stethoscope Council to the National Tongue Depressor League — hikes up Capitol Hill to demand exemptions, loopholes, and subsidies.
• Although Washington already owns 54 percent of the square mileage west of the Rockies, it obsessively purchases new acreage. More than on private property, land-use restrictions on federal soil often prevent thinning of foliage. Flames frequently follow.

“Most western wildfires burn federal land,” William Welch wrote in September 9’s USA Today. To date this year, 123,554 private acres burned in California, versus 271,000 federal acres.

Rather than inaugurate a frivolous, bottomless government option for health care, Washington should launch a “private option” for nearly every federal activity outside the Pentagon.

ThoughtRogue:  Read Doctor Zero’s following gem carefully – very ‘rich’ in content – very prescient!

The Eff Word.  Fascism.

By Doctor Zero

All Hail, Faux-bama!

It’s the ultimate political epithet, the atomic blast that ends calm and measured debate. This makes those who seek to be reasonable and persuasive understandably reluctant to use the word… and those who aren’t interested in either reason or persuasion eager to hurl it at their opponents. There is nothing surprising about the visceral emotions conjured by the mention of its name. The history of fascism is written in the blood of innocents, on a scale that challenges the limits of human imagination.

Our natural repulsion from the concept of fascism, coupled with the way it has been cheapened by decades of use as a casual insult by the Left, makes it difficult for us to study it dispassionately. It is important to make that study, because fascism was not a mystical phenomenon, a curse inflicted on the Axis nations through the supernatural charisma of Mussolini and Hitler. Too many people recall the garish and horrifying trappings of Nazi Germany, and think “it couldn’t happen here.” It has happened here. It’s happening again now. We do ourselves no favors by refusing to see it, any more than we would be helping ourselves by throwing around baseless accusations of fascism where it does not exist.

Fascism, like communism and socialism, is a form of collectivist politics. As the great author H.P. Lovecraft put it, when describing the dark gods of his horror stories: “Many names, one nightmare.” These philosophies share a belief in the supreme power and virtue of the central State. Under communism, government owns the means of production – there is no private industry. In a socialist system, the State is nominally separate from private industry, but it siphons large amounts of money from the private sector to fund the socialist agenda.  Fascism maintains private industry, but places it under the direct control of the government. Private industry still exists, but the State sets production goals, directly controls economic activity, and dominates the management of corporations. Industry becomes enslaved to political goals.

Modern audiences, raised on a steady diet of movies about World War II, think of fascism as either inhumanly horrifying, or completely absurd, and wonder how anyone in their right minds could have fallen for the fascist sales pitch. In fact, fascism did not seem absurd at all to the intellectuals of the early twentieth century. They thought a wise and all-powerful State, run by the most brilliant minds, would be able to engineer a more advanced society, much as engineers were designing increasingly advanced scientific marvels. The pioneering author of modern science fiction, H.G. Wells, was an outspoken advocate of authoritarian control by a benevolent government of geniuses and academics. His novel The Shape of Things to Come envisions such a government seizing control of the entire world to create a global utopia, called “The Dictatorship of the Air” because the government controls the technology of air travel – which it occasionally uses to drop bombs on those who resist. Here are some excerpts from a famous speech Wells gave to the British Young Liberals Society at Oxford in 1932, reprinted in Jonah Goldberg’s indispensable Liberal Fascism – a phrase Wells actually coins in the speech:

We have seen the Fascisti in Italy and a number of clumsy imitations elsewhere, and we have seen the Russian Communist Party coming into existence to reinforce this idea… I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis… And do not let me leave you in the slightest doubt as to the scope and ambition of what I am putting before you… These new organizations are not merely organizations for the spread of defined opinions… the days of that sort of amateurism are over-they are organizations to replace the dilatory indecisiveness of democracy. The world is sick of parliamentary politics…

The world is sick of parliamentary politics. This is an idea that occurs in every strand of collectivist thought. Collectivists only revere democracy until it has voted them sufficient power… then democracy becomes a cumbersome inconvenience that allows selfish, ignorant fools and corporate shills to interfere with the brilliant work of great men. The Democrats fleeing from town hall meetings are also sick of parliamentary politics, as is the President who defiles American government with dozens of unelected, unconfirmed, unaccountable “czars.” Parliamentary politics proved very inconvenient for the President’s health-care takeover and cap-and-trade bills, and have been driving global-warming cultists mad with frustration for years.

Kids, Obey and Help your Leader!

Why is fascism bad? It seems like a ridiculously understated question, similar to asking why cancer is bad, but the answer is important. The grisly ornaments fascism has worn in the past should not distract from the deeper reality of what it is, and why it fails. The essential flaw of fascism is that it elevates the State to control of its citizens, because controlling the economy requires control of the people. A corporation is a voluntary association of people, not an inanimate machine that can be reprogrammed painlessly by wise government advisers. The people who comprise corporations must be kept alienated from the government’s supporters – fascism requires enemies, and turns feral quickly. The government does not require a majority of the people to support it, in order to maintain power. It can make do with much less than fifty per cent, if they are sufficiently motivated and obedient. In fact, maintaining control through an energized minority is much easier than keeping the majority of the population on board, especially in a large country.

The proposition that enlightened government officials should control the economy sounds appealing to those who feel capitalism has not treated them well. No matter what name it operates under, fascism never works. It can’t work. Fascist control might produce short-term gains for its favored constituencies, and the sense of organization it brings might benefit a highly disorganized or demoralized population, such as prewar Germany, for a while. In the long run, fascism falls apart because political control is always less flexible and innovative than free-market competition. The political masters of the economy have a list of alternatives they will not consider, mistakes they will not admit to making, and explanations that simply cannot be true. Since they see the free market as inferior to their intellect and moral judgment, they never study it carefully enough to understand how it really works. They become highly adept at killing the geese that lay golden eggs.

Government is a terrible senior partner for any industry, because it has only one thing to bring to the partnership, and that is compulsive force. Everything government does is an expression of force: it collects taxes under the threat of imprisonment or death, blocks access to markets through licensing, and changes the rules of market competition through regulation. A well-run government uses force to protect its citizens, from external threats and internal lawbreakers. As the size of government swells, so does the amount of force deployed to enforce its will. This is inevitable, because force is what a government is. The fascist views private industry as a work horse, yoked to the will of the State… and when the State has exhausted its minimal patience trying to talk the horse into moving faster, there remains only the lash. Political control of the economy never produces the results that would be needed to keep the vital constituencies of the politicians happy, and the only method they can imagine to make their industrial horses work harder is to swing the whip, with increasing anger.

The fascist impulse expresses itself differently in different societies. In America, it was first embraced by President Wilson and the Progressives, because it made sense to them, and everyone else in the industrialized world was already doing it – if you’re unfamiliar with the intellectual literature of the Thirties, you would be surprised how often British and American academics fretted about “falling behind” marvelous, fascist Italy and Germany. Fascism’s second life in America began because socialism failed. The system of providing social benefits to an increasingly large dependency class, by taxing a dwindling group of productive citizens, went utterly bankrupt. This is dramatically illustrated by the failure of Obama’s health care plan, which even the most politically disinterested Americans can see we clearly don’t have the money to pay for, with trillions of dollars in debt towering over us. Exit the tax collector… enter the “czar.” When the American Left saw that it could no longer extract enough tax money from an increasingly grumpy, overtaxed electorate, it became logically necessary to compel industry to provide what the Left desires. Wrapping this strategy in high-minded language like “green jobs” does not change its essential nature.

The grim pathologies we associate with fascism come as consequences of its original sin, the assertion of direct State control over the economy. The cult of personality forms because the mighty politicians who command the economy must be brilliant supermen – how else could they handle the enormous task they have set for themselves? To support Obama’s domestic policies, you must believe he understands medicine better than doctors and insurance companies, knows more about monetary policy than all the banks he has asserted control over, and has a greater mastery of energy production than the industries he plans to destroy with the cap-and-trade bill. He even knows more about making cars than General Motors… and all of the other auto-makers combined, since the automobile market wanted GM to die, and Obama commuted the death sentence to community service. No wonder the media loves to photograph the man with a halo, and Hollywood celebrities pledge their obedience to him on their knees!

Fascism acquires militaristic aspects because a society organized for war is easier to control, and opponents of the State are more easily dismissed as traitors. The American fascists, evolved from socialists and liberals, dislike aggressive wars of military conquest, so they co-opt the language of warfare for domestic policy issues, declaring their policy preferences to be the “moral equivalent of war.” Fascism becomes violent because its supporters develop a tribal hostility to their domestic enemies, which eventually leads them to beat those enemies, and maybe bite off a finger or two. Fascism incubates racism because racial animosity is a powerful glue for holding constituent groups together, and milking them for political support.

Is America sliding into fascism? Not completely, or quickly… but it’s a potent venom, deadly in small doses. We should not dismiss the menace of fascism by reasoning that it always comes dressed in black uniforms and jackboots, patrolling the perimeter of concentration camps – so we’re in good shape as long as those horrors are not in evidence. We shouldn’t be fooling around with such a toxic ideology at all. No matter how noble the stated goals at the beginning of the collectivist journey, it always ends at the same destination. Promoting his latest propaganda film, Michael Moore said that “capitalism is evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to replace it with something that is good for all people, and that something is democracy.” This is more than just laughable hypocrisy from a millionaire leftist. Capitalism is the exchange of goods and services between free men and women. In the end, there is only one alternative to it, and it is not “democracy.”

Many names, one nightmare.

ThoughtRogue:  We here at NoCompromise promise to give our readers the unvarnished truth, especially providing information you will never hear on CNN, PBS, MSNBC, CBS…

Sudden Jihadi Syndrome

If this isn’t a case of Sudden Jihadi Syndrome (SJS), I don’t know what is.  The very next day after the unfortunate late-term abortion of mass-abortionist killer, “Dr.” George Tiller, one Carlos Bledsoe guns down two men in front of an Army recruiting office in Conway, Arkansas – assassinating Private William Long.

Click this Army recruiting logo to watch Private Long’s proud father interviewed (hat tip ArmyWifeToddlerMom):

Click the Image

The alleged “lone” shooter Mr. Bledsoe, who recently returned from “studying” in Yemen, was arrested with an SKS rifle, and other arms and ammunition, and admitted watching Jihadi inciteful propaganda videos among other SJS paraphernalia…  Also, did I mention that he changed his name in April to the innocuous moniker, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad?

The Battlefield is Here.

Usurper Obama, who just announced the new Army Secretary, failed to mention a peep about this most recent SJS hit on American Citizens.  However, Mr. Obama did find time join in the universal (Leftist) condemnation of the demise of infanticidal “doctor” Tiller and the “brutal take-down” of the “courageous” man – while declaring that all the innocent blood spilled is somehow actually on the hands of Conservatives.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder wasted no time in dispatching Federal thugs to help safeguard infanticide clinics nationwide, yet regarding the similar protection for military recruiting offices, not a peep has yet been uttered, identically like the Commander-in-Chief’s silence on SJS.

Lord, Help Us.

NC ***UPDATE*** US Attorney General Eric Holder is dispatching US Marshals to protect abortion clinic and doctors around the country.

Holder issued the following statement:

 The murder of Doctor George Tiller is an abhorrent act of violence, and his family is in our thoughts and prayers at this tragic moment. Federal law enforcement is coordinating with local law enforcement officials in Kansas on the investigation of this crime, and I have directed the United States Marshals Service to offer protection to other appropriate people and facilities around the nation. The Department of Justice will work to bring the perpetrator of this crime to justice. As a precautionary measure, we will also take appropriate steps to help prevent any related acts of violence from occurring.

This is so laughable!  Tiller was killed in a “church” known for enabling the murder of late term pre-born babies.  Why not dispatch US Marshals to post modern,  pro-death,  social clubs aka liberal churches?Furthermore, yesterday, a muzzie walked into a Military recruiting office and gunned down a recruiter!  Is Komrade Holder going to dispatch US Marshals to every recruiting office in America?  is Komrade Holder going to make a public statement calling what that muzzie did, “an abhorrent act of violence, and his family is in our thoughts and prayers at this tragic moment.”  Doubt it very much!   **Walking away disgusted at this scam of a government**

TR:  I’m still trying to come to grips with WHY should I feel the least bit sorry for “doctor” Tiller – you know, the Mass Baby Killer, whom the Left incessantly deems as “courageous”, “indispensable”, “compassionate” ..Huh!??

“If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”   ~George Orwell

ThoughtRogue:  This development, the passage of The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act in Congress, is so disturbing on so many levels it provides further proof that our U.S. Constitution is flat-lining as we speak.  Remember when the vaunted, blindfolded Lady Justice carried a sword in one hand, and a scale in the other?  Well, now she is to wield a group-identity cattle-prod in one hand, her num-chucks of empathy in the other, and will flail her opponents with eyes-wide shut as she takes careful notice of the litigant’s skin pigmentation, apparent genitalia, unverifiable claims of sexual “orientation”, flash judgements as to their apparent means, etc., and now most importantly, speculation as to guesses of what MAY have been going on in the perpetrator’s mind (thoughts) at sometime contemporaneous with an alleged crime which MAY have impacted their motivation for such crime!

Can we not agree that all serious crime, especially violent crime, involves some “hate” – whether it be self-hate, hate against society, hate against those of different means, or hate against someone because of some perceived wrong?  But, the legal standard should be based solely on alleged ACTIONS, because they are verifiable (remember proof, facts?)  I shudder to think what new capabilities this Hate Crimes “Prevention” legislation affords the police.  What – they’re so good at mind-reading now, that they can “prevent” crimes by reading your mind before you commit the crime?

This supposed ability of the judicial/law enforcement system to somehow read minds with accuracy AND certainty, in order to criminalize these thoughts (motivations, intentions, haaaate), and to therefore assign it its own punishments, are ipso facto, criminalizing the alleged thoughts themselves!  Are we still living in America?  This obsession with “hate” (feelings, gov.-approved ideology, etc.) and “group rights” and group feelings and grievances is abjectly anti-American.  If we let Big Daddy criminalize our thoughts, you cannot possibly ever live free – exactly as illustrated in the novel 1984.  This new anti-Americanism is an abomination.  Equal application of an abomination is further spreading of the abomination.  The way to vanquish this societal cancer is not to apply it “equally”, but to EXCISE IT from our law and society.  Will the Obomatron administration sign this abomination into law?  Stay tuned…

‘Thought Crimes’ Bill Advances

By Nat Hentoff, senior fellow of the Cato Institute

Big 'Mack' Daddy is Watching over You!

Why is the press remaining mostly silent about the so-called “hate crimes law” that passed in the House on April 29? The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed in a 249-175 vote (17 Republicans joined with 231 Democrats). These Democrats should have been tested on their knowledge of the First Amendment, equal protection of the laws (14th Amendment), and the prohibition of double jeopardy (no American can be prosecuted twice for the same crime or offense). If they had been, they would have known that this proposal, now headed for a Senate vote, violates all these constitutional provisions.

This bill would make it a federal crime to willfully cause bodily injury (or try to) because of the victim’s actual or perceived “race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability” – as explained on the White House Web site, signaling the president’s approval. A defendant convicted on these grounds would be charged with a “hate crime” in addition to the original crime, and would get extra prison time.

The extra punishment applies only to these “protected classes.” As Denver criminal defense lawyer Robert J Corry Jr. asked (Denver Post April 28): “Isn’t every criminal act that harms another person a ‘hate crime’?” Then, regarding a Colorado “hate crime” law, one of 45 such state laws, Corry wrote: “When a Colorado gang engaged in an initiation ritual of specifically seeking out a “white woman” to rape, the Boulder prosecutor declined to pursue ‘hate crime’ charges.” She was not enough of one of its protected classes.

Corey adds that the state “hate crime” law – like the newly expanded House of Representatives federal bill – “does not apply equally” (as the 14th Amendment requires), essentially instead “criminalizing only politically incorrect thoughts directed against politically incorrect victim categories.”

Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, think hard about what Corry adds: “A government powerful enough to pick and choose which thoughts to prosecute is a government too powerful.”

But James Madison, who initially introduced the First Amendment to the Constitution, had previously written to Thomas Jefferson on the passage of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom: “We have in this country extinguished forever … making laws for the human mind.” No American, he emphasized later, would be punished for his “thoughts.”

However, doesn’t the House “Hate Crimes Bill” state that nothing in the legislation shall “prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition” – or speech “protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses in the First Amendment”?

Remember, however, as Kathleen Gilbert notes (LifeSiteNews.com) that “free speech advocates have pointed out that under current U.S. law, any action that ‘abets, counsels, commands (or) induces a perceived ‘hate crime’ shares in the guilt of that crime and is therefore punishable.”

But doesn’t this new bill slip in an insistence that “evidence or expression or association of the defendant may not be introduced as evidence at trial unless the evidence specifically relates to that offense”?

Read the rest of this entry »

ThoughtRogue:  The following is a real letter written to my long lost hardcore Leftist – excuse me, Progressive friend.  It is certainly meant to spark discussion and debate with him, or any Leftist.  He seems to have developed a very hard time answering such questions without falling into huge traps of hypocrisy, ignorance, or prevarication.  Please, if you would act as his surrogate, and would like to take a stab at the many searing questions, go for it!!

ThoughtRogue:  If anyone harbors any doubt that the farther one goes left on the political scale, the more fascist and totalitarian you will find the environment, take a close look at Faux-bama’s latest in a lineup of “Czars” (not coincidental terminology) who wish to monitor your personal email, and the Internet for its “fairness”, and in this case, to monitor the speech of anyone who wishes to say something derogatory toward homo-fascists, or any number of other specially manufactured, protected “classes” of favored people.  George Orwell is now spinning in his grave like a lathe..   Mr. Orwell warned us of the coming totalitarian transformation of his homeland he dubbed “Airstrip One.”  One wonders whether he foresaw its cousin, the superpower-version of his dystopia burgeoning just over the Atlantic horizon..?

Vote looms on legislation that could outlaw preaching on homosexuality

By Drew Zahn, WorldNetDaily

It's for your own Good!

House Democrats have announced a vote could come as early as tomorrow on a “hate crimes” bill that supporters admit might allow federal officials to prosecute Christians who speak out against homosexual behavior.

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, or H.R. 1913, passed through committee last week, and according to the Weekly Leader published by the office of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the bill joins 14 others that could be brought to the floor for a vote sometime between noon tomorrow and the end of the week.

Meanwhile, advocates for the bill are engaged in a strong push to see it passed.

The Human Rights Campaign, which calls itself the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender – or LGBT – civil rights organization, has designated April 27-29 for a national call-in campaign, urging supporters to contact Congress and pressure the bill’s passage.

“We need more calls to Members of Congress, and we need them right away,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “It has been ten long years and tens of thousands more victims since the Matthew Shepard Act was first introduced in Congress. We are poised for a presidential signature this year, but lies from the radical right could easily derail our efforts.”

A number of groups – including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Council on La Raza, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Association of People with Disabilities, among others – announced formation of a national coalition to urge Congress to pass H.R. 1913.

One of the coalition members, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, announced last week that it has sent letters to all 435 members of the House of Representatives in support of the bill.

Tom Strode of the Baptist Press, however, reports that H.R. 1913 “adds ’sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ to the current classes – including race, religion and national origin – protected from hate crimes,” a measure that worries many people of faiths that deem LGBT sexual behavior as immoral.

When a nearly identical plan was developed in the last Congress, Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., admitted during a hearing on the bill it could be used to prosecute pastors merely for preaching against homosexuality under the premise that they could be “inducing” violence in someone.

The bill ultimately failed then because President Bush determined it was unnecessary – the crimes banned in the legislation already are addressed by other laws – and it probably was unconstitutional.

“The federal hate crimes bill is bad news for everyone,” said Brad Dacus of Pacific Justice Institute, who testified in Congress against the bill two years ago.

“Instead of treating all crime victims equally, it creates a caste system where select groups, such as gays and lesbians, are given greater priority in the criminal justice system. This is not progress; it is political correctness. In other nations and states, the adoption of hate crimes legislation has been the first step toward widespread suppression of speech and ideas critical of homosexuality,” he said.

Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel has spoken out against H.R. 1913 a number of times.

“As has proved to be true in both Europe and Canada, this Orwellian piece of legislation is the direct precursor to freedom killing and speech chilling ‘hate speech’ laws. It represents a thinly veiled effort to ultimately silence – under penalty of law – morally, medically and biblically based opposition to the homosexual lifestyle,” he said.

Barber said the 14th Amendment already provides that victims of violent crimes are afforded equal protection under the law “regardless of sexual preference or proclivity.”

“If passed, H.R. 1913 will change all that. It overtly and, most likely, unconstitutionally, discriminates against millions of Americans by granting federally preferred status, time and resources to individuals who define their identity based upon aberrant sexual behaviors (i.e.,’gay’ and lesbian ’sexual orientation’ or cross-dressing ‘gender identity’),” he said.

He also said there is “zero evidence” suggesting homosexuals do not get equal protection now.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Editors, Washington Times

Obama secretly ends program that let pilots carry guns

From My Cold, Dead Hands

After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.

Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.

The Obama administration this past week diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program to hire more supervisory staff, who will engage in field inspections of pilots.

This looks like completely unnecessary harassment of the pilots. The 12,000 Federal Flight Deck Officers, the pilots who have been approved to carry guns, are reported to have the best behavior of any federal law enforcement agency. There are no cases where any of them has improperly brandished or used a gun. There are just a few cases where officers have improperly used their IDs.

Fewer than one percent of the officers have any administrative actions brought against them and, we are told, virtually all of those cases “are trumped up.”

Take a case against one flight officer who had visited the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles within the last few weeks. While there, the pilot noticed that federal law enforcement officers can, with the approval of a superior, obtain a license plate that cannot be traced, a key safety feature for law enforcement personnel. So the pilot asked if, as a member of the federal program, he was eligible. The DMV staffer checked and said “no.” The next day administrative actions were brought against the pilot for “misrepresenting himself.” These are the kinds of cases that President Obama wants to investigate.

Since Mr. Obama’s election, pilots have told us that the approval process for letting pilots carry guns on planes slowed significantly. Last week the problem went from bad to worse. Federal Flight Deck Officers – the pilots who have been approved to carry guns – indicate that the approval process has stalled out.

Safety-Free Zones for Terrorists

Pilots cannot openly speak about the changing policies for fear of retaliation from the Transportation Security Administration. Pilots who act in any way that causes a “loss of confidence” in the armed pilot program risk criminal prosecution as well as their removal from the program. Despite these threats, pilots in the Federal Flight Deck Officers program have raised real concerns in multiple interviews.

Arming pilots after Sept. 11 was nothing new. Until the early 1960s, American commercial passenger pilots on any flight carrying U.S. mail were required to carry handguns. Indeed, U.S. pilots were still allowed to carry guns until as recently as 1987. There are no records that any of these pilots (either military or commercial) ever causing any significant problems.

Screening of airplane passengers is hardly perfect. While armed marshals are helpful, the program covers less than 3 percent of the flights out of Washington D.C.’s three airports and even fewer across the country. Sky marshals are costly and quit more often than other law-enforcement officers.

Armed pilots are a cost-effective backup layer of security. Terrorists can only enter the cockpit through one narrow entrance, and armed pilots have some time to prepare themselves as hijackers penetrate the strengthened cockpit doors. With pilots, we have people who are willing to take on the burden of protecting the planes for free. About 70 percent of the pilots at major American carriers have military backgrounds.

Frankly, as a matter of pure politics, we cannot understand what the administration is thinking. Nearly 40 House Democrats are in districts were the NRA is more popular than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We can’t find any independent poll in which the public is demanding that pilots disarm. Why does this move make sense?

Only anti-gun extremists and terrorist recruits are worried about armed pilots. So why is the Obama administration catering to this tiny lobby at the expense of public safety?

What Will the Ministry of Hopenchange Bring Us Next?!