From One News Now:

Planned Parenthood is suing the state of Texas for denying it tax dollars for a Medicaid program.

The Obama administration stopped sending federal money for contraception and check-ups for low-income women in Texas when the state decided not to allocate the money to organizations that perform abortions.

Elizabeth Graham of Texas Right to Life says the state instead decided to give program funding to 1,400 qualified providers in the state.

“Planned Parenthood and abortion providers are suing the state for locking them out of the women’s health program because they are desperate to keep their hands in the pockets of taxpayers to promote their abortion agenda,” she says.

Planned Parenthood is basically claiming discrimination because they are abortion providers.

“Really, the state is obligated to distribute much-coveted healthcare dollars to programs and agencies that best serve a large population and programs that have a broad application across the state,” comments the spokeswoman.

Texas will be allocating the money to healthcare providers that have no affiliation with abortion providers, because — as Graham emphasizes — abortion is not healthcare.

…abortion is not healthcare, amen to that!

Yet, Planned Parenthood is determined to finance as much baby murder as it can using our tax dollars. Is that abonimable, or what?

Of course, anyone who’s visited Hard Astarboard over a period of time knows how we classify the likes of Planned Parenthood.

Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general, the snake who’s so vehemently opposed to any kind of voter ID (he has to be, because where would the Democrats be if they couldn’t get illegall aliens’, deadpeoples’ and double dippers’ votes to keep them in office) should be awfully embarrassed right now (that is, if it’s possible for a liberal to be embarrassed).

After all, he’s the man who says voter fraud’s not a problem here in the U.S.A.

Well, then, how come…?

In a shocking new video, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas demonstrates to the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, just why he should be concerned about lack of voter ID laws – by walking into Holder’s voting precinct and showing the world that anyone can obtain Eric Holder’s ballot. Literally.

The video shows a young man entering a Washington, DC polling place at 3401 Nebraska Avenue, NW, on primary day of this year – April 3, 2012 – and giving Holder’s name and address. The poll worker promptly offers the young man Holder’s ballot to vote.

Holder has maintained that voter fraud is not a major problem in the United States, and that voter ID would not curb voter fraud in any case.

Project Veritas has already shown how dead people can vote in New Hampshire, prompting the state senate to pass a voter ID law; they’ve shown celebrities like Tim Tebow and Tom Brady registering to vote in Minnesota, prompting the state legislature to put voter ID on the ballot as a constitutional amendment. Washington DC voting law is a federal jurisdictional area. Will the federal government take up the challenge?

Have a gander here.

I love the way, at the end of the video clip, the man says “I’ll be back faster than you can say furious.” LOL!

And here I thought Mayor Bloomberg’s despotic administration in New York was beyond the pale.

Well, it appears that KingImamHis Excellency President — that’s it, President (or unrerasonable facsimile thereof) Obama has outdone Bloomberg the Weasel by bestowing upon himself the power to enact an all-encompassing martial law over we, the people and all our assets as he sees fit.

From the Washington Times:

President Obama has given himself the powers to declare martial law — especially in the event of a war with Iran. It is a sweeping power grab that should worry every American.

On March 16, the White House released an executive order, “National Defense Resources Preparedness.” The document is stunning in its audacity and a flagrant violation of the Constitution. It states that, in case of a war or national emergency, the federal government has the authority to take over almost every aspect of American society. Food, livestock, farming equipment, manufacturing, industry, energy, transportation, hospitals, health care facilities, water resources, defense and construction — all of it could fall under the full control of Mr. Obama. The order empowers the president to dispense these vast resources as he sees fit during a national crisis.

{Emphasis mine, contempt for the Constitution Mr. Obama’s}

More:

In short, the order gives Mr. Obama the ability to impose martial law. He now possesses the potential powers of a dictator. The order is a direct assault on individual liberties, private property rights and the rule of law. It is blatantly unconstitutional. The executive branch is arrogating responsibilities precluded by the Constitution without even asking the permission of Congress. The order gives Mr. Obama a blank check to erect a centralized authoritarian state. This is a law one would expect to find in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela or Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Sure, His Majesty uses the possibility of looming conflict with Iran (over their nukes) as a reason to somehow justify this extreme measure, but that is just an excuse, like his moratorium on deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in response to the BP oil spill or his and his fellow leftists’ use of any firearm incident as an excuse to pursue their anti-2nd Amendment agenda.

Would that tempt Mr. Obama to claim a state of emergency and thereby implement his executive order? No one knows the answer. And we shouldn’t have to find out. The president does not — and should not - have the authority to subordinate the entire private economy to the government, especially without the consent of Congress and the American people. It is national socialism masquerading as military security.

Amen to that!

Read the entire article here.

Considering that we are in America, THIS is just plain unbelievable:

The Senate on Thursday passed legislation barring lawmakers from using insider information for personal profit, sending the bill to the White House.

Ahem.

Congress passing a law prohibiting themselves from commiting felonies!

Come on, now… They need to pass a law making it illegal for them to break the law?

We’ve all known about the insider trading for awhile, and many of us condemned them for it, but are they such natural crooks that they need a law requiring them to obey an existing law in order to keep themselves “honest”?

Sheesh! These people really need to be voted out, every last one of them, at the first available opportunity…

Pitiful.

Oh, and in the area of transparency:

How about this?

“I appreciate [my colleague's] leadership on helping us honor what our founders put forth in our founding documents, which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Pelosi told her colleagues, citing the Declaration of Independence. “And that is exactly what the Affordable Care Act helps to guarantee.”

Who says the Democrats are not being transparent as advertised? I’d say Pelosi’s speech in the video makes it quite transparent that she and her liberal elitist ilk believe we are all very, very stupid.

After 236 years as the greatest nation in history, is this what our government’s leadership comes down to?

This one was in this morning’s Daily Caller.

Documents published online this month show that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an organization known for its uncompromising animal-rights positions, killed more than 95 percent of the pets in its care in 2011.

Well!

These concerned, peaceful humanitarians of the liberal persuation sure know how to practice what they preach, don’t they?

The documents, obtained from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, were published online by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a non-profit organization that runs online campaigns targeting groups that antagonize food producers.

Fifteen years’ worth of similar records show that since 1998 PETA has killed more than 27,000 animals at its headquarters in Norfolk, VA.

In a February 16 statement, the Center said PETA killed 1,911 cats and dogs last year, finding homes for only 24 pets.

“PETA hasn’t slowed down its slaughterhouse operation,” said Rick Berman, CCF’s executive director. “It appears PETA is more concerned with funding its media and advertising antics than finding suitable homes for these dogs and cats.”

In a statement, Berman added that PETA has a $37 million dollar annual budget.

His organization runs PETAkillsAnimals.com, which reports that in 2010 a resident of Virginia called PETA and asked if there was an animal shelter at the group’s headquarters. PETA responded that there was not.

I was recently at Bloomingdales (Lexington Avenue in Manhattan) and espied an anti-fur coat demonstration in front of the place, complete with pictures of skinned, bloody animals and the kind of slant to their message that almost suggested these animals were skinned alive, screaming in torment.

I wonder if these PETA creatures and their “progressive” friends would be offended were photographs to be posted publicly of aborted babies and piles of dead animals fallen victim to PETA’s slaughterhouse operation.

Of course they would! Liberals live on what they imagine is a one way street…

From the NRA-ILA:

It is certainly no surprise for gun owners to see the New York Times run a story belittling the United States Constitution. After all, the Times has worked for decades to devalue our founding document.

“[I]ts influence is waning,” opines the Times. It is “terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights.” The paper faults the Constitution for being difficult to amend and reflective of the times in which it was written. While the Times does not go so far as to claim the U.S. Constitution has been bad for America, it does lament that it is of “little current use to, say, a new African nation.”

Hmmm. While the article focuses on the N.Y. Times, the next paragraph refers to one of the poster creatures of the “progressive” menagerie, their agent on the Supreme Court:

But it was a much bigger shock when the Times reported in the same story that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a sitting associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and grande dame of the Court’s liberal voting bloc, shares the Times’ dim view of the Constitution. Ginsburg said “I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.” Her personal recommendations would instead include “the South African Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the European Convention on Human Rights.”

None of this should come as a surprise. One wonders, for example, if Justice Ginsburg even looks to the United States Constitution when interpreting it in 2012. Having had only limited success in getting the courts to creatively re-imagine the Constitution to suit their individual tastes, America’s legal, academic, and media elites are now determined to minimize what is left of the founding charter’s original meaning and intent by making unflattering comparisons to “sexier,” more expansive documents that empower state bureaucracies, undermine individual rights, and micromanage citizens’ day-to-day lives.

A good definition of a liberal (besides “someone who’s never been mugged”, LOL) is an individual who takes full advantage of the liberties that come with living in a free country while trying to destroy those freedoms at the same time.

Do these people have issues, or what?

Anyway, the entire NRA-ILA article is here.

From the Washington Times:

Neighborhood lemonade stands have for generations served as a training ground for budding young capitalists. Boys and girls eager for their first taste of success have recently watched their dreams dissolve as rulebook-toting authoritarians demand little Timmy and Sally show their permits and papers or face the wrath of the state. Americans are fed up with this nonsense. It’s time for a little lemonade liberation.

I had no idea things had gotten this bad in what was once called the Land of the Free. What’s next, the Tonton Macoute?

It’s nice to know that a few of our fellow Americans out there are demonstrating that they’re fed up!

I am in Manhattan for a couple of days (I can’t really stand the place anymore, it’s become so much more abrasive, overpriced and less pleasant since my first experience with the borough, but that’s another story).

Earlier today I was walking across one of the many parks (one of Manhattan’s few saving graces), Madison Square Park at 23rd Street and Broadway, when a scene on one of the benches caused me to stop and, well, rubberneck.

There was a man sitting there eating a sandwich. He appeared totally inoffensive (clean shaven, well groomed and neatly dressed). There was a small backpack sitting on the bench beside him and there were no other people sitting anywhere nearby.

There were five N.Y. Police officers standing around him, four patrolmen and one whose uniform included a white shirt who I think must have been a lieutenant, and they seemed to be giving him a hard time.

As I listened, the situation became apparent: In New York City, on top of the recently enacted law against smoking in city parks, on beaches or on city owned public concourses, there is also a law against placing ones backpack on a bench, thereby occupying a second space. It evidently doesn’t matter whether there’s anyone sitting nearby or anyone wanting, or not wanting, to sit where the backpack is sitting.

The police were threatening to give the man a ticket if he didn’t place the backpack on the ground.

This seems rather excessive to me in terms of the authority of the law, or whatever it’s called.

If my knowledge of American History is at all accurate, I could swear that a war was fought back in the 1770s to free Americans of such oppressive micromanagement, just as it was fought to liberate the people from the kind of overbearing taxation, including taxation without representation, as we are experiencing today.

I only hope those police officers don’t DARE have the nerve to expect extra pay for working the 4th of July or to barbecue and otherwise enjoy having the holiday off, because their in any way benefiting from Independence Day would be profound hypocrisy, just as would be the lawmakers who come up with such laws and, of course, the weasel named Michael Bloomberg.

That’s right, sleaze.

AARP sold out every senior citizen, member or not, when they endorsed the left’s monstrous HealthCare bill.

When government says it’s set to do something for the little guy, hang on to your wallet.

The latest evidence for this came in a congressional report released last week, showing that the seniors lobby (and insurance giant) AARP stands to make more than $1 billion as a result of ObamaCare.

The game works this way: The new health-care law contains more than $136 billion in cuts to the Medicare Advantage program, which now covers one in five seniors. As a result, according to Medicare’s chief actuary, at least 7 million seniors will be forced out of their Medicare Advantage plan and back into traditional Medicare.

But since traditional Medicare lacks several Medicare Advantage benefits, many will have to buy so-called “Medigap” policies to make up the difference. And who’s the nation’s largest marketer of Medigap plans? The AARP.

An 18-month congressional probe found that the AARP stands to make $55 million to $166 million in one year alone from seniors switching from Medicare Advantage to AARP Medigap plans. Over the next 10 years, it would earn more than $1 billion from new customers. Business is good if you can get the government to put your competitors out of business.

And AARP’s self serving slice of the pie is just the tip of an iceberg. To continue this very revealing Michael Tanner column:

The AARP isn’t the only big ObamaCare winner to come to light in the last few days. A hearing by the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations disclosed that labor unions and big businesses — including General Electric, Verizon, AT&T and IBM — have received nearly $1.9 billion in payments under the new health-care law to help offset health-insurance costs for early retirees.

The biggest single recipient: the United Auto Workers, which got nearly $207 million in taxpayer money. By the time the feds finish handing out funds to well-connected companies and unions, it’s expected to have cost taxpayers $5 billion.

The program doesn’t even require companies or unions to demonstrate any “financial need” for the subsidy. As a result, it enables companies to incentivize early retirement for older employees, saving the companies money and improving their balance sheets — with taxpayers footing the bill.

This is nothing new, of course. ObamaCare has benefited special interests and big businesses from the start. The major pharmaceutical firms got a requirement that all insurers must cover their products. That’s one reason why Big Pharma spent more than $150 million on ads in favor of the bill.

Other provider groups and beneficiary constituencies are pursuing a similar strategy. They’ve been lobbying a government panel that will determine the benefits that must be included in every insurance plan. At recent hearings, interests ranging from the in-vitro-fertilization industry to autism groups showed up to demand their share of the spoils.

Even large insurers played the game: They got a mandate requiring everyone to buy their product. Sure, they’ll have to adjust to some costly new regulations, and those added benefits will be expensive, but they can simply pass the costs on to consumers via higher premiums. After all, what can consumers do? If they decide not to buy insurance, the government will punish them.

Nor should we forget that politically connected firms and unions have regularly received waivers from ObamaCare’s worst provisions.

So one year in, ObamaCare’s big winners are becoming clear: Big Business, Big Labor and special-interest lobbies. The only losers are the American people.

America’s sure come the wrong a long way since the last of the true statesmen-in-government died out… A long time ago.

…I simply must share it, in case someone who visits Hard Astarboard hasn’t seen it.

An indignant President Obama complained last week, “I can’t spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead.” Fine. How about plastering a copy of his presidential oath of office there instead? The kowtowing commander-in-chief is in dire need of a daily reminder that his job is to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” — not international law or global diktats.

Case in point: Last week, Obama’s State Department handed in America’s first-ever report to the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights in conjunction with something called the “Universal Periodic Review.” In short, the 29-page document (pdf) is a self-aggrandizing report card touting the administration’s far-left domestic and foreign policy initiatives for the world’s approval. The report boasts of racial- and gender-bean-counting in the executive branch; Justice Department outreach to Muslim grievance groups opposed to post-9/11 security measures; teachers’ union payoffs in the federal stimulus law; continuing commitment to closing the Gitmo detention facility for enemy combatants; and the illusory lifesaving effects of Obamacare on minorities through “expanding community health centers” (which have yet to be built, but not that it matters in our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president’s age of post-achievement).

The report also includes a section on “values and immigration,” which essentially singles out Arizona’s immigration enforcement law as a human rights deficiency “that is being addressed in a court action.”

Yeah, this issue had mention here a few days ago, but some things bear repetition when they are downright offensive, so, truncating a bit…

No one should be surprised, of course, that the Department of Blame America First is prostrating itself before the likes of repressive U.N. Human Rights Council members Libya, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China. No one should be surprised that Obama’s globalist panderers couldn’t simply keep their mouths shut and refrain from trashing Americans with whom they disagree. In May, you’ll recall, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner preemptively trashed our country’s human rights record to Chinese government officials and humiliated Arizonans — and all Americans — who support states’ rights to protect their borders and enhance their security through strict immigration enforcement. An obsequious Posner called S.B. 1070 “a troubling trend in our society” in his bow-and-scrape conversations with the ChiComs.

The inclusion of Arizona in a politically correct catalogue of human rights and wrongs is more than “downright offensive,” as Brewer put it. It’s a national travesty. In the very same Obama administration document, the State Department praises the administration for its “robust protections for freedom of expression.” The report notes sanctimoniously: “As a general matter, the government does not punish or penalize those who peacefully express their views in the public sphere, even when those views are critical of the government. Indeed, dissent is a valuable and valued part of our politics.”

Yeah? Tell that to the Democratic members of Congress leading the punitive economic boycott and political demonization of Arizona. Or to Attorney General Eric Holder, who rushed to attack S.B. 1070 before he had even read it. Fresh off this U.N. mess, Holder’s Social Justice Department has launched yet another vendetta against Arizona. On Monday, DOJ filed suit against Phoenix-area community colleges because they imposed strict citizenship screening of potential employees.

As Obama throws America under the bus for the cause of open borders, the shady U.N. human rights police must be laughing their jackboots off.

The entire column is here.

November, 2012 is sure taking its sweet time getting here…