When I read this one, I was just a tad flabbergasted. Just a tad, mind you, but still…

From the Investigative Project On Terrorism

Special Travel Benefit for Saudis a “Slap in the Face”

Saudi Arabia, the nation which produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks, is about to become one of a handful of countries whose travelers can bypass normal passport controls at major U.S. airports. Sources tell the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) that this will mark the first time that the Saudi government will have a direct role in vetting who is eligible for getting fast-tracked for entry into the United States.

An agreement to accept Saudi Arabian applicants into the Global Entry trusted traveler program drew little notice when it was announced in January. Now, some officials question why the country merits such a benefit – which is similar to a theme park “fast pass” to avoid long lines – when other allies like Germany and France are not yet included. A program for Israeli travelers was reached last May but has not been implemented.

An agreement to accept Saudi Arabian applicants into the Global Entry trusted traveler program drew little notice when it was announced in January. Now, some officials question why the country merits such a benefit – which is similar to a theme park “fast pass” to avoid long lines – when other allies like Germany and France are not yet included. A program for Israeli travelers was reached last May but has not been implemented.

Travelers approved for the program can skip the normal Customs and Border Protection (CBP) lines starting next year and enter the country after providing their passports and fingerprints at a kiosk. Only Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands currently enjoy the benefit, although pilot programs could expand it to a handful of others.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the agreement in January after meeting with Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. It “marks another major step forward in our partnership,” Napolitano said at the time. “By enhancing collaboration with the Government of Saudi Arabia, we reaffirm our commitment to more effectively secure our two countries against evolving threats while facilitating legitimate trade and travel.”

Maybe we should also give our “partners” from Saudi Arabia an exemption to carry small arms and, say, a rationed quantity of personal use explosives aboard U.S. based commercial aircraft. That would mark still another step forward in our partnership.

From Political Outcast…

The Pocono Mountain School District believes elementary school students should have their First Amendment rights greatly limited.
In December 2010, a fifth grade girl at Barrett Elementary Center in Cresco, Pennsylvania went to school carrying flyers for a Christmas party at her church. Although other students have passed out flyers and invitations to other out-of-school events like scouting and various clubs, school officials stopped the girl from handing out her flyers because it contained elements of religious faith. The Pocono Mountain School District stood behind the school’s decision, claiming they have a policy that forbids anything being handed out that mentions religious faith in any fashion.

This is one of many methods used by the liberal run school system, wherever they can get away with it, to stifle the belief in God because this belief might one day stand between an individual and the doctrine of the state (the federal government), which as we know the political left wishes to see become our rulers, a collective monarchy of Bloombergian authority.

However, and thank the Lord, that these Americans support our constitutional rights….

In March of 2011, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit against Pocono Mountain School District on behalf of the student, claiming that her First Amendment rights of free speech had been violated. The school district not only cited their policies but argued before the court that elementary students are young enough to have their First Amendment rights greatly limited.

A lower court heard the case and ruled that the school had indeed violated the student’s First Amendment rights. The school district appealed the case to the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals who just issued a ruling that backs up the lower court’s decision that the school district did in fact violate the student’s First Amendment rights. The Appeal Court also ruled that the two policies the school used as their defense were unconstitutional when applied in this form of student expression.

Justice was served in both courts ruling that a grade schooler does indeed have First Amendment rights.

It’s all here.

From Michael Ledeen at PJ Media:

The War Intensifies. We Babble About Peace and Retreat.

Obama lectures about peace, but the war intensifies. North Korea has cut the hotline with the south, after threatening war, and warns of imminent attack. The Saudis have once again warned Iran to stay away from Abu Musa island. What if they don’t? Meanwhile, a leading cleric warns of domestic unrest in the kingdom (h/t Drudge), where the Iranians have long incited the Shi’a minority to confront the Wahabbi royal family. Small and not-so-small armies are marching over and around Syria. It is said that we are training the Free Syrian Army at a base in Jordan. Cyberattacks against our corporations and government agencies are so common they barely warrant news coverage. Bombs and suicide attacks are daily events in Iraq and Afghanistan. A major Iranian port explodes. The Iranians are shipping Chinese weapons to Shi’a insurgents in Yemen.

Obama, leading with his behind, swears he’s not bluffing, but his actions are those of a man digging deeper into his bomb shelter…adding missile defense on the West Coast, pondering another site on the East Coast. Of the United States. And he locks out American tourists from the White House.

The entire piece is here.

This must be Obama’s rendition of protecting America from enemies, foreign and…

This video from Conservative Videos speaks for itself, and boy, does it ever!

Here’s a politician who is not afraid to espouse conservative values, who has a quiet yet in-your-face manner when addressing Obama Administration leftists and who’s sounding more and more like a viable 2016 presidential candidate. We really must watch him closely.

This one’s just too much, and all to return campaign favors by spending the taxpayers’ money for something we don’t even need in order to reward some people who helped him monetarily on his campaign.

From J.P. Attitude:

Last week the U.S. government received its first shipment of a new medicine for treating smallpox. That’s right, smallpox. The new drug is called Arestvyr and this shipment is the beginning of a $463 million order for two million doses of the stuff.

If you’re confused by this news, it’s because you thought smallpox was cured forty years ago. Well, it was. Smallpox is the only human disease ever totally defeated. It was officially certified as eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1979… which begs the question: why is the government spending so much money on a disease that no longer exists?

The answer you’ll get from the Obama administration is they’re protecting us from enemies who might re-create the smallpox virus, weaponize it, and spray it on New York. Or crop dust the Super Bowl. Or some other nightmarish notion. That’s the official answer. The real answer is more about political corruption and the pharmaceutical industry.

So, to the heart of the matter…

The company that makes Arestvyr is SIGA Technologies, a company whose controlling stockholder happens to be Ronald Perelman, a longtime supporter of the Democrat Party and Barack Obama. In addition to normal political donations, he gave the president a big chunk of money to spend on inauguration parties. He probably considers the money an investment and don’t worry, he’s getting a good return: the government is paying SIGA about $255 per dose for a drug that costs very little to make.

If that’s not suspicious enough, another member of the SIGA board of directors is Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, maybe the biggest Obama supporter of all.

This drug is apparently dangerous, certainly not worth the risk of administering and definitely not something that yours and my tax money should be paying for, just to stroke financiers of B. Hussein Obama’s campaign.

The entire piece is well worth the read, and is here.

Several days ago, while taking care of a few errands in Manhattan (with the Wolf away, I seem to be spending ‘way too much time on that overcrowded, overpriced, rude people filled island), I somehow got into a conversation with one of those dizzy, New York Times/ CNN/ MSNBC/ Obama/ whatever brainwashed young women one sees in the millions on the streets of Almost Anytown, USA.

I forget exactly how we got into it, I believe it was my mentioning the unconstitutionality of so many things our fearless leaders in Washington have been up toof late, but she made what I thought is one of the most ignorant remarks one hears today:

“The Constitution was written in and for a time where realities were different than they are today.”

“No,” I said, “it was not, and no, today’s realities where the Constitution is concerned were no different than they were when it was written.

The Constitution has nothing to do with and is not affected by technological advancement, increased population/ massive immigration nor any other tangibles… It deals with human nature, which will never change. Regardless of physical changes, scientific breakthroughs, etc, mankind will be mankind and the Constitution, having to deal with governence and the rights of Americans, will always have the same place it always has in the order of all things American.”

I think that pretty well summed that up.

Ann Coulter’s got another one of her many winners up, titled TROUBLE IN THE NANNY STATE, that exposes, as usual, the idiocy and “any values but American ones” philosophy of liberals.

Like the proverbial monkey typing for infinity and getting Shakespeare, Mayor Bloomberg’s obsession with reforming New Yorkers’ health has finally produced a brilliant ad campaign.

Posters are popping up in subway stations and bus stops giving statistics about teen pregnancy that show cute little kids saying things like, “Honestly, Mom … chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?” and “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.”

(Based on a recent CBS report, the kid could add, “Then again, I’m in the New York City public school system, so even if I graduate I won’t be able to read.”)

It’s one thing to stigmatize “Big Gulp” drinkers, but liberals are hopping mad at this attempt to stigmatize teen pregnancy, 90 percent of which is unwed. To put it another way, if you’re a New York teen with a distended belly these days, it had better be because you’re pregnant.

Planned Parenthood’s Haydee Morales complained that the ads are creating “stigma” and “negative public opinions about teen pregnancy.” (I’m pretty sure that’s the basic idea.)

Instead, Morales suggested “helping teens access health care, birth control and high-quality sexual and reproductive health education.” Like the kind they got before becoming pregnant, you mean? Are you new here, Haydee?

Snip!

Unwed mothers have been the perennial excuse for big government, going back to Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who plotted in the 1960s to create broken families, welfare dependency and urban riots to pave the way for socialist revolution.

That’s why single mothers are revered victims — victims in need of an ever-expanding social safety net, staffed with well-pensioned government workers. As described in that great book, “Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America,” liberals concoct fake victims in order to victimize the rest of us.

The only thing single mothers are “victims” of is their own choice to have sex with men they’re not married to. Liberals seem to believe that drinking soda is voluntary, but getting pregnant is more like catching the flu.

It would be hard to make the case that fast food, plastic bags and cigarettes do more damage than single motherhood.

Controlling for socioeconomic status, race and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single mother.

At least 70 percent of juvenile murderers, pregnant teenagers, high school dropouts, teen suicides, runaways and juvenile delinquents were raised by single mothers.

A study back in 1990 by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that, absent single motherhood, there would be no difference in black and white crime rates.

So liberals don’t try to make that case. They just say they’re against “shaming” and then go back to shaming gun owners, non-recyclers, smokers and “Big Gulp” aficionados — while subsidizing illegitimacy.

The column is here.

“Who,” many will ask, “was Peter Banks?”

He was an exceptional guitarist who was featured as a member of YES, one of Seth’s 2 or 3 favorite rock bands, {one he introduced to Wolf and I years ago and whose music we came to love as well}, when the band first recorded in 1968 (they are still together today, though they’ve had a number of member changes over the years, and boy, are they ever aging with the rest of us!)

With YES….

After leaving YES, he went on to record with a several other groups, such as FLASH…

…Empire and a few other, lesser known bands as well as a few solo recordings.

Rest in peace, Peter.

The woman singing in the tribute video below is Annie Haslam, the great vocalist who fronted Renaissance.

This one from The Conservative Daily News, speakum big truth…

Obama: Law Breaker-In-Chief

“I, [President's Name] do solemnly swear, that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.”

That is the oath of office that all Presidents take when they are sworn in as President of The United States. However, it seems that Obama takes that oath with a grain of salt; I have heard Obama say “We are a nation of laws,” yet he seems to pick and choose what laws he will enforce. How can our Commander In Chief pick what laws to enforce and what laws he will ignore, what kind of message does that send?

Once again, he proves that he is not a President of all the people, but he only cares about the people that are behind his Liberal agenda. A President should uphold all the laws of the land, whether he agrees with them or not, if any of us would pick and choose what laws to follow, we would without a doubt be thrown into jail. How can we as a people, trust our own President to do the right thing, when he ignores the very laws he is sworn to uphold.

We have immigration laws in this country, which the President does not seem to care about. Our Southern boarders are being overrun with illegal aliens, but our President seems to favor them more than the citizens that live in those areas. He ties the hands of law enforcement and when Governors try to pass laws to protect their citizens, he takes them to court. He passes judgment on which illegal should go to jail and which one should go free, when they all broke the law by coming here illegally.

We have the Defense Of Marriage Act in this country, yet he comes right out and tells the Justice Department not to enforce it. The Presidents feelings about that law should not matter, he has sworn to uphold it, yet he does not. Nowhere in the Constitution or the Bill Of Rights does it say that marriage is a right. Yet when the people of California voted against same sex marriage, he sends briefs to the Supreme Court telling them they should overturn what the people have voted for, I guess he now chooses what rights are and the voice of the people be damned.

Read the entire piece here, with a great big Amen!

From The Hill:

Secretary of State John Kerry had hoped to offer considerably more aid to Egypt than the $250 million he announced during his trip to Cairo but was blocked by Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said.

“This is not the aid package that the administration wanted to announce,” Royce told The Hill. The administration wanted to release a “larger sum,” but bowed to the wishes of Royce’s committee as well as congressional appropriators, he said.
Royce wouldn’t say how much Kerry had hoped to announce, but the State Department has been pressing Congress to greenlight $450 million in direct aid since last fall.

“Our approach is not the full-throttle administration approach of delivering all the aid that they wanted to deliver, but rather a measured approach of tying tranches to results as it pertains to the peace treaty with Israel, to cooperation with respect to smuggling [into Gaza] and with respect to economic reforms to guarantee civil rights and the rule of law within Egypt,” he said. “That’s the pressure that we’re applying.”

Of course the Obama Administration wanted to give the farm to the anti-Israel, anti-U.S. (as we’ll have confirmed for us once the new Islamofascist-run Egyptian government has all they can get from us and then shows its true colors, just like the rest of Obama’s “Arab Spring” friends) Muslim Brotherhood. Luckily, some right thinkers in Congress are doing their job and preventing the “enemy of the state” at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from going whole hog.

The forme chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), and the chairwoman of the appropriations subpanel on foreign aid, Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), placed a hold on the money out of concern over the Muslim Brotherhood government’s democratic credentials and pro-U.S. stance. A Granger staffer said the chairwoman has been in continuous contact with the State Department over the funds and acquiesced to lifting her hold on the $190 million slice that Kerry announced.

…democratic credentials and pro-U.S. stance!???

Yeah, sure, of course…

Read the entire piece here.