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POPSWHERE in the Constitution does it say: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) said there is “no place in the Constitution” that grants Congress the authority to require that Americans purchase health insurance, as both the Senate and House health care bills do. She added that the health care bill recently passed by the Senate is a “trampling of individual rights.” Senator Hutchinson said: “There is no place in the Constitution that allows this trampling of individual rights, and I am going to make a point of order that it tramples on the 10th Amendment as well, the rights of states to regulate insurance. And, in my state, we have a self-insurance plan for state employees and teachers, and the federal government now has the right to intrude on that – and it’s not in the Constitution either.”
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POPSHealth Care Bill Could Face String of Legal Challenges Third, auto insurance regulation occurs at the state level. When the Congressional Budget Office considered the idea of a health insurance mandate back in 1994 under the Clinton administration, it concluded that the mandate would be "an unprecedented form of federal action." The only congressional mandate close to that was the draft, the CBO concluded. Other legal objections are emerging in the wake of a concession that Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., won for his state as a condition for his support of the health care bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed to provide for full and permanent federal aid for Nebraska's expanded Medicaid population. It was only one of a slew of hand-crafted sweetheart deals for those senators who agreed to support the bill. Graham said his state could file an equal rights suit under the Constitution. The Constitution calls for "equal protection" of all citizens.
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POPSObama Executive Order Cedes US Sovereignty, Citizen Rights to Interpol
In 1972 the sitting Interpol President was Paul Dickopf, former Nazi SS officer (SS #337259). Photo of Dickopf on bottom of previous page. Nudge, nudge folks… This seems a minor change but let us break it out for you as we see it. Let’s look at the section from Executive Order 12425. Here’s the text of 2(c), which this Executive Order now has applying to Interpol: (c) Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable. This now says that Interpol is no longer subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Their premises or staff can no longer be searched either. Their files are not subject to legal subpoena or discovery. Our government could just hand documents and files over to Interpol and Americans would no longer have access to them. Interpol can legally keep
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POPSSeniors are America's new Jews FTA: "Seniors now find themselves as the official go-to group for a president intent on taking both life and property and giving to those who are younger, more diverse, to illegal immigrants, and Democratic Party allies. Consequently, the Obama-led Democrats, with the help of intellectual and media elites, have declared open season on grandma and grandpa, with Newsweek Evan going so far as to feature a cover detailing "The Case for Killing Granny." My son & I were discussing this after I had put my Mother to bed. The best way to provide for Congress' Health Care Bill is to limit the number of users. The best way to "help the Planet" is to decrease the population. The best was to "save Social Security" is to eliminate the number of people who need it. I'm not a journalist, an elitist, a Marxist, a numbers-cruncher but even I can see what they are doing. Those who no longer are major contributers to society have no rights in Obama's society.
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POPSObamaCare Sparking 10th Amendment Action in Seven States Graham has been all over cable news today visibly angry about the vote-buying by Reid that secured the votes of Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as well as possibly other senators as yet unknown. DeMint has also been active, especially on the issue of the Reid amendment's provision seeking to bar future congresses from changing even a single word of Section 3403 on the Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB). The IMAB will become the federal health care ground zero under Obamacare if it becomes law. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a link to DeMint's floor speech on the issue and additional information, analyses, and links. Nelson's deal with Reid has attracted the most attention because it exempts Nebraska from paying its share of Medicaid expenses in perpetuity. Medicaid expenditures are among the most expensive federal mandates on state governments, and the Obamacare bill will significantly increase costs
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POPSWe Can’t Sit Back and Allow the Loss of Our Freedoms By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano The privacy of your communications and medical decision making with your physician will be gone. More of your hard earned dollars will be at the disposal of federal bureaucrats. It was not supposed to be this way. We elect the government. It works for us. How did it get so removed, so unbridled, so arrogant that it can tell us how to live our personal lives? Evil rarely comes upon us all at once, and liberty is rarely lost in one stroke. It happens gradually, over the years and decades and even centuries. A little stretch here, a cave in there, powers are slowly taken from the states and the people and before you know it, we have one big monster government that recognizes no restraint on its ability to tell us how to live. It claims the power to regulate any activity, tax any behavior, and demand conformity to any standard it chooses. The Founders did not give us a government like the one we have today. The government they gave us was strictly limited in its scope,
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POPSHealth Care Bill Could Face String of Legal Challenges “I don’t believe Congress has the legal or moral authority to force this mandate on its citizens,” Ensign said in a statement, raising what’s known as a “constitutional point of order.” Such procedural challenges are rare and typically lead to a vote. The non-profit Fund for Personal Liberty, as well as a Virginia-based group called the 10th Amendment Foundation, already have threatened to file suit in federal court over this issue if the health care bill passes. The Constitution allows Congress to tax, borrow, spend, declare war, raise an army and regulate commerce, among other things. Proponents of the insurance mandate point to the Commerce Clause in arguing that Congress is within its rights to require health insurance and dismiss such potential legal challenges. But foes say the across-the-board requirement is too broad.
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POPSTop 25 Censored Stories for 2009/10 "Project censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcast outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism." — Walter Cronkite
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POPSLatin America Ends Year With Major Advancements In Gay Rights
With the debacle in the Middle East brought about by the previous administration, serious questions are emerging that the U.S. now lacks the ability to project power on the international stage. Now, with Mexico City's decision on Monday to approve gay marriage, it appears that local governments in two countries steeped in conservative, Catholic tradition - and allegedly not as progressive as the United States - have taken a far more expansive view of human rights and equality than the U.S. If the U.S. cannot project military power, and we can't seem to get a grip on human rights and equality in a way that two Latin American cities have done, what can we do in this country anymore? I am ending the year on a pessimistic note, but it seems to me that the only thing we are good at anymore is consuming anything and everything we're told to, polluting the environment and yet denying the very existence of global warming, cheating the most vulnerable among us, and
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POPSVote at the General Assembly; Resolution Condemning “Defamation of Religion" of a radical Islamist ideology.” The text “recognizes that, in the context of the fight against terrorism, defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general become aggravating factors that contribute to the denial of fundamental rights and freedoms of members of target groups,” and expresses “deep concern” that “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.” “Today’s resolution comes at the same time as an Algerian-chaired UN committee in Geneva is seeking to amend the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, by adopting a protocol that would conflate the existing post-war prohibitions on racism with the Islamist agenda of silencing religious dissent,” said Neuer. “A full measure of the perils of today’s resolution must account not only for intimidation of Western writers and cartoonists, but the growing international legitimization of medieval anti-blasphemy laws"in countries like Pakistan, Egypt
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POPSPlaying A Character Palin and those conservative women who aspire to be like her love living in ignorance. They have been eating, sleeping, and working in pollution so long that they not only believe that is just the way the air is, but they advocate the air is not polluted and actually good for you. They buy into that twisted kind of logic because their survival and identity depends upon it. The stress of having to pretend to be innately superior at all times and buy into this belief system is more than the human organism can tolerate so they become angry, hateful, intolerant wanna be bullies who aspire to have a Sarah Palin book under their Christmas tree. To challenge them or doubt them is akin to heresy. Too bad they are buying into the myth that states there is only one reality because it limits the search in seeking any understanding for other human beings. Sad and pathetic.
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POPSMaking People Disappear: Our Tax Dollars at Work
"In addition to publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is holding prisoners in 186 unlisted, unmarked locations, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces." Sounds kind of totalitarian, doesn't it? Alternet has had a BOOM week in great articles. Check it out! More from the article below: Alison Parker, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, wrote a December comprehensive report on ICE transit policies, "Locked Up Far Away." ...... violates the UN's Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a signatory. She explained that the government must provide "an impartial authority to review the lawfulness of custody. Part and parcel is the ability of somebody to find the person and to make their presence known to a court." The challenge of being unable to find people in detention centers, documented in the Human Rights Watch report, is worsened when one does not even know where to look.....ICE has created a network of secret jails."
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POPSfort worth construction accident lawyers The Law Offices of John David Hart is group of experienced and dedicated professionals - including John Hart, paralegals and support staff - all working hard to protect the rights of individuals who’ve suffered a personal injury through the negligence of others.
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POPS 'O Brother Jihadi, Where Art Thou?' Obama Will Live to Regret Sending Gitmo Detainees to Illinois by Debra Burlingame Who would have believed after 9/11 that our own president, the commander-in-chief who recently announced that he was sending another 30,000 troops to risk their lives in Aghanistan, would order that the enemy combatants captured on the battlefield must be brought into the United States. We will live to regret this. Barack Obama continues to cast the closing of Guantanamo and the importation of Al Qaeda terrorists into the American heartland as a moral victory. But this is nothing more than moral vanity and rank political theater aimed at satisfying his liberal soulmates at the ACLU and Human Rights First. In truth, the security nightmare he is about to visit on this country will only be surpassed by the legal morass which will accompany the transfer of foreign terrorists to American soil.
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POPSSeveral States Ease Restrictions on Gun Laws I say it has nothing to do with the NRA. Some Americans do not have confidence in the American system of Justice, the efforts of local law-enforcement (they're overwhelmed), or the ability to maintain personal security. It's not just rural areas; it's regular folks who are taking responsibility for their own family's protection because the criminal element has become too large for law enforcement to handle. We receive, almost weekly, reports of criminal activity in our own neighborhood. Thankfully, the local police send out the reports, but we have to be aware of them and safeguard of property and children.
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POPSblistering indictment leveled against obama over his handling of bush-era war crimes yep- no accountability here- seems like- just set the tolerance level a whole lot lower- so we can cover up- hide and presumably get away with all the b.s. we are planning to do and are doing now- charging the past with accountability- opens a window into what the administration is working on now- i imagine.........and if they ok bush's war crimes- well we must really be up to no good.....and no! "i don't feel safer from the threat of terrorism- by means of torture-etc.......not anymore now than i did during the "daze" of bush"
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POPS"Jus Ad Bellum" - Seven Myths That Sustain War Jus Ad Bellum - the argument of a “just war” - is among the most specious and dangerous rationalizations that can be made to justify actions since it also authorizes any nation or group to use war to pursue and justify its actions.
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POPSUganda Debates Proposal "David Bahati, the legislator sponsoring the bill, said he was encouraging “constructive criticism” to improve the law but insisted strict measures were necessary to stop homosexuals from “recruiting” schoolchildren. I feel that the bill is good and necessary, but I don’t think gays should be killed. They should be imprisoned for about a year and warned never to do it again. Homophobia is rife even in more tolerant African countries." Wow, it's encouraging that some think gays should not be killed, eh? Ignorance, ignorance, ignorance. "Frank Mugisha, a gay Ugandan human rights activist, said the bill was so poorly worded that someone could be imprisoned for giving a hug. “This bill is promoting hatred,” he said. “We’re turning Uganda into a police state. It will drive people to suicide.”
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POPSNeeded: Workplace Democracy "Democracy gives us the power to create a society that matches our needs. Democracy in the workplace allows us to negotiate the conditions of our work. You may think that we have all of these rights now. We don't. US workers have almost no right to organize. Every 23 minutes in the United States, a worker is either fired or harassed for trying to unionize. In 1874 unemployed workers were demonstrating in New York City's Tompkins Square Park. Riot police moved in and began beating men, women, and children with billy clubs, leaving hundreds of casualties in their wake. The police commissioner said: "It was the most glorious sight I ever saw."
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POPSBarbara Ehrenreich: The uproar over the new breast cancer screening guidelines
More: So welcome to the Women’s Movement 2.0: Instead of the proud female symbol -- a circle on top of a cross -- we have a droopy ribbon. Instead of embracing the full spectrum of human colors -- black, brown, red, yellow, and white -- we stick to princess pink. While we used to march in protest against sexist laws and practices, now we race or walk “for the cure.” And while we once sought full “consciousness” of all that oppresses us, now we’re content to achieve “awareness,” which has come to mean one thing – dutifully baring our breasts for the annual mammogram. …the numbers are increasingly insistent: Routine mammographic screening of women under 50 does not reduce breast cancer mortality in that group, nor do older women necessarily need an annual mammogram. In fact, the whole dogma about “early detection” is shaky… the idea has been to catch cancers early, when they’re still small, but some tiny cancers are viciously aggressive, and some large ones aren’t going anywhere
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POPSAnimal Rights Lacking in the U.S. More from the article below: "They call for heightened involvement by local police who regard themselves as swamped with "people problems," and fail to take animal abuse reports seriously. Similarly, it is difficult to find a local District Attorney who will prosecute an offender of an animal rights law. As a result, "cases are often resolved with counseling, meager restitution, or community service, instead of felony prosecution," the law professors write. The response of public officials, they note, lags behind that of public concern. "Societal attitudes toward the favorable treatment of animals, particularly toward the family pet, have changed." They point to a recent survey that showed 75 percent of pet owners "consider their pets to be valued family members." The law professors note that when the European Economic Community signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957 there no provisions on animal welfare. But the Treaty of Amsterdam revision 40 years later included an animal welfare p
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POPSClimate Change: Small islands Fear Going the Way of Atlantis Drought, rising sea levels, flooding, and increased food insecurity are predicted to negatively affect hundreds of millions of people across the globe ... Indigenous peoples, intimately inter-connected with their environment, are already sensing environmental changes. "Even if indigenous peoples don't completely understand the science, they understand perfectly that modern civilisation is living out of balance with nature, the consequences of which we are now reaping, The precarious situation of the Amazon rainforest can be viewed as a bell-weather for the survival of Earth's ecosystem as a whole. Industrial-scale human activities, leading to deforestation, are conspiring with climate change symptoms like drought to point the Amazon toward the nightmare "die-back" scenario.
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POPSSaudi Columnist: Obama Will Be President of the 'United Collapse of America' Well...there ya' go. While I would not agree that Abbas is an ally of the US I can understand why he would consider his efforts for the Palestinian cause null & void. FTA: "Its political collapse in its war on terror, together with its economic collapse, have made the entire world sink into a political and economic quagmire." There. That's how the rest of the world perceives us and perception is reality. Hello!? Can we 'change' this and is there any 'hope'? This Administration has brought about our complete collapse in a matter of months!!! Those who deny it are willfully blind or partners.
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POPSPalestine - Israel What every American needs to know about Israel/Palestine. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/maps.html SHOULD NOT BE MISSING: Promises - DVD) Academy award nominee - best documentary Emmy award winner - best documentary Emmy award winner - best background analysis Talking Peace (book) by Jimmy Carter (the thirty-nine president of the United States). THE FEARLESS IDEALISM AND FRIENDLY PRAGMATISM THAT CHARACTERIZE THE AUTHOR'S PUBLIC PERSONA SHINE THOUGH THE PAGES OF THE BOOK. READERS WILL ALSO THRILL TO THE POWER IMPLIED IN HIS MOST INTIMATE CHALLENGE THAT WHOEVER RECOGNIZES HUMANITY'S COMMON NEEDS, COMMON RIGHTS, AND COMMON DIGNITY CAN - REGARDLESS OF AGE, GENDER, CREED, OR RACE - FURTHER THE QUEST FOR PEACE FOR ALL OF US, JUST BY THE CHOICES MADE IN DAILY LIFE.
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