Lindsey Graham Advocates Limits on First Amendment

In response to the idiotic and pointless burning of the Koran by a Florida pastor and the deadly riots that followed in Afghanistan, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has proposed limiting the First Amendment. (this is a dangerous and unconstitutional slope Sen. Graham)

“I wish we could find a way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war,” Graham told CBS’ Bob Schieffer on Sunday.

Graham mentioned government censorship of the First Amendment during the Second World War. FDR signed Executive Order 8985 in December of 1941 and established the Office of Censorship. The order gave a legion of bureaucrats “absolute discretion” over the exercise of the First Amendment and the free speech of all Americans.(I have a news flash for people….executive orders CAN’T limit the 1st amendment…that is unconstitutional big time.)

In the years following FDR’s decree, the government attempted to squelch free speech a number of times for political reasons, most notably in regard to the Pentagon Papers. During Bush Senior’s invasion of Iraq in 1991, the Pentagon revisited wartime censorship and prevented journalists from independently reporting the news. Bush and Reagan tightly controlled the flow of information during the invasions of Panama and Grenada.

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s cavalier attitude regrading the First Amendment and its imagined subservience to the dictates of an undeclared war  is in vogue now that a Democrat president has attacked yet another faction of officially designated Muslim enemies.

Installed puppet Hamid Karzai – a former advisor for the transnational Unocal – has demanded our representatives draft a resolution condemning the free speech of Florida pastor Terry Jones, who unwisely burned the Koran in order to make a political statement.

The First Amendment was drafted specifically to protect political speech. The cherished idea of true sovereigns free to speak their minds, however, soon withered under attack – beginning with the Alien and Sedition Acts passed in 1798 by the Federalists – and has continued on and off until this day.

“Ten to 20 people have been killed,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “We’ll take a look at this of course. As to whether we need hearings or not, I don’t know.”

It is wholly predictable that the government will spend its time and our money – or the money they borrow – to condemn an individual who has managed to offend the medieval religious sensibilities of people who kill Christians and burn churches. Seven UN workers in the Afghan town of Mazar-e Sharif died Friday during riots. Mr. Jones may have outraged millions of people, but he did not kill anybody.

Congress has yet to condemn Muslims in Afghanistan who have burned the U.S. flag and torched an effigy of Obama. According to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, who filled in for Chris Matthews the other day, burning the Koran is far worse than burning the U.S. flag.

Of course, Muslims have all the right in the world to burn the U.S. flag and burn Obama in effigy – so long as they own the flag and the materials they used to patch together Obama’s likeness.

Terry Jones, according to no shortage of Congress critters, does not have this right, even though his country has a Constitution its Congress has sworn to uphold and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Info Wars

Be Patriotic- Pay More Taxes-Senators Considering New Gasoline Tax

Well as part of the Obama administration’s brilliant philosophy of making energy prices so expensive the average person will seek alternative sources, in addition to a VAT tax being considered, some Senators are considering a new gasoline tax to drive you away from fossil fuels to something “green” like a bicycle or a horse and buggy.  You have to ask yourself, just what are these people thinking? Add so many new taxes in the middle of the worse recession since the depression and the highest unemployment in 35 years I believe it is? Great job guys ……..you are holding back the recovery by passing Obamacare, later maybe “Cap & Trade” along with your new taxes. Great Job!!!

Estimates put it in the range of 15 cents a gallon. Some oil companies are on board with the plan because it would cost them far less than other proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Senators consider gasoline tax as part of climate bill

Leading voices in the Senate are considering a new tax on gasoline as part of an effort to win Republican and oil industry support for the energy and climate bill now idling in Congress.

The tax, which according to early estimates would be in the range of 15 cents a gallon, was conceived with the input of several oil companies, including Shell, BP and ConocoPhillips, and is being championed by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

It is shaping up as a critical but controversial piece in the efforts by Lindsay Graham, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to write a climate bill that moderate Republicans could support. Along those lines, the bill will also include an expansion of offshore oil drilling (which Obama already did, maybe in anticipation of this Climate bill.) and major new incentives for nuclear power plant construction. (You have to ask yourself, what does Lindsay Graham think he’s doing…supporting a new gasoline tax and amnesty for illegals? Is he wanting to lose his job come November along with many of the Democrats? It certainly looks that way to me.)

Motorists on the Glendale Freeway head toward the downtown Los Angeles skyline. The gas tax proposal is shaping up as a critical but controversial piece in efforts by GOP and Democratic senators to write a federal climate bill that moderate Republicans could support. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times / February 10, 2010) Environmental groups have long advocated gasoline taxes to reduce fossil fuel consumption; the oil industry has spent heavily in recent years to fight taxes, which it says would harm consumers. In this case, though, several oil companies like the tax because it figures to cost them far less than other proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including provisions in the climate bill the House passed last year. The Senate bill’s sponsors appear to want the revenue raised from the tax to fund a variety of programs that would lower industrial emissions, including helping manufacturers reduce energy use or boosting wind and solar power installations by electric utilities. But the tax has encountered stiff behind-the-scenes resistance from some Democrats, who fear the political specter of increasing gasoline prices as the national average cost of gasoline is expected to crest $3 a gallon this summer. And no other Republicans have publicly announced support for the framework legislation that Graham and the others are circulating on Capitol Hill. Attracting significant Republican support for a bill featuring a tax increase would run counter to historical political trends and to the anti-tax outrage percolating among the “tea party” activists in the GOP base. Sources say the resistance extends to some Obama administration officials. In a statement, White House spokesman Ben Labolt said only that President Obama was “encouraged by the work of Sens. Kerry, Lieberman and Graham to move forward bipartisan, comprehensive energy and climate legislation” and that “we look forward to reviewing the details of the legislation when they are finalized.” Some industry analysts and environmentalists question how much a tax would do to reduce emissions from gasoline, particularly if the extra cost to motorists is measured in cents, not dollars. Proponents call the tax approach under consideration a “linked fee,” because it links the extra cost for gasoline to the average cost of greenhouse gas emission permits created through a so-called cap-and-trade system for electric utilities. That system would set a declining limit on emissions from power plants and force utilities to buy permits, on a trading market, to emit heat-trapping gases. Under the linked-fee proposal, gasoline taxes would rise in tandem with the prices of industrial emission permits, or fall if the price of permits declines. As negotiations build toward a scheduled unveiling of the bill next week, it’s still unclear whether major oil companies and their trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, will explicitly endorse the legislation or at least agree not to fund an ad campaign opposing it. Proponents of a climate bill say such backing would be a major coup. “It’s not clear that a linked fee creates a path to 60 votes” to overcome Senate procedural hurdles, said Scott Segal, a lobbyist for the Bracewell & Giuliani law firm in Washington who represents utilities and refiners on climate policy. If oil companies do back the bill, climate activists will find themselves joining forces with an industry they’ve long demonized. The tax could also put senators who vote for the bill at the mercy of election attacks if gas prices spike before November — even though the tax would probably not kick in for several years. LATimes.com

10 Red States Now Questioning Nelson Deal

Well as they say, “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings” and boy is that appearing to be true when it comes to health care. States are upset over the “sweetheart deals” made for some states to win votes. Congressman Stupak is being told to “be quite” by the White House on the abortion amendment to healthcare until they can get it worked out. So when these two bills (House  version & Senate version) go to committee to reconcile them both, there may be some big problems.

At least 10 states are now raising questions about the legality of the deal that Senator Ben Nelson, a Democrat, cut for his home state of Nebraska during the health care negotiations.

Under the agreement, which is on the verge of being approved Thursday by the Senate, Nebraska is permanently exempt from paying for its expansion of Medicaid, shoving that cost onto taxpayers in every other state.

Mr. Nelson was able to exercise such leverage because in exchange, he was providing the magical 60th vote that Democrats needed to advance their health care bill.

The deal has enraged other Senators, especially those from red states, whose Republican Senators didn’t bring home any pork at all because they were not part of the negotiations with Democratic leaders. Several other Democratic Senators did get concessions for their states, but no deal has hit the nerve struck by Mr. Nelson’s.

Attorneys general in at least 10 states held a conference call late Tuesday to consider how they might challenge the deal, which they call federally subsidized vote-buying.

Some say it is certainly unfair and may be unconstitutional.

Troy King, the attorney general in Alabama, told MSNBC on Wednesday that the Constitution was not written to allow “the subsidization of a backroom deal.”

The Constitution, he said, was written to protect citizens from arbitrary and capricious decisions by Congress, not “for Congress to force Alabama to subsidize vote-buying.”

Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist, defended the Nebraska deal on MSNBC. He said that brokering legislation was a long American tradition and said there was nothing unconstitutional about it. In fact, he said that Mr. King of Alabama had been “incoherent” in trying to back up his assertion that it was unconstitutional.

Could the growing backlash threaten passage of the health care bill? Mr. Nelson has said that he would vote for the bill only if nothing in it were changed. That makes it seem unlikely that Democratic leaders would try to undo the bill before the Thursday vote because doing so could threaten final passage.

But if anger builds — and especially if it spreads to Democratic senators — it may be harder for the Senate and House to keep the Nebraska deal intact when they meld their two bills in January.

prescriptions.blog.NYTimes.com

Obamacare Declared DOA in Senate

Well let’s hope this article is true, because regardless of what a lot of people think we don’t need a government run healthcare system in the US.

ObamaCare legislation in trouble

Not so fast.

President Obama’s victory dance yesterday for the House-passed health-care bill came as Senate foes — mainly Republicans with one key Democrat moderate — pronounced the measure mortally wounded, if not outright DOA.

Speaking from the Rose Garden after the squeaker 220-215 Saturday-night vote, Obama urged senators to be like runners on a relay team and “take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people.”

Instead, he met with immediate resistance.

If a government plan is part of the deal, “as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent whose vote Democrats need to overcome a GOP filibusters, told “Fox News Sunday.”

Lieberman said he was concerned about new government spending the health-care legislation would entail, saying deficits have gotten gargantuan.

“I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren,” he said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” declared, “The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate.” ( Graham went on to say….“The public option will destroy private health care. Nobody in this country in the Insurance business can compete with the government sponsored plan where the government writes the benefits and the politicians never raise the premiums. It  will be a death blow to private choice and all of these bills depend on reducing Medicare by $500 billion over the next 10 years.  Seniors are not going to like that, it’s unnecessary.  I just feel like the construct coming out of the House and what exists in the Senate is not going to pass and I hope and pray it doesn’t because it would be a disaster for the economy and health care.”)

“It was bill written by liberals for liberals, and people like Joe Lieberman are not going to get anywhere near the House bill . . . It is a nonstarter in the Senate.”

He said he firmly believes “the public option will destroy private health care.”

The House-backed bill would expand coverage to nearly all Americans and bar insurance practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.

But in the Senate, moderate Dems have balked at Majority Leader Harry Reid‘s plan for a public option, an insurance plan run by the government rather than private companies.

Reid (D-Nev.) has yet to schedule floor debate and hinted last week that senators may not be able to finish health care this year.

Democrats have no margin for error: They control exactly 60 seats in the 100-member Senate.

The overhaul would lead to the biggest changes in the $2.5 trillion health-care system — which accounts for one-sixth of the US economy — since the 1965 creation of the Medicare government health-insurance program for the elderly.

The House vote was a vital victory for Obama, who staked much of his political capital on the health-care battle.

A loss in the House could have ended the fight, impaired the rest of his legislative agenda and left Democrats vulnerable to big losses in next year’s congressional elections.

NYPost.com