by Representative Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

During the week I caught two Capitol press corps reporters standing on the sidewalk east of the Capitol comparing notes and writing like crazy in their little notebooks. I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to stop and visit with them. I told them that they reminded me of what a former State Senator, Dane Watkins, had said about these types of situations. “All we know is what we tell each other,” was how he put it.

For those of you who have followed the Legislature over a period of time, you would probably say that this is about the time of the session when things start to get a little interesting. Currently we are between the stages where the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee is setting budgets and when we start to see them for action on the floor of the House. So far, all we have seen are the corrections to the current year’s budget that we set last year. This is a normal activity around here because we find adjustments are needed because things have changed since the budget was set.

Second Amendment legislation is progressing in the House. Two of the measures passed the House this past week, one of which was the bill that provides for an enhanced concealed carry permit. It would make our permits recognized in several other states that don’t currently do so. Those who hold existing permits will continue on as they now are. Two other Second Amendment bills cleared the State Affairs Committee and were sent to the full House. One of those bills generated public comment of a very emotional nature. One person who testified crossed over the line and it was necessary that I use the gavel to reinforce our efforts to deal with these emotional issues in a civil manner. I for one am grateful that these are very rare occasions.

There has been some discussion about federal sequestration and its effect on Idaho, but no changes have been made in our current budget to reflect anything that is happening along those lines, at least not yet. The number crunchers are working behind the scenes to determine if and by how much corrections in our budgets need to be made.

There is still much talk around these halls about the personal property tax issue, but as of this writing there has still been no legislation proposed to deal with the issue. I was reading one of the newspapers over the weekend and one of the comments there was that local government entities and all other taxing districts have been very effective in having their points of view heard. It’s my best guess at this point, that the proposal has lost some of its traction.

Health exchange legislation has still not be been heard in the House Health and Welfare Committee. The lobbying effort has been extraordinary but an even bigger effort has been made by our constituents at home. There is no doubt about how our folks feel about it, they are about 90% opposed. To say that we live in interesting times is definitely an understatement.

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Idaho Chooses Life

President Obama has become a master of manipulation. When confronted with opposition, he enlists the MSM to deliver his version of contorted reality without scrutiny. We saw another stage production just this week when the Idaho media reported on Obama’s message that he will hurt Idaho kids, seniors, travelers, military personnel – unless Congress capitulates again to tax increases.

Under the guise of implementing the “sequester” – Obama says he will cut $3.7 million in federal funds to schools. Particularly hard hit will be those children with disabilities. Funding for Mountain Home Air Base will be cut. Grants for law enforcement, kids’ vaccines, and even a program to help women caught up in domestic violence will suffer because Barack Obama says they must. They must suffer to make Republicans pay and repent of their obsession with fiscal responsibility.

Why do we talk about this?

By our count, Obama is threatening to stop something like $15 million in federal funds from going to Idaho if the sequester happens later this week.
Here’s another idea: The Idaho Senate just approved a plan to implement an insurance exchange as part of Obama’s plan to impose health care “reform” on the people of Idaho. A program no one but Blue Cross wants. Attached to the bill is a $30 million federal grant.

How about we tell Obama to keep his $30 million, and keep the change to pay down the deficit – so long as he promises to leave us alone? So long as he stops using our tax dollars to impose ugly social policies upon the people of this state, so long as he ends his war on our religious freedom?

And why hasn’t Dan Popkey or other media personalities commented on the expansion of federal “aid” to Idaho at a time when Obama is threatening to slash spending in other areas already dependent upon the Santa Claus on Pennsylvania Avenue? For that matter – why haven’t members of the Idaho Legislature taken notice of this tragic irony?

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By Richard Larsen

Historically, Presidential Inaugural Addresses have sought to inspire and unite the nation, and provide directional leadership for the next presidential term. Perhaps to some, Monday’s speech did that. But to adherents of American exceptionalism, it was disconcerting. The president’s speech was laced with references to our founding principles, but their meaning twisted, misrepresented, and stripped of their historical and definitional significance.

God was mentioned seven times in the address, which may exceed the number of times the Almighty has been invoked by him over the past four years, which made their invocation seem superficial. The Constitution was mentioned once, at the very beginning, citing his second term as evidence of its “enduring strength,” in spite of the fact that he has stretched and distorted that document’s limitations on the executive branch beyond recognition of the founding fathers so dramatically during his first term.

Even the Declaration of Independence was cited, and those eternal classical-liberal ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that led to the severance of our relationship with Great Britain, and the perceived tyranny of King George. It was no surprise that he was reticent regarding the breadth and scope of our current federal government, which arguably wields immensely more tyranny over the American people than the British crown held over colonial America.

Even free market economics were mentioned, although it was in the context that the omnipotent and omniscient federal government must constrain and control it.

Clearly, through artistry and manipulation, precept-by-precept, the principles upon which the American republic was established were being redefined. Those tenets, which are distinctly and singularly American, which once were the pillars that the nation stood upon, were going through a historical revision right before our eyes. They were being reframed, redefined, and reshaped to fit a new progressive lexicon of American patriotic buzzwords that vitiate their original meanings.

The Constitution seems to have relevance since it returned him to power for another four years. But in terms of governance, it seems that to him it has lost its applicability to 21st century American politics since he can issue Executive and Administrative Orders that circumvent the very document he moments earlier swore he would uphold and defend.

God has no relevance in the godless, morally relativistic, and warped values of the ideology that seeks to make omnipotent government the central component in every American life, replacing an omnipotent deity. As the president’s campaign website so proudly portrays with its “Life of Julia,” the government is to be there at every turn and juncture in the life of the average American; governing, regulating, “helping,” and “supporting.”

And perhaps most invidious of all, a perverted sense of “liberty.” No spurious redefinition of liberty could be more antithetical to the founder’s intent than, “being true to our founding documents … does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way.”

In any language and any culture, liberty is synonymous with freedom. Not just a freedom “to,” as in “to do something,” but also a freedom “from,” as in freedom from control, repression, and tyranny. Each time liberty or freedom were mentioned, the words rang increasingly hollow and meaningless. For freedom to, and freedom from, have an inverse relationship to government growth, government power, and government control, which have dramatically increased over the past four years.

With each incremental Executive Order or legislative Act that broadens and expands central governmental authority, and with every dollar taken out of the pockets of Americans to fund the insatiable spending appetite of government, individual liberty and freedom are disproportionately diminished.

As government grows, individual liberty decreases. No wonder, then, that he would frame the concept of individual freedom in the context of “collective action.” The progressive statist agenda is always based on collectivism, not individuality.

It’s difficult to separate the causation, or at least correlation, of the massive expansion of governmental power, and alarming growth of government debt of the past four years, from the perceived elusiveness of the American Dream. Four years ago, over 52% of Americans still believed the “American Dream” was attainable. That has now dropped to less than 40%, according to pollsters at Zogby.

And regrettably the perception seems accurate. Between legislative Act, presidential declarations, and bureaucratic regulatory expansion, Investor’s Business Daily now calculates that the government has direct or indirect control of more than 60% of the entire U.S. economy. Energy production, oil production and distribution, banking and finance, manufacturing, logging, mining, health care, insurance, automobile manufacturing and more, are all now controlled by the central government. A strict political classification of such an economy is clearly fascistic, where government controls, not necessarily owns, the means of production. Individual and collective freedoms are sacrificed when government wields so much power over the entire economy.

Clearly typifying the moral relativism of our dysfunctional culture, the phrase “We cannot mistake absolutism for principle,” perverts the very meaning of principle. After all, a principle is “a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.” As such a principle is definitionally absolute. When they are no longer absolute, they are no longer principles, they’re simply good ideas. Such facile application of relativism to fundamental tenets like individual freedom and liberty diminishes the principled foundation of our republic.

The implications for the next four years are indeed ominous if this Inaugural Address represents the ideologically tortured state of our founding principles. With fundamental precepts marginalized through redefinition, token relevance accorded the Constitution, and free markets only viable with governmental control of the means of production, we are well on our way to the president’s desired “fundamental transformation of America.”

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By Richard Larsen

Charged by President Obama with forming a task force to examine possible solutions to senseless shootings as we saw at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut last month, Vice President Joe Biden mentioned one tool available to the president is the Executive Order (EO). It is a viable tool for a president to specify how established constitutional precedent or statute are being enforced, but it cannot be used to create law. If the president uses the EO to limit the 2nd Amendment, or to raise the debt limit, as has also been suggested, he would clearly be acting unlawfully.

There is only the most tenuous support for the use of the EO in the Constitution. Article II, Section, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution instructs that the president, as head of the Executive Branch of America’s tripartite government (executive, legislative, and judicial) “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

And for the most part, that is how the over 13,000 Executive Orders have been used over the past 240 years. Presidents have issued them to clarify or facilitate executive branch employees and agencies in implementing or enforcing laws in the Federal Register, passed by Congress. In our constitutional republic, laws are made by the legislative branch, and either signed into law by the president, or the president’s veto overridden by the legislative branch. But laws are made by the legislative, not the executive branch. The executive branch’s responsibility is to ensure that the laws created by legislative act are enforced, or executed, if you will.

These constitutional restraints on executive power are all that prevent our republic from turning into a despotic, totalitarian state. The executive branch has grown so much in power over the past 100 years especially, that it would not take much effort on the part of an unprincipled power-monger to literally usurp power reserved to the legislative and judicial branches by the Constitution, and act in totalitarian fashion by declaring laws and edicts from the Oval Office.

That’s why many across the nation took note last year when Obama brazenly declared, “If congress doesn’t act, I will.” What that signaled to the nation is that Obama considered his power to not be limited by constitutional constraints, and that he could simply change or enact law by declaration, Executive Order, or fiat.

The use of the EO is only legal and binding if it is based on existing statute or an Act of Congress which gives the president the powers to do as he intends. This was established judicially by the landmark 1952 Supreme Court ruling of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 US 579. By executive order 10340, President Harry Truman declared that all steel mills in the country were to be placed under federal government control. The Supreme Court ruled, however, that the EO was invalid since Truman was essentially creating, or making law, as opposed to clarifying the executive branch enforcement of a law established by congress or the Constitution.

John Yoo, a law professor at Berkeley, said in a research piece last year, “It’s the duty of the president. He must always uphold the law.” He further indicated that the only exceptions in doing so are if laws are unconstitutional or if prosecuting them can be reasonably deemed not viable.

Yoo’s comments were made following Obama’s Executive Directive to the Department of Homeland Security, that essentially granted amnesty to certain illegal aliens. Yoo, and co-author Robert Delahunty of the University of St. Thomas, argued that Obama created new law, by declaring that his DHS was not going to enforce laws enacted by Congress.

Obama displayed the same contempt for constitutional constraints on his power when he declared he would not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act.
This is precisely why many are concerned with yet another Obama term, where constitutional and legislative limitations on his power will likely be ignored even more blatantly. When the president of a country arbitrarily chooses which laws to enforce and which not to, and assumes or usurps powers of the states or other branches of government to which he has no lawful for legal claim, he is no longer functioning as a president for the people, but as a dictator of his own will.

On January 21, for the second time in four years, Obama will place his left hand on the Bible, raise his right arm to the square, and promise before the nation and the world that he will, to the best of his ability, “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

If, after making that promise, the president willfully and intentionally breaks his oath to support the Constitution, by either imposing new restrictions on the 2nd Amendment, or to increase the debt limit, his actions will be tantamount to newlyweds immediately breaking their vows through infidelity. A president that acts outside of the law is, by definition, a criminal, and such unilateral usurpation of non-existent executive powers should legally be considered grounds for impeachment.

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By Richard Larsen

The major news services this week universally proclaimed that the “fiscal cliff” had been averted by a last minute deal between congress and the White House. There were many components to the fiscal cliff, some of which have been addressed by the last-minute deal, and many that were not. The revenue components have been resolved, while the more significant spending related issues were simply postponed.

The best news is the Bush era tax cuts are now permanent, vindicating the former president whose tax cuts bore his name. The 10, 15, 25, 28, and 33 percent tax brackets are now permanent, while individuals earning $400,000 or couples at $450,000 will now pay the 35% up to those amounts, and 39.6% on anything over those levels.

The marriage tax penalty is now permanently fixed. The tax code, before the 2001 EGTRA (Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act), required a husband and wife to pay more in taxes when they filed jointly than they would as single taxpayers. According to calculations from the tax publisher CCH, the marriage tax penalty translates to a nearly 17% increase in taxes for those married couples who file jointly, regardless of bracket.

Everyone who is working will now see more taken out of their paychecks for Social Security. The payroll tax is now reverting from the temporarily reduced 4.2% rate for employees’ portion back to the pre-EGTRA levels of 6.2%. That will mean about $1,000 tax increase for employees earning $50,000 per year.

The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, or JGTRRA, temporarily reduced the capital gains tax rate. Most capital gains have been taxed at 15 percent for the past nine years, and investors in the 10 percent and 15 percent tax brackets have not paid any taxes on profits from appreciated asset sales. Qualified dividends have been taxed similarly. These rates are now permanent for all but the higher income taxpayers who will pay 20% on dividends and capital gains.

The Child Tax Credit was extended for another five years which allows each head of household to deduct $1,000 for each qualifying child, as opposed to the pre-JGTRRA deduction of $500. Also, the current levels of the Earned Income Tax Credit were extended until 2017.

The estate tax exclusion amount is retained at $5 million indexed for inflation, but the top rate has increased from 35% to 40%. The estate tax “portability” election was made permanent, which allows the surviving spouse’s exemption amount to be increased by the deceased spouse’s unused exemption amount.

Childcare expense deductions of up to $3,000 for one child and $6,000 for two or more dependents are now permanent.

The so-called AMT Patch is now permanent, and is indexed to inflation. The Alternative Minimum Tax was implemented in 1969 to ensure that wealthy taxpayers were not using tax loopholes or taking excessive tax breaks to reduce their tax liability disproportionately. It was never indexed to inflation, so the fairly high income levels of the AMT 43 years ago are low by today’s standards. For 2012, the exemption amounts are $78,750 for married taxpayers filing jointly and $50,600 for single filers. Relief from AMT for nonrefundable credits is retained.

There were more than 70 so-called tax extenders scheduled to expire at the end of 2012. Some of those were made permanent, and some were allowed to expire. A few of hose made permanent included: expanded adoption credit and adoption-assistance program amounts; the exclusion for employer-provided educational assistance; the enhanced rules for student loan deductions introduced by EGTRRA and special treatment of tax-exempt bonds for education facilities.

Some of those “temporary” tax extenders were renewed for another year. They included, among other things: deduction for certain expenses of elementary and secondary school teachers; mortgage insurance premiums treated as qualified residence interest; deduction of state and local sales taxes; deduction for qualified tuition and related expenses; and tax-free distributions from individual retirement plans for charitable purposes.

For those who itemize deductions, there are new higher limits to phasing out of deductions and exemptions. The thresholds are $250,000 for single taxpayers, $275,000 for heads of household, and $300,000 for married taxpayers filing jointly.

The tax increases are projected to raise $600 billion over ten years, or roughly $60 billion per year, enough to fund government operations for about six days. And, as usual, the measure included $70 billion in special tax breaks and credits, a perpetuation of crony capitalism.

Unresolved by the last-minute measure are issues related to Social Security and Medicare funding and solvency, reduction of our massive deficit, and the $16.4 trillion debt limit which we will hit in February. Also postponed is the automatic implementation of $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, known as the “sequester.”

Washington still must find the discipline to cut spending in order to avert a more devastating fiscal cliff created by our $1 trillion-plus deficit and $16 trillion national debt.

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By Richard Larsen

Most presidential election polls indicate that Barack Obama is leading Mitt Romney from two to eight percentage points. A notable exception is the Rasumssen poll which has Romney up slightly. While the pollsters are unlikely colluding, as the mainstream media do, to support their candidate of choice, there are three significant quantitative reasons the polls paint a skewed picture.

For a little perspective, with just a week to go before the 1980 presidential election, challenger Ronald Reagan trailed incumbent President Jimmy Carter by three to six percentage points in the polls. Then came the one and only presidential debate, and pre-election polls indicated the race was “too close to call.” The final results were significantly different than “too close to call,” as Reagan won by ten points, even with Independent Candidate John Anderson picking up nearly 7%, and Reagan won an electoral landslide, 489 to 49, with only 6 states voting for Carter.

The first issue that challenges the current polling methodology is based in party affiliation. This is always tenuous and in a state of flux, depending on sometimes exogenous factors that incline voters to lean one way or another with regard to political party identification. According to Rasmussen Reports, the latest data indicate a quantitative spike for Republicans (37.6%) and a drop for Democrats (33.3%) representing a 4.3% spread advantage for Republicans, with Independents coming in at 29.2%.

To provide context, at the time of the 2010 midterm elections, party affiliation was Republican 36.0%, Democrat 34.7%, for a 1.3% advantage for Republicans, and Independents at 29.3%. At the time of the 2008 presidential election, Democrats led significantly with 41.4%, versus Republicans at 33.8%, for a 7.6% Democrat advantage, and Independents at 24.7%. Election results for both 2008 and 2010, based on self-declared party affiliation, portend significantly different results for 2012 than what polls are currently indicating.

In spite of the current affiliation advantage for Republicans, the major polls are nearly all oversampling Democrats, as they explain in their methodology. Their rationale is based primarily on 2008 voter demographics gleaned from exit polls. Pollster’s explanation for their methodology is an exercise in statistical and verbal gymnastics as they justify their sampling rates.

Dick Morris, who engineered Bill Clinton’s successful elections as governor and president, said recently, “All of the polling out there uses some variant of the 2008 election turnout as its model for weighting respondents and this overstates the Democratic vote by a huge margin.”

Morris explains why the 2008 data is not an accurate model for the 2012 election. “But 2008 was no ordinary election. Blacks, for example, usually cast only 11% of the vote, but, in 2008, they made up 14% of the vote. Latinos increased their share of the vote by 1.5% and college kids almost doubled their vote share.”

“But polling indicates a widespread lack of enthusiasm among Obama’s core demographic support due to high unemployment, disappointment with his policies and performance, and the lack of novelty in voting for a black candidate now that he has already served as president. If you adjust virtually any of the published polls to reflect the 2004 vote, not the 2008 vote, they show the race either tied or Romney ahead, a view much closer to reality.”

Which brings us to the second anomaly as it relates to the current crop of polls. There’s a significant shift in the enthusiasm gap with this election cycle. In 2008, voters that leaned Democrat were 61% more enthusiastic than usual to vote, while the Republicans were at 35%. In 2010, the enthusiasm gap had evened out at nearly 50% for each side. For this election cycle, Gallup indicates those that lean Republican are 51% more enthusiastic, versus 39% for the Democrat leaners.

Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal pointed to this enthusiasm gap this week. “Among those who voice the highest interest in the election — in other words, those who seem most intensely interested in voting — Mr. Romney leads by three percentage points.”

The third quantitative anomaly is in how the demographic disparities just don’t add up to confirm most poll results. The independent vote, 29.2% who self-identify as such, favors Romney by 15 points (James Carville’s Democracy Corps) and 14 points (CNN). Politico indicates Romney is favored by middleclass voters by 14 points and male voters by 6. Rasmussen says Romney leads the white vote by 20%. The 45 and older voters favor Romney by 7%, white women favor Romney by 9% representing a 16% gain from what McCain got in 2008. Romney is making gains with Hispanics at 40%, and leads with Catholics at 51%. A Democrat has never won the presidency without a majority of the Catholic vote. Obama is losing 25% of the Jewish vote he garnered last time, and the youth vote, which voted 78% for Obama last time, gives him only a slight edge, 49% to 41%, this time around. Also, Dick Morris claims that historically, as much as 75% of the undecided vote breaks for the challenger, which is between 7-10%.

Questionable under or oversampling, a widening enthusiasm gap, and demographic breakdowns that don’t add up, paint a different picture than what most polls are indicating and cast a pall of doubt over their validity. Ultimately it all boils down to who shows up to vote, and the best thing for conservatives to do is ignore the pollsters and show up en masse on November 6.

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By Richard Larsen

Some voters, especially on the far right, erroneously maintain that there is little difference between the two major presidential candidates when in fact, their divergent views of the role of government could not be more pronounced. This election provides perhaps the starkest contrast since the 1964 election.

The Federal debt has become a problem that cannot be ignored and in my estimation, is the most crucial issue facing the nation at this time. In four short years, the nation has gone from 58% of debt to GDP to 107%, as the debt has skyrocketed from $10 trillion to $16 trillion.

Deficit spending, which has averaged $1.44 trillion over the past four years, is one of the largest contributors to the total debt. We are borrowing more than $41 for every $100 the government spends. This is unsustainable.

President Obama has presided over this massive rise in public debt and has ignored his own commission’s recommendations for addressing the problem. Mitt Romney recognizes, along with many other economists, that our debt and deficit, if not reined in, can lead to a complete collapse of the dollar and our financial system, and has spelled out how the current dangerous trend can be reversed. If ever we’ve needed a fiscal repairman, it is now, and Romney has the financial acumen and experience to do it.

Obama prefers government solutions to economic issues while Romney advocates less intrusion of government and more freedom for individuals and the private sector to succeed. The last four years has seen government control of our economy increase to nearly 60%, with direct and regulatory control over the health care, financial, automotive, energy, and real estate sectors. This is a fascistic model based on centralized control of the means of production. Romney ardently opposes this model, advocating instead free market solutions with as little governmental control and manipulation as possible. He sees the government role more as a referee rather than the crony-capitalism currently in force where the government picks winners and losers in the private sector.

The greatest facilitator of a post-recession economic recovery is job growth, and while the Department of Labor reports that we have gained 4.3 million jobs over the past four years, we have a net loss of 316,000 jobs as millions of Americans have given up hope and quit looking for work. Our participation rate, per the DOL, is lower than it’s ever been, with just 63% of the working-age public earning a paycheck. This has stymied recovery since the recession ended in July 2009, making this the most anemic recovery on record.

Uncertainty over government involvement in the private sector, including regulation and taxes, has significantly stymied job growth. With the cost of regulation to small business owners at over $10,600 per employee, according to the Small Business Administration, Romney will reduce the regulatory cost of doing business and free up small business capital to expand, grow, and create more jobs. In short, Romney’s focus is on economic growth, while Obama’s is on government growth.

President Obama was exactly right three years ago when he said, “We should not be raising taxes during a recession.” They should also not be raised during an anemic recovery. Yet that’s his answer to the $1.44 trillion deficit, to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans from 35 to 39.5%, even though it will only raise a projected $65 billion. Obama recently made his perspective clear regarding taxes, when he said that allowing those who earn more than $250,000 per year to keep most of their earnings is a government “giveaway.” This view that the government allows us to keep some of our money is vastly different than Romney’s, that your money is yours, but government needs some of it to provide the services expected.

On energy, when Obama says that he supports an “all of the above” approach, he means all of those that are above the ground, as evidenced by the crony-capitalism preferential treatment given to solar and wind. Romney’s approach is truly “all of the above,” including oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear. And he would’ve approved the Keystone Pipeline from Canada, which also would’ve created up to 140,000 jobs.

Romney believes the Constitution to be our founding legal document, and would appoint constructionist Supreme Court justices. Obama manifests little respect for the separation of powers and constitutional limits on the executive branch, and has given us justices that advance a less literalistic interpretation of the Constitution.

Romney adheres to the biological and anthropologically validated heterosexual definition of marriage, while Obama supports same-sex marriage.
Obama is pro-abortion, including partial-birth abortions, while Romney is pro-life except in cases of rape and incest.

We could go on and on. Ideologically, the two candidates could not be more divergent. Claims that they’re “just the same” are simply disingenuous and fallacious.

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By Richard Larsen

While we enjoy relative tranquility here at home, the Muslim world is erupting in a conflagration of Islamic fundamentalist protests, destruction, and murder. What started as timed terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya on the eleventh anniversary of the attacks of 9/11, has turned into full-scale demonstrations of destruction fueled by an amateur video purportedly critical of their prophet Mohammed.

What started with the Arab Spring nearly two years ago, a democratic movement which led to the ousting of strong-arm leaders Khadafy in Libya and Mubarak in Egypt, has evolved into an Arab Fall, and likely an Arab Winter of icy relations with the Muslim world. Perhaps it is nothing more than the morphing of “hope and change” to despair and violence, induced by the Islamic extremist realities of the region.

Four embassy personnel were mercilessly murdered at the consulate in Libya, including our ambassador and two former Navy Seals, who we’ve learned remarkably, were forbidden by the State Department from being issued live ammunition to protect the embassy staff. The Washington Times reports that Ambassador Chris Stevens was raped before he was murdered.

This week U.S. embassies have been under siege in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Israel, Iraq, and Yemen, and U.S. companies and interests targeted in Iran and London. And with all of this occurring, the president chose to skip his intelligence update to make a campaign trip to Las Vegas. In a taped message to campaign workers in Nevada, he imprudently compared them to those demonstrating in the Muslim world striving for a better world.

Some of the visual references this week remind us just how the radical elements of Islam challenge the notion that it’s a “religion of peace.” Graffiti written on the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo, “Take care America. We have one and a half billion bin Ladins,” as well as banners outside the U.S. embassy in London, which read, “Muslims will eventually conquer America,” do nothing to assuage our concerns of the intolerance of Islamic extremism.

There are also the aural reminders that the Muslim world has not taken kindly to the killing of Osama bin Ladin. Raw video captured by Middle East Media Research Institute shows the mob that attacked the Egyptian embassy was chanting, “Obama, Obama, we’re all Osama.” Perhaps it has been ill-advised to trumpet the killing of Osama. And all of this animus is targeted at the U.S. in spite of billions of dollars we give in foreign aid to Muslim countries, and surprisingly, one week after the administration “forgave” a $1 billion dollar, taxpayer funded loan to Egypt.

The Independent, a UK based news outlet reported that according to senior diplomatic sources, the State Department “had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted.” Yet no warnings were issued to consulates or embassies in affected areas, and the administration has denied the existence of such intelligence.

While there is no codex identifying specific tenets of the Obama Doctrine, foreign policy experts classify the Obama foreign policy of outreach and deference shown to Islam as its basis. The Obama Doctrine was aptly characterized by what critics called his “Apology Tour” at the beginning of his presidency, denouncing and apologizing for what he deemed to be American arrogance, dismissiveness, and derision shown to the Muslim states. Exemplary of the doctrine is the redefinition of one of NASA’s primary objectives to be an “outreach” to Muslims. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has described the Obama Doctrine as “overly idealistic and naïve, promoting appeasement” to those who seek our destruction.

Perhaps what we are witnessing across the globe today is the collapse of the Obama Doctrine, and as Obama’s former preacher might say, his “chickens are coming home to roost.”

Some have compared the failed policies of Jimmy Carter to the collapse of the Obama Doctrine. There certainly are similarities as both administrations allowed U.S. allied regimes to be toppled, leading to states founded in Islamic fundamentalism, solidified by anti-American hatred. For Carter, it was Iran, and for Obama, it’s Egypt and Libya.

Showing that he himself “shoots first and aims later,” the president said on Thursday that the U.S. would not consider Egypt an ally, “but we don’t consider them an enemy.”

On 9/11, the day our Cairo embassy was attacked, the embassy released a statement saying, “The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.” Rather than condemning those who perpetrate violence in the name of Allah, the statement targeted the producer of the obscure film that was critical of Muhammad.

Problematic throughout the Obama Doctrine era has been the cozy relationship between administration officials and the Muslim Brotherhood, a militaristic political entity that that spawned al-Qaida and Hamas and was instrumental in toppling the Libyan and Egyptian regimes. In April, a delegation of the Muslim Brotherhood made an official visit to the White House. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin has been confirmed to have formerly been involved with the group. David Horowitz has produced an ebook documenting associations between the Muslim Brotherhood and the administration, titled “The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration.”

The President has requested an audience this month with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate who won Egypt’s presidential election, while spurning a request by Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to meet this month as well. It’s difficult to explain how a sitting U.S. president can spurn a request for a visit from one of our “closest allies” while requesting an audience with a Muslim Brotherhood president of a nation that Obama doesn’t think is our ally, nor think they’re our enemy, either. The president also confirmed this week that he’ll appear with David Letterman on his show next week, adding insult to injury with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz this week indicated that Obama’s cozy relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood is troubling. And that due to the Obama Doctrine, regimes and Muslim country leaders can’t trust America to do the right thing, as evidenced by leaving Iraq after deposing a dictator, and Afghanistan after toppling a totalitarian Taliban regime. The administration actively supported the toppling of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, praising the democratic Arab Spring uprising, and militarily attacked Khadafy’s Libya to oust him.

The violence is spreading outside of the Muslim nations. Attacks on the U.S. embassy in London, as well as bomb threats at North Dakota State and the University of Texas in Austin validate concerns that anti-American violence can spread quickly, jumping oceans and geographic barriers to threaten Americans and U.S. interests everywhere. The caller of the bomb threat to the University of Texas claimed to represent al-Qaida.

Whatever the motivation, the threats and violence of terrorism are evil. The cozier our relationship with perpetrators of such vile acts as we’ve witnessed this past week is, the more compromised and susceptible we are to manipulation by those very elements. With the collapse of the Obama Doctrine of foreign policy, it’s clear that a new foreign policy is needed, based in reality, not on something as obviously tenuous as “Muslim Outreach.”

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By Richard Larsen

Our U.S. Federal debt is reaching a tipping point. Just four years ago, economists feared that our public debt would reach 60% of the GDP by 2022. Failure to curtail spending, pass a budget, and piling on massive new spending has hurled us past that 60% benchmark twelve years earlier than feared. We passed the mark in 2010.

That 60% benchmark is critical, for it is recognized across the European Zone and developed nations as the “prudential limit” for public debt. And here we are, just two years later and our public debt is even greater. The public debt clock shows we’ll hit the spending limit of $16 trillion within the next couple of weeks, which means with a $15 trillion economy, we’re rapidly approaching the 107% mark of public debt to our GDP. For every $100 we spend, $41 of it is borrowed. All reasonable citizens must recognize the fact that we cannot continue this way.

Even that is an incomplete picture, as the total debt associated with unfunded liabilities associated with Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare places our debt level between $55 and $80 trillion.

According to Joseph J. Minarik, Director of Research at Committee for Economic Development, “Today’s financial risk arises largely from U.S. fiscal misbehavior.” We did not have a budget passed by congress while Nancy Pelosi was Speaker, and the last two years the Senate has refused to pass one.

The President has presented his own “budget” to congress, but did not receive a single vote, even from his own party, because it was so out of touch with fiscal realities. Yet with his massive spending, from a $1.3 to $1.7 trillion deficit every year that he’s been president, our debt has skyrocketed.

Just four years ago Obama declared George Bush to be “irresponsible and unpatriotic” for $4 trillion in new debt in eight years. It must be more responsible and patriotic to run up $5 trillion in half the time!

The Simpson-Bowles Commission came up with recommendations to balance the budget in 12 years and reduce our debt load. The president ignored his own commission and has continued to spend as if there is no tomorrow. And there is no hint of an indication that the president has any plans for curtailing his spendthrift ways for the next four years.

The United States now has the seventh highest public debt burden among advanced nations, according to Minarik and the latest data. The countries ahead of us should sound familiar for their debt is destroying their economies: Greece, Iceland, Italy and Japan are worse off. We’ve even far surpassed Portugal. Minarik says without fiscal discipline, our politicians have placed us on course to “stumble into a financial meltdown.”

Minarick reveals, “In due time, U.S. public finances will be caught in a vicious cycle. Rising interest rates raise the federal government’s debt-service cost, which increases the risk premia on Treasury interest rates, which raises debt-service costs still further. Higher interest rates extend to private borrowing costs, which slows economic activity, which increases the federal government’s budget deficit. In another Catch-22 contradiction, the drop in economic activity is not cushioned by a fall in interest rates to match the fall in the demand for credit. Rather, the fall in activity triggers a massive growth of fear of default risk, and so interest rates rise rather than fall, accelerating the vicious cycle. Perhaps this crossing over in the effects on interest rates would constitute a true ‘tipping point.’”

Former Comptroller General of the United States, David M. Walker, appointed by President Clinton, agrees. He’s been sounding the clarion call of economic disaster for the nation if spending is not reined in, and politicians refuse to deal with fiscal realities of unabated spending. He describes America as a “sinking ship” in a sea of our own debt. He points out that, “The US ranks near the bottom of developed global economies in terms of financial stability and will stay there unless it addresses its burgeoning debt problems,” based on the Sovereign Fiscal Responsibility Index.

“We think it is important for the American people to understand where the United States is as compared to other countries with regard to fiscal responsibility and sustainability,” Walker said in a CNBC interview recently. He predicts that the country is rapidly heading towards a debt crisis that could come within the next two to three years if we continue on our present course.

Some may call this fear mongering, but it is the fiscal reality that we face as a nation today. We simply cannot go “Forward” on this same trajectory without collapsing the entire national economy under the weight of our debt, which is now $140,000 per taxpayer (mostly middle class). Is this the “fundamental transformation of America” that Obama has in mind? It’s our reality unless we change captains to navigate the fiscal obstacles ahead of us.

It’s time to put nation ahead of partisanship for everyone, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. There are even those who claim to be “patriots,” who cling cult-like to a former presidential candidate. Any who claim to love this country, our founding documents, and our founding principles, who will, by voting for a third-party candidate, write in a candidate, or not voting at all, facilitate the election of the one with his foot on the spending gas pedal, are not worthy of the “patriot” appellation. They will be accomplices to the destruction of the very nation they feign fealty to if they put their “principles” ahead of national survival by failing to do all they can to prevent this otherwise inevitable destruction.

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By Richard Larsen

Why would the administration and the Department of Justice not cooperate in cleaning up the voter registration problems across the country? Why would they intentionally make it more difficult to tabulate votes from our military personnel? Why would they block efforts to ensure fair, legitimate, and accurate elections and instead, facilitate voter fraud? There can only be one logical answer, because they lose flexibility in election results, and theirs is “The Chicago Way.”

According to Politico, “The United States’ voter registration system is in chaos — about 24 million registrations are no longer valid and nearly 2 million dead people are still on voter rolls. Along with the one of every eight voter registrations that is not valid or has significant inaccuracies, there are 2.75 million people currently registered to vote in more than one state, the Pew Center on the States study found. And the millions of problematic registrations aren’t the only issue — researchers estimate at least 51 million eligible U.S. citizens aren’t registered to vote. That’s nearly one in four. Additionally, about 12 million records have incorrect addresses, meaning it’s unlikely any mailings can reach these voters, the research in the report shows. There also are more than 1.8 million deceased people who still have active registration on voter rolls.”

Yet the administration is blocking efforts by Florida, New Mexico, Texas, Pennsylvania and several other states, to clean up their voter registration lists. Apparently removing the deceased from the voter roles proscribes the type of flexibility the Chicago boys require to assure election results. Five counties in Illinois have more registered voters than eligible voters. These facts demythologize the truisms about the “dead” voting in Illinois, especially Chicago, elections.

In Florida specifically, voting laws were passed last year to restrict early voting. Demographic data showed anomalous voting trends occurring and Florida officials felt the system was susceptible to fraud. The new laws also required third party groups like ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), to turn in their registration lists within 48 hours for verification. Remember, ACORN is a group that Barack Obama worked for as a “leadership training supervisor” and as a community organizer for “Project Vote!” a national program of ACORN for voter registration expansion, with a long and storied history of voter registration fraud. For some reason, Florida’s immediate verification system caused third-party registrations to stop altogether.

The administration, through its Department of Justice (it would be impossible to make this up and have it be more ironic than it is!) is also opposing voter ID laws. They’ve filed in several states to block implementation of laws that require some sort of personal identification at the time of voting, even though thirty states currently require it. Some sort of identification is required for most government services, and by all private sector firms that accept checks for payment. The assertion that some sort of identification at the polls can be deemed “voter suppression” can only be valid if the “voters” being suppressed are somehow illegal to vote, registered in multiple venues, or deceased. Far from “voter suppression,” as Attorney General Eric Holder asserts, voter ID laws are being implemented in order to protect election integrity. Most states with new voter ID laws even offer free photo IDs to citizens who need them.

The President’s Executive Order two months ago implementing key elements of the “Dream Act” by virtually gutting deportation of select illegal immigrants, was not just a political move in an election year, but plays directly to the goal of ensuring electoral outcomes. Amnesty advocate’s euphemism of choice, “comprehensive immigration reform,” will create millions of new Democrat voters. As Obama adviser and SEIU executive vice president Eliseo Medina said recently regarding amnesty: “Can you imagine 8 million new voters who care about our issues and will be voting? We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”

Part of Ohio’s voter registration law that received an overhaul recently allows for members of the military from that state three extra days to vote early. The rationale is that too many of the military votes are not counted because they are not received in time to be tabulated. Yet the Obama for America Campaign and the Democratic National Committee have filed suit to block implementation of that law, which may again result in non-tabulation of military votes in that key swing state. With indications that 70% of the active military supports Obama’s opponent in the November election, it’s clear what the DOJ motive is in blocking Ohio’s new law.

Every illegal and fraudulent vote diminishes the integrity of an election. Every American, regardless of party affiliation should have the assurance that our elections are clean, fair, and legal. The President, his administration, and his party should be working to eradicate election fraud, not perpetuating it.

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