Today, in 1781, Lord Cornwallis surrended at Yorktown, VA, effectively ending the American Revolution.

Discuss. Celebrate. Tip your waitress.

To the People of the State of New York:

A FIFTH class of provisions in favor of the federal authority consists of the following restrictions on the authority of the several States:

1. “No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex-post-facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts; or grant any title of nobility. ”

The prohibition against treaties, alliances, and confederations makes a part of the existing articles of Union; and for reasons which need no explanation, is copied into the new Constitution. The prohibition of letters of marque is another part of the old system, but is somewhat extended in the new. According to the former, letters of marque could be granted by the States after a declaration of war; according to the latter, these licenses must be obtained, as well during war as previous to its declaration, from the government of the United States. This alteration is fully justified by the advantage of uniformity in all points which relate to foreign powers; and of immediate responsibility to the nation in all those for whose conduct the nation itself is to be responsible.

The right of coining money, which is here taken from the States, was left in their hands by the Confederation, as a concurrent right with that of Congress, under an exception in favor of the exclusive right of Congress to regulate the alloy and value. In this instance, also, the new provision is an improvement on the old. Whilst the alloy and value depended on the general authority, a right of coinage in the particular States could have no other effect than to multiply expensive mints and diversify the forms and weights of the circulating pieces. The latter inconveniency defeats one purpose for which the power was originally submitted to the federal head; and as far as the former might prevent an inconvenient remittance of gold and silver to the central mint for recoinage, the end can be as well attained by local mints established under the general authority.

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Yesterday, tea partiers gathered in Troy, Michigan. (If any state needs a bit of the lower-taxes and less government spending old-time-religion…it is Michigan.) This time, their protest was focused on the Big Media itself, specifically the local NBC headquarters. Anyway, a camerawoman from Big Media NBC didn’t seem to appreciate that just about anyone can now chronicle events with video.

H/T to videographer GrassFireFilms. Speculate in the comments what the camerawoman is telling police…

On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued The Emancipation Proclamation: 

“That on the 1^st day of January, in the year of our Lord 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. . . And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”

With these words President Lincoln ended slavery – a  flagrant violation of the institutions of the United States of America, “a government of, by and for all the people.”

The institution of slavery denied essential freedoms to fellow Americans. Today, in 2009, another freedom is being denied to every man, woman and child — freedom of health care. Some in the HMO industry, many in the insurance industry, and many federal “Big Government” bureaucrats are denying Americans their freedom of health care.  The Obama Health Care Plan is the instruction manual and play book for this mandate.

 These “Masters” of  Health Care are trying to deny individuals the freedom to choose what doctor you can see, what medicine you can take, what hospital you can go to, and how you spend your health care dollars.  They even take it a step further in the Obama Health Care Plan, determining – IF – yes, IF you can be treated.  These “Masters” of Health Care are driving us to unnecessary pain, suffering, and, in some cases, death.

 We can all agree that the US health care system needs drastic reform, but not at the cost of destroying the entire system.  We face a defining crossroads, as we as a nation decide the face of this reform. If we really want to improve the system, reform must be based upon the bedrock of providing each person, family and business fundamental healthcare freedom.  

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Today, in 1954, Industrial Development Engineering Associates announced the release of the Regency TR-1, the first practical transistor radio.

When we created AFTexposed.com a few weeks ago, we paid particular attention to the American Federation of Teachers’ connection to ACORN.  [See a related sidebar below.]  Randi Weingarten, the president of the AFT, had previously been the president of the United Federation of Teachers–the New York City teachers’ union.

Bertha Lewis, before becoming the CEO and chief organizer of ACORN, had headed up the New York chapter of ACORN.

Weingarten’s UFT had hired Lewis’s ACORN to help unionize 28,000 day care workers and bring them into the UFT fold.  Just what exactly does the UFT know about child care?  From ACORN itself:

“For us, it’s an educational issue and a moral issue and an economic justice issue,” [Weingarten] said.

From 2006 to 2008, ACORNcracked.com has been able to account for over $1.2 million in dues dollars from New York City teachers going to ACORN.  And Weingarten earned a special recognition from ACORN earlier this summer at its 39th anniversary gala, hosted by chief AFT rival, the National Education Association.

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Rush took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to address the mau-mauing that scuttled his NFL dreams. Personally, I’m a little mystified why Rush would want to own part of a football team. Oversized, preening and pampered athletes set in strictly defined roles and running elaborately orchestrated “plays” designed by a full bureaucracy of coaches seems, frankly, I dunno…unAmerican.  Quite unlike the other football, where there are no plays, few coaches and wide latitude for individual initiative and improvisation. (How did we get stuck with the collectivist top-down heavy sport?) But, to each his own.

Of course the NFL is a private institution which can invite–or deny–whomever they’d like to join their owners’ club. But the manner in which Rush was sidelined is, at best, distasteful and definitely more than a little troubling. Alas, it was also utterly predictable. To wit:

Shortly thereafter, the media elicited comments from the likes of Al Sharpton. In 1998 Mr. Sharpton was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $65,000 for falsely accusing a New York prosecutor of rape in the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. He also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews “diamond merchants”) and 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot.

Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson, whose history includes anti-Semitic speech (in 1984 he referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown” in a Washington Post interview) chimed in. He found me unfit to be associated with the NFL. I was too divisive and worse.

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From today’s Politico:

At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform. 

The role Baucus’s chief of staff, Jon Selib, and deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina played in launching the groups was part of a successful effort by Democrats to enlist traditional enemies of health care reform to their side. No quid pro quo was involved, they insist, as do the lobbyists themselves. 

The result has been a somewhat unlikely alliance between an administration that came into power criticizing George W. Bush for his closeness to Big Business and groups such as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the American Medical Association.

Read the whole thing here.

During the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama’s website, Organizing for America – over which Obama has editorial control — played host to a series of vile anti-American, Jew-hating posts and pieces. It was overwhelming. There were numerous, heinous calls for Jewish genocide and incitement to hatred. And it is happening again, right now, on the official website of the man who is supposedly the leader of the free world.

The site was and is closely policed. The site moderators remove material that they consider to be “disrespectful to our other users” and to “detract from a welcoming community where all people can engage in positive discourse.” What they find disrespectful can be interesting: once during the campaign a conservative blogger, Bill Levinson, posted a blog on Obama’s website consisting entirely of a series of quotations from Obama’s own book, Dreams of my Father. Obama’s team did not approve of their standard-bearer’s words, and so Levinson’s blog and account were deleted from the Obama site in just under 36 hours. That’s right, Barack Obama’s website banned Obama’s own words. But the most disgusting anti-semitic ravings remained on the site, along with blogs advocating anarchy and the overthrow of the United States Congress.

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It turns out Shepard Fairey lied (what is it with these leftists?)…

Whole story of the duplicity here.  Question: Is the Left simply incapable of truth? If you have no philisophical grounding, will you just ultimately end up cutting every corner? Advise…

…At least according to the Center for American Progress’ Matt Miller.

Last night, Big Government Editor-in-Chief Mike Flynn was on CNBC’s “Kudlow Report” along with Miller, who is also a columnist and talk show host, to discuss the potential economic impact of ObamaCare and it’s various provisions:

Kudlow first asked the guests whether or not Obama is attempting to buy support from senior citizens by extending them multiple billions in bonus dollars.

Compare and contrast:

From Mike Flynn’s opening line: “It’s like we’ve turned into Venezuela.  We’re just gonna pick voting blocks and send them checks.”

From Matt Miller of Center for American Progress’ opening line: “What do you guys have against senior citizens?” (more…)

From the Wall Street Journal:

The conservative Internet entrepreneur on bringing down Acorn, Hollywood liberals, and embarrassing the mainstream media.

By JAMES TARANTO

Hollywood

Dressing up as a pimp and prostitute in order to seek Acorn’s help in starting a child sex-slavery ring wasn’t Andrew Breitbart’s idea. But without the Internet entrepreneur’s flair for publicity, the hidden-camera sting might not have produced such impressive results. Within days of his publishing the video exposé, government agencies were cutting ties with the left-wing advocacy and community-organizing group, Congress was voting to end its federal funding, and news organizations were rushing to catch up with a sensational story they had initially resisted or ignored.

James O’Keefe, the 25-year-old aspiring filmmaker who played the pimp in the Acorn meetings, came to Mr. Breitbart in early August with his videos. They showed Mr. O’Keefe and his putative partner in crime, 20-year-old Hannah Giles, asking Acorn counselors for advice on how to evade the authorities while setting up a business offering the sexual services of underage girls smuggled into the U.S. from El Salvador. It was a shocking and outlandish tale, but employees in at least five Acorn offices fell for it and offered to help. (more…)

Since ACORN’s crass corruption came into sharp focus a few weeks ago, Andrew Breitbart has not only been part and parcel of cracking ACORN’s nuts, but he has also been pointing out the ludicrous lack of reporting on ACORN’s asininities by what used to be the mainstream media. 

Breitbart, via the ACORN controversy, has shown the “mainstream” to be everything but conventional and more akin to an irrelevant, unwatched drip of ideological flotsam that’s entirely in the septic tank for the lunatic left. 

The Daily Show’s John Stewart—hardly a right-winger—also pointed out this willful ACORN media blindness this past month, as only Stewart can.  Yep, it appears the motto of the generic broadcasting boys who’re bent to the left has become: “We distort. We decide.”

Most folks who have a lick of sense have long understood that the media has been mollycoddling the Left and their lovers for quite some time, but this ACORN controversy pummeled us over the flippin’ head with this hypocritical fact. 

Now . . . I get that the former MSM is the mouthpiece for the Amerika that embraces Eurosocialism and all its weirdness, but the question I have, as a goofy sinner who’s part of Christ’s church, is this: Who the heck is the Christian media in the tank for? Their reportage on this ACORN slop has been conspicuously inconspicuous.

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There is something tragic in man’s nature that an ideology which has been the scourge of the 20^th century, inflicting misery and death upon hundreds of millions, still has so many adherents. China recently celebrated the 60^th anniversary of its Communist Party. Although communism’s horror show continues to enslave a large portion the world’s population, many in our county are still sympathetic to this cancer. Its track record bears repeating, particularly to students, whose naïveté and inexperience leave them susceptible to dangerous belief systems.

Also in need of a primer on communism’s track record are those in the United States Congress who continue to support and appease communist dictators and tyrants like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. For example, in April of 2009, key representatives of the Congressional Black Caucus met with Castro. “It was almost like listening to an old friend,” said Rep. Rush (D-Ill.). According to Representative Richardson (D-Long Beach), Castro knew her name and district. “He looked right into my eyes and he said, ‘How can we help? How can we help President Obama?’” On second thought, these minds have already been irreversibly poisoned. It’s better their constituents should hear the story of Communist China.

The People’s Republic of China was established on October 1, 1949 and the charismatic Mao Zedong, exposed to Marxism as a student at Peking University, was its leader. Mao’s cult of personality produced slavish devotion and enabled him to be seen as a visionary. Mao sought to fundamentally remake Chinese society. Dutiful to communist dogma, he needed someone to blame for society’s problems, and fomented class hatred. Mao insisted that the peasants were kept poor because landowners and small farmers had taken what was rightfully theirs. Mao demonized those farmers who held more land than he deemed acceptable. He confiscated the land and promised it to the peasants. Part of Mao’s plan for “land reform” was to select at least one landlord, and usually several, in virtually every village for public execution. Political opponents were at first ridiculed, then simply eliminated. So far, Mao’s strategy was akin to his Soviet counterparts but Mao took it a step further. Not only did he confiscate the land; he actually made the people property of the state. Family life and traditions, personal property, privacy, personal initiative and individual freedom, were utterly destroyed for around one-seventh of mankind.

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   Now we have “furlough Fridays.”

What more is it going to take to convince the public of the pressing need to transform our schools into student-based institutions, instead of the labor-based cesspools they’ve become in recent years.

In case you haven’t heard, the state of Hawaii, facing the same type of budget crunch as other state governments, has to cut more than $400 million from its education budget over the next two years. Logically, that would lead to some teacher layoffs in a number of school districts.

But the Hawaii State Teachers Association has a better idea. It wants to adopt a four-day school week, with unpaid “furlough Fridays,” to avoid any layoffs. In other words, the teachers are willing to sacrifice one-fifth of their students’ education to keep the paychecks rolling in.

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Just when the Obama Administration eliminates union boss disclosure that exposed union officer perks and self-dealing, a union boss has to get busted for demanding bribes from a trial lawyer. His actions certainly do not argue for the Administration’s ongoing effort to roll back union disclosure. 

The Associate Press reports:

The president of a national railroad employees union was arrested at his Ohio home on Tuesday and charged with bribery.

Edward Rodzwicz, who heads the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, is accused of soliciting and accepting $20,000 in bribes from a St. Louis lawyer. In exchange, prosecutors say, Rodzwicz allowed the lawyer to remain on a list of attorneys approved to handle injury cases for union members.

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Dan Proft, Illinois gubernatorial candidate, released the following Thursday:

The plot thickens — as in SEIU’s pay-to-play plots in state government, including its most recent naked power grab: Its repugnant effort to intervene between children with disabilities and their parents by making home health care workers for disabled children in Illinois a closed shop.

In an editorial on President Obama’s nominee to head the National Labor Relations Board, the Wall Street Journal shines a light on Craig Becker, an associate general counsel at SEIU whose career is traced back to Gov. Rod Blagojevich:

One of the many accusations leveled against former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is that he accepted money from the SEIU in return for taking actions giving collective bargaining rights to Illinois home health-care workers. While Mr. Becker denies any knowledge of, or role in, contributions to the former Governor, he does admit that he provided “advice and counsel to SEIU relating to proposed executive orders and proposed legislation giving homecare workers a right to organize and engage in collective bargaining under state law.”

Gov. Pat Quinn picked up where Blagojevich left off when he issued Executive Order 09-15, which allows SEIU to try to takeover the Home-support Services Program. It is worth noting that Quinn is relying on SEIU’s political muscle and campaign cash in his campaign for governor.

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Jonathan Salant of Bloomberg News is the past president of the National Press Club.  A profile on him at WashingtonJewishWeek.com begins:  “I grew up during the protests for civil rights and the Vietnam War and I saw what journalists were doing,” he said, explaining that becoming a journalist was a “chance to make the world a better place.”  If there is a better admission of the mindset of today’s establishment journalists and their influence and belief in advocacy versus objectivity, I’m not sure one exists.

So, knowing this, let’s take a look at how Mr. Salant introduced ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis at the National Press Club last week.  Here are the first few minutes of the introduction.

“The Associated of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN, exploded onto national headlines with the recent release of a series of undercover video tapes.  Tapes recorded by two conservative activists, a 20-year-old woman and 25-year-old man posing as a prostitute and her pimp.  Hanna Giles and James O’Keefe secretly taped their visits to ACORN offices as they asked about housing assistance for their pretend prostitution ring.  Some ACORN workers turned them down, one even called the police.  “

Really?  Spoken as a FACT, Mr. Salant?  Is there any evidence of this claim?  Have you seen the evidence?  Is it not interesting that the first action cited by Mr. Salant of an ACORN worker is the one ACORN would like everyone to believe was the standard and overwhelmingly common response?  Also, why are they merely referred to as “Conservative Activists”?  Isn’t that meant to diminish them, categorize them?  When Michael Moore gives a speech, is he introduced as “Liberal Activist”?

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Today, in 1859, John Brown led his raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory