A 30-some minute 2006 documentary, “Quiet Revolution,” by the progressive Alliance for Justice, hosted by actor Bradley Whitford, decried the supposed Constitutional abuse by the Bush administration.  It was screened at the 2007 “Take Back America” conference, where the session description humorously notes an interview with a little known, apparently Irish, Senator “Barack O’bama.”

Remarkably, Cass Sunstein, now the regulatory czar a President O’bama, officially known as the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, said the Bush administration and its like-minded justices on the Supreme Court (specifically Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia) are undermining the right to privacy.  By my count, that’s 2 on a court of nine justices.

Yes, the man that wants to “tax conspiracy theories,” put government-sponsored pop-ups on political blogs, and other Big Brothery things at one point was apparently concerned about the right to privacy.  Shows what a little power will do for you, I guess.  As Paul Joseph Watson wrote:

Essentially, Sunstein wants it to be written into law that the government can dictate the very nature of reality to Americans and that their opinions can only be voiced at best when accompanied by mandatory federal propaganda or at worst that Americans can be silenced entirely by federal decree.

All in the defense of the Constitution and the right to free speech, naturally.  And this man had the gall to criticize the Bush administration?

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Yesterday, MyTwoCensus.com reported that 2010 Census workers from Colorado have arrived in New York to assist with operations. Each of these employees is put up at a hotel and paid a per diem rate. (I’ve heard that Hilton Hotels are being used for this purpose — which isn’t surprising since Census Bureau officials are known to stay at Ritz Carleton Hotels while on government business).

Michael C. Cook of the Census Bureau’s Public Information Office wrote to me yesterday, “When we assess that a particular office is either not following procedures or has weak management we often make staffing changes, or even send in experienced managers to help improve operations and re-train the temporary staff.” So the Census Bureau is saying that nobody in New York, a city of 8 million people,  is capable of handling these procedures? (Two sources have confirmed to me that one manager from Washington DC is even being put up in New York’s Battery Park in a $4,500 per month apartment on your dime.)

The federal government outlines hotel and per diem rates for New York quite clearly. This means that in addition to their salaries as Census Bureau employees, each individual is spending up to $411 per day, not including flights or other expenditures, merely to eat and sleep in New York.

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From Investors.com:

Is there any low to which the SEIU won’t stoop? Now it’s interrupting blood donations in a strike against the American Red Cross. The Boy Scouts and Baptist churches are also on unions’ enemies list.

Demanding higher wages and better benefits, the Service Employees International Union on Wednesday launched a three-day strike against the Red Cross’ blood donation operations. The job action comes as the nonprofit, in a realistic response to the weak economy, is cutting salaries, ending bonuses and reducing pensions.

SEIU thinks its members should not only be exempt from the Red Cross’ efforts to live within its means, but actually get a raise.

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Barack Obama promised during the 2008 campaign to end partisan politics.  Although Obama as President has governed with staunch partisan vigor, he has continued to deplore the politicization of American politics as a terrible failure.

Underneath that sentiment, Uncommon Knowledge’s latest guest John Podhoretz argues is a fundamental misunderstanding of the beauty of American democracy.  Simply put, Obama believes that since he won the election that he is entitled to remake the world in his image, with no frustrating arguments with people who disagree.

Podhoretz recently wrote in Commentary about The Purposes of Political Combat.  On our show he said, “We’ve gotten to a point where politicians and pundits seem to detest politics.  Politicians want to believe, particularly Barack Obama, that once an election is over politics ends and action begins.”

But in Podhoretz’s view, politics really begins when elections end.   Every action that is taken should be a political battleground.  Every argument needs to be won.  Every policy needs to go through a public process.  Our system is built to retard the ability of politicians to act.

Like all episodes of Uncommon Knowledge, the topics are wide ranging.  Other issues addressed include the latest on the tensions between Israel and Iran and why Jews are overwhelmingly liberal.

Watch the full show below.  Also, consider joining our new Facebook Page or following us on Twitter.

U.S. Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill.) is back in the news two months after he was caught on video, saying, “I don’t care about the Constitution.” This time, however, he’s drawn the ire of a military veteran who wants the two-term congressman from Illinois’ 17th Congressional District to stop calling himself a veteran.

In a letter to Blake Chisam, Ken Moffet informs the chief counsel and staff director of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct of an incident during which he asked Congressman Hare if he was going to stop telling people that he was a veteran:

On Monday, May 31, 2001, Mr. Hare and I were engaged in a conversation concerning the statements he is making around the district about being a veteran.  After I pointed out that according to the law he is not a veteran, he became very upset and demanded to know my name.  I refused to tell him my name, saying that this was about his claim of being a veteran and not about me.

Mr. Hare then told one of his aids who was with him, to follow me to my car and get my license plate number so he could find out who I was.  I have since been told that Mr. Hare’s daughter works for the DMV.

I then asked Mr. Hare if he was going to stop telling people that he was a veteran.  Mr. Hare again demanded to know my name, and again told his aide to get my name or to follow me to get my license plate number so he could find out who I was, so he could tell all the former reservist what I said.

I asked Mr. Hare if he as a public official was going to use his official office to run name checks on private citizens, in order to intimidate them into not asking questions he did not want to answer.

As Mr. Hare was turning to walk away form me he paused, and turning back to my direction, he glared at me intently, and while leaning forward pointed his finger at me, and in a threatening and intimidating manner said, “I’ll find out who you are!”  Given the nature of Illinois politics and Mr. Hare’s reputation as a mean politician, I felt intimidated by the power of Mr. Hare’s office and what he might do.

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Republican Gary Miller represents everything the Tea Party activists are trying to fight against.

He has put his name on 10 earmarks since 2007 for $15 million.  The earmarks went directly to three non-profit entities outside of his congressional district.  The three non-profits were all operated out of the same address in the City of Rancho Cucamonga and all run by the same person, Jeffrey Burum.  Jeffrey Burum is under investigation by the San Bernardino DA and the California Attorney General for bribery and corruption of government officials.  Burum is also one of the top contributors to Republican Gary Miller’s PAC.

Why direct these earmarks to three different organizations outside of his district and to a man who is a top campaign donor and is under a cloud of suspicion for bribing government officials regarding real estate deals?

Republican Gary Miller is in the process of negotiating with the Rancho Cucamonga City Council regarding land that he purchased and has drawn up plans to develop.  The residents in the city are protesting the development and he is working with the City to sell the land back to them.  The deal has come under heavy scrutiny.

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The trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has begun in Chicago. Nothing says free-for-all like a political corruption trial in the Windy City. Should be a long, hot summer.

In the post-American world, a convoy of war ships trussed up as a “flotilla” is affectionately called “humanitarian aid.” And now the world is demanding a full-on “investigation” of Israel’s defensive action.

I asked former UN Ambassador John Bolton for his take on it. He said, “How Obama reacts in the UN Security Council and more generally will say a lot about his views on Israel.”

You gotta love how post-American Obama was so quick to call policeman James Crowley “stupid,” motivated by racism in the Gates affair, but when Jewish soldiers were getting beaten to a pulp on the killing flotilla, the Obama administration morally equivocated and “condemned those acts which resulted in the loss of life.”

What the hell does that even mean? And Obama and other world leaders are ignoring the fact that, as was reported by the Israel Project, “all nine protesters killed Monday (May 31) aboard a Gaza-bound Turkish ship carrying weapons-wielding activists are believed to be Turkish nationals and were backed by the IHH, an Islamist Turkish group connected to global jihadi networks.”

Has the post-American President Obama bothered to watch the murderous beatings?

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Gun owners might not feel besieged right now, but they should be very concerned. Last week the Obama administration announced its support for the UN Small Arms Treaty. This treaty poses real risks for freedom and safety in the United States as well as the rest of the world.

According to the U.N., guns used in armed conflicts cause 300,000 deaths worldwide every year. Their proposed solution is a simple one. Keep rebels from getting guns by requiring that countries “prevent, combat and eradicate” what those countries define as “the illicit trade in small arms.”

The UN’s solution isn’t too surprising when one looks at the long list of notorious totalitarian regimes, such as Syria, Cuba, Rwanda, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, and Sierra Leone, which support these “reforms.” But not all insurgencies are “bad.” To ban providing guns to rebels in totalitarian countries is like arguing that there is never anything such as a just war.

In hindsight, during World War II, should the French or Norwegian resistance movements simply have given up? Surely this would have minimized causalities. But that is hardly a one-time event. What about Afghanis in their fight against the Soviet Union or Nicaraguan rebels fighting communist dictators during the 1980s? Was it wrong to help out? What about totalitarian governments that massacre their citizens? Don’t they have a right to protect themselves?

Many countries already ban private gun ownership. Rwanda and Sierra Leone are two notable examples. Yet, with more than a million people hacked to death over the last decade-and-a-half, were their citizens better off without guns?

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Hamas ally Jodie Evans and President Barack Obama, October 15, 2009.

Democrat party front group Media Matters for America has released several statements in recent days seeking to throw reporters off the trail of the strong ties between President Barack Obama and Jodie Evans, co-founder of the terrorist support group Code Pink.

Media Matters attempts to influence public opinion by getting their politically-slanted, factually-challenged reports in the hands of sympathetic liberal reporters who then either regurgitate Media Matters’ propaganda to the public as news or use it as guidance to bury news.

In this case, Media Matters was responding to a report by World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein, picked up by Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit and Big Government, and by Glenn Beck, tying Obama to leaders of the so-called Gaza Freedom Movement, the group behind the terror flotilla intercepted by Israel as the six ship convoy attempted to break a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt on the terrorist enclave of Gaza.

Much of the information forming the basis for Klein’s report was originally researched and published at Big Government months ago, which Klein (a solid researcher in his own right who has added much to this story) acknowledged at the time.

Klein reported last weekend that Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers, his wife Bernardine Dohrn and Obama funder Jodie Evans each had ties to Obama and the Gaza Freedom Movement.

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The Federal Communications Commission’s bid to subject broadband services to stricter regulation encountered a new hurdle last Friday, as an informal count of legislators revealed more than half of the members of the House oppose reshaping the regulatory framework through reclassification.

In separate letters to FCC chief Julius Genachowski, 74 Democrats and 171 Republicans aired reservations with the commission’s present course, warning that the move to reclassify broadband a Title II service would retard innovation and stall investment. A few stragglers, including the Dean of the House Rep. John Dingell, brought the tally to 248.

GOPNetNeutralityletter

The Republican letter–by-lined by Rep. Joe Barton, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Cliff Sterns, senior most Republican on the House and Energy Commerce telecommunications subcommittee–said that reclassifying ISPs as a Title II common carrier is not within the purview of the FCC and should be left at the sole discretion of Congress.

“We write to encourage you not to proceed down your announced path to reclassify broadband service as a phone service under Title II of the Communications Act,” their letter reads. “Such a significant interpretation change to the Communications Act should be made by Congress.”

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From The Hill:

Hiring by the U.S. Census Bureau is expected to spike May’s job figures dramatically.

Economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s.com projects the economy will have added 575,000 jobs in May, while the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) rough projection is for 560,000 jobs.

Either figure would represent the largest number of jobs created in any month since the dot-com crash of 2000.

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser on Tuesday, touted what he said would be a positive report for Democrats, who are hoping a revitalized economy will help them in this fall’s elections. He said the May report would be “well beyond” the 290,000 jobs created in April, according to Reuters.

The numbers pose a problem for the administration, however, in terms of their reflection of economic growth.

Zandi expects that only 150,000 of the jobs created in May will come from the private sector, with 425,000 new jobs sparked by the once-a-decade Census. (more…)

It’s time for Tea Party activists in Southern California to put up, or shut-up.

Despite California’s “flakey” and leftist reputation, there are certain pockets outside of Los Angeles and San Francisco that very much resemble suburban and rural areas in the mid-west (except with much better weather and baseball).  I happen to live in just such an area.

California’s 42nd Congressional District. It is a bizarrely shaped district that covers much of LA’s suburban mecca, Orange County (the place Ronald Reagan once described as “where good Republicans go to die”) and rural portions of Los Angeles and San Bernardino county.  The district is shaped the way it is so a Republican incumbent is sure to win year after year after year… and he has.

For the past ten years the district has been “represented” by Republican Gary Miller.  I put those quotes around his name because looking at his record I can’t, for the life of me, see how he has represented me or my family or my neighbors at all.  In fact, in light of recent revelations, it seems that Republican Gary Miller’s most important constituency is Republican Gary Miller’s bank account.

I will get into all of the reasons why Republican Gary Miller should be turned out of office in a bit.  First, I want to address the Tea Party concept and why primary season is so important this year.

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“If you make a mess, you have to help clean it up”, John “Jack” McConnell said in his opening statement in a case that would have lasting and costly effects. From the looks of things McConnell and his friends may need a mop because there is a trail of corruption originating from Rhode Island that has spread to DC and polluted the country. McConnell’s nomination for the Rhode Island’s federal court reeks of backroom deals and paybacks.

“President Barack Obama nominated Jack McConnell in March for a spot on the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island. He was recommended by the state’s two senators, Democrats Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse.”

The Heritage Foundation explains McConnell’s background:

“Another of McConnell ’s claims to fame is the lead paint litigation in Rhode Island and Wisconsin. In Rhode Island, McConnell’s law firm shopped a lawsuit against the former makers of lead paint to Whitehouse, when the latter was that state’s Attorney General. Whitehouse’s successor ratified a decision that Whitehouse made and contracted out the state’s power to sue in the public interest to McConnell’s law firm. In the lawsuit, which McConnell considers one of his most significant, the state sought an order directing the companies to abate lead pigment in all buildings in Rhode Island that were accessible to children on the ground that the buildings were a ‘public nuisance.’

The Rhode Island Supreme Court recognized that lead poisoning was a serious public health problem, but declined to play the role of the legislature and create a new cause of action to address it, as McConnell ’s lawsuit wanted it to do.”

Have angry mob, will travel

Naturally, when there is an opportunity to exploit the situation, attack business, and make some money, ACORN is not far behind.

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There is very little difference between what intelligence analysts do and what ordinary folks try to accomplish when they pick up a newspaper, listen to the evening news, or read the posts on this and other sites. In every case, wittingly or not, they attempt to separate the revealing details from the background noise.

That is what we should do with regard to the violent incident that took place when the Israelis boarded the six ships constituting the so-called Gaza Flotilla. Most of what we have learned in the aftermath is true and appalling but, in the long run, inconsequential.

The Israeli soldiers who landed on the Mavi Marmara (in Turkish, the Blue Sea of Marmara) in preparation for conducting the ship to an Israeli port – from which the goods being carried could be sent on to Gaza – were, in fact, ambushed, as Allison Kaplan Sommer indicates in her lucid analysis of the evidence that has become available, and all of the usual suspects quickly lined up to condemn Israel for crimes she did not commit.

This is a tiresome, all-too-predictable business reminiscent of the campaign launched in the wake of the clearing action undertaken some years ago at the Jennin refugee camp and of the campaign launched after the Israelis intervened in in 2008 to put an end to Hamas’ firing of missiles into Israel from their stronghold in Gaza. It is part and parcel of a long struggle on the part of the PLO in days gone by and of Hamas now to stage incidents and rally world public opinion against the Israelis for doing what they have to do to defend themselves.

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If you’ve been watching the fiasco surrounding the oil spill in the gulf, you already know the mainstream media meme that has cropped up around it. “Yes, President Obama has failed to stop the spill thus far,” the press tell us. “Yes, he’s demonstrated that his promises of supreme competence were overblown. Yes, his leadership has become so questionable that even James Carville has attacked him for it. Yes, some of the alternatives being offered in spite of all of this are being ignored, and yes, President Obama has failed to inspire confidence among everyday Americans about his ability to handle this crisis. But one thing we will not deny is that President Obama cares. He is a man of deep humanity, and deep empathy (and where have we heard that word before) for the suffering of those affected by the spill, and he cares.”

What I am about to ask will require readers to engage in a supreme act of charity: Despite all the evidence to the contrary, all the evisceration which Rush Limbaugh and every other conservative commentator have piled on this administration, all the evidence that the media will never believe anything but the very best about this President even as he takes this country down the road to serfdom at a speed that would make Dale Earnhardt Jr feel queasy, and despite all the emotionless, meaningless, platitude-laden babble that the President has been spewing since the spill began, I want the readers to assume, just for the sake of argument, that the media is telling the truth. Despite what appear to be severe rhetorical and emotional shortcomings in his speeches and his own bearing, imagine that underneath the hyper-rational mask, President Obama really does care.

So what?

Has that “caring” done anything to stop the spill? Has it given President Obama one single, solitary constructive idea about how to solve the problem (other than “Plug the Hole,” that is)? Does President Obama have the ability to fly out to the Gulf Coast and, like Ma-Ti in Captain Planet, dissolve the oil with nothing but the magically empathic effusions of his beating heart? And if not, then even if we concede that President Obama cares about those affected by this crisis,  how is that remotely relevant to his ability to solve it? As per the usual liberal tag line, we are expected to believe that President Obama’s good intentions alone should assuage us of his competence, but have they done anything at all? The answer is as devastating as it is obvious: No.

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For nearly a year, MyTwoCensus.com was the only media outlet reporting about the problems that the Census Bureau faced in terms of fingerprinting the 1.4 million people who were set to work for the 2010 Census. And we continue that fight today.

In December 2009, I reported that a convicted felon in Alaska was working in a supervisory position for the Census Bureau. This was discovered only after the man killed his mother and then himself. Clearly, this incident should have made calls for improved fingerprinting procedures at the Census Bureau obvious. However, the Census Bureau maintained the status quo and did nothing — fending off my questions and ignoring my concerns.

This incident occurred two months AFTER I originally posted the flaws of the 2010 Census fingerprinting process that were written by child advocate and fingerprinting expert David Allburn, who offered solutions to the Census Bureau that were ultimately refused. Allburn wrote:

(1) The Bureau should announce that trainees are responsible for the “readability” of their own fingerprints, and that fingerprint “failure” due to un-readability (or to discovery of disqualifying criminal history), terminates the canvasser’s employment. This stops attracting ex-felons who would intentionally blur their prints, but it is manifestly unfair to honest workers whose fingerprints are blurred by the inexperienced print-takers. This is fixed by step two.

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The infamous Tammany Hall boss George Washington Plunkitt distinguished between “honest graft” and “dishonest graft.” Dishonest graft, he said, meant actual theft from the treasury, or shaking down criminals for bribes. Honest graft, on the other hand, simply meant taking advantage of private deals that arose in the course of public office. “I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em,” he said.

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich starts his federal trial today. And the Illinois Democrats who clung to his coattails for years are desperate to pretend they don’t know him. Back in 2003, Rep. Jan Schakowsky proclaimed of Blago: “He really is very smart. I don’t laugh at the idea [of his running for President] at all.” She added that when he walked into a room, “there was this crackle of electricity. Everyone wanted to touch him.”

That electricity prompted Rep. Schakowsky to donate $28,000 to Blago’s campaigns for governor. Her husband, convicted felon and political strategist Robert Creamer, made $541,000 helping Blago get elected in 2002. She lobbied him heavily in November 2008 in the hope that he would appoint her to fill the Senate seat being vacated by Barack Obama, and is thought to be “Senate Candidate 3” in the original criminal complaint.

Now she is trying to laugh it off, nervously telling the Politico that the trial will be a “soap opera.”  She and other Illinois Democrats are trying to pretend that even though Blago’s alleged crimes involved prominent figures in federal, state, and local government, he was a lone wolf. But they are nervous, because the connections are there. (Is it just a coincidence that President Obama chose last weekend, of all others, to visit Chicago?)

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Today, in 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini died. He was Iran’s answer to Marx/Stalin/Hitler. He has not been missed. Except, maybe by veterans of the Carter Administration. Here’s opening Carter II (Obama) doesn’t pave the way for another Khomeini.