Guns drawn, a SWAT team kicks in the door of a private business. Are the cops there for drug dealers? Mafia mobsters? Terrorists?

No, the long arm of the law is out for the real dangerous contraband: raw milk and grass-fed chickens.

Nick Gillespie sits down with Kristin Canty, director of Farmageddon: The Unseen War on American Farms, a new documentary about small farms and co-ops that have been raided by the Food & Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and state-level agencies and have had their products seized and destroyed. One particularly gruesome case involved a flock of sheep being killed because of the non-existent threat of the sheep acquiring Mad Cow Disease.

Farmageddon does more than document government overreach; the movie also takes issue with FDA claims that raw milk and other products popular with foodies are unsafe and filled with dangerous bacteria. In a country where more and more folks are embracing small-scale and organic agriculture, the government is on a collision course with a growing subculture.

(more…)

Over the last month, Barack Obama has toured a number of community colleges and job training facilities promoting what he believes is the next great job-creation and employment strategy: training young people graduating from high school and adult workers who have been laid off from their initial careers in the skilled trades. Experts estimate that nearly half a million skilled trade jobs remain unfilled because Americans simply lack the expertise necessary to fill these positions, and Obama is aiming to close the widening employment gap and give some semblance of normalcy to an increasingly irritated public by pushing programs that will get Americans back to work: training people to use the shovels for the shovel-ready jobs, if you will.

Of course, there’s a major flaw in his plan. While Obama is out promoting community colleges and job training programs, his administration is actively killing one of the most successful job training operations. Just last month, Obama’s Department of Education passed what is now called the “Gainful Employment rule,” a rule that severely limits the amount of federal financial aid students may receive to attend for-profit and career colleges – the very colleges that are training low-income, disadvantaged, minority and non-traditional students to enter or re-enter a dramatically changing workforce.

Obama’s Department of Education and it’s supporters in Congress claim that career and for-profit colleges have problems: that their students have a low graduation rate, a low employment rate following graduation and have a difficult time repaying loans. These concerns, they say, led to the need to limit the financial contribution taxpayers make to their education and opportunity. It’s understandable, except that the agenda really isn’t saving taxpayers money. The agenda is, instead, creating a preferential environment for incubators of the next Democratic generation: non-profit schools. If the agenda were saving taxpayer dollars, they might be targeting the very programs Obama is asking Americans to further contribute their support to.

Now, obviously, the educational elite are not fans of for-profit education.

(more…)

Before taking questions during yesterday’s press conference, Barack Obama issued a rambling statement that ran the left wing gamut from class warfare to an implied lament that taxes are too low.  For the most part, it came across as a tedious tour through the failed Democrat’s playbook.  The only time the President seemed truly engaged was when he used his daughters’ superb scholastic abilities to scold Congress for not taking decisive action on the debt limit crisis.

“You know, Malia and Sasha generally finish their homework a day ahead of time,” the President told the press corps.  “Malia is 13 and Sasha is 10. It is impressive. They don’t wait until the night before. They’re not pulling all-nighters.  They’re 13 and 10. You know, Congress can do the same thing. If you know you’ve got to do something, just do it.”

Yes, according to the President, if only the members of congress could move as fast as a pair of 10 and 13 year old girls, they’d be able to fix the mess he’s created.

However, if the President is to be believed, they have no intention of doing so.  Congress is just too busy taking vacations.  Obama lashed out at this practice, claiming that while Senators and Representatives have been in and out of town, vacationing and partying like latter day F. Scott Fitzgeralds, he’s been left alone in Washington, doing all the work.

“They’re in one week. They’re out one week,” Obama scolded.  “And then they’re saying Obama’s got to step in – you need to be here, I’ve been here, I’ve been doing Afghanistan, bin Laden, and the Greek crisis. You stay here.”

Really?

(more…)

From the New York Post:

Anthony Weiner’s wife is taking time off from her senior job with the State Department – as well as time off from the randy former representative, The Post has learned.

While Weiner, 46, heads to an “intensive” rehab program to recover from the sexting scandal that cost him his congressional career, his 35-year-old spouse, Huma Abedin, will be relaxing at an undisclosed location.

“She is definitely taking time off away from her husband and chilling,” a source said. “And he’s going some place for at least a couple of weeks.”

Huma, who is in the early stages of pregnancy with the couple’s first child, has been seen infrequently since she returned from a trip to Africa with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

She returned just before the Democrat announced his decision to quit his Brooklyn-Queens seat in the House after six terms. It was also reported that she had decided to try to make their marriage work. (more…)

While Minnesota is quickly approaching a July 1^st government shutdown, Governor Mark Dayton refuses to call the Legislators back for a special session. The budget passed by the Legislature not only increases spending to the highest levels Minnesota has ever seen, yet balances the budget without raising taxes. So why did the Governor veto it? He did so because he wanted to add in an extra $1.8 billion in tax increases, which only 8% of Minnesotans want.

The state constitution states no bills can even be considered until the governor calls the Legislature into special session. So the bill written by the House Republicans to continue current funding levels until a deal is made, cannot even be heard. According to recent article by the Examiner, Republicans have been attempting to reach across aisles and work together by offering to match the Governor’s budget on K-12 Education, the courts and public safety. However, if Gov. Dayton isn’t willing to call a special session to pass those bills plus the Transportation Bill, then many jobs will be lost. The reality is that over 20,000 jobs could be kept by just signing the Transportation Bill that works on the dedicated funding.

In an article by the Chanhassen Villager, Senate Tax Committee Chair Julianne Ortman asked, “Why wouldn’t he just agree to our $34 billion budget? It’s the largest state budget we’ve ever had, and it funds all of the state’s essential services. If there’s something critical that we haven’t funded, let’s talk. I think our budget does fund everything that’s critical. I question the governor when he says that he’s really concerned about those folks, but he’s willing to hold them hostage to a tax increase of $1.8 billion. It’s not right.”

(more…)

From The Daily Caller:

Minority parents in New York have a message for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT): you are hurting our children.

In New York Monday, charter school parents staged another of several rallies to voice opposition to a lawsuit brought by the UFT and NAACP against the New York City Department of Education. If the organizations are successful with their suit, it would prevent enrollment or re-enrollment in 17 charter schools and stop the closure of 22 public schools.

(more…)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Matt Lewis from the Daily Caller to discuss his new book, The Quotable Rogue about Sarah Palin, the picture it paints of her that might be different than the one you’ve seen in the media and how she may impact the 2012 presidential field if she decides to run.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

The Quotable Rogue: The Ideals of Sarah Palin in Her Own Words
10 questions with ‘The Quotable Rogue’ editor Matt Lewis
Palin visits Iowa for movie première
Matt Lewis at the Daily Caller

Follow Brad on Twitter
Follow Ben on Twitter
Follow Matt on Twitter

During the 2008 election campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama knocked fellow candidate John Edwards for benefiting from the same outside spending groups he criticized:

“So you can’t say yesterday you don’t believe in them, and today you have three quarters of a million dollars being spent on you. You can’t just talk the talk. The easiest thing in the world is to talk about change during election time.”

Priorities USA, a super PAC headed by Bill Burton – former Deputy Press Secretary at the Obama White House – launched a television ad campaign attacking Republicans today. A super PAC is a federal PAC that only makes independent expenditures in support or opposition of candidates. These super PACs were made possible because of the Citizens United and Speech Now cases.

President Obama made it a daily habit to bash the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision last year. From his weekly radio addresses to speeches on the stump, President Obama seemed obsessed with casting sinister aspersions on the decision. In one instance he ominously said, “But this summer, they’re also seeing a flood of attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names,” like Priorities USA perhaps!

(more…)

I believe that due to American Exceptionalism, the United States is on the verge of another dramatic period of economic growth. Our nation is far from perfect; but we learn from our mistakes, change dramatically, and move on. After three years of failed socialist efforts by governments around the world to deficit spend their way out of economic recession; America is re-embracing our exceptional belief that sovereignty belongs to the individual and not our political ruling class.

America’s new commitment to deficit reduction was made clear by the stark contrast this morning between President Obama’s address to the American people on negotiations with Republicans to cut $4 billion in budget deficits through spending reductions or tax increases; versus the anarchy of Europe’s efforts to address the Greek sovereign debt crisis. Just as the President was emphasizing that debt reduction was important for U.S. jobs growth; Athens rioters were burning down the Greek Finance Ministry as punishment for their socialist leaders accepting another $150 billion bailout from Germany and France, after Greece squandered last year’s $100 billion bailout.

The protests are being led by Greek Communists affiliated with PAME, the consortium of 280 trade unions that dominate Greek politics and whose member’s salaries are being paid by the bailouts. The protestors erected gigantic banners on the Acropolis hill overlooking Athens, stating: “People Have The Power and Never Surrender – Organize – Counter Attack”.

To an American outsider, watching the trade unionists bite the hand that has been feeding them at the rate of $300 million per day seems like a bazaar sense of entitlement. But an examination of the consequences to German and French banks if there is a default by Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece or Spain (the PIIGS of Europe); demonstrates the socialist borrowers have achieved “too-big-to-fail” dominance over their German and French lenders. As compared to U.S. banks below; leverage is twice as high for French banks and two and a half times for German banks:
IMF Estimates Average of Bank Leverage by Country

(more…)

Last Thursday an impressive $507,000- was raised during an eight hour period at the annual event known as Troopathon.  Troopathon- which was webcast here on ‘The BIG’s’- brings together celebrities from Hollywood, radio, TV and the media for the purpose of creating the single largest care package drive in America in support of our deployed troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Raising a half million dollars in eight hours is a tall feat anytime but in this economic climate it is quite remarkable.

Yours truly had the opportunity to participate as a speaker and also by broadcasting my radio show during the TV webcast seen by many of you right here.

While raising money in support of our troops is a serious subject it doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.  I thought you might enjoy this behind the scenes look at patriots Andrew Breitbart, SNL’s Victoria Jackson, Jon Kahn (‘My Weekly Date With a Liberal’), BreitbartTV’s Larry O’Conner and others in what I call:  Breitbart Unplugged, Jon Kahn Exposed, Victoria Jackson Unhinged. There is a lot of fun and very entertaining good natured needling going on.

(more…)

Today, at NOON EDT, BigGovernment will conduct a Twitterview with Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI). Follow @BigGovt and @ThadMcCotter or #mccotterttv for all the fun. As always, we’ll publish the full exchange later here at BigGovernment.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his little outfit “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” are at it again. Hoping to gain traction for what has heretofore been an absolutely pathetic gun control campaign, Bloomberg is rolling out all the stops by trying to scare us into thinking Al Qaeda agents are buying their guns at U.S. gun shows.

I’m not kidding: Bloomberg’s latest television ad contains clips of an American-turned-Islamist advising his comrades to buy their weapons at U.S. gun shows.

The ad is very, very sloppy, and full of factual errors. Like when the Islamist says, “You can go down to a gun show and come away with a fully-automatic assault rifle.” I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. Fully automatic weapons are subject to strict federal regulations above and beyond the normal, all too stringent, regulations on semi-automatic firearms in this country. To purchase a fully automatic weapon you have to live in a state that allows them, go through a 3 to 6 month process of federal background checks, pay a significant federal firearms tax, and receive approval by local law enforcement authorities, among other things.

To be honest, it’s sick that Bloomberg is so desperate to take away our guns that he’d actually present such an out-and-out lie by an Islamist as justification for limiting our access to firearms.

(more…)

For the last several months, pension managers, school districts and public officials have been howling about the alarming state of employee pension funds.  They tell us pension systems are dangerously underfunded and taxpayers are on the hook for potentially billions of dollars to make them whole.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey was even floating a bill that would make the federal government the backstop for pension funds – essentially committing to a bailout if the funds ran dry.

But the brain trust at the AFL-CIO and American Federation of Teachers have come up with a new idea: let’s use the billions of pension dollars set aside for union retirees to fund real estate development.

In other words, they want to use massive sums of money sitting in a (albeit evil) bank somewhere to put union members back to work on construction projects. This from people who said former President George W. Bush was crazy for proposing the investment of Social Security funds into the stock market.

Has Rich Trumka or Randi Weingarten looked at the real estate market lately?  It’s kind of not good.

(more…)

Today, in 1997, the United Kingdom turned Hong Kong over to the Chinese.

As of today, public employees in Wisconsin now have a CHOICE whether or not to join a union.

(more…)

The Charles Koch Foundation has released a great video that underscores the importance of economic freedom. Milton Friedman long-ago argued that, without economic freedom, all other freedoms are vulnerable.

Sabrina Schaeffer (close relation*) has a thought-provoking article up on NRO today about republicanism, gender and how Michele Bachmann might represent an emerging modern republican motherhood.

What’s that? Here’s the gist, but its well-worth the full read:

“The Republican Mother’s life was dedicated to the service of civic virtue; she educated her sons for it; she condemned and corrected her husband’s lapses from it. . . . The theorists [of the early republic] created a mother who had a political purpose and argued that her domestic behavior had a direct political function in the republic.” . . .

The goals of modern republican mothers are broadly similar to those of the original ones: to foster a relationship between citizen and state in which the citizen is sovereign over government. But whereas the republican mother of our Founding era participated in politics only indirectly, the new republican mother plays a decidedly active role in our public life. Gender has been not overcome, but integrated. . .

(more…)