Today, outside CPAC’s annual meeting at Washington’s Marriott Wardman Park, union supporters and Occupy DC activists gathered to protest.

One lady wearing an Occupy DC lapel pin proudly displayed a sign stating “Walmart for President.”

Although given multiple opportunities to explain what her sign meant, she stumbled aimlessly for the right words, eventually stating, “I’m going to have to think about that.”

Meanwhile, the Daily Caller’s Michelle Fields reports that protestors were paid $60 each to demonstrate against CPAC: (more…)

Some on the Left suggest that if were Jesus alive today he would be encouraging or even participating in the Occupy protests occurring around this nation.  Although Leftists often derisively dismiss the value of religious beliefs to contemporary government and economics, these same individuals now wish to claim Jesus as a fellow social revolutionary, wealth redistributionist, and civil agitator.

Would Jesus be camping with the protesters in the city park? Would he be leading an occupy “assembly”, singing solidarity choruses, and heralding the demise of capitalism?  If one takes the time to honestly review the stories in the four gospels, the only possible answer is a resounding, “NO!” Jesus lived under Roman rule.  The Romans oppressed Jesus’ fellow Jews, stationed military in Jewish homes and cities, and exercised political power over Jewish territory, interfered with Jewish religious life, and siphoned off Jewish wealth through tribute.

Though living under such conditions, Jesus never advocated revolution or political upheaval.  The gospel according to Matthew says Jesus instructed his disciple Peter, “go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee [as tribute].”  The gospel of Mark records Jesus as saying “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  These commands to pay tribute to a truly oppressive government hardly sounds like a revolutionary intent on overthrowing the political system.

(more…)

The American Jobs Act exposes states to frivolous lawsuits while providing a boon to trial lawyers seeking government settlement money.  The President made no mention of this boon to the trial bar in his national jobs speech.  Nor does the glossy overview of the American Jobs Act (Act) on the Whitehouse website mention this gift.  Instead, one must delve deep within the bill to perceive this threat to state governments— 376 sections into it to be exact.

Section 376 of the Act guts the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution by requiring states to forfeit their sovereign immunity rights guaranteed by this Amendment upon receipt of certain government funds.   This opens the door for expensive litigation against states.  Such litigation is a boon for trial lawyers but serves as a millstone around the neck of drowning taxpayers.

The Eleventh Amendment of the United States Constitution states:

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

The Supreme Court held in 1890 that this amendment prohibits suits brought against a state by its own citizens as well as from citizens of other states.  (Hans v. Louisiana,134 U.S. 1 (1890)).   Without this doctrine of sovereign immunity, lawsuits brought by private individuals could result in states being forced to pay monetary damages for alleged violations.  People with valid claims against the State would not be the only ones collecting monetary damages.  As those experienced in trial law will attest, settlements are often paid out to those launching lawsuits even when the merits of the case are questionable.  Settling a case in many situations is simply less expensive than paying exorbitant legal defense costs.

This doctrine of sovereign immunity does NOT eliminate recourse by citizens for constitutional rights violations committed by a state government.  Lawsuits may still be brought in an effort to prevent the States from continuing conduct which violates such rights.  Courts can then order the state to alter its actions.  Those who ratified Amendment XI recognized that courts should be in the business providing constitutional guidance rather than transferring public funds to individual litigants.  After all, those public funds are derived ultimately from individual citizens.

(more…)

Demanding higher taxes on the “wealthy” and condemning Republican plans to reform entitlements, a crowd of protesting loudly gathered in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill this afternoon.   Protesters then streamed into Representative Dave Camp’s office.

As chants of “My Medicaid matters” echoed through the typically peaceful congressional halls, police officers warned the protesters such conduct fell outside the bounds of acceptable conduct and stood guard at the congressman’s door to prevent a security problem from developing.

Who organized this group of people to engage is such poor behavior?

(more…)

The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, made a surprise appearance at the Iowa Straw Poll earlier August 13th. During a short interview, she claimed “common ground” with several Republican presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney, on renewable energy subsidies. Much to the chagrin of economic conservatives, her claim appears substantiated.

Parked horizontally on the grounds of the Iowa Straw Poll throughout the weekend was a blade from a wind turbine. Prominently displayed on the turbine blade were the corporate logos of GE and TPI Composites. These two companies partner together to develop subsidized wind farms throughout Iowa. Representatives of this partnership provided magic markers to straw poll attendees and to politicians. People could then indicate support of the projects by signing the turbine blade. In addition, politicians were provided a speaking area to verbally express their support of renewable energy subsidies in front of the blade.

Both Mitt Romney and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), amongst other politicians, attached their signatures to the declaration of support for wind energy subsidies. Considering Mitt Romney’s portrayal of himself as a businessperson with an economic vision starkly opposed to President Obama’s, his apparent support for renewable energy subsidies for TPI Composites may give conservatives pause. Unbeknownst to most Republican primary voters, several other prominent Democrats strongly support corporate welfare for TPI Composites. In fact, President Obama mentioned stimulus funds provided to TPI Composites in a speech last year. Another Massachusetts politician, stalwart Leftist Barney Frank, recently proudly announced the placement of a TPI plant in Fall River, MA—a plant supported with a $250,000 grant from the government.

The apparent endorsement by several Republican presidential candidates of this particular corporate welfare recipient will likely raise questions with conservative primary voters.

(more…)

Last year,  the federal government  funded  the National Science Foundation (NSF ) to the tune of $6.9 billion.  Each year, the NSF disburses much of this government funding in the form of grants.  These include graduate research fellowships.  According to the NSF, the grants “fund specific research proposals that have been judged the most promising by a rigorous and objective merit-review system.”

The University of Washington recently received graduate research fellowship funding from the NSF in excess of $14 million.  The Computing Research Association received an additional $14 million from the NSF.  Ostensibly, projects funded by NSF grants further the noble goals set forth by Congress in its establishment of this leading proponent of scientific research.   These goals are “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…” A new study funded by these grants from these two organizations calls this presumption into question.

“That’s What She Said: Double Entendre Identification” summarizes research dedicated to the double entendre “that’s what she said”.  The researches assigned values for “noun sexiness”, “adjective sexiness”, and “verb sexiness”.  Once inserted into a mathematical equation, these values predict whether use of this double entendre would be appropriate.  According to the authors, “Experiments on web data demonstrate that our approach improves precision by 12% over baseline techniques that use only word-based features.”  Notably, the researches make no mention regarding how this discovery will advance the NSF’s stated goals of scientific progress, more secure national defense, or increased national prosperity.

(more…)

Governor Pat Quinn quietly announced Illinois’ formal withdrawal from Secure Communities in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security.  This program, administered through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is fully successful only when state prison systems cooperate with the ICE and the Department of Home land Security.  States can choose to participate by  enabling discovery of the residency status of convicts held in state prisons and alerting ICE of upcoming convict release dates.  According to ICE, this program targets the “worst of the worst”, ensuring that these offenders no longer remain in the United States following their release from prison.

According to the FBI, Illinois ranks near the top in violent crime—number 14 out of the fifty states.  Now instead of ensuring deportation of violent criminals, the governor is choosing to release them into Illinois communities.  Such a policy may also serve to attract more criminals to this state as the risk of deportation following a conviction in Illinois is now significantly reduced.

(more…)

In the face of public sector union reforms, leaders within these unions plan on embarking a new strategy to defeat reformist implementations.

On April 28, Newberry Library in Chicago hosted a debate on whether states can stop collective bargaining. Panelist Stephen A. Yokich, an associate general counsel for UAW, unveiled a radical idea for combatting new state restrictions on public sector collective bargaining. His strategy on behalf of the unions is to obtain a Supreme Court ruling stating that collective bargaining by public sector unions is a protecting right under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution!

The Equal Protection Clause is found in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This section states that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The Supreme Court has held that this clause protects classes of race, national origin, gender, or religion from laws which are discriminatory, have discriminatory intent, or have disparate impact. Never has the Supreme Court ruled that this guarantee for “equal protection of the laws” applies to any particular group of organized workers! Such a suggestion lies far outside the judicial mainstream and defies the meaning and intent of this important clause.

When a member of the audience questioned the validity of such a novel constitutional law argument, the UAW lawyer replied, “We change what we think about the Constitution in order to adapt to the times that we are in.” Candid response, indeed.

(more…)

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) featured Bernadine Dohrn as its keynote regional conference speaker APRIL 2.   The NLG is a progressive bar association funded in part by George Soros’ Open Society Institute.  While the NLG claims to be a civil rights organization, its focus lies elsewhere.  In fact, the NLG’s anthem “human rights shall be held more sacred than property interests” only thinly disguises it’s radical leanings.

Bernadine Dohrn is known for her involvement with the Weather Underground.  At one point, the FBI placed her on its list of 10 most wanted.  Her husband, Bill Ayers, was co-founder of this revolutionary group.   In a 2011 interview with the NY Times, Ms. Dohrn’s husband reiterated,  ”I don’t regret setting bombs…I feel we didn’t do enough.”

As a fugitive, Ms. Dohrn remained a leader in the Weather Underground as it continued to plant bombs at government buildings in an effort to mount a communist revolution.  Three people were killed as a result of the organization’s bomb-making activities in 1970.

(more…)

On March 7, the Wisconsin Senate passed a bill reforming the public sector union bargaining process.  For weeks, the Senate remained at an impasse on the issue as absent Senate Democrats denied the quorum required to move forward.  By redrafting the bill to exclude certain fiscal items, a 2/3 quorum was no longer required to vote on the legislation.  The Senate promptly approved the bill 18-1.

After passage of the bill by the Senate, the Joint Committee of Conference then received the bill.  This committee’s responsibility is to make changes to  similar pieces of legislation passed in both the Senate and House.  Once these changes are approved by the Joint Committee of Conference, the legislation is then submitted for approval by the legislative chambers.  For a bill to be submitted to the governor for his signature — and thereby enacted into law– the language in the bill passed by the Senate and the House must be identical.   In this case, the Joint Committee of Conference approved the language of the bill passed by the Senate verbatim, submitting this to the House for Approval.

Typically, consideration of legislation by this committee for the mark-up process takes weeks.  However, the committee completed its work on this public sector union bill just hours after posting notice of its upcoming meeting.

Much criticism has been levied at the Wisconsin Republicans for the actions of the Joint Committee Meeting.  In a dramatic outburst, Representative Peter Barca proclaimed, “This is a violation of the Open Meetings Law!”   What does the law say?  The portion which the Democrats claim is being violated is Wisconsin Open Meetings Law, in particular §19.84 of the statute.

§19.84 (1) Public notice of all meetings of a governmental body shall be given in the following manner:….(2) Every public notice of a meeting of a governmental body shall set forth the time, date, place and subject matter of the meeting, including that intended for consideration at any contemplated closed session, in such form as is reasonably likely to apprise members of the public and the news media thereof. The public notice of a meeting of a governmental body may provide for a period of public comment, during which the body may receive information from members of the public.(3) Public notice of every meeting of a governmental body shall be given at least 24 hours prior to the commencement of such meeting unless for good cause such notice is impossible or impractical, in which case shorter notice may be given, but in no case may the notice be provided less than 2 hours in advance of the meeting.”

At first glance, it appears that due to the lack of a 24 hours notice to the public, the Joint Committee of Conference violated the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law.   However, there is much more to this statute.  We must also take into consideration §19.87 regarding the notice required by legislative meetings.

(more…)