We last week passed the $15 trillion national debt mark.  It continues hurtling upward, almost completely unabated.

We the People did our job and then some in the historic 2010 election, delivering more than 70 new Republicans to the Congress – on their promises to rein in out-of-control Washington spending.

We sent these folks to D.C. in large part to prohibit President Barack Obama and his Democrats from continuing to explode the budget – and the deficits and debt along with it – the way they had when exclusively in the Majority in 2009 and 2010.

So when President Obama campaigns asking for reelection and more D.C. Democrats – to undo this “do nothing” Congress – remember that stopping Obama and his Party colleagues was what We the People elected these “do-nothings” to do.

Serving as an impediment (modest though it may be) to the Democrat fiscal train wreck is, in fact, doing something.

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With Operation Fast and Furious headlining the news, there is no doubt civilian arms have been trafficked into Mexico. However, many of the arms used by Mexican cartels are NOT supplied by civilian gun outlets in the United States. Based upon the statistics I have compiled, our State and Defense Departments may be the premier suppliers of weaponry to Mexican drug cartels — not the US civilian.

From 2003-2009, over 150,000 Mexican soldiers deserted from their ranks. Drug cartels became so confident in their recruitment of military personnel that they posted help wanted ads for hit men, traffickers, and guards. When these soldiers desert, their US-supplied weapons (grenades, sniper rifles, assault weapons, etc.) often accompany them over to the cartels. In 2008 and 2009, 13,792 and 20,530 small arms were exported to Mexico from the US. Over 92% of these arms were civilian legal semi-automatic or non-automatic firearms, a number eerily similar to the debunked 90% number echoed by the ATF. A 2008 State Department memo to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi shows a $1,000,000 shipment of select fire M4A2 assault rifles to the Mexican Federal Police Force, (AKA Federales) one of the most corrupt Mexican government agencies.

The most recent numbers from 2010 show the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) — the State Department agency responsible for overseeing the exportation of military goods — authorized the transfer of 2.5 million units of small arms, weapon optics, silencers, and related components. In that same year, over 11 million units of ammunition and 127,000 units of explosive ordnance were cleared for exportation to Mexico. This amounted to $25 million worth of small arms, ammunition, and explosives shipped to Mexico authorized by our State Department.

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In case you thought the Black Panther voter intimidation case, Fast and Furious, cracking down on Gibson Guitars, and attempting to give Kaleid Sheikh Mohammed a civilian trial weren’t enough, get ready to add another entry to Attorney General Eric Holder’s greatest hits:

NEW YORK (AP) – Federal authorities declined to pursue a case against an “al-Qaida sympathizer” accused of wanting to bomb police stations and post offices in New York City because they believed he was mentally unstable and incapable of pulling off the alleged plot, two law enforcement officials said Monday.

New York Police Department investigators sought to get the FBI involved at least twice as their undercover investigation of Jose Pimentel unfolded, the officials said. Both times, the FBI concluded that he wasn’t a serious threat, they said.

The FBI concluded that 27-year-old Pimentel “didn’t have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own,” one of the officials said.

The officials were not authorized to speak about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity. The FBI’s New York office declined to comment on Monday. New York City authorities said that the FBI was involved in the case, but did not specifically say they declined to pursue the charges.

“We just believed that we couldn’t let it go any further. We had to act,” said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. (more…)

In July, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chair of the Republican Study Committee, was made to apologize to party leaders for opposing the debt ceiling deal that created the now-failed super committee.

Photo credit: UPI/Kevin Dietsch

Now that events have proved his opposition to have been well-founded, Rep. Jordan is reminding the public that House Republicans have already passed the Cut, Cap, and Balance plan, along with many other bills proposed and/or passed to balance the budget and generate economic growth at the same time:

Jordan Responds to the Super Committee’s Lack of Agreement

Washington, DC – Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan offered the following statement after the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction failed to come to agreement, triggering $1.2 trillion of automatic spending cuts over a ten year period beginning in 2013:

“Throughout the year, the Republican Study Committee has offered solutions to address the debt crisis, including the Cut, Cap and Balance plan that passed the House with bipartisan support.  But instead of a solution, Washington wanted a deal, and thus the Super Committee was created.”
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Some people have asked why I’m so agitated about the possibility that Republicans may acquiesce to tax increases as part of the Supercommittee negotiations.

Rather than get into a lengthy discourse about the proper role of the federal government or an analysis of how the Bush-Obama spending binge worsened America’s fiscal situation, I think this chart from a previous post says it all (click to enlarge).

Republicans are considering a surrender on taxes because they are afraid that a deadlock will lead to a sequester, which would mean automatic budget savings. And the sequester, according to these politicians, would “cut” the budget too severely.

But as the chart illustrates, that is utter nonsense.

There are only budget cuts if you use dishonest Washington budget math, which magically turns spending increases into spending cuts simply because the burden of government isn’t expanding faster than it potentially could.

If we use honest math, we can see what this debate is really about. Should we raise taxes so that government spending can grow by more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years?

Or should we have a sequester so that the burden of federal spending climbs by “only” $2 trillion?

The fact that this is even an issue tells us a lot about whether the GOP has purged itself of the big-government virus of the Bush years. (more…)

“Workers of the World Unite”

Karl Marx, the infamous German political philosopher had a vision.  Marx, together with Joseph Engels, predicted and even called for the dismantling of capitalist economic systems worldwide into a socialist and ultimately classless communist world.  24thState will be asking the question of the late Mr. Marx, “How is that working out for you?”

In a series of columns, we will expose the 5th column in the United States.  We will name names and expose the ties from David Axelrod, who just visited St. Louis referring to some GOP presidential contenders as “nutty folks,” to active Marxists and communist party loyalists in Congress and even the Missouri General Assembly.  We will expose their plans and how even their favorite Republican member of Congress (yes, they have one) works to fulfill them.

If we contemplate for a second, whether it is realistic to assume that the Marxists quit being Marxists, in Russia, China and even the U.S., can we assume that the workers of the world decided to not unite?  Did they pack up their tents and go home?  Are Russian and Chinese leaders relinquishing power and creating new constitutional republics?  Did the Communist Party USA shut their doors or just change their tactics? The answers to these questions are unquestionably obvious but uncomfortable to contemplate.

First published in 1848, the Manifesto had ten very specific goals (briefly examine their progress in the U.S. here).  The most alarming tenet however, may be the assertion that communism will never really work until the entire world is communist.  In other words, the true believers have a duty to spread it.  What then is the duty of those opposed to it?  What is IT?

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So much for the argument that renewables don’t compromise our national security the way fossil fuels do – but try telling an environmentalist as much. While it was first reported more than a year ago that wind farms were interfering with military radar, making airplanes disappear from sight on screens and cluttering those same screens with the blade-rotation changes of turbine blades, not much was said on the matter until this month, when the Department of Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) proudly unveiled the Renewable Energy and Defense Database. The REDD is an interactive tool that allows renewable-energy developers to locate military installations with a view toward avoiding them in deciding where to construct future projects.

According to a Nov. 9 DoD press release, the “labor-intensive, very time-consuming project” was primarily an effort of the NRDC and didn’t cost the federal government a dime. Unfortunately, this assessment fails to take into account the hefty national security toll wind farms have already taken – and will likely continue to take unless the current premium placed on “green” energy isn’t removed.

As of 2008, wind turbines had compromised almost 40 percent of U.S. long-range radar systems (h/t masterresource.org). Here’s just one example of how: In 2007, two wind-farm projects slated for the area near Travis Air Force Base in northern California came before the county planning commission. The base and a county airport land-use body sought to have the projects delayed until turbines’ effects on radars could be further studied. But when, the following year, a project supporter donated $1 million to the base, Col. Steven Arquiette, commander of the 60th Air Mobility Wing at Travis Air Force Base, “was told by his superiors to accept the money and withdraw his complaints,”according to Masterresource.org blogger Lisa Linowes, despite the fact that nothing about the plans had changed substantially.

Now pilots coming in to Travis are urged to turn on their aircraft’s transponders as a way of announcing their presence, since they still cannot be seen on radar. This poses a sizeable security threat given that it could easily be emulated by terrorists – and has been. As Linowes notes, among the first actions the Sept. 11 perpetrators did was turn off the transponders of the planes they hijacked.

Wind farms have also dramatically slowed the Federal Aviation Administration’s review time for project proposals. While it once took a month for construction of a project to be approved or be declared hazardous, now similar projects stand to wait up to three times that long.

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A number of people have contacted me voicing their concern that my coming out against Mitt Romney by signing onto the Not Mitt Romney pledge isn’t helpful. Their argument is that we must ensure that Obama is not re-elected. I agree. America is at a serious crossroads.

If Mitt Romney nabs the nomination as Republican candidate for President of the United States, I will support him with every breath of my body. That said, Obama Lite is not the answer. Obama Lite will not defeat Obama. In the lead-up to the primaries, we should fight for a candidate with the most principled values. Political will and courage is what we are in dire need of.

John Bolton was my candidate. He didn’t run.

Rudolph Giuliani was next in line for me. He didn’t run.

Sarah Palin had my vote. She didn’t run.

Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann are next.

Rick Perry? Please. I questioned his very bad judgment when I exposed his entire Islamic curriculum, dawah and proselytizing, to Texas school children. To this day he has never come clean about that. And the fact that he was Al Gore’s manager does not bode well.

Perry is a snake. Watch him. He is creepy. And his freak show speech in New Hampshire recently belonged in a Roger Corman film. (more…)

I really hate mice, but even I felt for the freakishly disgusting rodents when I was walking around Target and saw mouse traps with FAKE cheese on ‘em. Are mice so freaking stupid they’d actually fall for something pretending to hold the most coveted of cuisines within a mouse’s palette?

There’s a political parallel there…

Monday, President Obama announced a plan to force banks to refinance home mortgages for those who are upside-down in their property. For those of us who bought high and now couldn’t dream of selling at a profit, this is a wonderful way for us to benefit from a government that seems to spend on programs that’ll impact us, right?

But then we take a few steps closer and realize if we fall for this, we’re being sucked into something we already kinda fell for a few years back.

The original mortgage plan, put into effect in 2009, was designed to allow those who are current with their payments but have little or no equity in their home to secure lower mortgage rates. The President’s Home Affordable Refinance Program has helped only 894,000 borrowers since the spring of 2009. The administration had originally hoped up to 5 million homeowners would benefit. I guess this didn’t work as planned. This revised plan is supposedly going to help up to 1.6M homeowners and will force banks, on paper, to take a loss on the mortgages of people who over-extended themselves.

What the President is really feeding us is nothing more than a petrified piece of cheese that’s sat out in the sun way too long and has now been spray-painted and re-molded so as to broaden its appeal (so he hopes) in order to garner votes from an electorate who would otherwise NOT vote for him. (more…)

Earlier this month, while South Korean President Lee Myung Bak was visiting the United States, his military commanders were back home watching out for ammunition boxes.

North Korea’s military had moved combat aircraft, mobile ground-to-air missiles and missile launchers to attack positions near the border with the South. Had those ammo boxes – the final step in preparations for an attack – appeared, whether for war-making or simply for live-fire exercises, it might well have triggered a resumption of the shooting war that began in the 1950s and never truly has ended.

Elsewhere recently, a North Korean diplomat at low-level talks at the University of Georgia said war on the peninsula seems closer now than it has in decades, and Iran was linked to a clumsy attempt to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington. The Iranians also are “playing” in hot spots throughout the Middle East – from Syria to Yemen to Egypt and even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and working feverishly to overcome a cyber attack on its nuclear weapons development program.

Clearly, this is no time for the United States to let down its guard on missile defense. Congress – which is under pressure to cut defense spending but maintain capabilities – must show resolve to ensure our nation, troops and allies are protected.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama on Friday declared an end to the Iraq war, one of the longest and most divisive conflicts in U.S. history, announcing that all U.S. troops would be withdrawn from the country by year’s end.

Obama’s statement put an end to months of wrangling over whether the U.S. would maintain a force in Iraq beyond 2011.

“After nearly nine years,” the president, “America’s war in Iraq will be over.”

He spoke at the White House after a private video conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and he offered assurances that the two leaders agreed on the decision. (more…)

A lot has changed in the life of former Army Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Kelly A. Stewart since the last time his name appeared on the virtual pages of Big Government’s sister site, Big Peace, Jan. 2, but the highly-decorated Green Beret and combat veteran is still fighting to clear his name from sexual assault charges that placed him behind bars.

SFC Kelly A. Stewart

On Aug. 26, 2010, Brig. Gen. Steven L. Salazar reduced Stewart’s sentence from eight years to three years, making him eligible for parole immediately. Seven months later, Stewart was released on parole from the U.S. Military Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, KS. Today, he is living and working in Virginia.

Despite being out from behind bars, Stewart is still fighting to clear his name and shed the “sex offender” label that will stay with him the rest of his life if justice remains out of reach.

How did he get that label in the first place?  Here’s the short version:

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In our continuing coverage from last Saturday’s anti-war protest and march organized by the left-wing ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink, and the Gay Liberation Network, we have more alarming video to share. Alarming, but not surprising, given our footage of the same groups’ joint demonstration last March.

Organizers and protesters from Occupy Chicago joined these groups and provided support to last Saturday’s anti-war gathering. The protest carried a strong anti-Israel/anti-America message, a theme that both served as a rallying cry for the day and, more ominously, a call to action for the organization of massive demonstrations in Chicago next May during the G-8 and Nato summit. Bringing more socialist economics to the United States, was also high on the agenda for the day.

Hatem Abudayyeh, a local pro-Palestinian agitator, rose to stage to address the crowd regarding Israel and American imperialism. He referred to Benjamin Netanyahu as a “fool” for his recent address to the U.N. General Assembly, and cheered the effectiveness of the global boycott and divestment in Israel, which he said was successfully putting a “dent in Israel’s indemnity over Palestine and the Arab world.” During the speech, members of the radical left-wing Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization on which noted socialist Noam Chomsky happens to sit on the board, passed out flyers that read at the top, “Be a Passivist (sic), be a Nonviolent Activist, Refuse to Pay Taxes, Destroy Israel!”

Abudayyeh is not a rookie in the activist business. He is the executive director for the Arab American Action Network, which was founded by radical PLO propagandist Rashid Khalidi. When President Obama was on the board of directors for the Woods Fund, they gave a $40,000 grant to Abudayyeh’s group, and the group has also received close to $500,000 in federal tax dollars.

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President Barack Obama’s call yesterday for “restraint on all sides” as defenseless Coptic Christians were attacked and murdered in Egypt in a government-supported Islamic pogrom was typical of his administration’s response to attacks by states against civilians.

Though he has, in some cases, come around to criticizing and even toppling regimes, Obama’s first instinct is to treat the perpetrators and the victims as equals.

The sole, and repeated, exception is Israel, which the Obama administration criticizes and condemns for legal activities such as construction within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. By contrast, the administration coddles the unrepentant, terror-promoting Palestinian leadership–a fruitless effort, greeted with contempt rather than gratitude.

The same tendency is apparent in Obama’s newly-uncovered attempt to apologize for the atomic blast at Hiroshima, which the Japanese, appropriately, rejected. Obama has had trouble, especially early in his presidency, distinguishing defense from aggression–especially when that defense is on behalf of western democracy.

That is worse than moral equivalence; it is “immoral equivalence,” because it destroys the moral distinction between freedom and tyranny. (more…)

From AFP:

US agents have foiled what has been called a “significant terrorist act” linked to Iran which called for the assassination of the Saudi US ambassador and other attacks, ABC News reported Tuesday.

The Justice Department scheduled an announcement at 1800 GMT on what it called “significant national security enforcement action.”

ABC said the plot included the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, with a bomb and subsequent bomb attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington.

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The budget fights this year began with the “shutdown” battle, followed by the Ryan budget and then the debt limit. These fights have mostly led to uninspiring kiss-your-sister outcomes, which is hardly surprising given divided government.

Now the crowd in DC is squabbling over Obama’s latest stimulus/tax-the-rich scheme, though that’s really more of a test run by the White House to determine whether class warfare will be an effective theme for  the 2012 campaign.

The real budget fight, the one we should be closely monitoring, is what will happen with the so-called Supercommittee.

To refresh your memory, this is the 12-member entity created as part of the debt limit legislation. Split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, the Supercommittee is supposed to recommend $1.2 trillion-$1.5 trillion of deficit reduction over the next 10 years. Assuming, of course, that 7 out of the 12 members can agree on anything.

There are two critical things to understand about the Supercommittee.

o The Democrats have openly stated that their top political goal is to seduce Republicans into capitulating to a tax hike.

o Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi appointed hard-core leftists to the Supercommittee.

With these points in mind, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that the Supercommittee is designed – at least from the perspective of the left – to seduce gullible Republicans into going along with a tax hike.

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As the Super Committee continues to meet (largely in secret), the lasting impact of its decisions on our national security is still unclear.

The Heritage Foundation recently sat down with Frances Fragos Townsend, former Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and former New Jersey Governor and 9/11 Comission Chairman Thomas Kean at the first ever Concordia Summit on global extremism to discuss the national security threats we face and the concerns they have for our national defense in light of these looming cuts.

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The Obama administration has responded in court regarding Judicial Watch’s pursuit of the CIA’s bin Laden death photos.  Given the administration’s open hostility to government transparency, it probably does not come as a surprise that the CIA is fighting tooth-and-nail to keep these photos secret.

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Obama Department of Defense (DOD) seeking the following records: “[A]ll photographs and/or video recordings of Osama (Usama) bin Laden taken during and/or after the U.S. Military operation in Pakistan on or about May 1, 2011.” (We filed an identical request with the CIA.) When the government stonewalled, we sued.  Now we’re in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia trying to force the release of the photos.

The DOD says it came up empty in response to our request, though I have good reason to believe that the Pentagon didn’t look hard enough.  But the CIA admitted it found 52 responsive records (photos and video).  Here’s a description of what they found according to the government’s most recent court filing:

These records contain images of Osama bin Laden’s body after he was killed.  Many are graphic and gruesome, as they depict the fatal bullet wound to bin Laden’s head.  Some of the images were taken inside the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was killed.  Other images were taken as bin Laden’s body was transported from the Abbottabad compound to the location where he was buried at sea.  Several images depict the preparation of Osama bin Laden’s body for the burial as well as the burial itself.

So they have the photos and videos we’re after for sure.  But the agency refuses to release them to the public.  Why?

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First, let me say that I respect Ron Paul a great deal. More often than not, he’s fundamentally right on the pressing issues of today and I believe that the modern political landscape is a better place because of him. Over the current president, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat.

That being said, regarding his online clan of “libertarian” followers… eeesh. Here’s a recent tweet that I received from one of his followers after I so much as barely criticized Dr. Paul’s foreign policy ideas;

“Hey neocon, how the h*** can you justify our costly empire overseas? Only Ron Paul will stop this!!”

Come again, dummy?

Listen, their heart is in the right place but here’s the concept that many of the younger, supposedly anti-establishment, self-professed “libertarians” can’t seem to grasp; by it’s very definition and historical precedent, an empire isn’t a costly endeavor. It’s a profitable one. Be it the Roman, Ottoman or English, all of these tyrannical government’s built their empire in order to expand their territory and reap the bountiful spoils of war.

The reason the United States supposed “empire” expanding abroad is so costly would be because it in fact is no empire at all. The United States boldly walks in through the front door of these countries, provides unprecedented aid and/or overthrows their evil governments in an attempt to rightfully give power back to its citizens, after which we ask for nothing more than the land needed to bury the bodies of those who died to provide them with that privilege.

Now is that a legitimate role of government? Should we really be playing “hero” to the world? Say! Now that’s a meaningful dialogue that deserves a spirited discussion!

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