Have you ever watched the Rev. Al Sharpton’s television show on MSNBC and wondered what you’d get if you combined his ignorance of American history with James Carville’s inability to quit speaking? If so, you’ve probably concluded, as I have, that you’d get someone who sounds a lot like Democrat Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas. (Yes, the same Congresswoman Lee who, while visiting NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories in 2005, infamously asked whether the Mars Pathfinder had taken a photograph of the flag Neil Armstrong planted on Mars in 1969.)

And as I listened to Lee speak recently, February 8th, on Ed Schultz’s radio show, it dawned on me anew that responsibility for many of our nation’s current woes can be directly traced to the fact the we’ve placed congressional members and senators in power who know little to nothing about recent American history, much less events surrounding our nation’s founding.

For example, when Schultz asked Lee why anyone would think Congressional Republicans wanted to better the economy when their chief focus appears to be defeating the president, Lee concurred, in a round-about way, then said:

As I have scanned the annals of history, during the tenure of many presidents, obviously the recent presidents of JFK and Lyndon Baines Johnson, of Richard Nixon who was impeached, and subsequently Ford and Carter. I cannot find in the statement of a message of a minority leader, majority leader, or speaker, whose message has been defeat the commander-in-chief.

Wow. The “recent presidents” Lee referenced were JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. JFK died in 1963 and Carter left office in January of 1981. In other words, “recent” to Lee is somewhere between 31-to-49 years ago? Moreover, Lee said Nixon was impeached. Seriously folks, Nixon made history by becoming the first president in U.S. history to resign the office, and of course he resigned before charges of impeachment were brought against him.

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World Net Daily is citing an outdated post-Revolutionary War act repealed by Congress that only recognized “free white persons” as citizens to make its case that Miami born Marco Rubio is not a “natural born citizen.”

WND’s argument comes in the wake of several 2011 articles, which make a birther argument that recently elected U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is not natural born because his parents were alien residents at the time he was born in Miami in 1971.

WND’s editor Joseph Farah pushed that theory on FOX News with Sean Hannity last week,  an interview that was quickly picked up by The Hill and the Daily Caller. The birther movement’s attention turned to Rubio last year when rumors began surfacing that he was a potential candidate for the vice-presidential position on the 2012 Republican ticket, despite his assertion that he was not interested in the position. Since the 12^th Amendment requires that the vice-president possess all the necessary constitutional requirements to serve as president, Rubio’s citizenship came into play.

Throughout their reporting, WND has relied on three major arguments: the first being the treatise “The Law of Nations” by Swiss philosopher Emer de Vattel, which they argue was an influence on our forefathers. Vattel wrote, “The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.” They also cite a U.S. Supreme Court case from 1875, Minor vs. Happersett, alleging that the case only uses the term “natural born citizen” by referring to persons born in the United States of U.S. citizen parents. Finally, they rely on the Naturalization Act of 1790, which defined a natural-born citizen as: “The children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.”

There are significant problems which each one of these three flawed arguments.

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Romney at the SLC Olympics

Mitt Romney, in pledging to turn around the Olympics in 2002, had promised to restore the honor and integrity of the scandal-clouded Salt Lake City. The Games captured the world’s attention and became all the more urgent after terrorists attacked us on 9-11. But while Romney invoked the wellspring of American patriotism after the attacks, he neglected their heroes, the fallen firefighters of that early September morning.

Romney’s executive assistant, Donna Tillery, twice denied requests to provide free or discounted tickets to widows and orphans of the felled firefighters but gave them for free to Utah legislators just six weeks later, according to a new book, The Real Romney (HarperCollins, 2012).

Tillery sent e-mails to A.J. Barto, a former Salt Lake City firefighter helping the 9-11 widows and orphans, citing a policy barring giveaways, but Romney gave 100 free surplus tickets ($885 each) to Utah legislators. “I was outraged at the hypocrisy,” Barto told Kranis and Helman. “In less than two months, he went from saying, ‘We’re going to run a tight ship’ to throwing out free tickets to a group of people who could help him politically.” (221)

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Tim Scott (R-South Carolina)

Earlier this week, Congressmen Allen West and Tim Scott, former congressman J. C. Watts, congressional hopeful Star Parker, and other prominent black conservatives held the Black Conservative Forum to discuss blacks and the Republican Party. The forum, broadcast by C-Span, was well attended, though neither Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee bothered to show up. Rep. Jim Jordan of the Republican Study Committee showed up with only a few minutes to spare and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, showed up late.

It’s a shame that the talent scouts in our party didn’t bother showing up. Had they, they would have noticed this exchange in which Tim Scott demolished the latest lie about school choice: that racist prep schools, are not intransigent prep schools, are the impediment to educational progress in the black community.

“There are still those schools that would deny access to African-Americans. They are fewer than when I was there, but they are still there.”

Scott quickly showed the silliness of Cleaver’s question by pointing out that waiting for mythical racist schools to become non-racist would mean waiting forever because they don’t exist.

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Earlier today the Mitt Romney campaign released a video of the 1994 debate he had with Ted Kennedy where a younger Mitt Romney argues against a government takeover of health care.

But in April 12, 2006 at a Faneuil Hall singing ceremony, Mitt Romney actually saluted Ted Kennedy, the very man he debated at Faneuil Hall in 1994 as a “parent” of healthcare. Then Romney celebrated Kennedy’s ability to get a federal monies for their signature health care bill. Now Romney makes a states’ rights appeal and says that the Massachusetts plan was for Massachusetts and didn’t involve the other states.

According to NBC News’ Michael Isikoff, White House visitors logs reveal that Romney’s health care advisers and experts repeatedly met with senior Obama administration officials in 2009, while Obama’s health care plan was being drafted.  Indeed when Mitt Romney argued that Barack Obama ought to have called him and asked him what worked and what didn’t, Romney neglected to mention that three of his own advisers decamped to Washington so Obama had little need to phone him.

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Mitt Romney’s father, liberal Republican George Romney, met with and endorsed infamous progressive activist Saul Alinsky; meanwhile, in a defense of Mitt Romney against charges of racism, the National Black Chamber of Commerce points out the significant influence the elder Romney had on son Mitt and credits the Romneys for a long history of progressive activism. Emphasis mine.

No, Mitt Romney is not a racist. As I researched history, over the years I have come to find that the opposite is the case. The Romney Family has a legacy of pro-civil rights, progressive activism and an understanding of how poverty and inequality can hurt people.

This portrait would jibe with Mitt Romney’s image as a progressive Governor of Massachusetts, while suggesting any serious conversion to conservatism would not only entail a change in viewpoint but a rejection of Mitt’s Father, George — someone he has regularly mentioned as a major influence while campaigning. Taken as a whole, the new information could serve to fuel existing significant doubt amongst an already skeptical conservative base that Romney’s already vague conversion to conservatism is more one of electoral convenience than a principled decision.

During all of this advocacy, his son, Mitt, was evolving as a man. He idolized his father and emulated his legacy. Mitt Romney lived amongst Blacks in metropolitan Detroit. He went to the prestigious Cranbrook School. One of our board members, Claude McDougal, is a fellow alumnus of the school.

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Along with being both timely and timeless, the critical importance of Mark Levin’s latest, Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America, rests in its unique ability to empower and inform the Conservative, or activist, political junkie, and average citizen with a genuine interest in contemporary American politics.

Timely because it cuts to the heart of the political struggle playing out in 2012, timeless in that it’s a concise yet thorough primer addressing the two core philosophies that drive all American politics, the depth of understanding of both Liberalism and Conservatism and the critical struggle between them it provides represents a wealth of information and insight to empower the Conservative and political activist of today.

From government in general, to the particulars of the American experiment embodied in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Levin extensively quotes unique and important thinkers, such as Plato, More, Hobbes and Marx on behalf of the utopianist view; with thinkers like Locke, Montesquieu, de Tocqueville and others representing the individualist, or Conservative view as we know it today.

Interspersed with extensive, insightful commentary by Levin himself, one comes to understand the bedrock, theory and practice of two very different political ideologies and how they apply to contemporary American politics playing out on a day-to-day basis, as well as in every election year.

Broadly at issue is, how will man structure himself, so as to function within a society. The utopianist would hold that said society must be structured from the top down, with rules, roles, regulations and laws all purportedly designed for the common good being issued from on high. The individualist, free-thinking, or conservative view would hold that, at the core of all civil society rests the individual, with his natural rights and inclinations, both good and bad, the ideal society being represented by a governmental authority that manifests the least amount of control possible, so as to empower the freedom, happiness and productivity of the individual.

By tracing the development of these two critical schools of thinking from their earliest beginnings, in theory, practice and thought, following them right up to today, one comes to understand American society as existing within a polarity between the two competing schools, with every political decision, be it a vote, or government mandate, as impacting precisely where within said polarity an American must live out his, or her life every day.

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The gist of a recently released opposition research document from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is that the former Massachusetts governor is not a real Republican because some of his centrist positions and alliances with Democrats. Researchers working for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) reportedly authored the file during the 2008 Republican primary.

But some of the claims may simply illustrate a man who is committed to his own ideals, loyal to those around him and perhaps trying to do what is morally right–maybe even by hiring advisers to offer him objective perspectives so that he doesn’t just have people around him who mimic his own views. Among some of the exacerbated criticisms are the following with an alternative counter-point below each allegation:

1. “Romney voted for Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary”

Tsongas was a Senator from Massachusetts, Romney’s own state.

2. “Romney was an independent until deciding to run for the Senate in 1994.”

Mitt Romney’s 1994 bid for U.S. Senate was his first attempt at running for political office. It should be no surprise that he was independent before then since independents make up the majority of Massachusetts voters–some of whom remain non-party affiliated or “unenrolled” so that they can opt to vote in either primary in each election. According to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Elections Division online records, in February 1994  there were 418, 298 registered Republicans, 1,283,986 registered Democrats, but 3,174,759 total voters, which leaves 1,471,500 unenrolled voters. Romney was no different than the largest class of Massachusetts voters.

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With members of the mainstream media now hurling charges of using racially coded language against GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, Big Government has uncovered a private memorandum written over three decades ago that offers a unique glimpse into Mr. Gingrich’s longstanding attitudes about race.

The private memo, dated July 1, 1980, was written by Mr. Gingrich on his official House of Representatives stationery and was sent to then-candidate Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager, Bill Casey, who would later become President Reagan’s CIA Director.

In the memo, Mr. Gingrich urges Governor Reagan’s campaign to reconsider its decision not to speak to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Convention.

“This is a great opportunity to prove that a conservative Republican can speak to the hearts and pocketbooks of Black Americans,” Gingrich urged in the memo.

The memorandum goes on to explain that a decision not to speak at the NAACP convention would insult African American voters and be a “tragedy” for the nation:

Many middle class Black Americans who would vote for Reagan will be insulted by his non-attendance.  I urge you to schedule the speech and talk about Kemp’s Inner City Jobs Bill, which Kilpatrick and George Will have both endorsed as acceptably conservative.

Failure to attend the NAACP convention will be a tragedy for Gov. Reagan and the country.  Symbolic events are vital.  Thank you for considering this.

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Americans celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday to honor his contributions to our Republic. His struggle against racial prejudice and discrimination brought the words of the Founders–“that all men are created equal”–to true fruition.

Dr. King used non-violent protest, and an appeal to universal principles, to bring Americans together. His birthday should be a holiday that unites us.

Instead, Democrats are using it to divide Americans.

Consider the sermon offered by White House adviser Valerie Jarrett yesterday, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where Dr. King preached. She told the audience: “Teachers, and firefighters, and policemen, whose jobs are now in jeopardy because Congress–well let me be specific–because [of] the Republicans in Congress.”

Those in the audience laughed and applauded at Jarret’s brazen–and false–partisan attack.

Democrats have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle to portray Republicans as the villains, when in fact most segregationists were Democrats. Republicans, in fact, voted for civil rights laws in greater proportions than Democrats. Moreover, Dr. King himself had been a Republican. Regardless, Dr. King was careful not to divide Americans along party lines in his struggle for justice–nor would he approve of it today.

Another Obama administration official who is exploiting Dr. King’s memory for political gain is Attorney General Eric Holder, who used the holiday to renew his attack on voter ID laws in South Carolina, falsely claiming they are racially discriminatory.

It is Holder, in fact, who practices racial discrimination by refusing to apply voting laws equally, notably in the New Black Panther Party case, an open-and-shut example of voter intimidation. (more…)

On May 10, 2011, 43-year old Allen Kephart died after having a Taser applied to him multiple times by three San Bernardino, California, sheriff’s deputies during a routine traffic stop in Lake Arrowhead.

“I feel that my son was murdered, I feel that something has to be done about law enforcement,” says Alfred Kephart, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit in San Bernardino Superior Court, August 30, 2011.

High profile police related deaths like Allen Kepharts’ are pushing activists, families and courts to question whether Tasers or officers are to blame, but the answer to that question is a tricky one.

Numerous studies and reviews from the National Institute of Justice, Amnesty International and the Police Executive Research Forum have come to different conclusions on Tasers and how officers use them. A study in the American Heart Journal even revealed that studies funded by Taser International were “substantially more likely to conclude Tasers are safe.”

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As many Breitbart readers know, my story is one of a former prominent Leftist revolutionary turned believer in the American Constitution.

My blog posts and public talks often detail the experiences I had and my journey towards believing and appreciating our system of governance. My speeches usually focus on the experiences that brought me from being an anti-American revolutionary to a patriotic American who, having felt a profound sense of owing our nation, began working undercover with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task force.

My writings and speeches usually avoid any discussion or mention of the guilt I often felt in my transition. However, I’d often think of how vocal I had been in critiquing America, our armed forces, and other men and women who protect our rights and our lives. Like most Leftists, I seized any opportunity to knock our heroes and point out any possible failure or shortcoming. I felt shame once my worldview began to mature.

The emotional aspects of the conversion are never as intense as when I think of how I once bought into the dominant left-of-center belief that Israel was to be included in any discussion of why the world was so evil and wrought with war and hatred. My world, though I thought it was full of a variety of information from different perspectives, was quite insular. My historical knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was, in fact, solely based on the perspectives of the enemies of the Jewish state.

Anti-Israel protestors at Houston Holocaust Museum, Jan. 2009

I had the privilege recently to visit the National Holocaust Museum and Memorial. I was, as most are, horrified to see what had occurred. The museum walks the attendee through the history of antisemitism; the media and propaganda that were used to dehumanize Jews; and through the subsequent actions to which that dehumanization led. The lack of involvement and intervention from other nations is well displayed, as well as the role such abuses played in the creation of modern state of Israel.

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While many conservatives rightly admire Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul’s principled economic and constitutional views, they are often bamboozled, even appalled, by the Texan’s defense and foreign policy ideas.

Ron Paul

It seems, that when it comes to defense, Ron Paul is stuck in 1776. He seems not to realize that America’s enemies, real or potential, Russia and China, and Iran chief among them, have a very long reach. The continental US is only partially protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans . The enemy can now attack the American homeland with ICBMs, biological weapons, cyber warfare, dirty bombs smuggled across the Mexican border – any number of deadly methods of mass destruction.

Just as frontier forts would have outposts to warn of Indian attack, the US needs people all over the world to protect not just her friends and allies, but the American homeland itself.

Why then does Ron Paul, a man so supremely rational in many areas, have such a blind spot when it comes to US national security?

The answer, in my opinion, is that Ron Paul’s justified distrust at the growth of government power in many unconstitutional areas, has irrationally created an antipathy to Federal Government activity in one of its few legitimate areas – national defense.

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Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, recently created a media flap when she said:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you!

But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.

But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Conservatives and libertarians took offense at Warren’s claim that the government has a superior claim to “a hunk” of people’s earnings merely because every individual lives in and benefits from a society to whose creation many other people have contributed.

The critics might well have been grateful for small blessings, however. Warren was prepared, rhetorically at least, to let people keep “a big hunk” of their earnings.

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My paternal grandfather’s cousin, Yechezkel Pulerevitch, was imprisoned in a Soviet concentration camp for seventeen years for the “crime” of being a Zionist.

After his release, he was eventually alloweed to emigrate to Israel, where he organized former Soviet prisoners to oppose the communist regime and, specifically, its treatment of Jews. That helped create a broader human rights movement that eventually posed a serious threat to the Soviet system.

Yechezkel Pulerevitch (Source: Jerusalem Post)

In 1973, he came to Washington to meet Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA) and advocate for the passage of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment–which former dissident Natan Sharansky has called the “first nail in the coffin of the Soviet dictatorship.”

In 1974, Pulerevitch published a memoir of his experiences in the Gulag, entitled Short Stories of the Long Death. The foreword was written by future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, and the book appeared in several languages.

One story in particular recalls a Hanukkah celebrated in the concentration camp, in the most difficult of circumstances. Its message of resistance is appropriate to the themes of the holiday–now on its eighth and final night–and for a generation that has yet to understand the folly of socialism or to memorialize the horrors of the communist system.

***

A Hanukkah Candle in the Concentration Camp

by

Yechezkel Pulerevitch

Where have I seen that face? – I wondered, staring at the old man opposite me, a prisoner with gaunt features and blue-green eyes with a dreamy faraway expression. All around us – Russian prisoners in tattered clothing, bickering at the top of their voices and swearing a blue streak. The old man’s clothing was also in rags. But the face, the face… (more…)

On the evening of Sept. 16, 2009, I was invited to a function for Rand Paul’s U.S. Senate campaign at the headquarters of Americans for Tax Reform.

I had been invited by a friend of mine via Facebook who was a passionate supporter of Ron Paul. Within minutes of arriving, I saw Rep. Paul enter the room, followed by an entourage of several college students.

I immediately walked up to Paul and introduced myself, and Paul smiled at me and shook my hand. I told him that I had always wanted to ask him a question, and that it was a hypothetical question, but I would appreciate his answer nonetheless. Paul smiled, and welcomed the question. At this point there were about 15 people surrounding us, listening.

And so I asked Congressman Paul: if he were President of the United States during World War II, and as president he knew what we now know about the Holocaust, but the Third Reich presented no threat to the U.S., would he have sent American troops to Nazi Germany purely as a moral imperative to save the Jews?

And the Congressman answered:

“No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t risk American lives to do that. If someone wants to do that on their own because they want to do that, well, that’s fine, but I wouldn’t do that.”

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As unlikely as it is for OWS to gain power, what would it mean for our nation, and our society, if they did? Michael Bane provided a frank answer. Bane has several decades of experience in the coverage and study of riots and social cavitations worldwide as a journalist. He is also the host of “Best Defense Survival” on the Outdoor Channel.

Bane discussed Occupy’s anarchist collaboration: “If anyone succeeds in bringing down the United States government or creating a social dislocation that breaks this fragile, amazing machine the Founders created, what comes after is not pleasant. What comes is what was before the Dream of America… That was simply survival of the most vicious.”

Bane continues, “What the toy anarchists in the Occupy movement don’t understand is that the best organized people in the country are the criminal enterprises. They’re very good at it. MS-13? Biker gangs? Mexican cartels? These guys are good at anarchy… because they are without conscience or any sense of moderation… That is what anarchy looks like. Anarchy looks like someone’s head on a bed.”

The communist and socialist elements within the Occupy movement believe the elimination of our current system, or at least the collapse of it, will bring about a favorable revolution. What the Occupiers fail to understand is the historical, if not psychological, context behind a revolution. These movements are regularly co-opted by more insidious ideologies. Those who instigated the French Revolution ultimately found their way to the guillotines just as many of the antagonists who toppled the Russian Empire found their way into the gulags of Soviet Russia. (more…)

For some of us, it’s difficult to take the Occupy movement seriously. However, for once, let’s do just that and ask the simple question, “What if the Occupiers take power?” To answer that, I need to first address what they would need to do to rise to power (I will address the consequences of them in power in a later post). We need to understand the means through which the Occupiers will reach their ends — communism or anarchy. The answer can be discerned from the perspective of experts on mob mentality and mob rule.

To stand any chance at gaining control over our nation, the Occupy movement would first need to disrupt our current system of governance and commerce. Jim Rawles, editor of Survivalblog.com, New York Times best-selling author, and a former US Army Intelligence Officer, offers a historical perspective on the matter by referencing the International Workers of the World (IWW) protests of the 1920s and 30s.

“In that situation, The IWW relocated people from very long distances. They intentionally overwhelmed the local police by relocating large numbers of protesters. It’s analogous to the military massing their firepower for an offensive…If there is an overreaction on the part of the police or conceivably the military, if the protests grow to a large scale beyond the police’s ability, there’s the potential for a lot of violence.”

Further violence from the Occupy movement is not a far-fetched expectation; it’s something we have already seen. Historically, mass sit-in protests, such as those of the 1960s or the Veteran’s Bonus Encampment of 1932, have the capacity to generate a violent and confrontational end result. After all, Occupy has already attempted to disrupt our economy on Black Friday through mass action protests (and miserably failed). History does repeat itself, by the way, as the IWW is heavily involved with the Occupy protests.

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May the city of New Orleans subject local tour guides to hundreds of dollars in fines and five months in jail for engaging in unauthorized talking?

This is the question the Institute for Justice (IJ) seeks to answer in a federal lawsuit filed on December 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.  Four New Orleans tour guides are joining forces with IJ to strike down New Orleans’ tour guide licensing scheme as a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights:

According to First Amendment expert Matt Miller of the Institute for Justice, seen the above video:

The government cannot be in the business of deciding who may speak and who may not.  The Constitution protects your right to communicate for a living, whether you are a journalist, a musician or a tour guide.

New Orleans requires every tour guide to pass a history exam, undergo a drug test and pass an FBI criminal background check every two years merely for speaking.  People who give tours without a license face fines up to $300 per occurrence and five months in jail.

City officials are currently breaking up tours led by guides that don’t have the government’s permission.

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