If you want to keep up to date on the Occupy movement, you’ve come to the right place. This is Breitbart.com’s running chronicle of Occupy’s chaos, political machinations and internal power struggles as we head towards the Occupy movement’s planned Spring rebirth.

The Occupy movement is the Obama administration’s shadow campaign; community organized shock troops helping to spread the President’s strategic 2012 campaign message that we need to stop income inequality. With Big Labor calling the tactical shots, Occupy is President Obama’s direct action to bring real radicalism into the mainstream American politics, while another faction of Occupy organizers struggles to extract the movement from the grips of the Democrat Party establishment.

The crowds may have dwindled with the cold weather, but there’s still a tremendous amount of Occupy activity preparing for an “American Spring.”  We’ll be keeping this page updated with links to all of our Occupy coverage.  Catch it all right here, in one place.

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I’ve come to a cross roads, and I believe many of you are with me. I no longer have faith that members of the Grand Old Party can represent me as a classical liberal or more specifically as a Conservative-Libertarian, and neither do I believe the majority of the members of the party share true forms of those ideologies.

This feeling began developing after the 2010 election when several friends and colleagues of mine and I developed ConservativeCongress.com to assess every single candidate self-proclaimed to be running as a conservative in the entire country. Thousands of unpaid and thankless hours were put into the project by myself and my friends. I myself put in roughly 2,000 to 3,000 hours alone. Then I watched as various state Tea Party groups and supposedly conservative minding groups signed off on the status quo. I became sick as state after state sent D.C. main stays and beltway insiders back to flap their gums about conservative principles while we all watched continuous compromise and a lack of any leadership with the House at their disposal.

The final blow personally for me was when I watched a man take my home district who had not lived in his home state in 18 years and also did not even own property in the state in which he was running for office. I’ve had the great privilege in my lifetime to travel extensively and live in various areas of our great nation. I remember very clearly living abroad in Australia some seven years ago and then upon returning spending the next four years moving around for graduate school and work. When I made it back home I hardly recognized the place in which I grew up. Everything had changed.

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The GOP Establishment we keep hearing about is real, and it is also doomed.

That will not change whether the Establishment’s candidate Mitt Romney wins in November or not.  After the election, the battle really starts; what is happening now are just skirmishes in a fight for control of the Republican Party.  Not the soul of the party – if it had one, it auctioned it off long ago – but the mechanism of the party.  The Grand Old Party matters only as a vehicle to carry our banner forward.

To do that, we need to seize control, and we do that by destroying the Establishment starting next November 7th.

Superficially, it might seem that we – the outsiders, the Tea Party, the conservatives, whatever the label – are outgunned by opponents with their hands on the reins of power, money in amounts we can’t hope to match, and pals in the media backing them.  But if we understand our strengths, and our opponents’ weaknesses, we can not only compete but eventually prevail.

First, let’s understand our opponent.

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The number of Republicans in the country inched up half a percentage point in January, while the number of Democrats, 32.5%, dipped to the lowest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports.

During January, 35.9% of Americans considered themselves Republicans. That’s up from 35.4% in December and the highest number of Republicans measured since December 2010.

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As Newt Gingrich’s challenge to the anointment of Mitt Romney heats up, the newest line of attack against the erratic former Speaker by the Romneyites is not so much that Newt is unelectable – that’s assumed, and not unreasonably.  It’s that in November the voters will recoil in horror at the Republican presidential ticket, and that Newt will take the GOP’s hopes for the Senate down with him, leaving Obama in total control of the Republic.

There are plenty of problems with a Newt Gingrich nomination – most of them a direct result of Newt’s own antics – but the developing conventional wisdom that he will be toxic to Republican Senate chances may just be totally off-base.  In fact, a Newt nomination could be the best possible thing for winning a GOP Senate majority – ironically because of people who don’t think he has a chance in hell in the general election.

The GOP has great expectations for the Senate in 2012 – winning just four seats (five if Senator Kirk fails to recover from his recent stroke and the Democratic governor of Illinois appoints another Roland Burris as the replacement before his traditional indictment) will capture the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body from the clutches of Harry Reid and the Democrats.

With the Democrat party playing defense on many more at-risk seats, the percentages are in the GOP’s favor.  Moreover, many of the senators up for elections are “conservative Democrats,” which mean flaming liberals who talk a good game about being “fiscally conservative” and “moderate” back home in their blood-red states.  With the Obama economy especially painful in the middle of the country – the administration’s stimulus money disproportionately rewarded the urban and academic communities whose support Obama is unshakeable – it should be a cakewalk not only to grab the majority but press on toward the magic number of 60.

Enter Newt.

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From the Iowa Department of Public Safety and the State of Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the following press release:

Des Moines, IOWA — Today, Friday, January 20, 2012, Zachary Edwards, age 29, from Des Moines, Iowa, was arrested and criminally charged with Identity Theft, an Aggravated Misdemeanor (Iowa  Code 715A.8(2)).  Edwards turned himself in to Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) agents this afternoon at the Polk County Jail.  He was then booked into the jail with a set bail of $2,000, cash or surety.

According to the Criminal Complaint, on June 24, 2011, Edwards fraudulently used, or attempted to use, the identity of Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz and/or Secretary Schultz’s brother, Thomas Schultz, with the intent to obtain a benefit, in an alleged scheme to falsely implicate Secretary Schultz in perceived illegal or unethical behavior while in office.

Read the full press release here.

Edwards was the 2008 Iowa New Media Director for Barack Obama’s campaign.  The Iowa Republican reported earlier that he is also the Director of New Media for Link Strategies, but the website has apparently since scrubbed all mention of Zach Edwards. However, you can see an earlier snapshot of the page through WayBackMachine. (more…)

The controversial anti-piracy legislation that set off an unprecedented wave of opposition from the technology sector is withering on the vine, with additional Members of Congress withdrawing support for the bills on an almost hourly basis.

What’s interesting is that of the over 30 Members who have recently come out in opposition to the Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the vast majority have been Republicans, who have long been considered the stodgy side of the aisle when compared to their tech-savvy Democratic counterparts. While the tech world, who Dems claim to support at every turn, aggressively protests SOPA and PIPA, the very officials they helped to elect – including Democratic party leaders – have abandoned them in the face of their most important issue: internet privacy.

The word on the Hill that in the past 24-hours alone Sens. Rubio, Cornyn, Hatch, DeMint, Kirk, Grassley, Blunt, Boozman, and Ayotte have all come out in opposition of PIPA, with several among them withdrawing their original co-sponsorship of the legislation. What do these nine Senators have in common? They’re all Republicans.

Even within individual states the divisions don’t make sense; New Hampshire’s junior Senator Kelly Ayotte withdrew her co-sponsorship and support for PIPA citing overwhelming constituent opposition, whereas Democratic senior Senator Jeanne Shaheen has remained on board. Did New Hampshire voters somehow reach out to Ayotte to register their disapproval but leave Shaheen out of the loop? Unlikely.

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As the city of Troy, NY, awaits jury selection in the first trial involving two Democrats and their alleged roles in a “massive” voter fraud scheme, new details have emerged from the investigation.  Details involving two other veteran political operatives that have already pleaded guilty.

According to a recent Fox News report, Anthony Renna, a Democrat guilty of second-degree forgery, and Anthony DeFiglio, a Democrat guilty of first-degree falsifying business records, are trying to drag all local politicians, regardless of party affiliation, down with the ship.  Thus far, eight people have been charged in connection with the ballot fraud investigation, four of which have pleaded guilty.

Reports emerging from the investigation indicate that the Democrats are trying to implicate Republicans of the same conduct they have been charged with.  According to the state police, Renna and DeFiglio both claimed that, ”voter fraud is an accepted way of winning elections, and faking absentee ballots was commonplace.”

Renna explained that the process of handing in forged ballots and fake votes ensures that “ballots are voted correctly.”  He adds, “‘Voted correctly’ is a term used for a forged application or ballot.”

DeFiglio added that such fraud is actually “an ongoing scheme and it occurs on both sides of the aisle.  What appears as a huge conspiracy to nonpolitical persons is really a normal political tactic.”

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For the second time in a session that is only weeks old, Indiana House Democrats refused to show up for work on Tuesday, effectively delaying the passage of right-to-work legislation. The first delay was a three-day boycott that finished with Democrats coming back to the table to continue other legislative business. House Republicans expected to have a vote on the contentious right to-work bill after Democrat leader B. Patrick Bauer (known for vainly sporting a toupee) made public and private promises that his caucus would show up and participate in the legislative process.

But while Bauer and his fellow Democrats have been throwing temper tantrums and obstructing legislative business, other opponents of right-to-work legislation have been busy producing and distributing studies that purport to show how the reform would hurt Indiana’s economy. The several studies and reports reach a variety of conclusions. Some say that right-to-work would undermine private sector pension plans and others say that the reform will not have any meaningful impact on drawing job creators – especially those in the manufacturing sector – to the state. South Carolina’s success in attracting a new Boeing plant seems to go unmentioned.

Leading the way among those providing intellectual firepower and talking points for pro-union right to-work opponents is the Economic Policy Institute. EPI, a D.C. based think-tank that specializes in state-based research, has released a steady stream of information and research allegedly debunking the benefits of the reform and calling on Indiana policymakers to bend to union demands by killing the legislation.

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OLYMPIA — State government stores money at Bank of America, buys goods with U.S. Bank cards and distributes welfare aid through JP Morgan Chase ATMs.

Supporters of cutting such ties to big banks say the first step is to create a state-owned bank.

The idea of a state bank — a favorite of the Occupy movement that sees it as an alternative to Wall Street — has strong support among the Democrats who control the state House. Speaker Frank Chopp called it a top priority last week in a speech opening this year’s session of the Legislature.

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As President I will stop one of the biggest wastes and frauds ever perpetrated on the American people – the trillion dollar war on drugs. While falsely promising us a safer, more sober society, the war on drugs is bankrupting our state and local coffers and costs the Federal government $15 billion dollars per year. That’s five hundred dollars every second – mostly for possession of marijuana, a relatively harmless drug the effects of which are certainly no worse than alcohol, the sale of which is legal and regulated.

Think how many tax cuts we could have with the money we are spending. If you’re a Republican – think how many tax cuts (federal, state and local) could be bought with the money you’re spending to lock people up for something as dangerous as drinking. Think how many poor people could be helped with that money. We need to reform our drug laws as soon as yesterday by stopping the prohibition of marijuana and regulating its sale.

If you think the drug war makes you and your children safer, think again. The International Center for Science in Drug Policy stated: “Drug prohibition likely contributes to drug market violence and higher homicide rates.” But you don’t need to be a scientist, or the governor of a border state, to understand why: the drug war creates violent criminals.

Criminals deal drugs because drugs make them money, a lot of money. When that kind of money is in play, people kill for it. Entire armies of crime have built up on our streets and across the border in Mexico. But we can stop that tomorrow – with drug policy reform. We know that prohibition makes prices higher. Our own history with prohibition proves that. When we make something illegal, we keep the supply artificially low, and that keeps the price artificially high – and that means violence.

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Just as Gov. Mitt Romney seems to be closing in on a win in the Republican primary, he seems to have adopted what Steve Benen calls a losing argument for the general election: “Two weeks into 2012, Romney has a new message: don’t give Obama credit for making the economy better….This isn’t just a tough sell; it’s an impossible one.”

Given that Romney probably must win on Obama’s turf in 2012, it may be time to worry.

I had dinner with several Democrats recently–some “leftist,” some moderate–and their views on the Republican primary left me feeling rather uneasy. The fact is that many Democrats are eager to face Mitt Romney in the fall, no matter what they might say in public.

Gov. Mitt Romney (Photo source: Christian Science Monitor)

Democrats are frustrated with Barack Obama, but most want him to win in November–and they are pleased Romney is emerging as the likely Republican nominee.

Here’s why:

1. Romney hasn’t given voters a compelling reason to choose him over Obama. Obama is going to run on a version of “hope and change” again. It might sound absurd to Republican ears, but it’s a clear message: “We had to clean up a mess for the first four years. Things are getting better. Give me a chance to show you what we can really do.” Romney’s basic message is that he’s more competent than Obama. It’s weak stuff.

Worse than that, Romney’s bought into Obama’s ideas: e.g. the economy’s getting better; Obama’s bailouts were necessary; the “rich” don’t deserve capital gains tax cuts, but the “middle class” does; forcing everyone to buy health insurance enforces “responsibility”; it’s “erratic” to tell the truth about the Middle East or about the flaws of Social Security.

Basically, Romney is reducing the race to a personalty contest–which Obama will win.

2. Democrats believe Romney’s become extreme, despite his moderate message. One person, from Massachusetts, said that today’s Romney is a completely different person from the one who governed from 2003 to 2007. Democrats know he’s not “Tea Party,” but they believe he’ll give into it. It’s likely they’d believe that of any Republican, but nothing in Romney’s record or rhetoric, moderate though they may be, has convinced them otherwise. (more…)

In politics, as in life, there can be an overwhelming temptation to go along to get along; to be a team player; to do the easy thing even when it’s not the right thing.

For far too long, insiders from both parties have played these games. Talk up fiscal responsibility, but spend big. Talk about a federal government that fulfills its basic responsibilities, but then vote to expand it beyond all recognition so that it cannot possibly do so. Talk about doing what’s right, but then do what the establishment wants instead.

Americans deserve better—and they deserve to get to choose something better this year. In 2012, Americans have the opportunity to decisively move away from big government, built up over years and years by both parties in Washington, D.C.

As I said in Sunday’s NBC/Facebook debate, President Obama has thrown gasoline on the fire, but let’s be honest: The bonfire was raging well before Obama ever left Chicago.

Policies and spending served up by Washington, D.C. insiders, in several notable instances designed and written by Wall Street insiders to suit their needs, not ours, caused and then exacerbated this situation. In too many cases, these advocates of big spending and bad policy have used their positions of power to enrich themselves, both while in office and once outside of it. Republicans have been complicit in this scheme, just as Democrats have.

It is time for it to end.

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The case of Dr. Steven Chase Brigham grows ever more disturbing. Brigham has a long history of jumping from state to state in an attempt to collect as much cash as possible for the termination of not only viable fetuses, but baby’s that would almost certainly have survived because of their advanced growth and development. The doctor has faced charges, license revocations, and clinic closures in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Florida, and New York, yet has still maintained his deadly operation simply by packing up and moving.

Mental Recession readers have already been briefed on how the Democratic political machine in Albany, New York, allowed Dr. Brigham to escape relatively unscathed, being charged only with fraud despite evidence that abortions had been performed on fetuses that exceeded 24 weeks.

Details are emerging about his recent arrest for murder and they are not good. This is a man that knows the laws of the states in which he operates his clinics, and knows them well. So much so that Brigham had developed a scheme in which he started abortion procedures in his New Jersey clinic, then ferried patients to his clinic in Maryland where the laws on late-term abortions were a little more relaxed.

The Times Colonist has reported that the crux of this murder investigation centers around one such case.

The investigation began in August 2010, when a young woman sought an abortion from the pair.

The abortion was induced in New Jersey and the patient was then transported across state lines into Maryland, according to the Elkton police statement.

Operation Rescue, which has done a fantastice job of tracking the murderous trail left behind by Dr. Brigham, has a copy of his indictment, which includes 5 counts of first-degree murder, and 5 counts of second-degree murder.

More chillingly, they have obtained logs of the abortions that were performed in Brigham’s Maryland clinic. They include several abortions performed on fetuses that had developed well over 8 months, including one seen below that had been documented at 36 weeks!

And if you’re thinking that this doesn’t indicate much of anything since Brigham’s name is not on the patient log, think again. The ‘Dr. Shepard’ in the above referenced document was nothing more than a cover according to Operation Rescue President, Troy Newman.

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – A Republican-dominated Indiana Senate committee endorsed the right-to-work bill that has prompted a three-day standstill in the Indiana House.

The Senate labor committee voted 6-4 to send the bill to the full Senate, where the GOP holds a 37-13 majority and the party’s leader has made its passage a top priority. The bill would prohibit contracts between companies and unions that require workers to pay representation fees.

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A potentially huge Democratic scandal is brewing in upstate New York, regarding a trophy-keeping abortion practitioner who had a collection of 17 frozen fetuses confiscated from a clinic in Albany back in 1996.  An assistant to the Attorney General’s office is now claiming that the doctor, Dr. Steven Chase Brigham, was never thoroughly investigated due to political pressure from the Albany Democratic machine.  Now, sixteen years after the fact, that same doctor has been charged with murder.

Dr. Steven Bringham

Could hindering an investigation of Dr. Brigham make Democrats in Albany an accessory to murder?

Last week, LifeNews reported on a pair of abortion practitioners who were charged with murder across two states:

Operation Rescue has learned that abortionists Steven Chase Brigham and Nicola Irene Riley have been charged with murder related to the deaths of viable babies at an illegal secret abortion clinic that the pair operated in Elkton, Maryland.

Brigham is currently in the custody at the Camden County Jail in New Jersey and Riley was arrested and is currently in the custody of the Salt Lake County Jail in Utah. Both are awaiting extradition to Maryland.

Brigham was charged with five counts of first-degree murder and five counts of second-degree murder. Riley was charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder. The charges are the result of a Grand Jury investigation.

This is the same Dr. Brigham who had once been profiled in a New York Times article with sympathetic leanings to the cause of abortion doctors, even citing his record as “proof of the shortage of abortion providers” and demonstrating that “the small number of people still performing abortions are working in a war zone.”

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Indiana’s Republican House leader on Tuesday promised swift movement on a push to make his state the first in more than a decade to ban labor contracts that require employees to pay union fees.

Speaker Brian Bosma of Indianapolis told the Associated Press he is confident he can push the “right-to-work” bill through his chamber during the 2012 session that begins Wednesday and is spending a lot “personal capital” to do so.

“We assume nothing,” Bosma said. “I don’t assume we have all the Republicans votes, in fact I know I don’t and I don’t presume we don’t have some Democrat votes either.”

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From PJMedia:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) caused a bit of a stir when he announced he was not seeking re-election. Frank, a high-visibility member of Congress for more than 30 years, is in one of the safest Democratic districts in the nation. Yet he is not alone: there are several other Barney Franks fleeing the 112th Congress. Eight other veteran House Democrats who reside in safe congressional seats are throwing in the towel.

The problem isn’t merely in the House. Just this week, U.S. Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska announced he won’t seek re-election this coming November. Nelson is one of seven Senate Democrats who have decided to “voluntarily” retire ahead of the 2012 elections. This is a repeat of the 2010 elections when a flood of Democrats decided to retire rather than face certain defeat.

The retirement of rank-and-file Democrats is an especially bad sign for the Democrats if they have any hope of retaking the U.S. House. The nine House retirements are even more notable because each ranks high in seniority for key House committees — if the House returned to Democratic rule, they would be in line to assume chairmanships.

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From The Hill:

The Senate on Wednesday defeated each party’s version of a constitutional amendment that would have required a balanced federal budget.

The rival proposals would have prohibited Congress from spending more each year than it receives in revenue.

But each one fell well short of the two-thirds majority needed to send them to the states for ratification.

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From Gallup:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ concerns about the threat of big government continue to dwarf those about big business and big labor, and by an even larger margin now than in March 2009. The 64% of Americans who say big government will be the biggest threat to the country is just one percentage point shy of the record high, while the 26% who say big business is down from the 32% recorded during the recession. Relatively few name big labor as the greatest threat.

Historically, Americans have always been more concerned about big government than big business or big labor in response to this trend question dating back to 1965. Concerns about big business surged to a high of 38% in 2002, after the large-scale accounting scandals at Enron and WorldCom. An all-time-high 65% of Americans named big government as the greatest threat in 1999 and 2000. Worries about big labor have declined significantly over the years, from a high of 29% in 1965 to the 8% to 11% range over the past decade and a half.

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