Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting.
The fear: Government-subsidized premiums will disappear at the end of the year under a provision in the health care law that nudges aides and lawmakers onto the government health care exchanges, which could make their benefits exorbitantly expensive.
Clearly, from this, the authors of ObamaKare have made a large mistake: they didn’t exempt nearly enough people in DC.
Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.
What you may not know, however, is this:
Based on an article in The Guardian published Wednesday night, we now know that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency used the Patriot Act to obtain a secret warrant to compel Verizon’s business services division to turn over data on every single call that went through its system. We know that this particular order was a routine extension of surveillance that has been going on for years, and it seems very likely that it extends beyond Verizon’s business division. There is every reason to believe the federal government has been collecting every bit of information about every American’s phone calls except the words actually exchanged in those calls.
Articles in The Washington Post and The Guardian described a process by which the N.S.A. is also able to capture Internet communications directly from the servers of nine leading American companies. The articles raised questions about whether the N.S.A. separated foreign communications from domestic ones.
Stick or not? Teflon or not? Does it matter or not?
As Texas Fred wrote in his post, “A warning from a former Muslim,” Islam has patience. And drive. And violence. They are the 800-pound gorilla of religions, cold, cruel, barbaric, single-minded. Read Fred’s post first.
Some people may be asking, in light of the recent declaration that Feds suggest anti-Muslim speech can be punished, why such emphasis on the negative aspects of one tiny religion when there are so many other issues of greater importance requiring focus in today’s world? And, further, won’t this get me in trouble?
The second question is easiest to answer: because I believe in my First Amendment rights. Once we lose our First, everything else means nothing. That is why it is the FIRST Amendment and why the Leftists and “Progressives” by way of the Demorats work so hard to eliminate our Second Amendment protections. Once the Second Amendment is gutted and emasculated, the rest of the Bill of Rights — with the First Amendment clearly “first to go” — can be tossed aside with abandon. Then the nation truly becomes one populated by Groundlings, Serfs and Proles. This doesn’t just work for Obama, folks; any old and staid Republican could potentially do the same thing. No one, ladies and gentlemen, gets my First Amendment.
The first question is also an easy one to answer: because Islam has the West in its gunsights. Literally and figuratively. And the so-called “good” and “moderate” Muslim keeps silent and quaking in his boots for fear of the True Islam. My phrase “Islam is as Islam does” isn’t merely some trite coinage; it’s the absolute truth. Do the reversal: substitute the word “Catholic” for all the death and carnage committed at the hands of and in the name of Islam and imagine what the state of Catholicism would be today.
People say that, after all, these kinds of thing can’t happen here and that Texas Fred and I are simply religionists and terribly over-reactive. One tiny point: people also intimate that Texas Fred and I are racists and to that I laugh out loud: the dolts and cretins making this remark are themselves ill-educated and give away their obvious poor public school days: Islam is a religion and not a race. Such goobers.
So good, in fact, that Politico spouts this headline:
