Now look who's getting grilled over eligibility

BORN IN THE USA?

'Natural born' citizenship questions go beyond Obama to GOP potential

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By Joe Kovacs
© 2011 WorldNetDaily

PALM BEACH, Fla. – Is potential Republican candidate Donald Trump eligible to run for U.S. president?

Donald Trump

The question comes in the wake of high-profile statements by the billionaire developer and Palm Beach resident who has suggested Barack Obama's presidency could be "illegal" if he does not release his long-form, hospital-specified birth certificate to prove he's constitutionally qualified to occupy the White House.

"To be honest with you, I want him to have a birth certificate," Trump said on Fox News, "because [otherwise] that would mean that his presidency was, I guess you'd have to say, illegal. You have to be born in the United States."

Help get TV commercials on the air to bust Obama's eligibility wide open!

Trump this week released two copies of his original birth certificates, one from the Jamaica Hospital in Queens, N.Y., and the other long-form, official government document from the New York Department of Health, confirming Trump's birthplace at Jamaica Hospital on June 14, 1946.

Donald Trump's official birth certificate – for full image, including certifying note from registrar, click here (courtesy ABC News)

But some have still wondered if Trump can be considered a "natural born citizen" as the Constitution requires since his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, was born in Stornoway, Scotland, thus giving her British citizenship at her birth in 1912. Donald's father, real-estate mogul Frederick Christ Trump, was an American by birth in New York City in 1905.

Donald Trump's mother Mary Anne MacLeod, shown in 1932, was born in Stornoway, Scotland

AOL News contributor Mara Gay suggested one of the reasons why Donald Trump may be pushing the eligibility issue is because "he's trying to deflect attention from his own shady, Scottish origins."

Columnist Ben Smith at Politico jokingly wrote, "Trump's mother, it should be noted, was born in Scotland, which is not part of the United States. His plane is registered in the Bahamas, also a foreign country. This fact pattern – along with the wave of new questions surrounding what he claims is a birth certificate – raises serious doubts about his eligibility to serve as president of the United States."

While the Constitution itself does not provide a definition of natural-born citizen, those challenging President Obama have asserted that it requires not only a birth having taken place on U.S. soil, but also that both parents of the child have to be U.S. citizens at the time of the child's birth. Only Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a U.S. citizen when Obama was born, while his father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was a British subject, having been born in Kenya.

Now the Birthers.org website, which has been among those questioning Obama's eligibility, reports that Trump's mother did indeed become a U.S. citizen before the birth of Donald. It displays a small image of a signed naturalization receipt for Mrs. Trump on March 10, 1942, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, four years before Donald was born.

WND found a larger image of the document in the National Archives, showing details for Mary Anne Trump, including her home address of 175 24 Devonshire Rd. in Jamaica, N.Y. and her age of 29 at the time of the record.

Receipt in National Archives of Mary Anne Trump's naturalization dated March 10, 1942, four years before she gave birth to Donald Trump.

"Donald Trump is a natural born American citizen, above the age of 35 and a resident of the United States of America longer than 14 years," declares Birthers.org. "He has provided sufficient documentation attesting to his place of birth, and upon research of his parents it is determined that they were both American citizens at the time of his birth. ... There is no doubt that at his birth his natural allegiance for the United States of America was and still is unalienable. ... Congratulations Donald, you are the first prospective presidential candidate to qualify as a natural born citizen."

The founder of Birthers.org, Teo Bear, told WND, "I am 99.999 percent certain Donald Trump meets the definition of a natural-born citizen as our founding fathers understood it to mean. Once Donald authorizes the release of his mother's naturalization, I will move to 100 percent."

He said the confusion for this issue rests with a weak education system in America.

"We have as a nation become dumbed down in understanding our heritage. We look for the simplest answers, so 'natural born' became 'born on the soil,'" Bear said.

"As it stands now, according to Obama's supporters, if [al-Qaida mastermind Osama] bin Laden were captured and one of his many wives came to America for his trial while carrying his child, and if that child were born in the United States, that child would be eligible to be president in their view. That, my friend, is the result of an education system that promotes politically correct thinking in place of critical thinking."

Mary Anne Trump, a philanthropist who supported various charities near her home in New York, died in August 2000 at age 88. Fred Trump passed away in June 1999.

Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen is defending is his client's natural-born citizenship, telling Britain's Daily Mail: "I don't think anyone's going to question whether Donald Trump is or was not born in New York."

Cohen pointed out there are hospitals named after Trump's family in New York, but the only ones named after Obama are in Africa.

Radio host Rush Limbaugh called that comment "priceless" today, adding, "I don't know that his brother's hut has a name."

When asked by a caller if Trump or Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., had a better shot at the presidency at this point, Limbaugh said it was "too soon to say," but then added, "You'd have to say Trump just on name recognition alone. At this stage, you'd have to say that. Far more people, many more people know who Trump is than Michele Bachmann."

Limbaugh also played a parody song to the tune of Bruce Springsteen's hit "Born in the USA," performed by Obama soundalike Paul Shanklin.

The opening lyrics state:

Born down in that Hawaiian town
They were too busy to write it down
Trump and others, they think too much
They say I got something to cover up
Born in the USA
I was, born in the USA
I was, born in the USA
Not somewhere far away

A video parody was also posted today on YouTube, featuring a fictional edition of Trump's TV program "The Apprentice" with an episode titled "Eligibility Edition" with WND senior staff writer Jerome Corsi included:

Karl Rove, the former adviser to President George W. Bush, told Bill O'Reilly of Fox News tonight that he thought Trump's promotion of the eligibility issue could hurt the entrepreneur.

"This is a mistake. It will marginalize him," Rove said. He claimed the right-wing base of the party is "not in love with the issue," and added "Barack Obama wants Republicans to fall into this trap."

Meanwhile, potential Republican presidential candidate, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is blasting Trump's call to see Obama's birth certificate, claiming it has already been made public, at least according to some news agencies.

"The news reports from CNN and others have said they've seen the birth certificate," Pawlenty told Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel last night.

"Never trust CNN," Hannity interjected.

Pawlenty continued, "I watched it myself. CNN reported they saw the birth certificate. So, you got to either believe that they didn't [see it] and they're lying, or there's something else going on."

For its part, CNN is continuing to report false information on its website about the controversy.

This paragraph posted on its site yesterday by CNN producer Alexander Mooney has numerous errors: "It should be noted that CNN and other news organizations have thoroughly debunked the rumors about the president's birthplace. Hawaii has released a copy of the president's birth certificate – officially called a 'certificate of live birth' – and the hospital where he was born took out ads in two Hawaiian newspapers in 1961 announcing the birth."

The first error is that rumors about the president's actual birthplace have not been debunked. The precise birthplace, including the city and hospital of birth for Obama, is still a matter of conjecture because no long-form, hospital-specified birth certificate has ever been produced officially documenting them, and no hospital has ever gone on the record to confirm Obama was born at its facility.

Secondly, the state of Hawaii has never verified any of the president's purported birth-certificate images that have been displayed online. Former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs claimed he personally put an image of the short-form certification of live birth on the Internet, not the long-form certificate of live birth, but the state of Hawaii has refused to confirm its authenticity as well as one examined by Factcheck.org.

This short-form "certification of live birth" released by the Obama campaign in 2008 does not have the name of the hospital or an attending physician, which would be included on a long-form "certificate of live birth," which has never been produced by Obama.

CNN also mistakenly claims "the hospital where he was born took out ads in two Hawaiian newspapers in 1961 announcing the birth."

Birth announcements from the Star-Bulletin (left) and Honolulu Advertiser (right), with Barack Obama's announcement marked

Once again, the hospital of Obama's birth remains unconfirmed, and as WND has reported, it was not the hospitals that took out newspaper ads about births, but rather the Hawaii Department of Health that provided information to newspapers based on certifications of live birth, meaning someone reported the birth of a child. Such certifications could be issued for children not even born in Hawaii.

Additionally, Obama's parents did not even live at the address published in the Hawaiian newspapers. His grandparents actually lived there.

How Hawaiian papers published announcements

WND discovered the following in previous discussions with the two Honolulu newspapers:

• Neither newspaper had an editor to vet birth announcements;
  
  
• Neither newspaper independently checked the truthfulness or accuracy of birth announcement information derived from Hawaii Department of Health vital statistics records;
  
  
• Both newspapers merely published birth announcements, as received, from information published in Hawaii's Department of Health vital statistics announcements.
  
  
• Hawaiian hospitals did not report to newspapers any birth information;
  
  
• Hawaiian certifications of live birth do not typically list the hospital of birth or attending physician;
  
  
• Errors and misstatements in birth announcements published in the two Hawaiian newspapers have been documented, stemming from incorrect information recorded by the Hawaiian Department of Health.

Trump injected new life into the debate over Obama's eligibility last week during an appearance on ABC's "The View," demanding to see Obama's long-form birth certificate.

"I want him to show his birth certificate! There's something on that birth certificate that he doesn't like," Trump said.

"The other thing. If you go back to my first grade, my kindergarten, people remember me. Nobody from those early years remembers him. If you're going to be the president of the United States, it says very profoundly that you have to be born in this country."

Trump noted his skepticism of evidence proffered thus far about Obama's life history, stating, "I grew up in New York. Wall Street was a big part. I have seen fraud and I have seen scandal and I have seen a lot of things that people don't see. I've seen people take a $100 bill and make it a $1,000,000 bill. The point is, I can't rely on some newspaper [birth announcement] that they showed [to prove the president's eligibility]. I want him to show his birth certificate!"

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Beck: “I stand with Israel”

Tuesday, Mar 29, 2011 at 5:55 PM EDT

Glenn gave a passionate condemnation of US foreign policy on tonight’s TV show. As the Middle East continues to burn, the United States – and most of the world for that matter – have not taken a firm stance in alliance with Israel. Instead, the administration has been silent as groups like the Muslim Brotherhood start to work their way into power in Egypt and other countries.

Glenn makes a compelling argument, noting that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that shares American values. They are constantly provoked and attacked, yet despite having a heavy nuclear arsenal they have not launched a single one. In Israel, unlike most other Middle Eastern countries, women are treated equally and people aren’t stoned for their sexual orientation. Nevertheless, the United States has – at it’s best – remained silent.

But as Glenn also noted, there are those high up in the administration that would stand against Israel, such as Samantha Power (Mrs. Cass Sunstein), who has argued that the United States should shift their support from Israel and focus on the creation of a Palestinian State. They use the doctrine of a “Responsibility to Protect” to say the US and its allies should move against Israel in support of the Palestinian State, the same doctrine that President Obama used to move against Libya without congressional approval. You can see her make the argument in this video:

But Glenn used his opening monologue to take a stand for Israel. “You have to do what you feel is the right thing, because the times call for it.” He made his stand tonight, and he called for viewers to take account of their lives and figure out where they stand on these issues and the other issues facing the country and the world. World leaders may be silent – or worse, standing on the wrong side of history – and its up to the individuals in America to stand on the side of good.

Libya bombing an attempt to create 'New World Order'?

WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS

Shock admission by author of doctrine used by White House to justify attacks

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By Aaron Klein

Ramesh Thakur

JERUSALEM – The author of a military doctrine used by the Obama administration to justify the recent airstrikes targeting the regime of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya recently advocated for a "global rebalancing" and "international redistribution" to create a "New World Order."

The author, Ramesh Thakur, is a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, which is in partnership with an economic institute founded by philanthropist billionaire George Soros. Thakur is also closely tied with other Soros-funded initiatives.

WND was first to report last week that Soros is also a primary funder and key proponent of the global organization that promotes the military doctrine "Responsibility to Protect," cited by the White House as allowing the use of force to attack Gadhafi's forces.

The joint U.S. and international air strikes targeting Libya are widely regarded as a test of Responsibility to Protect – a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of "war crimes," "genocide," "crimes against humanity" or "ethnic cleansing."

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The term "war crimes" has at times been indiscriminately used by various U.N.-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops.

Now WND has learned that Thakur, one of the principal authors of and original commissioners of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine," argued recently for a global realignment.

In a piece last March in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, "Toward a new world order," Thakur wrote, "Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution."

He was referring there to a United Nations-brokered international climate treaty in which he argued, "Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions."

In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.

"The West's bullying approach to developing nations won't work anymore – global power is shifting to Asia," he wrote.

"A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train," he added.

Thakur continued: "Westerners have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behaviour for the world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations."

Thakur contended "the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of 'superior' western power."

Soros fingerprints on Libya bombing

Thakur's International Governance Innovation Centre is in partnership with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, or INET, for which Soros is a founding sponsor.

The philanthropist agreed to provides $25 million over five years to support INET activities.

Just last week, INET was in the news for its announcement of its annual four-day economic symposium to be held next month in the mountains of Bretton Woods, N.H.

The gathering of economic giants will take place at Mount Washington Hotel, famous for hosting the original Bretton Woods economic agreements drafted in 1944. That conference's goal was to rebuild a post-World War II international monetary system. The April gathering has a similar goal in mind – a global economic restructuring.

Reporting on last year's event, the Business Insider related, "George Soros has brought together a crack team of the world's top economists and financial thinkers."

"Its aim," continued the business newspaper, "to remake the world's economy as they see fit."

Thakur, meanwhile, serves on the advisory board of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect, the world's leading champion of the military doctrine.

Activist Gareth Evans, who sits on the global group's advisory board, is widely regarded as the other founder of the Responsibility to Protect principle along with Thakur.

Soros' Open Society Institute is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.

Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have recently made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders, which includes former President Jimmy Carter.

Annan once famously stated, "State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined – not least by the forces of globalization and international co-operation. States are ... instruments at the service of their peoples and not vice versa."

During his tenure as Australia's foreign minister, Evans served as co-chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which invented the term "responsibility to protect."

In his capacity as co-chair, Evans also played a pivotal role in initiating the fundamental shift from sovereignty as a right to "sovereignty as responsibility."

Evans presented Responsibility to Protect at the July 23, 2009, United Nations General Assembly, which was convened to consider the principle.

Soros: Right to 'penetrate nation-states' borders'

Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article entitled "The People's Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World's Most Vulnerable Populations."

In the article, Soros said "true sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments."

"If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified," Soros wrote. "By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states' borders to protect the rights of citizens.

"In particular, the principle of the people's sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict."

Evans sits on multiple boards with Soros, including the Clinton Global Initiative.

Soros is on the executive board of the International Crisis Group, a "crisis management organization" for which Evans serves as president-emeritus.

WND previously reported how the group has been petitioning for the U.S. to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition in Egypt, where longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was recently toppled.

Aside from Evans and Soros, the group includes on its board Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, as well as other personalities who champion dialogue with Hamas, a violent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

WND also reported the crisis group has also petitioned for the Algerian government to cease "excessive" military activities against al-Qaida-linked groups and to allow organizations seeking to create an Islamic state to participate in the Algerian government.

Soros' own Open Society Institute has funded opposition groups across the Middle East and North Africa, including organizations involved in the current chaos.

Power pushes doctrine

Doctrine founder Evans, meanwhile, is closely tied to Obama aide Samantha Power, who reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya. Power is the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights.

Evans and Power have been joint keynote speakers at events in which they have championed the Responsibility to Protect principle together, such as the 2008 Global Philanthropy Forum, also attended by Tutu.

In November, at the International Symposium on Preventing Genocide and Mass Atrocities, Power, attending as a representative of the White House, argued for the use of Responsibility to Protect alongside Evans.

With research by Brenda J. Elliott

Atlas Shrugged: Part I Rubs Capitalism in Hollywood's Face

by Jarrett Stepman

April 15 is a miserable day for American taxpayers, but it’s the perfect release date for the film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s classic novel Atlas Shrugged.

The ultimate taxpayer’s revolt movie, which has been in production for nearly two decades, will capitalize on the confluence of current issues that strike at the heart of the book’s message.

The marketing campaign has been small because the movie didn’t have a big budget. One of the producers, Harmon Kaslow, said at a Heritage Foundation prescreening of Atlas Shrugged: Part I—the movie is only the first part of an ongoing saga—that he wanted the marketing effort to be “grassroots,” The other producer, John Aglialoro, has been the CEO of several large companies and is a former U.S. poker champion. Both are complete neophytes in the movie-making industry.

Unlike the typical Hollywood story line of scientists, environmentalists, and government officials fighting against greedy, profit-seeking corporations, Atlas Shrugged: Part I turns the formula on its head.

The villains are instead members of society who try to leech off the hard work of others. Their only skill is in using government machinations to plunder from their fellow man. The list of villains includes incompetent CEOs, government bureaucrats, and altruistic pinheads.

The storyline of Atlas Shrugged: Part I generally follows two main protagonists.

The first is Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling), who is the vice president of the railroad company Taggart Continental. She deftly handles the day-to-day business of the company while her brother, James Taggart, is the incompetent CEO whose only real skill is using political influence to gain governmental favors.

The other main protagonist is a brilliant metal inventor, Hank Rearden (Grant Bowler). He is a hardworking entrepreneur who has created the world's strongest, but untested, metal. Unfortunately he is married to a cold and decadent wife who ungratefully spends all of his money on herself.

The plot of Atlas Shrugged: Part I revolves around the complex partnership between Hank and Dagny. Both need each other professionally. Dagny needs Hank's revolutionary new metal to revive her families company, and Hank needs the contract with Taggart Continental to build his budding young company. As the story moves along, however, their relationship extends far beyond the professional.

The subplot of talented workers, entrepreneurs, and businessmen disappearing eventually becomes the focus of the movie. A phrase used sarcastically over and over again, usually before someone disappears, is “Who is John Galt?” This is the character who symbolizes the power and the glory of the human mind. As the world is falling apart, the only people who can save it are either being attacked for being successful, or are simply leaving.

While the theme and message of Atlas Shrugged: Part I are sure to resonate with Tea Partiers, libertarians, and conservatives, some elements of the film remain noticeably lacking.

Despite an impressive first scene of a roaring locomotive racing toward its spectacular doom, there is a definite lack of visuals. The set design could have certainly used a bit more artistic flair.

Another problem is that many of the characters' performances are wooden and stiff. Because the film is not visually spectacular, there was an even greater need for powerful character performance, and it really just isn’t there. Some individual performances stand out, including Taylor Schilling's portrayal of Dagny Taggart, but many of the characters simply don’t mesh well.

So Atlas Shrugged: Part I doesn’t have the best visuals or character performances, but it does have a number of memorable scenes. The portrayals of the government bureaucrats, in their brief time on screen, are well-done and humorous. And there is no lack of particularly detestable characters, such as super lobbyist Wesley Mouch.

Atlas Shrugged: Part I certainly has its flaws, and the lack of a major marketing campaign will probably hurt its chances of success, but it is a movie that goes against everything Hollywood is known for. That alone makes it worth seeing.

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Jarrett Stepman is a graduate of UC Davis, where he studied Political Science. He is currently an intern for HUMAN EVENTS through the National Journalism Center.

Holder ignores demands for NAACP-influence data

LAW OF THE LAND

'Who is running Justice Department? That is what we're trying to find out'

By Bob Unruh

A lawsuit has been filed against President Obama's Justice Department fNew Black Panther Partyor refusing to release details about how agency officials decided to abandon a voter intimidation case that staff members had brought – and won – against members of the .

The lawsuit was filed by Judicial Watch, the public interest organization that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, over a refusal by the federal agency to provide information about the decision.

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At issue in the case is whether the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People "improperly influenced" the Justice Department, the nation's highest law enforcement agency, "to drop a lawsuit against members of the Black Panthers who allegedly threatened and intimidated white voters outside a polling station during the 2008 election."

Because Kristen Clark, of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, reportedly met with Justice Department officials to discuss the case just before the agency announced plans to dismiss the action, questions arose about the influence that may have been exerted. Judicial Watch in November 2010 filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records of communications between the agency's Civil Rights Division and the NAACP. Under federal requirements, Attorney General Eric Holder's agency was supposed to have responded by Dec. 3, 2010.

"However, to date, no documents have been produced," the Judicial Watch announcement said.

"Who is running the Justice Department? That is what we're trying to find out with this lawsuit. I find it outrageous that leftist special interest groups seem to be directing the activities of the nation’s top law enforcement agency," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a prepared statement about the case.

"The Obama Justice Department has made a mess of the Black Panther lawsuit. We already know the Justice Department's decision to drop the case was tainted by politics and racism. There is something amiss in the Holder Justice Department. And its casual violations of the freedom of information law highlight this administration's contempt for transparency and the rule of law."

According to the lawsuit, "As of the date of this complaint, defendant has failed to produce any records responsive to the request or demonstrate that responsive records are exempt from production. Nor has it indicated whether or when any responsive records will be produced. In fact, defendant has failed to respond to the request in any manner."

WND previously reported on the Philadelphia case, which was documented on video.

The Justice Department originally brought the case against the organization and several individuals who witnesses say derided voters with catcalls of "white devil" and "cracker" and told voters they should prepare to be "ruled by the black man."

One poll watcher called police after he reportedly saw one of the men brandishing a nightstick to threaten voters.

"As I walked up, they closed ranks, next to each other," the witness told Fox News at the time. "So I walked directly in between them, went inside and found the poll watchers. They said they'd been here for about an hour. And they told us not to come outside because a black man is going to win this election no matter what."

He said the man with a nightstick told him, "'We're tired of white supremacy,' and he starts tapping the nightstick in his hand. At which point I said, 'OK, we're not going to get in a fistfight right here,' and I called the police."

Subsequently, former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams testified before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission that the Voting Section of Holder's organization is dominated by a "culture of hostility" toward bringing cases against blacks and other minorities who violate voting-rights laws.

Further, two other former U.S. Department of Justice attorneys later corroborated key elements of the explosive allegations by Adams.

One of Adams' DOJ colleagues, former Voting Section trial attorney Hans A. von Spakovsky, told WND he saw Adams was being attacked in the media for lack of corroboration. He said he knew Adams was telling the truth, so he decided on his own to step forward.

It was Adams who had been ordered by his superiors to drop a case prosecutors already had won against the New Black Panthers. When they were ordered to stop prosecution, Adams and the team of DOJ lawyers had already won the case by default because the New Black Panthers declined to defend themselves in court. At that point in the proceedings, the DOJ team was simply waiting for the judge to assign penalties against the New Black Panthers.

The latest FOIA action is part of Judicial Watch's comprehensive investigation of the New Black Panther Party scandal. It previously found information that top political appointees played key roles in the decision to dismiss the case.

That information "directly contradict[s] sworn testimony by Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, who testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that no political leadership was involved in the decision," Judicial Watch said.

Is it America’s duty to intervene wherever regime change is needed?

George F. Will
Opinion Writer

Is it America’s duty to intervene wherever regime change is needed?
By George F. Will

The missile strikes that inaugurated America’s latest attempt at regime change were launched 29 days before the 50th anniversary of another such — the Bay of Pigs of April 17, 1961. Then the hubris of American planners was proportional to their ignorance of everything relevant, from Cuban sentiment to Cuba’s geography. The fiasco was a singularly feckless investment of American power.

Does practice make perfect? In today’s episode, America has intervened in a civil war in a tribal society, the dynamics of which America does not understand. And America is supporting one faction, the nature of which it does not know. “We are standing with the people of Libya,” says Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, evidently confident that “the” people are a harmonious unit. Many in the media call Moammar Gaddafi’s opponents “freedom fighters,” and perhaps they are, but no one calling them that really knows how the insurgents regard one another, or understand freedom, or if freedom, however understood, is their priority.

But, then, knowing is rarely required in the regime-change business. The Weekly Standard, a magazine for regime-change enthusiasts, serenely says: “The Libyan state is a one-man operation. Eliminate that man and the whole edifice may come tumbling down.” And then good things must sprout? The late Donald Westlake gave one of his comic novels the mordant title “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” People who do not find that darkly funny should not make foreign policy.

In Libya, mission creep began before the mission did. A no-fly zone would not accomplish what Barack Obama calls “a well-defined goal,” the “protection of civilians.” So the no-fly zone immediately became protection for aircraft conducting combat operations against Gaddafi’s ground forces.

America’s war aim is inseparable from — indeed, obviously is — destruction of that regime. So our purpose is to create a political vacuum, into which we hope — this is the “audacity of hope” as foreign policy — good things will spontaneously flow. But if Gaddafi cannot be beaten by the rebels, are we prepared to supply their military deficiencies? And if the decapitation of his regime produces what the removal of Saddam Hussein did — bloody chaos — what then are our responsibilities regarding the tribal vendettas we may have unleashed? How long are we prepared to police the partitioning of Libya?

Explaining his decision to wage war, Obama said Gaddafi has “lost the confidence of his own people and the legitimacy to lead.” Such meretricious boilerplate seems designed to anesthetize thought. When did Gaddafi lose his people’s confidence? When did he have legitimacy? American doctrine — check the Declaration of Independence — is that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. So there are always many illegitimate governments. When is it America’s duty to scrub away these blemishes on the planet? Is there a limiting principle of humanitarian interventionism? If so, would Obama take a stab at stating it?

Congress’s power to declare war resembles a muscle that has atrophied from long abstention from proper exercise. This power was last exercised on June 5, 1942 (against Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary), almost 69 years, and many wars, ago. It thus may seem quaint, and certainly is quixotic, for Indiana’s Richard Lugar — ranking Republican on, and former chairman of, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — to say, correctly, that Congress should debate and vote on this.

There are those who think that if the United Nations gives the United States permission to wage war, the Constitution becomes irrelevant. Let us find out who in Congress supports this proposition, which should be resoundingly refuted, particularly by Republicans currently insisting that government, and especially the executive, should be on a short constitutional leash. If all Republican presidential aspirants are supine in the face of unfettered presidential war-making and humanitarian interventionism, the Republican field is radically insufficient.

On Dec. 29, 1962, in Miami’s Orange Bowl, President John Kennedy, who ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion, addressed a rally of survivors and supporters of that exercise in regime change. Presented with the invasion brigade’s flag, Kennedy vowed, “I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana.” Eleven months later, on Nov. 2, 1963, his administration was complicit in another attempt at violent regime change — the coup against, and murder of, South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem. The Saigon regime was indeed changed, so perhaps this episode counts as a success, even if Saigon is now Ho Chi Minh City.

Andrew Breitbart - Courts an Instrument of Leftist Thuggery

by Audrey Hudson

Politicians and their supporters use interesting tactics to intimidate and silence their critics, from rumor-mongering to editorial cartoons, even dueling pistols.

But the target of a high-profile lawsuit who is also a relentless investigator of the Obama administration says the judicial system is being used to retaliate against him.

“The President of the United States has an unprecedented and uncanny desire to silence those who report the truth about him,” says media mogul Andrew Breitbart.

Breitbart first came under fire last year after posting a video on one of his websites of a speech given by an Agriculture Department employee during an NAACP conference. The speech, Breitbart said, elicited racist responses from the audience. The speaker, Shirley Sherrod, says she was then fired at the behest of the White House, but when she was offered her job back days later, she declined.

Rather than targeting the administration for its actions, or accepting its peace offer of what appeared to be a better job, Sherrod is suing Breitbart in the District of Columbia Superior Court for defamation of character and emotional distress.

Breitbart concedes that Obama is “noticeably absent” from the lawsuit, but says it is part of a pattern of isolation and intimidation that is being orchestrated by the Obama White House that threatens to marginalize media critics through the courts.

Exhibit A, he says, is the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis that is representing Sherrod.

“All you have to do is look at who Kirkland Ellis is and where their money went in the 2008 election cycle,” Breitbart said.

Through employee donations, Kirkland Ellis was a top 20 contributor to Obama’s presidential campaign, with nearly $494,000 in donations, according to Wikipedia.

“This is a man who wants to shut out and silence his enemies,” Breitbart told HUMAN EVENTS.

“The courts are a lovely place to take away the energy and resources of the President’s critics,” Breitbart said. “He thinks he can use the courts as a war of attrition against his political enemies.”

Exhibit B, Breitbart says, is how the Left used the apparatus of the mainstream media to target other enemies, such as author David Freddoso and commentator Stanley Kurtz.

Freddoso, who wrote The Case Against Barack Obama, a New York Times best seller, “was called a hack, and whatever else they could think of,” Matthew Vadum, a senior editor at Capital Research Center tells HUMAN EVENTS.

In an American Spectator article Vadum penned during the campaign season, he outlined an Obama campaign memo he obtained urging followers to stir up trouble for Freddoso.

"The author of the latest anti-Barack hit book is appearing on WGN Radio in the Chicagoland market tonight, and your help is urgently needed to make sure his baseless lies don't gain credibility," the memo said.

"David Freddoso has made a career off dishonest, extreme hate-mongering. And WGN apparently thinks this card-carrying member of the right-wing smear machine needs a bigger platform for his lies and smears about Barack Obamao—n the public airwaves."

Kurtz says he was also the target of “Alinskyite tactics” during a Chicago radio show appearance in 2008.

“The Obama campaign tried to shut me down when I went onto a radio station,” Kurtz told a Hudson Institute audience that same year. “About half an hour before I got there, they had been called by 7,000 people demanding that I not be allowed on the air. So they called the Obama folks and invited them to have someone come on to debate me. They refused, demanded that I not be allowed on the radio, and then they asked for the name of the head of the station so they could call and demand that I not be allowed in the radio. They did the same thing to David Freddoso. These are Alinskyite tactics, and Obama is using them in the campaign,” Kurtz said.

Vadum told HUMAN EVENTS that “leftist radicals don’t really like free speech unless it goes their way.” The courts, it appears, are their final option to shut down the opposition.

“When they don’t like what you stand for, they want the police to harass you or they take you to court. That’s not supposed to happen in a constitutional Republic like the United States,” Vadum said.

“This is thug politics straight out of Chicago,” Vadum said. “Al Capone would have been pleased.”

Exhibit C is the so-called Pigford settlement. Breitbart says it is the most controversial story he has ever uncovered.

What initially started out as Breitbart’s mission to defend the Tea Party against attacks of racism by the NAACP has now evolved into a mission to expose how federal payments to black farmers for racial discrimination in farm aid has been hijacked as a reparations movement.

“This is about politics, this is about my continued attempts to expose the rotten-to-the-core alliances of the alleged objectivity of the mainstream media and organized groups like the NAACP who have gone to war against the Tea Party for its attempts to bring fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control government,” Breitbart said.

“And I am being attacked because of my effectiveness in exposing how the President’s propaganda is being created. And I am being attacked because I have been a relentless force in reporting and propagating narratives that show that hope and change have been nothing more than organized thuggery and false propaganda,” Breitbart said.

Audrey Hudson is an award-winning investigative journalist who specializes in homeland security.

Soros fingerprints on Libya bombing

WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS

Leftist mastermind puts up big bucks to erase borders

By Aaron Klein
© 2011 WorldNetDaily

Philanthropist billionaire George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the global organization that promotes the military doctrine used by the Obama administration to justify the recent airstrikes targeting the regime of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.

The activist who founded and coined the name of the doctrine, "Responsibility to Protect," sits on several key organizations alongside Soros.

Also, the Soros-funded global group that promotes Responsibility to Protect is closely tied to Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights.

Power has been a champion of the doctrine and is, herself, deeply tied to the doctrine's founder.

According to reports, Power was instrumental in convincing Obama to act against Libya.

The Responsibility to Protect doctrine has been described by its founders and proponents, including Soros, as promoting global governance while allowing the international community to penetrate a nation state's borders under certain conditions.

Libya regarded as test of global doctrine

The joint U.S. and international air strikes targeting Libya are widely regarded as a test of Responsibility to Protect – which is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege, but a responsibility.

According to the principle, any state's sovereignty can be overrun, including with the use of military force, if the international community decides it must act to halt what it determines to be genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing.

The term "war crimes" has at times been indiscriminately used by various U.N.-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops.

An organization calling itself the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect is the world's leading champion of the doctrine.

Activist Gareth Evans, who sits on the global group's advisory board, is widely regarded as the founder of the Responsibility to Protect principle.

Soros' Open Society Institute is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.

Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have recently made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders, which includes former President Jimmy Carter.

Annan once famously stated, "State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined – not least by the forces of globalization and international co-operation. States are ... instruments at the service of their peoples and not vice versa."

During his tenure as Australia's foreign minister, Evans served as co-chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which invented the term "responsibility to protect."

In his capacity as co-chair, Evans also played a pivotal role in initiating the fundamental shift from sovereignty as a right to "sovereignty as responsibility."

Evans presented Responsibility to Protect at the July 23, 2009, United Nations General Assembly, which was convened to consider the principle.

Soros: Right to 'penetrate nation-states' borders'

Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article entitled "The People's Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World's Most Vulnerable Populations."

In the article, Soros said "true sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments."

"If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified," Soros wrote. "By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states' borders to protect the rights of citizens.

"In particular, the principle of the people's sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict."

Evans sits on multiple boards with Soros, including the Clinton Global Initiative.

Soros is on the executive board of the International Crisis Group, a "crisis management organization" for which Evans serves as president-emeritus.

WND previously reported how the group has been petitioning for the U.S. to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition in Egypt, where longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was recently toppled.

Aside from Evans and Soros, the group includes on its board Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, as well as other personalities who champion dialogue with Hamas, a violent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

WND also reported the crisis group has also petitioned for the Algerian government to cease "excessive" military activities against al-Qaida-linked groups and to allow organizations seeking to create an Islamic state to participate in the Algerian government.

Soros' own Open Society Institute has funded opposition groups across the Middle East and North Africa, including organizations involved in the current chaos.

Power pushes doctrine

Doctrine founder Evans, meanwhile, is closely tied to Obama aide Samantha Power, who reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the U.S. president's decision to bomb Libya.

Evans and Power have been joint keynote speakers at events in which they have championed the Responsibility to Protect principle together, such as the 2008 Global Philanthropy Forum, also attended by Tutu.

In November, at the International Symposium on Preventing Genocide and Mass Atrocities, Power, attending as a representative of the White House, argued for the use of Responsibility to Protect alongside Evans.

With research by Brenda J. Elliott

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Glenn Beck warns: 'The perfect storm' is beginning

MEDIA MATTERS

'These are not enemies of man. These are enemies of God'

By Joe Kovacs
© 2011 WorldNetDaily

Media giant Glenn Beck is warning that a "perfect storm" of problems in America and the world has begun, and he's urging people to turn to God to deal with it.

"These problems, as you are beginning to see," Beck said on his radio program this morning, "we are experiencing now the perfect storm, the beginnings of the perfect storm that I outlined to you years ago and now you can see how when I was talking about it and everybody was saying 'Shut up! Who cares? It's not going to happen.'

"You're beginning to see it now and you can know why I was crying all the time. Because I saw this in advance. It doesn't take a genius to do it. You can see it if you would just open your mind."

Islamic Antichrist'? Why Glenn Beck raves about it

Beck, who often invokes God in his commentary, continued, "It is an overwhelming force and it is global in nature and it is evil in nature. You must be as good and as light as the evil is evil, bad and dark. These are not enemies of man. These are enemies of God, and He will sort things out. You must stand in righteousness."

"Here is the most dangerous thing I could say on the radio or on television," Beck said. "God is the only answer. There is no hope, there is no victory without a people that understand light, goodness and God."

Beck then issued a call for listeners to take a stand against any kind of evil in their personal lives.

"If you don't say something now, it's only going to get harder and harder and harder," he said. "You think it's gonna get easier to talk to your friends about God? You think it's gonna be easier to talk to your spouse about, 'Hey, let's clean up our lives'? You think it's gonna get easier to talk to your kids and tell them, 'Hey, knock it off' or 'You don't need all of that stuff?' It's not going to get easier. It's going to get harder because the world is going down in the other direction. You gotta stop now. You've got to turn your life around now."

Beck played audio at times from Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan, and made reference to an end-times Muslim leader known as "the Mahdi."

"This [the uprising in the Middle East] is a sign that the great Mahdi that the Muslim world has been looking for is present in the world," Farrakhan noted.

Beck remarked, ""If you look at the Mahdi / the 12th Imam, he really is the biblical antichrist."

The Obamacare Legacy of Centralization and Bureaucracy

by Kevin Glass

The monstrous Obamacare health law was passed by the House of Representatives on March 21, 2010 and signed into law by President Obama nine days later. Nancy Pelosi said that Congress had to pass the law to find out what was in it. Despite a lengthy debate, new details trickle out seemingly daily about the destructive impact of the law. One year later, a group of conservative health policy wonks have banded together to release a book that comes as close as possible to being the authoritative tome on the full impact of Obamacare.

Grace-Marie Turner, James Capretta, Thomas Miller and Robert Moffitt are co-authors of the new book Why Obamacare is Wrong For America. Turner, President of the Galen Institute (a health policy think tank) and frequent Townhall contributor, made time to talk with Townhall about her new book, Obamacare's continuing repercussions and what Americans can do to make sure their voices are heard.

Townhall: The title is blunt.

Grace-Marie Turner: It is, I know, there's not any question about where we stand on this.

TH: The book was written by you, James Capretta, Thomas Miller and Robert Moffitt, four of the biggest names in health care policy on the Right. How did this project come together?

Turner: You know, it was really clear to us that there needed to be one book that pulled together the key parts of Obamacare, and that we needed a book that really explained the impact of this awful new law. So rather than descriptions of the bill, which is important, we decided that we needed to do a book about the impact on young adults, on seniors, on patients and doctors, employers and employees, taxpayers and citizens whose constitutional rights are in jeopardy because of this legislation. So we offered this to several publishers, and Adam Bell, who's now our editor at HarperCollins, said "I believe we need this book." We produced it in unbelievable record time. We started it at Thanksgiving, and the manuscript was due at the end of December, so it's very, very current. We've continued to update it through January. Everything is in one place for what people need to know about this legislation and its impact on Americans.

TH: The book is perhaps the most comprehensive overview of what's in Obamacare. What would you say is the biggest impact of Obamacare that's still largely unknown by the public?

Only 9% believe Obama has documented eligibility

WND/WENZEL POLL

Scientific tally shows 2 of 3 like state legislation to require proof

By Bob Unruh
© 2011 WorldNetDaily

Editor's note: This is another in a series of monthly "WND/WENZEL POLLS" conducted exclusively for WND by the public-opinion research and media consulting company Wenzel Strategies.

Not even one person in 10 believes Barack Obama has shown that he is eligible to be president of the United States, according to a stunning new scientific poll that also reveals political Independents have less tolerance than even Republicans for his efforts to obfuscate the issue.

"The shocking result in this survey is that just 9 percent said they believe Obama has met the requirements to prove he was born in the United States and is therefore qualified to be president," said Fritz Wenzel, chief of Wenzel Strategies, which conducted the assessment.

"Even when you combine those who say such questions are not valid with those who believe he has satisfied the requirements, it still falls short of equaling the percentage who said he should step forward and prove his birth origin once and for all," he said.

Wenzel Strategies, an independent public opinion research firm based in Ohio, conducted a nationwide telephone poll using a randomly selected sample of all adults. Thesurvey , including 1,095 respondents, was conducted March 15-17, 2011, and carries a confidence interval of 95 percent and a margin of error of +/- 2.93 percentage points.

"The question of whether Barack Obama is eligible to hold the office of president is remarkable in that so many people are aware of the questions that remain unanswered. The survey shows that 77 percent are aware of the issue, and another 12 percent said they are unsure, which likely means they know a little but not enough to articulate details," Wenzel said in his analysis of the results.

"Given the level of interest that the American public now devotes to politics, especially in an off-election year, this finding is remarkable. It speaks volumes about Obama's unwillingness or inability to satisfy this question once and for all," he said.

It was back in June 2009 when Wenzel asked the simple question, "Are you aware of questions raised about Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility for the office of president?" and 51.3 percent responded yes.

This month, 77 percent of the Democrats who responded said they are. Nearly 82 percent of the Republicans are, and almost 69 percent of the Independents. Overall, 76.8 percent said yes, and another 11.7 percent said they were unsure. Only 11.5 percent said there were not aware of the questions.

"Half of those surveyed said they believe these questions about Obama's legitimacy as president are either troubling or should be satisfied by Obama. In fact, more people want Obama to prove his legitimacy – 42 percent – than believe that the lingering questions are not valid – 32 percent," Wenzel said.

That division is 41.9 percent who say Obama should prove his birth story, including 60.9 percent of Independents, 58.6 percent of Republicans and 13.2 percent of Democrats.

Another 7.9 percent the questions are troubling

"What is most interesting is the response on this question of Independent voters: Fully 61 percent of Independents said they want Obama to prove once and for all his birth origin, which is a higher percentage than even among Republicans. Men are also somewhat more skeptical than women," Wenzel said.

"At a time when this country faces dramatic problems both here at home and around the world, it does harm to Obama's credibility and undermines the confidence of the American people to have this question hanging out there," Wenzel explained. "One can only imagine the storm of controversy that might ensue if we discover definitively after his presidency is over that he was not qualified to hold office. The resignation of Richard Nixon would pale by comparison in terms of undermining public confidence in government."

"A corollary issue to the Obama birth certificate is the question about Obama's refusal to release educational records, which could hold some clue as to his birth origin and early citizenship," Wenzel said. "Two-thirds of all respondents want those records released, while the other third of respondents oppose the release of those records. It remains unclear why Obama will not comply with any requests to show those records to the public."

Only 26 percent strongly opposed the release of the records. Nearly 50 percent strongly favored release and another 17 percent said the president should release the records.

"The bottom line on these early-life records of Obama is that this issue lives on, regardless of how derisive some have been toward the so-called 'birther' movement," Wenzel said. "Obama supporters, particularly those in the national news media who have protected the president on this issue, have tried to ostracize those who still have doubts about Obama's birth, but try as they might, they have done little to quell the questions in the minds of the American public. This issue is far from over."

"Evidence of that springs from the strong support that the national telephone survey found among Americans for state laws that require candidates for president to prove they are constitutionally qualified to hold the office – before they will be allowed to appear on that state's presidential ballot," Wenzel said.

"Fully 65 percent said they support such state bills, while just 24 percent said they oppose such state measures. Huge majorities of both men and women agree with these state proposals and it is popular in every region of the nation," he said.

"The clear implication from this polling data is that Americans like the idea that, in the absence of full disclosure by presidential candidates and a press corps interested enough to ask and pursue tough questions, state governments will do their own vetting of presidential candidates," he said.

WND has reported that such proposals already have been made in 13 states, although several of the initiatives have been detoured by politics inside of committee meeting rooms.

Another recent poll, of only members of the GOP, said only about 30 percent believe Obama was born in the U.S.

The Public Policy Polling found that only 28 percent of the Republicans surveyed believe Obama was born in the U.S. while 51 percent do not. Another 21 percent say they are not sure.

"Any thought that the birther theory has been put to rest can be thrown out the window," Dean Debnam, the president of the Democratic-leaning polling firm, told Politico at the time.

"That view is still widely held in Republican circles," he said.

Other polls in recent months have shown Americans to be increasingly skeptical of Obama's official narrative:

* A survey by Angus Reid Global Monitor, a division of Vision Critical Group, in October 2009 found three in 10 people in the U.S. believed Obama to be a foreigner.

"While only 13 percent of Democratic Party supporters believe Obama was not born in the U.S., the proportion rises to 25 percent among independents and 51 percent among Republican Party backers," the report said.

* Then in January 2010, another WND/Wenzel Poll revealed on the one-year anniversary of Obama's tenure in office that fully one-third of Americans refused to believe Obama was a "legitimate president," with another 15.8 percent saying they were not sure.

Barely half the voters, 51.5 percent, said they believed the president legitimate even though he had not yet produced the documentation proving his constitutional eligibility. Even 14.6 percent of the Democrats said they did not consider him legitimate.

* In May 2010, a WND/Wenzel Poll revealed that 55 percent of Americans wanted Obama to release all records relating to his childhood and his education, including "college records, Harvard Law School papers, passport records, travel records, and other similar documentation."

"Asked what should be done should it be found that Obama does not meet the qualifications to be president, 59 percent said he should be removed from office, and 35 percent said all bills signed into law by Obama should be repealed," the poll's analysis revealed.

* By last June, other media were beginning to put their toes in the waters of the controversy. A 60 Minutes-Vanity Fair poll revealed only 39 percent of respondents believe Obama was born in Hawaii as he claimed in his book.

"A shocking 63 percent – very nearly two-thirds of us – went out on a limb and stated for the record that we believe in the United States. It's enough to make you proud to be an American – or 63 percent proud, at any rate."

But that figure included those who said they believe he was born in Kansas or some other unknown state, which still would conflict with Obama's story.

* Last August, a poll by CNN said 6 of 10 people were uncertain Obama was born in the U.S. The poll said only 42 percent believe Obama "definitely" was born in the U.S.

The CNN report said that, "Hawaii has released a copy of the president's birth certificate – officially called a 'certificate of live birth.' And in 1961 the hospital where the president was born placed announcements in two Hawaiian newspapers regarding Obama's birth."

However, the online image released by the Obama campaign during his presidential race actually is called a "Certification of Live Birth," and those documents under the rules in the state of Hawaii were available for children not born in the state.

The Constitution requires a president to be a "natural-born citizen," which is not the same as a "citizen."

Other Wenzel Poll questions revealed a large majority of Americans – nearly 66 percent, including 86 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of Independents – believe the country is on the wrong track.

They also give Obama a "poor" grade for his job performance, by about the same margin.

And they believe many of the drilling and energy production restrictions in the U.S. now should be lifted and are split on the idea of more nuclear plans.

If you are a member of the media and would like to interview Fritz Wenzel about this story, please e-mail.

Read more: Only 9% believe Obama has documented eligibility http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=276865#ixzz1HFhv6pGj

Atlas Shrugged 2011: Businesses Buck Obama

by Roger Hedgecock


Two years in to the Obama term, American companies are reacting to his anti-free market regime in one (or more) of four ways: by becoming wards of the federal government, fleeing offshore, fleeing to business-friendly states, or fighting back.

The “too big to fail” banks and insurance giants, and “ Government Motors” and Chrysler have become extensions of the regime, playing lap cat Mr. Bigglesworth to Obama’s Dr. Evil.

Some American businesses continue to flee to business-friendly foreign locales, hollowing out their North American operations and staying afloat with overseas profits.

Other companies (with lots of overlap with point two) seek (additional) refuge by relocating in whole or part to more biz-friendly states within the U.S. Over the last 40 years, for example, California witnessed an exodus of old industrial companies (manufacturing, chemicals, logging, mining, etc.) Today that exodus has picked up speed as California tech, biotech, and even renewable energy firms crowd the exit lines seeking lower taxes, less regulation, and lower costs in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Texas, and Mississippi.

But the most interesting phenomenon is the companies and their owners who have chosen to fight back against a government-directed economy. Before explaining that statement, I acknowledge that the government has become too powerful to ignore at every level, if you are in business in the United States.

Lobbying directly or through trade associations is a ubiquitous feature of business life today. Campaign contributions are even more so, especially if you are a business dependent on government contracts. But even if you’re not, government tax policy and compliance with regulation tsunamis that affect every business take up an increasing amount of a business owner’s or executive’s time.

Here's what’s new in the resurgence of Atlas Shrugged moments.

Take the example of Amazon.com, Overstock.com, and other Internet sales sites' reactions to state sales-tax policies.

States are caught between a growing demand for services, skyrocketing costs of unfunded liabilities for state workers’ pensions and health plans, and declining revenues.

Some states turn to economic growth for the answer: North Dakota boasts a balanced state budget, low taxes, and a biz-friendly atmosphere. Her 672,000 residents enjoy a 3.8% unemployment rate. Farmers are prosperous, ditto for miners. High-tech companies swarm the Red River Valley. But the North Dakota economy really kicked into high gear with the oil boom. Private land out of reach of the Obama moratoria yielded more than $12 billion in oil sales last year.

By contrast, high tax, regulation-happy states such as Illinois and California continue to wonder why they can’t balance their budget by raising taxes, mandating a “prevailing wage,” promising even higher public-sector wages and benefits, and imposing more “protections” through regulation.

In Illinois, the reelected Democrat governor and Democrat-dominated state legislature seek relief for the state budget by raising all taxes—by taking more money from every worker’s already-stretched-thin budget.

For a company to legally be forced to collect state sales tax on sales within Illinois, the company must have a “nexus” within the state—usually an office, store, etc.

Amazon did not have a physical nexus in Illinois. The state defined the 6,000 Amazon affiliates' websites as a sufficient “nexus” and asked Amazon to start collecting sales tax on items sold to Illinois residents. The affiliate websites host ads for Amazon on their sites and get a commission when shoppers click through to buy on Amazon.com.

Amazon continued direct online sales to Illinois residents but cut affiliate ties with the 6,000 Illinois-based websites, with the result that the state doesn’t get the sales tax revenue and 6,000 affiliates lose income.

California is contemplating passing the same “Amazon” tax. Amazon has threatened to sever ties with more than 10,000 California affiliates' sites, calling the law unconstitutional and a threat to California jobs.

Last year, Texas demanded $269 million dollars in uncollected sales tax from Amazon, this time because Amazon owned (through a subsidiary) a physical nexus—a warehouse in Irving, Tex.

In response, Amazon closed the warehouse, fired the warehouse workers, and refused to pay the Texas sales tax. States are now suing Amazon. Amazon is standing its ground.

At long last, there is hope that the producers and innovators will demand their rights in a country and an economy where their rights to private property are routinely violated.

In 2011, will Atlas shrug?

Doubting Donald? Now Trump wonders about Obama eligibility

BORN IN THE USA?

Tells ABC: 'The reason is because he grew up and nobody knew him'


© 2011 WorldNetDaily

Now flamboyant billionaire Donald Trump, whose name has been surging past lesser-knowns among rumored candidates for the GOP's 2012 presidential nomination, says he has reason to wonder about Barack Obama's eligibility to be president.

Questions about Obama's qualifications under the U.S. Constitution's demand that a president be a "natural born Citizen" have been around since before he was elected: multiple cases have been filed in court, a military officer has been sent to prison over the issue and significant numbers of the American population have major doubts about his story of being born in Hawaii.

Trump has told an interviewer for ABC that he'll be making a decision on his possible candidacy probably in June.

Get the free, in-depth special report on eligibility that could bring an end to Obama's presidency

Then he said his doubts about Obama stem from the fact that so little information is available regarding his background.

"He grew up and nobody knew him. You know! When you interview people, if ever I got the nomination, if I ever decide to run, you may go back and interview people from my kindergarten. They'll remember me. Nobody ever comes forward [about Obama]. Nobody knows who he is until later in his life. It's very strange. The whole thing is very strange," he said.

While much of the concern rests with Obama's birth certificate – he's refused to release his original document, substituting instead a computer-generated summary of information purportedly in the Hawaii state archives – there are a multitude of other documents that remain unavailable.

These are the types of records that typically are available for major political leaders such as someone occupying the Oval Office. They include his kindergarten records, his Punahou school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.

According to CNN, Trump said, "Let me tell you, I'm a really smart guy. I was a really good student at the best school in the country. The reason I have a little doubt, just a little, is because he grew up and nobody knew him."

Neil Abercrombie, the current Hawaii governor, promised some weeks ago when he took office to investigate the issue of Obama's birth records in the state and release information to prove his eligibility status.

However, he said later he could not do that, raising even more questions since an earlier governor had made public statements that the president's birth records were on file "in accordance" with Hawaii law and had been inspected.

Read more: Doubting Donald? Now Trump wonders about Obama eligibility http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=276269#ixzz1Gs5cILB3

The 'Redevelopment' Hoax

by Thomas Sowell


Why are so many people who are opposed to development nevertheless in favor of "redevelopment"?

The short answer is that development involves decisions made in the market by large numbers of people in the general population, in their own personal interests, while redevelopment involves taking decisions out of the hands of the population at large and putting the power to make those decisions in the hands of elites.

Developers who build housing to sell to the public are the focus of many denunciations by elites in places like coastal California. But developers would not even exist if there were not vastly larger numbers of people ready to buy or rent what they build.

All these people who make the developers' work economically viable vanish into thin air in political rhetoric that is focused on the developer and his "greed."

The people who are against development dare not come right out and say in plain English that they want other people's desires squashed by the government, so that the desires of the small, self-congratulatory elites can prevail, while housing prices skyrocket because of the restricting on building.

If development is considered to be so bad, why is redevelopment considered to be good, by many of the same people?

Redevelopment imposes the supposedly superior wisdom and virtue of an elite on the rest of us. That is its ideological appeal to self-congratulatory elites.

Its political appeal is more mundane. By bulldozing low-income neighborhoods and replacing them with upscale malls and condos, local political leaders get more tax money into their coffers, offering more opportunities for them to do things that enhance their chances of being reelected.

A politically successful redevelopment project enables those who promoted it to show "before and after" photos of the neighborhood that has been bulldozed and replaced by shiny new buildings, tree-lined vistas and clearly upscale new housing. This is easily portrayed as a welcome new addition to the community, both aesthetically and economically.

In reality, what redevelopment does is transfer wealth from one place to another place, with no net addition to the wealth of the country as a whole. But it increases tax revenues in the local jurisdiction, which is what local politicians care about.

When money that would have been spent and taxed elsewhere is transferred into a particular jurisdiction, that is no net increase in tax revenues, or of jobs, in the country, however.

Six-Figure Bus Drivers and Other Working-Class Heroes

by Ann Coulter

Can we stop acting as if people who work for the government are the heroes of working people?

Fine, we understand that Wisconsin public sector employees like the system that pays them an average of $76,500 per year, with splendiferous benefits, and are fighting like wildcats against any proposed reforms to that system. But it's madness to keep treating people who are promoting their own self-interest as if they are James Meredith walking into the University of Mississippi.

This isn't how we usually view people fighting for their own economic interests.

When Wall Street opposes financial reforms or a tobacco company opposes new cigarette taxes, no one hails them as "working men and women" who "deserve a decent pay and decent retirement." We're not told Wall Street has a "fundamental right" not to be regulated, or tobacco companies promoting their own interests are just trying to "help working people and middle-class people retain a good job in America." People on the other side of the issue aren't said to be "just trying to kick the other guy in the shin and exterminate him."

And yet all that was said by the Democratic governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, on MSNBC's "Hardball" last week, about government workers fighting to preserve their own Alex Rodriguez-like employment contracts.

Yes, we understand that public sector employees got themselves terrific overtime, holiday, pension and health care deals through buying politicians with their votes and campaign money. But now, responsible elected officials in Wisconsin are trying to balance the budget.

MSNBC is covering the fight in Wisconsin as if it's the 9/11 attack -- and the Republicans are al-Qaida. Its entire prime-time schedule is dedicated to portraying self- interested government employees as if they're Marines taking on the Taliban. The network's Ed Schultz bellows that it is "morally wrong" to oppose the demands of government employees.

Yes, and I guess pornographers are noble when they launch a full-scale offensive against obscenity laws.

Public sector workers are pursuing their own narrow financial interests to the detriment of everyone else in their states. That's fine, but can we stop pretending it's virtuous?

Because of the insane union contracts in Wisconsin, one Madison bus driver, John E. Nelson, was able to make $159,000 in 2009 -- about $100,000 of which in overtime pay. Jackie Gleason didn't make that much playing bus driver Ralph Kramden on "The Honeymooners." Seven bus drivers took home more than $100,000 that year.

When asked about the outrageous overtime pay for bus drivers -- totaling $1.94 million in 2009 alone -- Transit and Parking Commission Chairman Gary Poulson said: "That's the contract."