From its earliest days, even before the Revolution, Americans valued their newspapers and understood they played a crucial role in the issues and events of the times in which they lived. It would take a while, however, before newspapers evolved from highly partisan advocates of the early political factions to their role as watchdogs of government.

A literate population depended on them for news that revealed the increasing futility of dealing with a British monarchy and parliament that found new ways to tax the essentially independent colonies. Newspapers became the glue of the new nation, eagerly read in every state, providing news of Congress and the presidency.

By contrast, authoritarian governments understood the need to keep a tight control over the news and none more than the Third Reich of the Nazi Party and in the Soviet Union.

On May 21st, Kirsten Powers, writing in the Daily Beast.com, borrowed from words of pastor Martin Niemoller, a German who witnessed their rise to power and who framed the manner in which the Nazis targeted, jailed and killed all those they deemed enemies of the state.

His poem, “First they came” was echoed by Powers who wrote “First they came for Fox News, and they did not speak out—because they were not Fox News. Then they came for government whistleblowers, and they did not speak out—because they were not government whistleblowers. Then they came for the maker of a YouTube video, and—okay we know how this story ends. But how did we get here?” The “we” to whom she referred are the nation’s journalists.

“Turns out,” said Powers, “it’s a fairly swift sojourn from a president pushing to ‘delegitimize’ a news organization to threatening criminal prosecution for journalistic activity by a Fox News reporter, James Rosen, to spying on Associated Press reporters.”

“Where were the media when all this began happening?” asked Powers. “With a few exceptions, they were acting as quiet enablers.”

This is what I and many other conservative observers and analysts of the President and his administration have been saying since 2009 and earlier. “These series of ‘warnings’ to the Fourth Estate,” said Powers, “were what you might expect to hear from some third-rate dictator, not from the senior staff of Hope and Change, Inc.”

In his book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler demonstrated his contempt for the public. “The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” Obama’s 2008 slogan was “hope and change.” He was vague about the change he had in mind, but we have been learning about it since his election.

Hitler and his minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, set up a department that dealt solely with newspapers. An instructive history of the press in the Third Reich can be found on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“When Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, the Nazis controlled less than three percent of Germany’s 4,700 newspapers.” The elimination of the German multi-party political system ended hundreds of newspapers that would offer any opposition to the Nazi Party. What followed in the first weeks of 1933 was the systematic use of radio, press, and newsreels to stoke fears of a pending “Communist uprising.” This occurred in a pre-television and, of course, pre-Internet era, but it was effective when backed up by the thuggish behavior of Hitler’s paramilitary units that were used to “brutalize or arrest political opponents and incarcerate them in hastily established detention centers and concentration camps.”

Not unlike the popularity and influence of Fox News, the well-known Berlin daily, the Vossische Zeitung, was targeted, along with the Berlin Tageblatt. The former employed 10,000 people, but in 1933, its owners, the Ullstein family, were forced to resign and, a year later, sell the company assets. The latter newspaper was owned by the Mosse family that published a number of major liberal papers “much hated by the Nazis.” When Hitler took power, the family fled Germany.

This is not to suggest that Fox News or the Associated Press will suffer a similar fate, but it is no accident that their reporters are being intimidated by an administration that has seized telephone records as a message to their owners and editors to curb any criticism, any investigation of what they are doing.

Asserting that James Rosen, a Fox reporter, engaged in criminal behavior for doing what any reporter would do, seek out information about the government, has outraged many in the press, but whether they will stand firm or buckle under remains the real question. In Germany, the press became an arm of the Nazi regime.

If history is any guide, we have real cause to fear the intent of the Obama administration—one now distinguished by its leadership for having no memory of any steps they have undertaken to oppress organizations that oppose its agenda, mobilizing the IRS and Department of Justice.

We are looking into a tyrannical abyss and it is time to be afraid, be very afraid.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

Among the greatest liars on Earth today is the international organization called Friends of the Earth (FOE). It has engaged in the most scurrilous fear-mongering for decades, along with Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the World Wildlife Fund, while all the time they pulled in billions in funding.

In May 2012, the Daily Caller noted that “The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on ‘climate change activities.’” The leading critic in Congress, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) asked at the time, “Which would you rather have? Would you rather spend $4 billion on Air Force base solar panels, or would you rather have 28 new F-22s or 30 F-25s or modernized C-130s?”

“Would you rather have $64.8 billion spent on pointless global warming efforts or would you rather have more funds put toward modernizing our fleet of ships, aircraft and ground vehicles to improve the safety of our troops and help defend the nation against the legitimate threats that we face?’

On May 9th, I received an email from Friends of the Earth that repeated all the lies we have heard for years. Painting with a very broad brush that completely ignores the fact that the U.S. climate has always had highs and lows of temperature, FOE complained that “Last year the U.S. experienced record-breaking weather all over the country. But, the nightly news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC barely talked about what was fueling this extreme weather—climate change.”

What FOE failed to mention was a record that was set in 2012-13; as of May, according to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, the U.S. had its longest stretch in recorded history—2,750 days—without a major hurricane landfall. The many claims of “extreme” weather are classic fear-mongering. I might also add that, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, the number of wildfires is at a ten-year low. Glaciers are not melting and seas are not rising, unless a millimeter or two worries you.

“Climate change” is the replacement name for “global warming.” Climate is measured in centuries. The weather is whatever is happening anywhere in the nation on any given day. Around the world, however, there has been a significant increase in cold weather and many are still waiting for spring to arrive.

Typical of the hyperbole that is representative of the lies we have heard from so-called environmental organizations, FOE fumed that “the nightly news programs at the major broadcast networks have largely ignored what is fueling this extreme weather—climate change.” Citing a Media Matters for America study, FOE noted that “ABC’s nightly news program did only one segment about climate change last year. Meanwhile NBC’s news show did only four and CBS just seven segments to this critical issue.” Perhaps this is because these notably liberal news organizations have concluded it is not a critical issue?

It gets better, FOE was angry, saying “What’s almost worse is that when these networks have covered global warming, they have often treated climate change as a ‘two-sided debate’ rather than what it really is; an issue in which there is overwhelming scientific consensus.” These are people who do not want to have a debate because, based on the facts, they would lose. As for scientific consensus regarding either global warming or climate change, there is NONE. If anything, leading scientists around the world have been debunking global warming now for years.

One of the leading think tanks in the effort to end the global warming hoax has been The Heartland Institute. It has sponsored several international conferences in which scientists and others have offered papers and addressed the topic. I recommend you subscribe to its national monthly, Environmental & ClimateNews. Its Managing Editor, James M. Taylor, J.D., provides the latest information on the environmental organizations greatest villain, carbon dioxide (CO2).

Two recent dispatches by Taylor noted in one that “Climate models supporting predictions of rapid global warming during the next century have performed miserably predicting global temperatures during the past two decades”, citing a comparison of computer model predictions and real-world temperatures by climate scientist Roy W. Spencer. In another, Taylor noted that “New data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, but global temperatures are not following suit. The new data undercut assertions that atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing a global warming crisis.”

Undismayed by the facts, FOE could only cite the taxpayer-funded PBS News Hour that “devoted 23 segments to covering climate change.” When the President is telling everyone that the climate is the greatest threat to the nation, PBS bureaucrats who know where the money comes from can be depended upon to broadcast his lies.

Ironically, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion by Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer on the same day the FOE email arrived. It was titled “In Defense of Carbon Dioxide.” Schmitt was an Apollo 17 astronaut and a former U.S. Senator from New Mexico. He is an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Happer is a professor of physics at Princeton University and a former director of the office of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy.

“The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

No wonder FOE is upset that even the mainstream media networks no longer want to report on a global warming that does not exist. There’s real science and there’s the fulminations and lies of Friends of the Earth.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

While all the so-called “Republican strategists” and conservative pundits debate the depth of the Obama Administration’s “evil deeds,” and while everyone in the conservative blogosphere is screeching “impeachment” at the top of their cyber-lungs, we who possess level heads; who deal in facts and realism instead of emotion and appearance, understand that the probability of impeachment is next to zero. This is because for all the misdeeds and ethical lapses of this administration; with the very serious issues they have exploited for political gain –  including those that took place at the expense of American lives and the sanctity of constitutional rights, “high crimes and misdemeanors” have not been executed by Mr. Obama, personally, that anyone can prove.

Additionally, there are two reasons why impeachment would never result in the removal of President Obama from office.

First, we have a Democrat majority in the US Senate. And while impeachment happens in the US House of Representatives, the trial conducted due to impeachment is held in the Senate, presided over by the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. In the end, anyone who believes that a Democrat controlled Senate would vote to convict, thus executing Mr. Obama’s removal from office, is smoking something that is now legal in Colorado.

Second, the Republican establishment and elected leadership would never agree to move on impeachment for fear of losing a messaging battle with the Progressive machine that would leave them with the scarlet letter of “racist” around their organizational neck. Moving on the impeachment of Mr. Obama on charges of “high crimes and misdemeanors” would energize the Progressive base, motivate the race-baiter activists and give the Progressive-sympathetic mainstream media a reason to re-champion Mr. Obama, thus destroying any advantage the GOP may have thought they gleaned from the Obama-induced “scandals.”

And while there are some in this administration that very well should don orange jumpsuits for a period of time, the responsibility of prosecuting these people to conviction is predicated one of two events.

There can be an appointment of a special prosecutor – which requires an appointment of one by…wait for it…US Attorney General Eric Holder. With Mr. Holder’s contempt for Congress and anything not Progressive or “social justice,” and with his track record of biased prosecutions and non-prosecutions, pigs will fly before we see a special prosecutor appointed by Mr. Holder.

Then there is the option of the Department of Justice taking up the prosecution. Again, this would require action on behalf of Attorney General Holder. And again, because he would be – in at least one if not two of the “scandals” – implicated as a “wrong-doer,” well, pigs…wings…you get the picture.

I know, it sounds as if conservatives can’t win for losing. But that’s not the case. There are two opportunities that could not only seal Mr. Obama’s fate, but that could save the United States from one-hundred-plus years of Progressive incremental victories.

First, in light of the fact that the IRS is at the center of a scandal of mammoth proportions, a scandal that reeks of Progressive and/or Chicago-Progressive thug politics, the forces that champion comprehensive and radical tax reform could combine forces to affect true and real reforms in the tax code in either a flat tax, with absolutely no deductions, loopholes or exceptions; or a consumption tax. Either could completely replace the existing Progressive tax code (have you figured out why they call it that yet?) and literally neuter the IRS completely. Truly, it would be just desserts for an agency that has moved from the honest collection of taxes under a dysfunctional and politically charged tax code to a tyrant agency that routinely attacks the innocent, striking fear into the hearts of the law abiding.

But second, and frankly I believe more important, is the opportunity to spotlight the Progressive Movement for the tyrannical, oligarchical elitist, Fabian socialists that they really are; to educate the no- and low-information voters – in real time and with “in-the-news” issues that directly affect them – on how the Progressives actually despise the masses, even as they say they champion the worker (if they really champion the worker how come their signature achievement in Mr. Obama’s tenure – Obamacare – is set to raise the taxes on union health insurance plans in 2018 by 40%?).

If, by the grace of God Almighty, conservatives can dispose of the egos and join in an effort to communicate, if establishment Republicans can lose their penchant for “know-it-all,” “my-way” inside-the-beltway arrogance to provide the national apparatus by which to communicate, and if the TEA Parties can enjoin cohesively with both of the aforementioned to move the message; to educate; to inform the no- and low-information voters, in a non-aggressive and non-inflammatory way – if conservatives of all stripes can craft and move a message that defines the Progressive Movement for exactly who they are and exactly what their goal is for our country, then we have an opportunity to send their movement into a thousand years of darkness.

Imagine.

Of course, to do this would require conservatives to – at least for the moment – work together, something the “too-many-chiefs-and-not-enough-Indians” Conservative Movement does very poorly.

So, Conservatives of all stripes, establishment Republicans and TEA Partiers, it’s the bottom of the ninth and the score is tied. We’re at bat, their pitcher is tired and they have exhausted their bullpen.

How about it?…

How is it that, time and again, the most powerful man on the planet doesn’t seem to have a clue what is happening in his own government? Famed for never accepting blame for anything, the more I see President Obama these days, the more I am reminded of Sergeant Hans Schultz of the TV sitcom, “Hogan’s Heroes”, that ran from 1965 to 1971.

The wonderful Hans Banner the actor who played the prisoner of war guard left an indelible legacy with his repeated denials, “I know nothing. I hear nothing, and I see nothing”; often all three at the same time to avoid being implicated in Col. Robert E. Hogan’s manipulation of Werner Klemperer’s Col. Wilhelm Klink, the camp commandant of Luftwaffe Stalag 13.

Obama’s way of dealing with everything has been to talk it to death and he has been responding to questions from the press, claiming that the accusations are all “a sideshow” or that “there’s no there, there.” It is not working. In the case of Benghazi-Gate, his lies are so blatant that it has gone from an embarrassment to a full-fledged cover-up.

Similarly, the Attorney General, Eric Holder, has relied on claiming ignorance and putting distance between himself and his Department of Justice’s increasing list of scandals, from Fast and Furious that earned him a citation for contempt of Congress in June 2012 for his lack of candor. His latest “I know nothing” testimony regarding the DOJ’s seizure of the phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters makes one wonder why the President continues to retain him in office or, for that matter, why he isn’t in jail for stonewalling about Fast and Furious, an ATF gun-running scheme that got a border patrol and ICE agent killed.

Those of us who follow the President closely know that he has been lying consistently before and since being elected–twice. His two “memoirs” have been picked apart by reporters who have written their own books on the subject. It would appear that Obama picked up the habit of lying early on in life as the son of a Kenyan who had abandoned his mother, the step-son of an Indonesian whom his mother also divorced, and a man who remarkably was a friend or associate of a long list of shady characters you might more likely find in a detective novel.

He dismissed his close friendship with former 60s Weatherman terrorist, Bill Ayers, as someone who lived in his Chicago neighborhood. He had to throw his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, under the bus when it became known he said many bad things about America over the course of the many years Obama was a member of his church. The man who conducted Obama’s wedding and christened his children said of 9/11, “the chickens have come home to roost” as if it was America’s fault it was attacked.

Even so, this is small potatoes compared to the way the many “renewable energy” companies received billions in government loans and rapidly went bankrupt. It turned out that many of the many of the men who created those companies where major “bundlers” and contributors to his 2009 presidential campaign. Of the most famous bankruptcy, Solyndra, Obama said, “That was not our program, per se. Congress-Democrats and Republicans—put together a loan guarantee program…” Maybe so, but we have not seen such a program lose so much money in such a short time, betting on solar and wind power projects. The taxpayers got stuck with the bill. The number of actual “green” jobs ended up costing over a million dollars each to create.

Of his failed “stimulus” package, Obama said “Apparently there weren’t as many shovel ready jobs as we thought.” Before spending millions to allegedly revive the economy, you are supposed to know such things.

If not Benghazi-Gate, than the IRS targeting of conservative, patriot, and constitution education groups could provide the fulcrum to bring down Obama’s presidency. Despite his denials of knowledge about the program within the IRS to harass and deny these groups non-profit status, vital to raise donations and funding, and the firing of the IRS commissioner, this is a scandal with which ordinary taxpayers can identify, fearful of audits. Imagine now as the realization sinks in that it is the IRS that will be administering Obamacare!

Up to now Obama could count on the mainstream media to ignore much of the blunders, failures and lies that characterized his first term, but the scandals coalescing as his second term begins have a weight that includes the growing unhappiness of the White House press corps who are tired of being lied to or having to listen to press secretary Jay Carney speak to them as if they were a bunch of witless clowns.

It is said that “the fish stinks from the head” and what we are witnessing is an administration whose corrupt political practices have seeped deep into the government agencies for which Obama is responsible.

It is still too soon to know which scandal or combination of scandals will bring down his presidency, but it will only take a few more eye-witnesses and whistle-blowers to turn Obama into the Wizard of Oz, hiding behind the curtain and pulling the levers to fool Dorothy and her pals or, in our case, those of us who still believe laws should be obeyed and power should not be abused.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

Usually there are signs a dam is about to burst. Tiny cracks show up, the structure makes strange noises, and then, whoosh! That’s what we are witnessing as the President, the former Secretary of State, and the Attorney General struggle to keep the bulwark of lies and half-truths they have built intact. It is showing signs of collapse.

Liberals say absurd things all the time—mostly because they either don’t know the facts or because they prefer to ignore or obfuscate them. The current example is the shout-it-from-the-rooftops claim that Republicans are “politicizing” the events in Benghazi that left a U.S. ambassador and three security personnel dead.

In the wake of the House hearings on May 8th, the most elemental politics is at work within the White House and that is the decision to abandon Hillary Clinton. The decision to appoint her Secretary of State was political and, since the President sets foreign policy, it kept her wing of the party in the tent while affording the White House the opportunity to keep her conveniently on the road and largely out of the spotlight.

Name a single treaty or significant foreign policy achievement of Hillary Clinton’s time as Secretary of State. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nienta.

Consider the meltdown of influence the United States has had in the Middle East where the single act of a Tunisian peddler who committed suicide as a response to the harassment of the police set off a revolution that drove its dictator from office and then spread rapidly to Libya where Gaddafi was killed and to Egypt where its dictator (and ally of the U.S.) was driven from office with the President’s blessing. And, for two years, the U.S. has stood on the sidelines and watched as the Syrian dictator has slaughtered 70,000 Syrians, driving some 2.5 million to flee to Turkey and Jordan.

It has taken eight months since the September 11, 2012 attack on the Benghazi consulate and a House committee hearing to learn the truth as to why repeated requests for increased security assets were denied in a nation that is still essentially a war zone between the north and the south. We still do not know who told available forces to stand down. The President and his regime call this “politicizing.”

Beyond Benghazi, every decision the President makes or chooses not to make has political implications. The choice to go to bed the night of the attack and then fly to a fundraiser the following day was political. As Commander-in-Chief he had responsibility to issue the orders to protect his diplomats—our diplomats—but he is also the Great Delegator and, as the noose tightens around Hillary, she is very expendable.

It’s a political decision to exploit the murders in a Connecticut elementary school to attack the Second Amendment and gun ownership. The response of ordinary people was to go out and buy a gun. Indeed, fear of the White House’s intentions has made the President the greatest gun salesman in the nation.

Even in the Obama Justice Department there is the odor of deception that still reeks from the bungled gun-running program called “Fast and Furious” which allowed guns purchased In the U.S. to be transferred to various Mexican drug cartels. The result, in one case, was a dead U.S. Border Patrol officer, an ICE agent, and an unknown number of Mexican cartel victims. It took a presidential executive order to throw a blanket of silence over the role of the Justice Department in this lethal debacle. That’s political.

Now we learn that the Justice Department obtained Associated Press phone records in a probe to discover the source of a leaked story. AP officials called it a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how a news organization gathers news. The ever-reliable, politically-correct, liberally oriented AP has become a crack in the dam.

The revelation that the Internal Revenue Service “targeted” the Tea Party, patriotic, and pro-Israel groups for special attention regarding their tax status now adds to a growing sense of a regime without any internal limits on its exercise of power.

The result is a period in which the barely concealed scorn of the President, his wife, and those around him in appointed and elected office has half the population outraged while the other half is content to live parasitically, not paying taxes, and receiving an amazing array of benefits which a bankrupt nation cannot afford.

When enough people—citizens, voters, taxpayers—think they are being lied to and betrayed by those in high office, the dam of lies will begin to show signs of bursting under the pressure of their pent up anger.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

The famed Boston Tea Party was a protest against “taxation without representation”, but our pockets are picked every day by a plethora of taxes of which most Americans are not even aware.

We get robbed when the federal government thwarts exploration and extraction of energy resources that would greatly reduce those costs. We get robbed when the government (EPA) conspires to force coal-fired plants out of business through excessive regulation or declares that milk is a form of “oil” to be regulated.

One particularly egregious form of robbery is ethanol. In March, a Washington Times editorial pointed out that “only the government could come up with a bubble in a commodity that’s merely speculative…renewable identification numbers are ethanol production credits created by the Environmental Protection Agency to help companies meet federal quotes for the production of a fuel that doesn’t actually exist.”

Not content with requiring the waste of a basic food product, corn, this other supposed source of ethanol requires refineries to purchase a “renewable identification number”, then priced at $1.10, up 500% from the three cents it would have cost a few months ago. The cost is passed along to everyone filling up their tank.

The cost of the corn that is diverted from the dinner table is in the billions and creates worldwide shortages. Before the Renewable Fuel Standard was imposed, corn prices were between $2 and $3 per bushel. The price of corn has since spiked to $7 per bushel and you pay for that at the gas pump and in the supermarket where corn is an integral element of thousands of food items.

Ethanol is justified as reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but it creates more as it is processed for use and it actually reduces the mileage that a gallon of gas provides. Worse yet, it damages the engines of all new cars and trucks. It is so corrosive, it cannot be shipped via pipelines. And the EPA wants to increase the amount of ethanol to be blended from ten percent to fifteen percent!

Not content with that approach to fending off a global warming that has not been occurring for the last sixteen years, the EPA recently proposed a “Tier 3” rule to further lower sulfur content in gasoline that would increase the refining cost of gasoline by up to nine cents per gallon.

Reflecting on Obama administration policies, David Rothbard and Craig Rucker, co-founders of CFACT, a free market think tank devoted to environmental and development issues, recently noted that “All of the above” too often means all of the above ground and little or nothing below the Earth’s surface: wind, solar, biofuels and wood, for example – but little or no oil, gas, coal or uranium. In fact, more than any other in history, the Obama administration is using its executive powers to delay, obstruct, hyper-regulate, penalize and bankrupt the proven energy that is the foundation of modern living standards.”

The fleecing of the American taxpayer defies the imagination. The Institute for Energy Research recently reported that President Obama has spent $11.45 million for every “green job” created. Since 2009, Obama’s first year in office, the Department of Energy’s $26 billion loan program has created just 2,298 permanent jobs. The DOE has squandered billions on so-called green energy companies—solar and wind—whose investors have also turned out to be heavy contributors to his political campaigns. This is borderline criminality.

Since 2008 when the housing bubble burst, causing a huge economic downturn that has created an estimated 26 million unemployed, the Obama administration has gone about cancelling oil and natural gas leases while at the same time putting an embargo on the issuance of new leases on all federally owned lands.

The federal government owns 28% of the land in the nation and a majority of the land in the energy-rich Western states. It also controls oil and natural gas leasing on the Outer Continental Shelf, the submerged area between land and deep ocean.

In sharp contrast, drilling on privately owned lands has proved to be a bonanza. If the full capacity of the nation’s technically available reserves of oil and natural was unleashed, the United States would not only have no need to import oil, but would become an exporter!

Most Americans are totally unaware of what the government is doing, but all are being impacted as the cost of transportation and electricity continues to rise for no good reason other than government policies and the environmental propaganda about “climate change” and “pollution.”

The Greek myth about Cassandra tells of the god Apollo’s gift of prophecy he bestowed on her to win her affections. When she would not become his lover, he punished her by causing anyone to hear her prophesies of future events to interpret them as lies. The gift became a curse.

Think tanks like CFACT and others are telling Americans the truth, but too many remain deaf to it. The result is our present torpid economy and the cost of energy and commodities that have been increased by the lies Greens tell.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

The resistance to Obamacare is writing a new chapter in U.S. history. It may well become the most unpopular law since Prohibition became an Amendment to the Constitution in 1919. By 1933, another Amendment repealed it.

Obamacare passed by a straight Democratic party vote on Christmas Eve in 2009. No Republican voted for it and, as one poll recently revealed, a third of Americans are still unaware it is the law of the land. A divided Supreme Court gave it a pass, calling it a tax, but it is a profoundly unconstitutional law insofar as the federal government may not pass a law that requires Americans to purchase something and to fine them if they do not. It is also playing havoc with the economy, delaying recovery as it deters hiring and encourages firing.

Nonetheless, a number of states have gone on record seeking to nullify its enforcement and some are doing the same as regards gun control. Arizona became famous when it passed its own immigration law in response to the federal government’s failure to protect its border with Mexico. The proposed “Gang of Eight” immigration law is facing stiff opposition for its various provisions, most of which do not address the central issue of security on the southern border.

How out of touch is the President? He went to Mexico and blamed the violence arising from its drug cartels on America, saying “Most of the guns used here to commit violence came from America.” He made no mention of the scandalous “Fast and Furious” scheme in which the ATF actually ran guns into Mexico, claiming they would track them. It took an executive order to throw a blanket of silence over it and a compliant media to ignore that scandal.

It is, however, Obamacare that poses the greatest threat to the nation, intruding on the patient-doctor relationship, robbing billions from Medicare to pay for it, requiring states to fund more Medicaid when many are strapped to meet other needs, and putting 16% of the nation’s economy under federal control.

A total of twenty-seven states have filed suit against Obamacare. Two federal judges have upheld its individual mandate to purchase health insurance and two others have ruled that it is unconstitutional.

Twelve states have introduced versions of the Federal Health Care Nullification Act that was drafted by the Tenth Amendment Center. They include Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Alabama, and Maine. All declare that Obamacare is “hereby declared to be invalid, shall not be recognized, is specifically rejected, and shall be considered null and void and of no effect.”

In South Carolina, on May 1st, the state House passed a bill that declares the bill null and void and goes a step further, criminalizing its implementation. Earlier Governor Nikki Haley, in her state of the state address, said that South Carolina does not want and cannot afford Obamacare, saying of the President’s namesake, “not now, not ever.”

The following day, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback sent a letter in response to Attorney General Eric Holder’s opposition to its Second Amendment Protection Act, declaring it unconstitutional; essentially tell him to piss off. “The people of Kansas,” said the Governor, “have clearly expressed their sovereign will.” The same day, Missouri passed a comparable law protecting the Second Amendment.

Not since the years leading up to the Civil War was kicked off on December 20, 1860 when South Carolina voted for secession, has there been such open resistance to the mandates of the federal government by the states on a range of issues. Earlier, in 1832, President Andrew Jackson had threatened to send troops to South Carolina to enforce federal laws.

Nullification, however, will not succeed as a means to rid the nation of Obamacare. To Obama’s dismay, his gun control law failed in Congress when even members of his party joined in voting against it. The fate of immigration reform remains unknown but it will come to a vote soon enough.

The reason why nullification will fail is embedded in the Constitution. The Supremacy Clause states “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be found thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary, notwithstanding.”

That has not discouraged the legislatures of many states from expressing their opposition to Obamacare, intrusions on the Second Amendment right of citizens to bear arms, and to demand the federal government enforce the laws regarding its borders.

There isn’t a constitutional scholar that does not support the Supremacy Clause. The Heritage Foundation has a policy paper on the subject of nullification that says “there is no clause or implied power in either the national or the various state constitutions that enables states to veto federal laws unilaterally.”

The states, though, can express their displeasure and their opposition to federal laws and that is what lies at the heart of the spate of nullification laws that have been passed. As sovereign republics, the states can and do express themselves and, through their elected Senators and Representatives, have the power in concert to repeal obnoxious and injurious federal laws.

That will be the fate of Obamacare.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

From the moment US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice took to the airwaves to insist that the attacks that took the lives of a US Ambassador and three of his colleagues were, in fact, not a coordinated and planned terrorist assault of a US target of interest, but, rather, a “spontaneous” uprising turned violent, spurred by a third-rate video that literally no one had ever seen, the American people were being subjected to fact manipulation for political purposes. With an election coming up, a terrorist attack did not fit the Obama Campaign’s narrative that, “Osama bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is on the run.” If the al Qaeda was on the run on September 11, 2012, it was running forward, bayonets fixed, with death in their eyes.

But re-writing history is nothing new to the Progressive Movement. During the time of Woodrow Wilson, Progressives perfected the art of propaganda to such an extent that many in the fascist  movements of Europe – Hitler, the hierarchy of the Nazi Party and even Italy’s Mussolini – took notice; impressed at the effectiveness and results achieved by Wilson’s Administration.

In Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg writes:

“Under President Wilson, progressives perfected the art of government propaganda. Wilson appointed the journalist and former muckraker George Creel to head the Committee on Public Information (CPI), the first modern ministry for propaganda in the Western world. Thus empowered, Creel methodically assembled an army of nearly 100,000 ‘Four Minute Men,’ each trained by the CPI to deliver, at a moment’s notice, four-minute propaganda speeches at town meetings or any other public venues where they might be heard. In 1917–18 alone, these operatives delivered some 7.55 million speeches in 5,200 communities.

“In addition, the CPI produced – with taxpayer dollars – millions of posters, buttons, and pamphlets bearing pro-Wilson, Progressive messages. The CPI’s nearly 100 pamphlets were distributed to approximately 75 million people. ‘It was a fight for the minds of men, for the “conquest of their convictions,” and the battle line ran through every home in every country,’ Creel later recalled…

“The public-relations pioneer Edward Bernays learned the science of what he termed ‘the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses’ during his time on Creel’s committee.”

To that end, it could be argued that Barack Obama’s entire life story is a product of decades of propaganda perfection. From Dreams From My Father to The Audacity of Hope, Mr. Obama’s entire life’s story has been very carefully crafted to present a myth rather than a man; a story rather than a life; an illusion instead of a person; an idea rather than reality. But I digress…

With UN Ambassador Rice’s advancement of the narrative that it was a protest over an inconsequential and poorly made film that served at the genesis for the murders of Ambassador Stevens and his colleagues, the spin of a propaganda machine meant to protect the Obama presidency began. CIA talking points used in a briefing to Obama Administration officials by the Director of National Intelligence were revised no less than two times in less than 24-hours – from 231 words that included references to jihadists and al Qaeda to 91 words that completely expunged all reference to radical Islamist participation, planning or premeditation.

And then the propaganda machine began to hum. From Ambassador Rice to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to high-ranking officials at the Pentagon and CIA, to President Obama himself, the story – the talking points – were so succinctly crafted and choreographed that they could have been loaded into a teleprompter. Well-rehearsed and with authoritative style, each of these political operatives delivered the approved talking points text with conviction, insisting that they, too, were disgusted by the Islamophobic nature of the incendiary video. Mrs. Clinton even went so far as to look the father of slain former-Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods in the eye and say, “We will make sure the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

Of course, the light of the truth is shining on the facts of this story thanks to many in the new media, talk radio and FOX News, three information outlets routinely lambasted as “bias” and “right-wing” by the Progressive Movement’s many “useful idiots,” both in the mainstream media and the special interest community. And those facts, as they present, depict a much different reality – a much more truthful accounting – of the circumstances surrounding the slaughter in Benghazi. Ambassador Stevens and his colleagues were abandoned; left to fend for themselves and die in a foreign land so that an election could be won.

An equally disturbing truth, albeit not as lethal, is the fact that many serving in the highest elected offices in the United States; the highest offices in the Executive Branch as well as the Legislative Branch, left these people to die because of their political aspirations; so emboldened by their total commitment to a socio-political ideology, so cripplingly devoted to attaining the power that only winning elections can afford, that they blatantly and freely deceive the American people, even about lethal attacks on our diplomats; deadly attacks against our country.

Perhaps even more disturbing is the very real fact that many, if not all, of the people who voted for Mr. Obama in 2012 were led to incorporate the “Obama Campaign Islamophobic film narrative” into their decisions at the ballot box.

The facts being what they are, it cannot be denied that the decision to deceive the American people, the decision to flagrantly lie to the American people – and, in fact, the decision to abandon four Americans as they fought for their very lives – was a decision based on a political motive. The CIA talking points on the slaughter in Benghazi were purposely and grotesquely altered in an effort to deceive the voting public into believing the deadly events of September 11, 2012, were inconsequential to the 2012 Presidential Election; that everything that could have been done to save the lives of four Americans in the service of their country was done; that the hellfire that rained down on Ambassador Christopher Stevens, US Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and former-Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods was the result of “common over-reactionary” violence associated with the hurt feelings of Islamofascists to which the Obama Administration had no recourse.

The decision to lie to the American people about the act of war that happened in Benghazi, Libya, on September 12, 2012, was made to mask the weak and conciliatory foreign policy of a president whose only real-life prerequisite experience for the highest office in the land was that of Chicago community organizer – not a constitutional scholar, not an exceptional legal mind, not a well-seasoned elected public servant, but a failed Chicago Progressive community organizer.

In the book, Fabian Freeway, Rose L. Martin explains the agenda mindset of the founders of the Fabian Socialist Movement, the very movement that would give birth to today’s Progressive Movement. Incidentally, among the founding members of this arrogant and totalitarian movement: George Bernard Shaw:

“From the outset, the nine young men and women who remained to found the Fabian Society had grandiose plans. Quite simply, they wanted to change the world through a species of propaganda termed ‘education,’ which would lead to political action. To a rather astonishing degree they have been successful…”

“Changing the world through a species of propaganda termed ‘education’.” Given the fact that the same people who lied to the American people about the slaughter in Benghazi are the very people in control of our public education system, I would have to say I have never read more chilling words.

When the people we elect to public office are caught lying there should be consequences; a price paid for the cost of the deception. Keeping in mind that the four Americans who died in the slaughter of Benghazi – whose last moments on this earth must have been hopelessly tormenting – have already paid the ultimate price in the service of their country, it is fair to say that, so far, the only price Mr. Obama has been made to pay for his deadly political opportunism is to be re-elected to the Presidency on the wings of a lie.

I’m sure he’ll lose sleep over it.

Native-born and naturalized Americans who are currently seeking work are already competing with illegal immigrants—a term that the Associated Press says it will no longer use—or standing in line behind them as they sign up for all manner of welfare benefits. The official estimate of the number of illegal aliens—oops, undocumented aliens—in the nation is estimated to be eleven million, but if the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill becomes law, it will act as a magnet to attract millions more.

As Roy Beck, the founder and president of NumbersUSA, points out, “If Congress passes the Senate Gang of Eight bill, it would be like re-creating ALL of the Top 20 cities in the United States, filling them entirely with foreign citizens and giving them lifetime work permits to compete with America’s struggling workers—in just ten years’ time.”

NumbersUSA analysts spent two weeks reading the 844-page bill, concluding that 33 million lifetime work permits would be given to foreign citizens in the first decade if the bill passes. A revised bill has 867 pages and, according to a Daily Caller article, “contains 999 references to waivers, exemptions, and political discretion”, more even than Obamacare.

That’s a lot of competition for jobs and it will hit those graduating from high school and college the hardest. Right now, the youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds is 11.7% and, among them, the African-American cohort’s rate it 20.1% and Hispanics’ rate is 12.6%. An additional 1.7 million young adults are not counted as “unemployed” because they are not in the labor force, meaning that they have given up looking for work due to lack of jobs. Do we really want to add millions of formerly illegal immigrants to the work force at this time?

The Center for Immigration Studies also analyzed the Gang of Eight amnesty bill and discovered that it is essentially a Get Out of Jail card:

The report, by Ronald Mortensen, a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, shows that the token penalties, when they do exist, are not commensurate with the employment-related felonies committed by the majority of illegal aliens, nor are they commensurate with the benefits received by illegal aliens.

Just as unfortunate is the fact that millions of victims of these crimes are ignored while the amnestied illegals are rewarded and even benefit from the so-called penalties, as the monies actually go into a fund that provides services to the very people who paid the “penalties”.

“Illegal aliens will be rewarded for breaking laws for which American citizens are routinely punished,” said Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “For example, an American citizen would face a maximum penalty of ten years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 for using a fraudulent Social Security card, but under this bill the illegal alien would face a $1,000 penalty covering all his many offenses, a penalty which in many cases will be waived. Then, they would be issued a new Social Security number without any past bad credit or arrest records.”

View the full report at: http://cis.org/immigration-reform-amnesty-illegal-aliens-and-their-employers

Dr. Mortensen discovered the following amnesties for illegal aliens and their employers:

Amnesty for the estimated 75 percent of illegal aliens committing Social Security fraud.

Amnesty from returning to home countries for 10 years before adjusting status.

Amnesty for illegal aliens committing Identity theft.

Amnesty for illegal aliens by officially authorizing them to continue committing identity theft by using fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers belonging to American citizens.

Amnesty for illegal aliens who have committed perjury on I-9 forms.

De-Facto amnesty from the token $1,000 penalty, since it effectively pre-pays services provided to illegal aliens.

Amnesty from existing exclusion, deportation, and removal orders:

While illegal aliens would be granted amnesty for crimes they have committed, government employees who discover Social Security fraud, identity theft, or perjury on I-9 forms while reviewing applications for provisional status would be prohibited from notifying victims, law enforcement, etc. with a threat of a $10,000 penalty. This is 10 times more than the $1,000 penalty paid by an illegal alien who has committed felony identity theft.

Amnesty for employers found to have employed illegal aliens or who are currently employing illegal aliens. Moreover, employers may continue to employ illegal aliens, accept fraudulent Social Security numbers, and renew falsified I-9 forms for those who apply for provisional status.

Amnesty for employers who did not withhold and/or submit payroll taxes for individuals illegally in the United States.

Amnesty for employers who violated labor laws by paying unfair wages, who failed to pay wages, etc.

Amnesty for employers who facilitated Social Security fraud and identity theft by providing or accepting false Social Security numbers.

While employers would be held harmless, government employees who find that employers violated the law while reviewing applications for temporary status would be prohibited from notifying the appropriate law enforcement authorities. If government employees do report tax or labor violations, they could face a fine of $10,000.

Thanks to the passage of Obamacare, the amnesty bill would increase the cost of the nationalized health care system. Betsy McCaughey, the lieutenant governor of New York from 1995 to 1998, in an April 29 letter in The Wall Street Journal, warned that “One looming cost is health care. Under the Obama health law, starting January 1, 2014 legal immigrants will be eligible for subsidized private health plans on the exchanges as soon as they arrive in the U.S.”

“The Senate Gang of Eight’s proposed bill will add $100 billion to the cost of Obamacare’s subsidies over the next decade by doubling the number of legal immigrants entering the country with green cards.” Ms. McCaughey noted that, in 2012, 484,072 immigrants entered that way. “The Gang of Eight plan will push it to about one million. About half of those green card holders will be eligible for the maximum assistance with premiums, subsidies and copays, totaling $9,000 per person, and more than 80% will qualify for at least some taxpayer-funded Obamacare subsidy.”

Little known or reported is the fact that the Schumer-Rubio bill includes two “slush funds” amounting to $150 million that would be used to fund groups like La Raza and the American Immigration Lawyers Association with taxpayer money.

The prevailing wisdom is that the amnesty bill will create more Democrat than Republican voters and that is precisely its purpose. Its victims will be every native-born and naturalized citizen paying taxes and trying to cope with a healthcare system that will be on life-support soon enough.

The proposed bill is a massive multi-million fraud. If it passes and is signed into law, the further destruction of America will be accelerated.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

I could barely keep myself from falling asleep during President Obama’s Tuesday press conference. Rush Limbaugh led off his program describing it as “boring” and the answers to questions as “boilerplate.” I cannot recall a press conference that yielded less “news”.

In her weekly Wall Street Journal column Peggy Noonan wrote of “Obama fatigue” while ruminating on the opening of the George W. Bush library.

She noted that Bush’s popularity in the polls—in “a 50-50 nation”—was equal to President Obama’s; now at 47%. I’m betting we shall see Obama’s numbers continue to fall in the months and years ahead. Noonan put her finger on the cause. We are all weary and wary of Obama. And he is not even half-way into the first year of his second term.

Usually by a second term, a President has mastered the skills the job requires, but Obama not only arrived with the thinnest resume of any previous President, but he demonstrated his indifference to working with Congress and his contempt of the Supreme Court, referring to the latter as “unelected” when even school children knows they are appointees.

He left Congress to be manipulated by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. By the 2010 midterm elections, he had lost control of the House. By the start of his second term, even members of his own party in the Senate were refusing to cooperate.

In the first term Obama seemed to be everywhere including late night shows like David Letterman’s and daytime shows like “The View.” The mainstream media’s infatuation with him ensured that he was on magazine covers and, as President, he receiving front page headline news coverage. Less coverage, indeed, biased coverage, was given the turnout of an estimated million or more citizens to protest against the passage of Obamacare.

It has been Obamacare, his “signature” legislation that has greatly contributed to the disaffection that now follows the President wherever he goes. Many states refused to set up the exchanges required while others passed resolutions against its implementation. People began to discover that their premiums increased dramatically and, for some, their jobs either disappeared or were downgraded to part-time. Obamacare continues to contribute to the high rate of unemployed Americans nationwide.

The opening of the Bush library was a reminder of the thousand times Obama blamed Bush for all the ills he “inherited” upon taking office, but all Presidents encounter this problem and none spent their entire first term blaming their predecessor. It was a mark of Obama’s immaturity.

All Presidents encounter some kind of scandal in the course of their administration, but Obama seems to have had more of his fair share. “Fast and Furious” was covered up with an executive order and outright stonewalling. It involved a government-sponsored gun-running scheme to Mexican drug cartels with the intention of “tracking” the weapons. This is as hair-brained as it gets, but some of those weapons ended up killing a U.S. Border Patrol agent and many Mexican victims. Any other President would have been severely wounded, but the mainstream media managed to ignore it sufficiently until it went away.

This same process ensued following the September 12, 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three security personnel. So far, everyone in the Obama administration who was involved in the failure to initially provide sufficient protection and then, while the attack ensued for several hours, failed to come to their aid, has been given a pass by the media with the notable exception of Fox News.

I sometimes think that too many Americans are afflicted with Attention Deficit Disorder because scandals and repeated lies do not seem to be remembered for more than a week or so. In a society afflicted by a suffering economy, the immediate needs of one’s personal life overtake and blur concerns for the constant revelations regarding a succession of failure policies.

The calls for the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that would not cost the taxpayers a dime while at the same time generating tens of thousands of jobs, go unheeded despite repeated studies that confirm it not only wouldn’t pose an environmental hazard, it would contribute to the nation’s energy independence.

At the same time, Obama’s self-proclaimed war on coal is causing coal-fired plants providing electricity to shut down. At the same time, in Europe, “clean energy” projects—primarily wind power—are seeing their government subsidies end while new coal-fired plants are authorized and built.

The “new normal” in America is a $17 trillion national debt that exceeds our current gross domestic product earnings of just over $15 trillion. Under Obama, the government has run up a huge debt that has led to its credit rating being reduced for the first time in the nation’s history.

These and other factors contribute to the “Obama fatigue” to which Peggy Noonan alluded. Even the lavish lifestyle of the Obama’s no longer is sufficient to evoke anything other than a mild rebuke.

This is likely to change, however, as voters begin to focus on the 2014 midterm elections because the Rasmussen polls are telling us that the economy is their primarily concern. Fully 80% of likely voters surveyed last week said the economy will strongly influence how they vote. Just 17% of adult consumers rated the economy as good.

We well may see more Democrat incumbents decide not to run in 2014, opening the door for Republican candidates. A Republican-controlled Congress, such as occurred during Clinton’s first term in 1994 may be the result.

Obama will try to blame Republicans for the failure of his gun control and immigration initiatives and many pundits are saying this is part of his 2014 strategy. It won’t work. His effort to frighten and burden Americans with sequestration has already failed, further weakening his credibility.

In general Americans have seen and experienced enough of Barack Obama to conclude that they no longer want to hear or see that much of him in the months and years ahead.

© Alan Caruba, 2013