HR 1444: New Bill Calls For Congressional Commission on Civic Service
Barack Obama recently signed into law the HR 1388 GIVE Act that would require youth to sign up for a certain amount of community service. This Act becomes much like the AmeriCorps and if we know anything as of late about that organization, we know that it is rife with corruption and government meddling (i.e. Walpin-Gate). AmeriCorps and government funded “volunteer” organizations have always been vulnerable to becoming ideological arms of the parties which give the most or establish them. This is no different than unions receiving kickbacks from Democrats and in turn voting for them. There is a serious problem in our government regarding pay-to-play politics.
The GIVE Act was scary enough because it was reminiscent of what Obama had said on the campaign trail regarding a National Civilian Security force that would eventually be larger than the US military. Many didn’t take Obama seriously at the time, but with the signing of the GIVE Act and the latest bill in the Senate, HR 1444, it keeps looking more and more like he was in fact telling the truth.
Here’s a reminder of what he said:
Here is what a columnist at the Denver Post has to say about HR 1444:
Little did I know he was serious. The first step was the passage of HR 1388, “The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act,” originally titled the GIVE (Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education) Act before the Senate renamed it as a tribute to the “Lion of Liberalism.” It triples AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000. The second step is HR 1444, not yet passed, which would establish a Congressional Commission on Civic Service. The commission would “address and analyze” the effects on the nation and on those who serve “if all individuals in the United States … were required to perform a certain amount of national service” and “whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all young people could be developed.”
Whoa! It’s one thing, out of clear necessity and for purposes of national survival, to have a military draft when our nation is at war (hot or cold). But mandatory community service of up to two years? This is a preposterously intrusive notion and one that is surely unlawful under our Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits “involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime.” What crime have these young people committed?
The “audacity” — to use President Obama’s favorite expression — of such a sweeping mandate is a direct contradiction of our founding principles as reinforced in the Bill of Rights, which emphatically restricts the powers of government over the lives of individuals. The camel’s nose under the tent that has led some people to regard national mandatory community service as respectable public policy is no doubt the imposition of a similar requirement on students as a condition of graduation in our public schools.
Just what we need, more politicians using the constitution as toilet paper and youth having the government run their lives.
Look at it this way – blue will be the new “brown” 
“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Abraham Lincoln, Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838)
The DoD Thinks Protesters Are Terrorists
It reminds me of the old junkie commercials from the 90′s… “Nobody said ‘I want to be a terrorist when I grow up.’”
I certainly never thought myself a terrorist or involved in terrorist activities, but that’s not what the DoD manual says.
On the last 2 pages of the DoD manual, (PDF here) obtained by the ACLU, they state that protests are considered low-level terrorism. That means that Tea Party protesters, abortion protesters, and even David Letterman protesters are considered terrorists.
The DoD refresher course/manual begins:
“Anti-terrorism (AT) and Force Protection (FP) are two facets of the Department of Defense (DoD) Mission Assurance Program. It is DoD policy, as found in DoDI 2000.16, that the DoD Components and the DoD elements and personnel shall be protected from terrorist acts through a high priority, comprehensive, AT program. The DoD’s AT program shall be all encompassing using an integrated systems approach.”
The first question of the Terrorism Threat Factors, “Knowledge Check 1″ section reads as follows:
Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorism activity?
Select the correct answer and then click Check Your Answer.
O Attacking the Pentagon
O IEDs
O Hate crimes against racial groups
O Protests
***
The “correct” answer is Protests.
Of course the left-wing blogs like Salon associate this with “fascists” on the right. However, fascism is left-wing and totalitarian. Fascism can go left or right. It’s incredibly disingenuous to blame a group based upon the actions of lone “crazies” like Tiller’s killer. I could say the very same thing for the Arkansas murder of the Army recruiter for the left, or what we learned about the Holocaust Museum shooting (although the below shows a lack of research or knowledge of the shooter’s political leanings, blaming it on the right).
…thus giving the government under the rubric of fighting domestic terrorism unrestrained and unsupervisable power to suppress legitimate political activities, the unleashing and justifications for Christian fascists to murder those they do not like (such as the assassination of Dr. George Tiller and the killing at the Holocaust Museum a few days ago) – this news adds further fuel to the fire.
The far left fails to realize the gravity of this for all of America, not just some political ideology. We all protest and we all stand up and fight for what we believe in. To be considered terrorists for our voice is something we should all be concerned about.
Life’s a Beach; If You’re a Uighur Detainee in Gitmo…
The Obama administration, namely the Department of Justice and race coward Eric Holder, announced the resettlement of 4 Uighur Gitmo detainees in Bermuda, obviously to teach them a lesson. The lesson of course being 40 spf is much safer than Banana Boat accelerator.
The government must be paying Bermuda a hefty fee to take the terrorists since I can’t even get a time share down there!
The Department of Justice today announced that four detainees, Chinese nationals of Uighur ethnicity who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, have been resettled in Bermuda. These detainees, who were subject to release as a result of court orders, had been cleared for release by the prior administration, which determined they would no longer treat them as enemy combatants. The detainees were again cleared for release this year after review by the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force.
As directed by the President’s January 22, 2009, Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of the four, including a threat evaluation, and approved them for resettlement. The detainees left Guantanamo Bay today pursuant to an arrangement between the United States and the Government of Bermuda.
The Uighurs are a Turkic Muslim minority from the Xinjiang province of far-west China. The Uighurs currently at Guantanamo Bay left China and made their way to Afghanistan, where most eventually settled in a camp with other Uighurs opposed to the Chinese government. After the United States conducted aerial strikes in the area in October 2001, the Uighurs from that camp fled to Pakistan and were later apprehended. According to available information, these individuals did not travel to Afghanistan with the intent to take any hostile action against the United States.
This marks the first time since 2006 that the U.S. government has successfully resettled any of the Guantanamo Uighur population. In 2006, five Uighurs were transferred to Albania; there have been no reports of post-resettlement engagement in criminal behavior or terrorist activities.
The detainees were unable to comment – they we were found on the beach passed out after sipping mamosas.
Flip-Flopper In Chief Now Agrees to Reading Detainees in Afghanistan Miranda Rights
I personally want to stop writing and crawl back into the hole I found myself in over a year ago before becoming politically involved. This just keeps getting worse by the minute. Everyday there is something new occurring and some story being reported that seems worse than the last…
The Obama administration is granting Miranda rights to detainees in Afghanistan. This is simply ludicrous! Obama wants to allow FOREIGN terrorists US constitutional rights!? These same terrorists who want to destroy our military, the West and Israel!? My brain is hemorrhaging trying to comprehend this idiocy.
When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.
Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal — read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.
If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today — foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them and they’re reading them their rights — Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.
Rogers, a former FBI specialagent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”
Global justice? Global justice? The law of the land, the constitution, is no longer valid for liberals. The document that has given us the greatest country on Earth is apparently obsolete. Quite frankly, if liberals and anyone else for that matter, do not like America, then by all means, please move elsewhere and quit whining! I’ve lived abroad, and if anything, it makes one appreciate America even more…
This is a clear message to the troops – don’t defend America and if you do happen to defend Her, don’t take any prisoners just kill them all on the spot do what the islamo-fascists do and video tape a beheading. (I’m sure that will really improve our image abroad and help the problem in the Middle East). The liberals with the body count signs in their front yards from Iraq and Afghanistan will have to update regularly, since these actions are bound to cost more lives.
Does this also mean that any Gitmo detainees who are tried in court and were not read Miranda rights (which none of them were) would be released into the US immediately? Would there be a statute of limitations that would stipulate no detainees arrested prior to this new policy will qualify? If the former occurs then the body counting liberals should also create a sign for unarmed, innocent, American citizens who were killed by Obama’s naivete.
What is even more interesting is the fact that Obama completely flip flopped on this issue, when back in 2003 he opposed giving Miranda rights to foreign terrorists. It’s interesting to see those who can sell out their principles for political expedience. It’s the real ideologues who don’t have an issue with checking their values at the door if it will win them votes.
Juxtapose that with Governor Palin’s remarks at the RNC convention last year (as C4P has reported, it was another “I told ya so moment”)… I’m so glad we dodged the bullet on Palin last election/sarc!
Thank God for JaNo’s Overseas Contingency Operation… LOL!
Zero Is at Zero In The Polls…
Obama, or O (Zero) as many of us like to refer to him as, is now at that magical number in the polls. The difference between those who strongly approve and those who strongly disapprove is a big fat 0%!
Obama’s approval:disapproval gap has been diminishing at a steady pace over the last several months. It’s about time that some people begin to take the kool aid goggles off.
The unemployment rate continues to rise, and although it is a lagging indicator on stock markets, it has a long-lasting effect, especially on the jobless lower middle class and middle class voters, who find it difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Clinton played with the formulas for unemployment back in the 90′s, so although drudge is reporting 9.4% (the highest it has been since 1983), it’s probably closer to 12/13% nationwide and between 15-20% in certain regions/states, like California and Michigan.
Obama is still seen as highly popular on a personal level, but his policies leave little to be desired by the American public. It is only a matter of time, if this trend continues, that Obama will lose much of his personal popularity, due to the grating effect of negative policies passing. Obama’s voters, namely the moderates, decided on Obama due to the media bashing of George Bush, Republicans, and the economy. Historically speaking, when there is economic turmoil, the party in office, will usually lose. Obama’s success will come from the economy and our national security. I foresee both being vulnerable and the outcome in the future to be less than optimal. If inflation (which I believe is inevitable) hits, health care passes, and people wake up to realize that we still have to pay for it and the quality of care goes down, if cap and trade/green policies pass and weigh down businesses or cause them to go out of business, if oil prices sky-rocket (they are on their way already), if we get attacked (releasing nuclear sites to the public and CIA memos does not help) – then Obama’s overall approval will go down dramatically.
Politicians like Sarah Palin, Newt, Sanford, etc. need to continuing speaking out against Obama’s policies and the liberal Democrats who are in the majority, pushing their agenda through. The more Republicans communicate to the people, that these policies are dangerous for our future, our economy, and some of our freedoms, the better chance they will have at winning in 2012 and gaining support from independents, moderates, and conservatives.
