Today, across our nation, Lady Justice has lost her way, thanks to a recent decision by Judge Mark Martin. What does it matter that some States are trying ensure that Sharia Law has no influence in American Courts, when people like Judge Martin ignore the facts of a case, choosing instead to dispense justice by using his own brand of political correctness?

Today the judge is in hiding because of his ridiculous ruling. I do not advocate violence, but hopefully the public’s reaction with this decision will serve as a warning sign to all, not just Judge Martin.

Judge dismisses charges against Muslim man who attacked atheist dressed as ‘Zombie Muhammad’

 By Caroline May

Bio | Archive | Email Caroline May

A Pennsylvania judge has dismissed charges against a Muslim man who physically attacked an atheist dressed as “Zombie Muhammad” during the Mechanicsburg, Pa. Halloween parade.

Talaag Elbayomy, a 46-year-old Muslim man, allegedly attacked Ernest Perce V, who was dressed as “Zombie Muhammad” and walking with a man dressed as “Zombie Pope” during the October parade. Both men were members of the Parading Atheists of Central Pennsylvania.

During the attack Elbayomy reportedly attempted to take Perce’s “Muhammed of Islam” sign and choked him. Zombie Pope was uninjured.

“He grabbed me, choked me from the back, and spun me around to try to get my sign off that was wrapped around my neck,” explained Perce to ABC 27.

Judge Mark Martin threw out a grainy video of the attack and explained that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict Elbayomy of the harassment charge.

Martin further dressed down Perce for his insensitive behavior, going so far as to call him a doofus and telling him that in Muslim societies he could have been put to death for mocking Muhammad.

“Having had the benefit of having spent over 2 and a half years in predominantly Muslim countries I think I know a little bit about the faith of Islam,” Martin said. “In fact I have a copy of the Koran here and I challenge you sir to show me where it says in the Koran that Mohammad arose and walked among the dead. I think you misinterpreted things. Before you start mocking someone else’s religion you may want to find out a little bit more about it. It makes you look like a doofus… In many Arabic speaking countries something like this is definitely against the law there. In their society in fact it can be punishable by death and it frequently is in their society.”

Sgt. Brian Curtis handled the incident aftermath. Curtis explained that Elbayomy admitted to grabbing Perce that October night.

“I believe that I brought a case that showed proof beyond a reasonable doubt and the case was dismissed,” Curtis told ABC 27. “I was disappointed.”

Perce was disappointed by the decision as well.

“He let a man who is Muslim, because of his preference of his culture and his way of life, walk free from an attack,” Perce said.

According to ABC 27, Elbayomy thought it was a crime to depict Muhammad and had joined Perce in calling police.

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Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/24/judge-dismisses-charges-against-muslim-man-who-attacked-atheist-dressed-as-zombie-muhammad/#ixzz1nRb8XlDI

During our show on February 26, we talked about America’s energy policy (or lack thereof), high gas prices, and President Obama’s recent speech on the matter. During that show I mentioned an article from Heritage (posted below) that provides an honest critique of the points that were part of President Obama’s statement.

This issue will never be resolved so long as both parties continue to politicizes our energy policy (or for that matter every policy point) the way they are now, and have been for the past 70 years. The people must push the politicians to put the bickering aside, and solve this issues once and for all. Without a populist movement from the people, the powers that be in Washington will continue to fail because they not only lack vision, because they are more partisans than they are patriots!

High Gas Prices: Obama’s Half-Truths vs. Reality

By Nicolas Loris
Direct link to article: High Gas Prices: Obama’s Half-Truths vs. Reality

The national average for gas prices is almost $3.60 per gallon, increasing 40 cents from a year ago and jumping 20 cents from just one month ago.[1] Prices are already surpassing $4 per gallon in some states and could threaten the country’s economic recovery. Higher gas prices drive up production costs for goods reliant on transportation, and more money spent at the pump means less money spent at restaurants and movie theaters. Buying fewer goods and services tightens the economic vice and holds back job creation.

Almost 70 percent of the price of gasoline comes from the price of crude oil, with excise taxes, refining costs, and retail/distribution making up the other 30 percent.[2] Exporting refined petroleum products comprises a small percentage of total domestic gas production and marginally impacts prices. Despite demand for oil falling in the United States as a result of a weaker economy and a warm winter curbing the use of heating oil, the industrial rise of China and India continue to put upward pressure on the price of oil. The threat of Iran restricting oil exports to Europe is also driving up the global price, impacting gas prices in the U.S.

President Obama addressed these issues Thursday, February 23, in a speech on gas prices[3] in which he continued to take many facts out of context. While the President said that there is no quick fix to high gas prices and the nation cannot drill its way out of the problem, he creates a false dichotomy that suggests that micromanaging the solution from Washington by subsidizing uneconomical technologies and sources of energy would work. This approach would do little to provide America with new, reliable, and economical sources of energy and in fact would cause more harm than good to the consumer and taxpayer. America knows what works to effectively combat high gas prices: allowing the market to work by opening access to the country’s own oil and gas reserves, reducing onerous regulations, and allowing producers and consumers to respond to energy prices without Washington’s interference. Here are five half-truths that one continually hears about gas prices and five actions that Congress and the Administration can take to effectively combat high gas prices.

Half-truth #1: Oil production is the highest it has been in eight years.

Increased oil and gas production in the U.S. is a great development, but this is a result of increased production on private lands in North Dakota, Texas, and Alaska. On federal lands and offshore, the story is much grimmer. Production on federal lands and offshore could have yielded more output, increasing supply and therefore putting downward pressure on oil prices. Poor administrative decisions—such as refusing to open areas to exploration and production, cancelling or delaying lease sales, and the offshore drilling moratorium and subsequent “permitorium”—significantly reduced oil production, destroying jobs and reducing economic activity in the process.

If there is an economic interest to produce this oil, Washington should allow companies to do so. In North Dakota, oil production is booming and unemployment is low. There should be more stories like this.

Half-truth #2: Increasing oil production takes too long and would not impact the market for at least a decade.

This has been the mantra of the anti-drilling crowd for years, and the longer politicians listen to the message, the longer the nation’s oil resources will remain undeveloped. If access to areas that are currently off limits is increased, it will take time to explore and extract that oil. But that does not change the fact that the nation needs it today and also in the future. Furthermore, some of this oil can reach the market in much less than a decade if the permitting process is streamlined and the Keystone XL pipeline—which could bring up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada to the Gulf Coast refineries—is built.

Half-truth #3: Oil is not enough. America has only 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves.

President Obama frequently uses this number to push federal investments in alternative sources of energy that cannot stand the test of the market. The reality is that he uses this number deceptively. According to the Institute for Energy Research:

[A]lthough the U.S. is said to have only 20 billion barrels of oil in reserves, the amount of oil that is technically recoverable in the U.S. is more than 1.4 trillion barrels, with the largest deposits located offshore, in portions of Alaska, and in shale in the Rocky Mountain West. When combined with resources from Canada and Mexico, total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels, or more than the world has used since the first oil well was drilled over 150 years ago in Titusville, Pennsylvania. To put this in context, Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of oil in proved reserves.

One reason to view “reserves” estimates with caution is the fact that they are constantly in flux. In 1980, the U.S. had oil reserves of roughly 30 billion barrels. Yet from 1980 through 2010, it produced over 77 billion barrels of oil. In other words, over the last 30 years, the U.S. produced over 150 percent of the proved reserves that it had in 1980. If the massive quantities of U.S. oil are made available to explore and produce, the current estimated reserves of 20 billion barrels would certainly increase, providing much more production over decades to come. In other words, reserves are not a stagnant number.[4]

Half-truth #4: Oil is not enough. The country needs an “all-of-the-above” approach to reduce its dependence on oil.

President Obama mentioned this approach in his 2012 State of the Union address, saying, “This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy.”[5] But a market-based strategy is the only all-of-the-above approach. It allows all energy sources to compete, drives innovation, and results in the best possible supply and pricing. Sadly, all-of-the-above is often just an excuse to subsidize uneconomical and politically preferred technologies and energy sources, which leads to a “pigs-at-the-trough” strategy.

Whether they are for biofuels, electric vehicles, or natural gas vehicles, subsidies for alternative fuel and vehicle technologies waste taxpayer dollars, misallocate labor and capital, and create a dependence on government that promotes crony capitalism. The world petroleum market is a multi-trillion-dollar one; whatever technology can capture a portion of that market will not need help from taxpayers.

Half-truth #5: Speculators are driving up the price of gas, and they need to be reined in.

Finger-pointing at speculators and investigating prices at the pump ignore the real cause of rising gas prices: supply and demand. Oil futures markets can affect prices at the pump by changing the amount of gasoline delivered to gas stations. If producers anticipate higher prices in the future, they might take some oil off the market today and wait to sell it later. This may be happening to some degree (although there has been little historical evidence of this[6]), especially given Iranian threats to cut off supply to European markets, but it would cause only a marginal short-run increase in prices, because at some point businesses have to unload the inventories they accumulate.

Five Actions for Congress and the Administration

Congress and the Administration should:

1. Get moving on permits. As the only country in the world that places a majority of its territorial waters off-limits to oil and gas exploration, the U.S. should at the very least be drilling in the areas where access is permitted. Removing the de facto moratorium on drilling would immediately increase supply, create jobs, and bring in royalty revenue to federal and state governments.
2. Require lease sales when ready. Congress should open areas that are off-limits: the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, Alaska’s offshore, the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and lands out West. Congress should require the Secretary of the Interior to conduct lease sales if a commercial interest exists to explore and drill. Congress should also provide the funding necessary to lease new onshore and offshore areas to oil and gas companies. Although it would take time for the federal government to lease these areas and for the energy companies to develop them, at least the process could begin.
3. Create a sensible review processes. Placing a 270-day time limit on environmental reviews would ensure a quick review process for energy projects on federal lands. Construction projects on federal lands take an average of 4.4 years. The 270 days would allow for a thorough environmental review process but would not prevent investments from moving forward.[7]
4. Remove regulatory delays and limit litigation. Environmental activists delay new energy projects by filing endless administrative appeals and lawsuits. Creating a manageable time frame for permitting and for groups or individuals to contest energy plans would keep potentially cost-effective ventures from being tied up for years in litigation while allowing the public and interested parties to voice opposition or support for these projects.
5. Approve the Keystone XL Pipeline. Congress should use its authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations to accept the State Department’s conclusion that construction of the pipeline would pose minimal environmental risk.[8] Approving the pipeline would create jobs and increase energy production—both of which the nation desperately needs—from a friendly supplier and ally.

Let the Market Work

The market would respond if Congress and the Obama Administration allowed it to work. Oil companies would respond by increasing their production, and consumers would switch to more fuel-efficient cars without any need to mandate more fuel-efficient trucks and cars. If the price of gasoline continues to rise, it will make alternative technologies all the more economically competitive. But policies that restrict oil exploration, refining, and production should not artificially drive that price higher.

Nicolas D. Loris is a Policy Analyst in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

I love editorials, articles, blog postings and video’s (whatever)  that make fun of the obvious. Sometimes the only way to get people to admit how stupid they are acting is to throw it in their face like cold water.

Representatives across this land don’t see the the plan and simple truth….we are broke. We have nothing left. We are the turnip, and there is no blood.

 Debt Limit Made Simple:

 The Government Debt Simplified

 However, New Hampshire can be proud that there is a member of the U.S. Senate who not only gets, but is prepared to fight on our behalf.

The Government Debt – Don’t Forget Unfunded Liabilities

What happens when there are more people in the wagon than there are available to pull the wagon?  What happens if everyone gets into the wagon, and no one is there to pull the wagon?

Self-reliance is a dying virtue, and has been dying a slow death on the liberal vine for sometime. Those that work hard and devote themselves to success  are mocked by the slugs who are benefiting from the labor of others.  On our country’s current course, it is not a matter of whether we become like Greece, but when.

‘Takers’ overtake ‘makers,’ threatening American self-reliance

Here are four facts that ought to scare the daylights out of every person who cares about preserving individual freedom, economic opportunity and American self-reliance. According to the Heritage Foundation’s latest Index of Dependency — which measures the degree to which individuals rely on benefits funded by the tax payments of other Americans — these four facts illustrate the reality that our country is losing the spirit of independence that is the heart of citizenship:

• Takers get more than makers: Individuals received on average $32,748 worth of benefits annually in 2010, the most recent year for which full data is available. By comparison, the average personal disposable income of tax-paying Americans was $32,446.

• More takers mean more costs for taxpayers: An estimated 67.3 million people in America depended on government for food stamps, retirement income, health care, job training and a host of other benefits. As a result, the dependency index rose 8.1 percent in 2010 over 2009, at a cost to taxpayers of $2.5 trillion.

• Fewer makers to support each taker: Just as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher predicted, sooner or later the entitlement state runs out of other peoples’ money to redistribute. In 2010, nearly half — 49.5 percent — of all adult Americans paid no federal income taxes. This is a prescription for an economic imbalance similar to the one that has paralyzed Greece.

• Ranks of the takers are exploding: The baby boomer generation has begun retiring and within the next 25 years their ranks will swell to more than 70 million. Virtually all of them will depend on government for many benefits. This means the Dependency Index is headed higher, even if major entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are reformed now.

As disturbing as these facts are, they only scratch the surface of a problem that Heritage has been tracking since 2002. The index is unique because is measures multiple factors associated with the cost of providing government benefits, as well as the scope of their distribution, using 1962 as a baseline. As Heritage’s Bill Beach and Patrick Tyrrell explain, “the index score has grown by more than 15 times its original amount. This means that, keeping inflation neutral in the calculations, more than 15 times the resources were committed to paying for people who depend on government in 2010 than in 1962.”

Alexis de Tocqueville reputedly said that the American republic will last only “until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.” Indeed, political philosophers have warned since Aristotle that the worst flaw of democracy is the tendency of the majority to oppress the minority. That is what happens when takers become the majority and use their political power to force makers to hand over the fruit of their labor in the form of taxes. The time remaining for America to reverse this debilitating ratio is rapidly disappearing.

“Europe is in the gripes of a prolonged Winter; literally and figuratively. A Winter of discontent “ – Daniel Hannan, CPAC 2012

So begins one of the all time great CPAC speeches; rivaling even Ronald Reagan’s 1977 CPAC Speech.

I have to admit that this years CPAC seem to be lacking an energy of past CPAC’s. Most of the speeches did not even pay tribute to this years theme – ‘We Still Hold These Truth….’

Of course, there were a few exceptions: Congressman Allen West, Senator Jim DeMint, Sara Pain. As for me though, EU Minister Daniel Hannan’s speech was the best.

Daniel Hannan spoke with a passion from a person who truly understands what is a stake, and the terrible path that some in America have set us upon. Stifling debt that is killing our economy and bankrupting our children, misguided regulations that serve only to ensure the job of a bureaucrat and destroy jobs in the private sector, and a foreign policy that not only has made us the laughing stock amongst our allies and our enemies, but has made the world less safe.

I assure you, after watching this speech you will be reinvigorated, re-energized, and thankful that patriots such as Daniel Hannan still exist.  Daniel is truly our cousin from across the Atlantic, coming to our shores to remind us of how dear liberty is, and how easily it can be taken away. Whether it is by a single swift blow or by a thousand tiny cuts, Daniel reminds us that liberty is never more than one generation away from being lost.