Should be a no-brainer…

(Daily Caller)- In the wake of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) passing of a net neutrality plan, some Congressmen are already planning how to fight back. For some, that means the 1996 Congressional Review Act (CRA).

Michigan Republican Rep. Fred Upton, the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Oregon Republican Rep. Greg Walden and Nebraska Republican Rep. Lee Terry have pledged to use that law to fight the FCC’s new regulations.

The CRA gives Congress the authority to review federal agency regulations, and repeal them if necessary with a joint resolution.

“The FCC’s hostile actions toward innovation, investment and job creation cannot be allowed to stand,” said Upton in a statement. “Today’s vote is a sad commentary that this administration and the FCC continue to ignore the will of the American people – our new majority is committed to protecting personal liberty and reducing the size and scope of the government.”

Upton went on to say that while the FCC may claim broad industry support for net neutrality, that support is really just “’cries of ‘uncle’ resulting from threats of even more onerous regulation.”

While promising to use the CRA to fight the FCC’s plan, Walden released a statement saying, “If left unchallenged, this power grab will allow the Commission to regulate any interstate wired or wireless communication on barely more than a whim.”

“The FCC has irresponsibly decided to pursue a course unauthorized and opposed by most members of Congress,” added Terry. “This is just more big government intervention in the marketplace to try and fix something that isn’t broken.”

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The Obama regime is now using the FCC to pass laws even though that is Congress’ job. Another shameful power-grab…

(Jonathon Seidl)- The FCC has voted 3-2 along political lines to extend the government’s reach and regulate the internet via net neutrality.

The vote to institute net neutrality rules marks the first time the government has stepped into the world of internet regulation. Proponent’s of the net neutrality rules say that the move allows the government to stop companies from controlling too much of the internet, while opponents view it as a scary example of government control and an impediment of private business.

“As we stand here now, the freedom and openness of the Internet are unprotected… . That will change once we vote to approve this strong and balanced order,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said at a commission meeting on Tuesday, according to The Hill.

Keep reading…

From one joker to another…

(Politico)- Paging Jon Stewart: The White House needs your help.

Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday that he hopes the Comedy Central host can persuade enough Republican senators to vote for a 9/11 health bill so it can head to the president’s desk.

“If there’s the ability for that to sort of break through in our political environment, there’s a good chance that he can help do that,” Gibbs said in his briefing. “I think he has put the awareness around this legislation. He’s put that awareness into what you guys cover each day, and I think that’s good. I hope he can convince two Republicans to support taking care of those that took care of so many on that awful day in our history.”

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Between Napolitano working to keep us safe “364 days” a year and this nitwit, call me crazy but I don’t feel all that safe…

(ABC News)- Attorney General Eric Holder has an urgent message for Americans: While he is confident that the United States will continue to thwart attacks, “the terrorists only have to be successful once.”

And while it is not certain we will be hit, the American people, he told ABC News, “have to be prepared for potentially bad news.”

…What was uppermost on his mind, however, is the alarming rise in the number of Americans who are more than willing to attack and kill their fellow citizens.

“It is one of the things that keeps me up at night,” Holder said. “You didn’t worry about this even two years ago — about individuals, about Americans, to the extent that we now do. And — that is of — of great concern.”

“The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens — raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born,” he said.

In the last 24 months, Holder said, 126 people have been indicted on terrorist-related charges, Fifty of those people are American citizens.

“I think that what is most alarming to me is the totality of what we see, the attorney general said. “Whether it is an attempt to bomb the New York City subway system, an attempt to bring down an airplane over Detroit, an attempt to set off a bomb in Times Square … I think that gives us a sense of the breadth of the challenges that we face, and the kinds of things that our enemy is trying to do.”

A token of his appreciation for pumping in over $100 million into Dem campaigns during the midterms….

Via Mark Hemingway:

The pro-union regulatory assault continues. The National Labor Relations Board is now proposing new regulations requiring workers to be notified of their right to unionize (PDF link):

The National Labor Relations Board has submitted to the Federal Register a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which provides for a 60-day comment period. The rule would require employers to notify employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act.

As the Notice states, the Board “believes that many employees protected by the NLRA are unaware of their rights under the statute. The intended effects of this action are to increase knowledge of the NLRA among employees, to better enable the exercise of rights under the statute, and to promote statutory compliance by employers and unions.”

Private-sector employers (including labor organizations) whose workplaces fall under the NLRA would be required to post the employee rights notice where other workplace notices are typically posted. If an employer communicates with employees primarily by email or other electronic means, the notice would be posted electronically as well. The notice would be available from the agency’s regional offices and could also be downloaded from the NLRB website.

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Sickening…

A document released by WikiLeaks described efforts by high-ranking Afghan officials to quash reports of police officers and other Afghans arrested for “purchasing a service from a child.”

The leaked diplomatic cable quoted former Minister of the Interior Hanif Atmar’s concern that publicity about the arrests, which involved the hiring of “dancing boys,” would “endanger lives.”

The author of the diplomatic cable fretted that the case would be “blown out of proportion, an outcome that would not be good for either the U.S. or Afghanistan.”

The vast gulf between U.S. and Afghan attitudes about homosexuality and pedophilia has generated concern among U.S. advisers in Afghanistan since the American presence there began to expand.

In late 2009, U.S. and British forces ordered a study of Pashtun male sexuality. They were worried that homosexuality and pedophilia among Afghan security forces and tribes could create cultural misunderstanding with allied troops, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Examiner.

The study, requested by 2nd Marine Expeditionary Battalion along with British forces in Lashkar Gah, was conducted by members of one of the Defense Department’s Human Terrain Teams stationed in Afghanistan. The report was authored by team member Anna Maria Cardinalli, who said the goal was to learn how to advise “U.S. and British service members who report encounters with men displaying apparently homosexual tendencies. These service members are frequently confused [by] this behavior.”

The report described unease by U.S. Marines and British soldiers who felt they were being propositioned, or who were outraged by apparent acts of pedophilia by Afghan soldiers and police. It documented one case in which 12 of 20 Pashtun interpreters working with one U.S. Army unit had contracted gonorrhea from homosexual encounters.

Troops interviewed by The Examiner say they are frequently forced to deal with a radically different attitude toward sex with male youths by Afghan security forces.

“I know Marines and soldiers who have refused to work with Afghan military or police,” said one U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s not about homosexuality as much as it is about the young boys. Some of them like to show pictures on their cell phone — that should be illegal. Some of the Afghans have their own young boys they use for sexual purposes and we can’t do anything about it.”

Cardinalli told The Examiner by e-mail that she is writing a book about widespread acceptance of male homosexuality among Pashtuns, a culture where far fewer opportunities for premarital heterosexual encounters exist.

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HT: Kevin in Brownsburg, MmmPolitically

It’s easy to contradict yourself when you lie like it’s a natural body function…

Via Byron York:

Pelosi, 11/18/10:

I was the first woman speaker. It didn’t get that much play…Boehner, before the election, they had him on the cover of Newsweek. [Interview with New York Times]

Pelosi, 12/21/10:

The speaker of the House is such an awesome power…You don’t worry about whether Newsweek has your face on the cover. [Interview with Politico]

Comrades…

(WSJ)- Lots of hypotheses have been floated to explain why the Obama administration went to such extremes last year to try to force Honduras to reinstate deposed president Manuel Zelaya.

Now the release of two WikiLeaked cables from the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa strengthens one of those theories: that the U.S. knew Mr. Zelaya was a threat to democratic Honduras but had decided the country should tolerate his constitutional violations in the interest of realpolitik.

Practically speaking, Hugo Chávez was the man to please. After a decade in power, the president of Venezuela’s influence around the region was notable. George W. Bush had clashed with him. Barack Obama was out to prove that they could get along, as evidenced by the warm handshake at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain in April 2009.

Honduras offered a bonding opportunity. Mr. Zelaya was a protégé of Mr. Chávez. Standing up for him as democratically elected was a way to score points with Latin America’s hard left.

But Honduras wasn’t willing to play the sacrificial lamb. When its other branches of government removed him from office last year, it caught Hugo Llorens, the U.S. ambassador, flat-footed. Saving face became the top priority.

Mr. Ford’s cable, written as he was turning his post over to Mr. Llorens after a three-year assignment in Tegucigalpa, supports this premise. In the opening summary, Mr. Ford wrote: “Ever the rebellious teenager, Zelaya’s principal goal in office is to enrich himself and his family while leaving a public legacy as a martyr who tried to do good but was thwarted at every turn by powerful, unnamed interests.” The State Department says it does not comment on classified documents.

The image of a champion of the poor crushed by the rich elite is precisely what Mr. Zelaya’s supporters in Washington and Tegucigalpa peddled to the press in the months after he was removed from office. But Mr. Ford had spotted a fraud. “His erratic behavior appears most evident when he deliberately stirs street action in protest against his own government policy—only to resolve the issue (teacher complaints, transportation grievances, etc) at the last moment.”

American feminists express their outrage in 3…2…yeah, right…

(BBC)- Two people have been arrested after the death of a Bangladeshi woman who was publicly caned for allegedly having an affair with her stepson, police say.

A group of village elders and clerics sentenced Sufia Begum under Sharia law to 40 lashes for adultery.

The 40-year-old died of her injuries almost a month after the beating in Rajshahi district, her family says.

Bangladesh banned such punishments in the name of religious edicts or fatwas by Muslim clergy earlier this year.

It is thought to be the first case of a fatality linked to a Sharia law punishment since the practice was outlawed.

Two people, including a woman who allegedly took part in the beating, have been arrested. Police say they are looking for four others.

Women’s rights campaigners in the country are demanding action, and have gone to Ms Begum’s home village in an effort to find out what happened.

Activists say dozens of fatwas are issued under Sharia law each year by village clergy.

A preview of what could happen here if the Obama regime gets its way and gives the FCC the power to enforce net neutrality…

In a move that smacks of the draconian Internet laws in place in countries like Australia, the UK government has plans to ask ISPs to block all pornography from home Internet connections by default, it’s reported today. Under the plan, customers would have to ask the ISP for access to pornography.

The Sunday Times reports [paywalled link] that the UK’s largest ISPs will be called to a meeting next month to discuss the idea, which is being presented as a way of stopping children from accessing porn. Quoted in the story, Conservative MP Claire Perry describes the current Internet as the “Wild west”. “We are not coming at this from an anti-porn perspective. We just want to make sure our children aren’t stumbling across things we don’t want them to see.”

The Sunday Times says the government is pushing for this despite the UK’s Internet Services Providers’ Association saying in the past that such a block would be expensive and technically difficult.

Does this sound insane to you? It does to us. While most people probably don’t want children exposed to porn, the idea of blocking it at source is hairbrained on a number of levels:

• How do you define porn? Sure, some sites are obviously explicit but what about sites which cover the academic study of pornography? What about message boards like 4chan which cover a wide range of topics including porn? Where is the line?
• If you do block sites which cover porn among other subjects, where do you stop? It’s potentially letting Internet censorship in through the back door.
• Adults shouldn’t be stigmatised for viewing porn. Forcing them to contact their ISPs for “permission” does that.

No, we’ll take end-users choosing their own child protection measures over a ‘Nanny state’ approach. It’s worth noting that the minister behind this reported plan is Ed Vaizey, who last month made comments that called the future of net neutrality in the UK into question, even if he later claimed to have been misunderstood.

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I have a fireplace that’s in need of some kindling…

(JPost)- A Koran etched in the blood of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been hidden away in a vault in a Baghdad mosque for the past three years, reported the British newspaper the Guardian on Tuesday.

According to the report, over the course of two years Saddam Hussein sat regularly with a nurse and Islamic calligrapher to transcribe the Koran in his blood.

Since the fall of Baghdad almost eight years ago, the Koran has remained mostly out of sight, along with other artifacts of the ousted dictator. The current government does not know what to do with it.  The reason for this, cites the Guardian, is that on the one hand the newly created Shia-led regime is very sensitive to the re-emergence of symbols that might glorify  the former Ba’athist regime and serve as an icon for the remaining loyal supporters. On the other hand the Sunnis themselves are fearful of retribution if they reveal this version of the Koran which some would view as sacriligious, cites the report.

“What is in here is priceless, worth absolutely millions of dollars,” said Sheikh Ahmed al-Samarrai, head of Iraq’s Sunni Endowment fund to the Guardian.

“It was wrong to do what he did, to write it in blood,” says Sheikh Samarrai. “It is haraam [forbidden].”

Nevertheless Samarrai acts as the document’s guardian, holding one of three keys necessary to remove it from the vault.

The persecution is never ending…

Washington, D.C. (December 20, 2010)- International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that on December 16, members of Al-Shabaab, an Islamic militant group, destroyed a Christian library in the Luuq district of Somalia.

The militants destroyed the library and brought Bibles, Christian books, and audio/video materials to the city center and burned them after the Muslim noon prayer. The guardian of the library fled the area hours after the library was found by the Islamists. His whereabouts are unknown.

Al-Shabaab’s district commissioner in Luuq, Sheik Farhaan Abdi Elmoghe, described the discovery of the library as “a blow to the misguided Somali Christians.”

The library was located in a derelict farm on the Juba River. It is not uncommon for the persecuted Somali Christians to literally bury their Bibles and other Christian materials because of intense persecution from Islamists.

Speaking from Mogadishu to ICC, a leader of an underground church said, “The library served as an underground Somali Bible college, [and it's] one of the biggest and the most comprehensive Somali Christian libraries in southern Somalia.” He further added that the destruction of the library would not stop the Somali Christians from studying the scriptures.

Another victory for the godless left’s attack on our Judeo-Christian heritage…

(Fox News)- There is controversy and confusion in the town of Mesquite, NV after teachers and staff members at the local high school were told to stop saying, “Merry Christmas,” according to an attorney with a conservative advocacy group.

Teachers at Virgin Valley High School are reportedly not allowed to post any religious Christmas decorations, and are prohibited from engaging in other Christmas activities as part of an agreement with the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union, according to Alliance Defense Fund attorney David Cortman.

He said the agreement was in response to the ACLU’s threat of litigation. Read the letter the ADF sent to the high school.

“Employees, including teachers, can’t even say the words, ‘Merry Christmas,’ in the school,” Cortman told Fox News Radio. Students, however, are still permitted to use the traditional holiday greeting.

But Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the Nevada ACLU, told Fox News Radio they are not to blame and never threatened to sue the school.

“Saying Merry Christmas does not create a problem for us,” he said. “There are certain people perhaps who want to make this into a conflict where personally I don’t see where there is any need for conflict.”

Several dozen parents and students protested the ban at a rally outside the school, acknowledging school officials were caught in the middle of the controversy.

“They took away prayer, now they’re saying you can’t say ‘Merry Christmas,’” Narvin Ruth told the Mesquite Local News. “It’s about time we took our rights back.”

The newspaper wrote an editorial on the controversy, calling on the ACLU to “back off on this one, and allow our children to revel in the Christmas for as long as adolescence will allow it.”

Hold on, Nancy Pelosi has feelings, don’t you have to be human for those?…

(Politico)- “Every minute is a new minute to me,” says Nancy Pelosi, and, with boxes packed in the hall outside, the soon-to-be-former speaker has already jumped ahead to her vision of the “humming, whirling entity” House Democrats can still be in the coming Congress.

“I’m obviously devastated by the loss we had,” she will admit, but expect no tears, no retreat on health care reform. Pelosi mourns the Democratic talent lost but not her gavel. And on this particular Friday afternoon, she skipped President Barack Obama’s signing ceremony for his tax deal with the new Republican powers and instead drew her energy from a morning meeting with the fresh crop of ranking Democrats on House committees.

…There’s some denial to be sure. In the course of an interview, Pelosi repeatedly spoke of her ranking Democrats as committee “chairmen” when they won’t be in the new Congress. Four years of restrictive rules on House debate seem a lost memory: “I’m thoroughly agnostic. If Republicans have a good idea, let’s go with it.”

And by her reckoning, little or nothing about November’s losses can be attributed to the enactment of health care reform.

“If we had never passed the bill, we would still have had these losses. We were told a year ago: ‘If you’re anywhere near 10 percent unemployment, there’s no chance you can hold the majority.’”

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Christmas is coming a few days early this year…

WASHINGTON—A Senate deal to fund the federal government until early March doesn’t include money to enact the health-care overhaul or stepped up regulation of Wall Street, boosting Republican efforts to curb key elements of President Barack Obama’s domestic agenda.

Democrats last week sought $1 billion to expand federal agencies to cope with health-care demands as part of a proposed $1.1 trillion spending bill. That measure died after Senate Republicans closed ranks against it under pressure from conservative activists.

The doomed budget plan also included spending increases sought by Democratic leaders for two agencies granted new responsibilities by the Dodd-Frank financial-regulation law, passed in response to the Wall Street crisis of 2008-2009.

The $250 billion deal to pay for the government until March 4, which is expected to come to the Senate floor for a vote Tuesday, freezes spending for most government programs at 2010 levels. The deal is expected to clear the Senate and House before current government-spending authority expires that day.

Good grief…

(WUSA)- They call themselves the “Christmas Sweater Club” because they wear the craziest ones they can find. But they also sing Christmas songs at school and try their best to spread Christmas cheer.

But now all 10 of them are in trouble because of what they did at their school, Battlefield High School.

“They said we were maliciously wounding other kids. But nobody intentionally tried to do that, or did,” said Zakk Rhine, a junior at Battlefield.

The boys say they were just tossing small two-inch candy canes to fellow students as they entered school. The ones that are in plastic wrap and are so small they often break apart.

Skylar Torbett, also a junior, said administrators told him, “The candy canes could be used as weapons by sucking on them and making them have sharp points.” He said neither he nor any of their friend did that.

(click image for video)

Thank you for acknowledging what we’ve been say all along…

“The only thing left for you young folks, next year, is to go back to the EPA and say listen, we tried to pretend that what was going on was a market failure, i.e. we had the price wrong for carbon, the price being zero and now we’re going to pretend like it’s a regulatory failure.”

Via The Blaze

HT: Milton

Michael Moore expected to be hardest hit…

(Daily Mail)- Al Qaeda terrorists planned to poison food at multiple US hotels and restaurants over a single weekend, it has been revealed this morning.

The ‘credible’ plot involved slipping the poisons cyanide and ricin into salad bars and buffets, according to CBS news.

The terrorist group behind the failed ‘ink cartridge’ attacks on cargo planes in October were said to have hatched the plan.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula branded the plot ‘Operation Haemorrhage’.

Militants say the plot consists of ‘attacking the enemy with smaller but more frequent operations’ to ‘add a heavy economic burden to an already faltering economy’.

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Interfaith outreach, Islamist style…

VANCOUVER—More than 100 Canadian-Arab Christians are listed on an Al Qaeda-affiliated website, apparently targeted because of their alleged role in attempting to convert Muslims.

Some of those named say concerned Canadian intelligence officials have contacted them.

The Shumukh-al-Islam website, often considered to be Al Qaeda’s mouth piece, listed pictures, addresses and cellphone numbers of Coptic Christians, predominantly Egyptian-Canadians, who have been vocal about their opposition to Islam.

In a forum on the website, one member named Son of a Sharp Sword, says “We are going to return back to Islam and all of the Mujahedeen (holy warriors) will cut off their heads.”

Three pages of the fundamentalist, Arabic-language website titled “Complete information on Coptics” sets to “identify and name all of the Coptics throughout the world who hope to defame Islam,” The website calls the Coptic Christians living abroad “dogs in diaspora,” a derogatory reference in Arabic.

Among those named on the Shumukh-al-Islam website is Samuel Tawadrus, a Coptic Egyptian living in Quebec.

“This is a direct threat against our lives,” Tawadrus said in an interview.

“They are trying to inform each other in hopes that someone can carry out this threat. They could be in Egypt and they could be here. Our names and our pictures are listed.”