Reposted from RedState. Any NRA supporters out there should read this.  Is it bad enough that I would quit membership?  Mmm, it's getting close, but they still have a lot of pull to do good in the legislature.  I do prefer GOA and I'm told JPFO are upstanding as well.

This was passed on to me by a friend.  The page has an opening video that is worth watching.  Check it out and decide for yourself.

http://apathetic-usa.com/

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.  During those 200 years, the nations have progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith
2. From spiritual faith to great courage
3. From courage to liberty
4. From liberty to abundance
5. From abundance to complacency
6. From complacency to apathy
7. From apathy to governmental dependency
8. From governmental dependency back into bondage

Where is America today?

Not that the wishes of the majority of citizens has stopped this administration from doing whatever it wanted in the past <*cough*ObamaCare*cough*>.  According to polls, those who side with Arizona lead 2 to 1 over those who don't.  But wait, there's more.  Not only do the people think Arizona has done the right thing, there is a high percentage that want a similar law in their own state.

In a major blow for the Obama Administration just months before the midterm elections, an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose the federal government’s lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration control law.

Most Americans, not only back  Arizona’s measure, they support a similar bill aimed at restricting illegal immigration in their own state, according to a pair of national polls released this week. First a Rasmussen Reports survey divulged that 56% of Americans oppose the president’s lawsuit against Arizona while only 28% agree with it. In the same survey 61% of respondents said they would like to see a similar law in their state.

A separate poll, conducted by  Gallup, says that 50% of all Americans are against Obama’s lawsuit while only 33% favor it. As one major newspaper report points out; with less than four months before his first midterm election, President Obama's lawsuit against Arizona's new illegal immigrant law is running against a strong tide of American support for the measure.

None of this is surprising since practically every poll conducted after Arizona’s law passed in April has revealed that most Americans support the measure to curb illegal immigration. In one national survey 82% of Americans opposed a boycott of Arizona over the new law and in another a substantial majority said they want a decrease in illegal immigrants and more agents to secure the Mexican border.

None of this has stopped the president from wasting U.S. tax dollars to block a border state desperately trying to survive a crisis created, in part, by the federal government’s negligence. Modeled after the federal statute, Arizona’s law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally, bans “sanctuary city” policies and allows local police to inquire about suspects’ immigration status.

That “unconstitutionally” interferes with federal immigration responsibilities, according to the Justice Department lawsuit filed on behalf of the Obama Administration this week. Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledges that “Arizonans are understandably frustrated with illegal immigration” but “setting immigration policy and enforcing immigration laws is a national responsibility.” If only the feds would do their job.

Well then, get on with the enforcing Mr. Holder.

Wow.  From her own testimony in the hearings for confirmation, Elena Kagan has basically said she has no idea what rights people have outside of the Constitution.  What that says is, in essence, if it's not written down it doesn't exist.  In this particular instance Sen. Coburn is asking the question in relation to an individual's right to defend themselves.  However, her answer really transcends that arena and brings into question her basic viewpoint on whether natural rights, any of them, exist.

Her answers seem appropriate on the surface but she is clearly avoiding the deeper issue raised.  She goes so far as to not comment on whether she embraces the words in the Declaration of Independence.

It is scary to imagine how this could play out if she were to actually make it onto the bench.

Elena Kagan has disqualified herself from serving on the U.S. Supreme Court with her statement under oath that she has no view of "natural rights," says the man leading a letter-writing campaign to the U.S. Senate.

"In all my years of observing hearings in Washington, I don't think I've ever been more stunned and disappointed by the testimony of a Supreme Court nominee than I was with Elena Kagan," said Joseph Farah, spearhead of the "Stop Kagan Campaign," which has generated nearly 60,000 letters to members of the Senate. "This is someone, who, from her own testimony, doesn't believe in the Declaration of Independence, which we just celebrated and commemorated this week for the 234th time in our nation's history. This is someone who claims she doesn't have a view about 'natural rights' –- those that real Americans believe are unalienable and God-given."

...

"Kagan is a radical antimilitary and pro-abortion zealot," said Farah. "This selection by Barack Obama reveals once again his extremist agenda of leaving America undefended, elevating alternative lifestyles to sainthood and exterminating the most innocent human life with reckless abandon and persecuting anyone who tried to stand in the way. In a nutshell, that's who Elena Kagan is."

Read the whole story

From WND.  I saw this article last week but it took me a while to get it posted.  This time it appears they have been double-billing and inflating the prices for some of their, umm, "services." I am pretty stunned that this is coming from the 9th Circuit Court.  'Bout time they got their feel held to the coals.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco has stopped Planned Parenthood of California's attempt at silencing a whistleblower who alleges the abortion provider has billed taxpayers $180 million in fraudulent birth-control charges.

Victor Gonzalez, the former chief financial officer of Planned Parenthood's Los Angeles branch, exposed though a federal lawsuit California clinics purchasing birth-control pills at discount prices, then billing both self-pay clients and federally funded state programs inflated prices.

Through its dozens of affiliated "health centers" over several years, Gonzalez estimates, Planned Parenthood had profited over $180 million from overbilling.

Planned Parenthood, however, had won a dismissal of the fraud case in district court by arguing that a state audit had also found the overbilling, and, therefore, Gonzalez didn't really qualify as a whistleblower.

And since the state opted not to take punitive action following the revelation of wrongdoing, it may have appeared Planned Parenthood had gotten away with decades of profiting off overbilling taxpayers.

But the unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit's court of appeals this week has brought the scandal back to light.

Read the whole story

This is reposted from RWN.  I was two years old when this gentleman emigrated from the USSR to the US and I found his story enlightening.  He has lived under the socialist state of Russian communism and now has a warning to deliver.  It is a long letter, but worth reading.  Maybe we can learn from his experience.

Dear ex-compatriots who once lived under the socialist regimes of the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Cuba, China, Albania, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Venezuela of Chavez, the Argentina of Peron, and others of similar life experience!

I was born in the Soviet Union and was lucky to part with socialism and lucky & privileged to become the US citizen. However during last year and a half I am becoming increasingly concerned about the direction American leaders are steering our country to. More and more the US resembles the world you & I were fortunate to leave behind. More and more it now resembles the path Russia took a century ago – and we all know the devastating results this “experiment” caused. This is the very same path Greece recently chosen in trying to achieve another “just society.”

For years the United States was the island of sanity in the ocean of pain, suffering and injustice in which most of the world was drowning. The countries that were able to stand against tyrannies and make life bearable for their citizens did so in large part because the US was backing them with its might. If America falls, world as we know it will end. Without a strong America we will soon see China establishing its hegemony over Asia; Russia will strengthen its muscles and take back Eastern Europe; Hugo Chavez and brothers Castro will run Latin America; and a wide swath of the globe stretching from North Africa through the Middle East to Indonesia and perhaps the Philippines will become radically Muslim - fanatically massacring “infidels.”

Please read Letter to America below and (if you agree with the content) sign it, and forward it to all your friends, relatives, co-workers and pen pals. Ask your spouse and kids over age eighteen to sign it as well. Even if you never lived in a socialist country but share our concerns, we are asking you to stand with us. When signing Letter to America please choose the field “I didn't experience socialism firsthand but I agree with you.”

Thank you all for your willingness to raise your voice and defend freedom! You & I now have an opportunity and obligation to help America, to do something for all the good we so generously received from this wonderful country.

Our voices will make a difference!

Letter to America
Written by people who came from where Obama is taking America to

In this case he is speaking of immigration, but I wonder if there is something more behind that statement.  It is hard to argue with that either, since it is true.  There are large numbers of Americans who have come here legally, obtained citizenship, and integrated.  The problem with the what he said, however, is that there are large numbers of illegals who have no desire to become Americans.  They are here to take advantage of the work, medical, and social programs while wanting to remain native to the country they voluntarily left.  They want all of the benefits with none of the drawbacks.

The New York Post in this article says

Speaking at the American University School of International Service in Washington D.C., Obama expressed an understanding for why states would pass individual anti-illegal immigration laws, but said taking such action is “ill conceived.”

The president said laws, such as the one signed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in April, are "divisive," put pressure on local law enforcement, burden state and local budgets and could potentially violate the rights of innocent American citizens and legal residents.

What is interesting about that is that the Arizona law basically just allows the state to enforce laws already in place at the federal level.  If those laws were just allowed to be enforced, AZ would never have had to pass their own.  As it stands, however, is that our Border Patrol Agents have their hands tied and face litigation if they do happen to do what they are paid for.  The Post goes on to say