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ConservativeNC: Promised Land http://bit.ly/9LIY5m #ConsNC #NCGOP #TCOT

JacqueEsslinger: Vance County GOP Convention Monday, March 15, County Commissioners meeting room, Young St, Henderson. 7PM

FreedomWorks: RT @ali: RT @FreedomWorks No Reconciliation Petition tops 60,000 signers! http://bit.ly/d6lhCL #norec

FreedomWorks: No Reconciliaton Petition Tops 60,000!: FreedomWorks "No Reconciliation" petition has surged past 60,000 signers i... http://bit.ly/d6lhCL

ConservativeNC: NC-10: Scott Keadle in Washington Examiner http://bit.ly/aWI2R1 #ConsNC #NCGOP #TCOT

ConservativeNC: Taliban Comedy http://bit.ly/bKt4du #ConsNC #NCGOP #TCOT

RNC: We’re taking suggestions for the name of a new RNC Email Newsletter! Tell us your best ideas over at www.facebook.com/GOP #tcot #sgp #gop

FreedomWorks: Spending Limit Amendment Cannot Be Ignored: Congressmen Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Mike Pence (R-IN) and John Campbell... http://bit.ly/bngFpz

NCGOP: The Anson County Convention will be held tonight at 7PM at the Szechuan Empire Chinese restaurant on Hwy 74 in Wadesboro.

On March 25, the Civitas Institute is sponsoring a lecture by Father Robert Sirico, President of the Acton Institute who will be speaking on “Does Social Justice Require Socialism?”

Too see a bit of what Fr. Sirico is about, check out his “Tangle with Rangel” from a House Committee hearing in 2007.

To attend the lecture, sign up on the Civitas website here. The cost is $10 for individuals, $15 per couple.

© Chris Hayes for Civitas Review Online, 2010. | Permalink | No comment

NCGOP: The Randolph County Convention and Precinct’s Meetings will be held tonight from 7-9PM at 122 Sunset Ave. in Asheboro.

By Matt Hawes

Via The Wall Street Journal:

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker....

Read the rest.

FreedomWorks: Join The People's Surge Against Obamacare 2.0!: Come join FreedomWorks, and many other Tea Party groups and organi... http://bit.ly/cTYUGt

The Washington D.C. based Tax Foundation released this report critiquing the “Amazon Tax,” a tax North Carolina enacted as part of the state budget last summer. Some highlights:

Sponsors have promised that a revenue windfall would follow enactment of an Amazon tax, but no windfalls have been forthcoming so far. This is often because online companies respond to Amazon tax law enactments by ending their affiliate programs.

….

Similarly, legislative officials estimated that North Carolina’s Amazon tax would raise $13 million in its first year of operation, but the termination of affiliate programs in the state makes this unlikely. Revenue officials have stated that they are not tracking Amazon tax revenues.

North Carolina lawmakers saw the Amazon tax as another revenue stream to help bail them out of a massive budget deficit last summer. It appears those funds won’t materialize. North Carolina’s current fiscal year revenue is already below projections, and may likely fall even further behind as the year unfolds. Additional layoffs and unpaid furloughs for state employees and teachers may well be on the horizon in order for the state to pay its bills. This dire situation can be blamed, in part, on legislators’ misguided belief that the Amazon tax would bring in millions in tax revenue. They can’t claim that they weren’t warned.

© Brian Balfour for Civitas Review Online, 2010. | Permalink | No comment

By Matt Holdridge

From the Atlantic:

Why is the national security community treating the "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010," introduced by Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday as a standard proposal, as a simple response to the administration's choices in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt? A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity. Read the bill here, and then read the summarized points after the jump.

According to the summary, the bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning.

The post goes on.

There is no distinction between U.S. persons--visa holders or citizens--and non-U.S. persons.)

It would require these "belligerents" to be coded as "high-value detainee[s]" to be held in military custody and interrogated for their intelligence value by a High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team established by the president. (The H.I.G., of course, was established to bring a sophisticated interrogation capacity to the federal justice system.) 

This begs the question, what is a "belligerent" and how loose will this definition become with time? 

By Matt Hawes

Sounds like all the more reason to keep pushing.

The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim reports:

Secretary Tim Geithner, Assistant Treasury Secretary Alan Krueger and Gene Sperling, a counselor to the secretary, held a briefing Monday with new media reporters and financial bloggers during which they discussed the Fed audit and other topics. Under the briefing's ground rules, the officials could be paraphrased but not quoted, and the paraphrase could not be connected to a specific official....

That's leadership!

Asked whether he supports the House-passed measure to open the Fed to an audit, which was cosponsored by Reps. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas), a senior Treasury official said he is intensely opposed to it.

The official said the measure would undermine the independence of monetary policy and could restrict the ability of the Fed to act in times of crisis. He said that the GAO already has audit authority and that the chairman routinely testifies before Congress....

Read the rest.

By Doug Bandow

It is commonly thought that liberal Democrats are defenders of civil liberties.  But as advocates of big government, the Left is no principled defender of freedom.  Barack Obama is the worst sort of status quo Big Government liberal--adopting George W. Bush's wars and attacks on civil liberties as his own.

Glenn Greenwald observes:

although they will try, it will be extremely difficult even for his most devoted loyalists to deny the fundamental cowardice of Barack Obama.  Think about how many times this will have happened: 

During the primary campaign, Obama unequivocally vowed to filibuster any FISA bill that contained telecom immunity, only to turn around -- once the nomination was secure -- and vote against a Democratic filibuster of such a bill, and then in favor of the underlying bill itself; in other words, he blatantly violated his own unequivocal vow in order to avoid being called Soft on Terror (but did so assuring his believing supporters that, once in office, he'd fix the surveilllance excesses he helped enact; don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen).  Then, last May, Obama announced that he would comply with two court decisions by releasing photographs of detainee abuses in the Pentagon's custody, only to turn around two weeks later and completely reverse himself after Liz Cheney and friends accused him of Endangering the Troops and Helping Terrorists.  If, in the face of "GOP demands" that Mohamed be denied a civilian trial, he again reverses himself -- this time on the highest-profile civil liberties decision of his administration -- he will unmistakably reveal himself, even to his most enamored admirers, as someone so utterly devoid not only of principle but also of resolve:  you just blow on him a little and he falls down and shatters into little pieces. 

Even just as a political matter, is there any better way to ensure that Americans will view him as weak than by abandoning one key decision after the next as a result of the slightest pressure?  What kind of person could possibly admire a "leader" who does this? 

There are few dedicated defenders of liberty in the political square these days.  Barack Obama certainly is not one of them.  In fact, we might as well talk about the Bush-Obama administration when it comes these issues.

Doug Bandow, American Conservative Defense Alliance

By tshoes4liberty

Last night, Ron Paul addressed a packed auditorium of nearly 1700 students at the Ohio State University. 

The evening began with musical entertainment from Jordan Page, a guitarist who sang songs promoting peace and civil rights. Following the performance, Foxnews.com's Andrew "Judge" Napolitano broadcast his show "Freedom Watch" live from the stage.

When Paul took the stage a little after 8, the crowd reached its loudest volume.

Dr. Paul frequently expresses his delight at speaking on college campuses.

"I enjoy going around the country and speaking to the students," Paul said. He was positive about high numbers of students attending his events. "That delights me because of the burden placed on that generation."

He ended the speech with words of hope for the future:

"There's reason to be optimistic," he said. "I go to the universities and see young people involved. Young people need to be involved in the revolution."

Read the rest.

By Andrew Ward

For a window into the possible future of U.S. domestic policy, I make sure to "monitor" the flamboyantly Orwellian policies of the United Kingdom.  Here's the latest from British Brother:

All dogs are to be compulsorily microchipped so that their owners can be more easily traced under a crackdown on dangerous dogs to be unveiled today.

The idea, as home secretary Alan Johnson put it, is to ensure the public's right to feel safe in their homes and on the street.  Here is the proposal that will allegedly make Britains feel safer:

Under the scheme a microchip the size of a grain of rice is injected under the skin of the dog between its shoulder blades. The chip contains a unique code number, the dog's name, age, breed and health as well as the owner's name, address and phone number. When the chip is "read" by a handheld scanner the code number is revealed and the details can be checked on a national database.

Why don't they just cut to the chase and try chipping the owners?  Or better yet, chip everyone just in case they might have thoughts about owning a poodle.

Read the rest here.