On Wednesday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that states can deny food stamps to legal immigrants.  The ruling reverses a lower court decision which blocked Washington state from removing non-citizens from the state’s food stamp assistance program.

In February 2011, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire ordered that 14,350 legal immigrants in her cash-strapped state stop receiving food stamps.  However, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington quickly blocked her move, stating it was likely an unconstitutional act of discrimination based on citizenship status.

The appeals court ruling stated:  States constitutionally can do precisely what Washington did here:  "...provide supplemental benefits when the state's coffers bulge, but eliminate them when the state's resources diminish.”

In 1996, a law was passed denying food stamps to legal immigrants who had not yet become citizens.  Then, in 2003, another law was passed making immigrant minors eligible for food stamp assistance.

According to John Camp with the Washington state Department of Social and Health Services, removing the more than 14,000 non-citizens from the food stamp program will save the state more than $60 million over the next two years.

Read the Court of Appeals decision here.


Dave Gibson
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The SNAP/Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever.

Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us to "Please Do Not Feed The Animals".  This is because the animals may grow dependent on handouts and not learn to take care of themselves.

That ends today’s lesson.


Craig DeSpain

This would be laughable -- pathetically laughable -- if it weren't a "serious" Congressional hearing.  But when Nancy Pelosi is involved, you can be certain the crazies and loons are loose, and the fantasyland "testimony" is on full display.

This instance does not disappoint whatsoever in that regard.  If you can stomach the spilth, take in the vile video below.


Bill Cochrane
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A Georgetown co-ed told Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s hearing that the women in her law school program are having so much sex that they’re going broke, so you and I should pay for their birth control.

Speaking at a hearing held by Pelosi to tout Pres. Obama’s mandate that virtually every health insurance plan cover the full cost of contraception and abortion-inducing products, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke said that it’s too expensive to have sex in law school without mandated insurance coverage.

Apparently, four out of every ten co-eds are having so much sex that it's hard to make ends meet if they have to pay for their own contraception, Fluke's research shows.

"Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy" (Georgetown student insurance not covering contraception), Fluke reported.

It costs a female student $3,000 to have protected sex over the course of her three-year stint in law school, according to her calculations.

"Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school", Fluke told the hearing.

$3,000 for birth control in three years?  That’s a thousand dollars a year of sex – and, she wants us to pay for it.

Yes, us.  Where do you think the insurance companies forced to cover this cost get the money to pay for these co-eds to have sex? It comes from the health care insurance premiums that you and I pay.

But, back to this woman’s complaint that she’s spending $3,000 for birth control during her time in college:

"For a lot of students, like me, who are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary," she complains.

So, she earns enough money in just one summer to pays for three full years of sex.  And, yes, they are full years – since she and her co-ed classmates are having sex nearly three times a day for three years straight, apparently.

At a dollar a condom if she shops at CVS pharmacy’s website, that $3,000 would buy her 3,000 condoms – or, 1,000 a year.  (By the way, why does CVS.com list the weight of its condom products in terms of pounds?)

Assuming it’s not a leap year, that’s 1,000 divided by 365 – or having sex 2.74 times a day, every day, for three straight years.  And, I thought Georgetown was a Catholic university where women might be prone to shun casual, unmarried sex.  At least its health insurance doesn't cover contraception (that which you subsidize, you get more of, you know).

And, that’s not even considering that there are Planned Parenthood clinics in her neighborhood that give condoms away and sell them at a discount, which could help make her sexual zeal even more economical.

Besides, maybe, these female law students could cut back on some other expenses to make room for more birth control in their budgets, instead of making us pick up the tab.  With classes and studying and all that sex, who's got time for cable?

And, let's not forget about these deadbeat boyfriends (or random hook-ups?) who are having sex 2.74 times a day.  If Fluke's going to ask the government to force anyone to foot the bill for her friends' birth control, shouldn't it be these guys?

All of this seems to suggest at least two important conclusions:

1. If these women want to have sex, we shouldn't be forced to pay for it, and
2. If these co-eds really are this guy crazy, I should've gone to law school!

Craig Bannister

A sharp increase in the number of Americans that rely on the federal government for housing, food, student aid, income and other aid now means that 49.5% of Americans pay no income taxes. Nada, zip, zilch.

Heritage authors Bill Beach and Patrick Tyrrell state:  “The percentage of people who do not pay federal income taxes, and who are not claimed as dependents by someone who does pay them, jumped from 14.8 percent in 1984 to 49.5 percent in 2009.”  That's three years ago!  What is the percentage now in 2012 ?!?!?!!!


According to Heritage, yes, we should be worried:

The rapid growth of Americans who don’t pay income taxes is particularly alarming for the fate of the American form of government, Beach and Tyrrell warned. Coupled with higher spending on government programs, it is already proving to be a major fiscal challenge.

“This trend should concern everyone who supports America’s republican form of government,” Beach and Tyrrell wrote. “If the citizens’ representatives are elected by an increasing percentage of voters who pay no income tax, how long will it be before these representatives respond more to demands for yet more entitlements and subsidies from non-payers than to the pleas of taxpayers to exercise greater spending prudence?”

A not as succinct restate of Tytler....  But no less true.  This is why this year's elections will be close -- very close.  I believe they will be another "nailbiter".  There is probably a majority of voters now who are in the "recipient class".  That is why Obama and the Democrats and all the Leftists are trying to make this election all about class warfare.

If they can get enough of the recipient class to turn out the vote, and if those recipients vote for more government and more government largesse to themselves, the Leftists win.  This year, it really will come down to voter turnout -- and to voter fraud.



Bill Cochrane

Daniel Hannan has a history of speaking truth to the power structures of the U.K. and E.U.  If you haven't heard him before, I'll wager you'll do some "googling" after you hear his speech to CPAC below.

He speaks to us here in the United States from our future.  He has seen our future, and he warns us with a voice that cannot and must not be dismissed.  From reports of Moore County folks who attended the CPAC conference this year, this speech by Mr. Hannan was the highlight, the apex, the defining moment of the event.  He eclipsed our own politicians and celebrities who spoke there.

I believe after you hear his speech, you will agree.


Bill Cochrane

It has become crystal clear that a chilling belief system has taken root in our society again.  A great many among our population no longer have a deep respect for human life.  It begins with the growing "movement" and loosely allied coalitions among the "green movement", environmenal activists, and the "animal rights" movement.  The most hard core of these clearly place a higher value on the "natural environment" and on other species than they do on the human society.

In fact, they view human society as the greatest threat to the environment, the earth, and the well being of other species.  Their views have grown sufficiently among a segment of society to foster serious debates such as the one here.  Members of the current Administration advocate equal legal rights for animals and the ability for animals to sue in federal court to seek redress for harms by human society.  For example, Cass Sunstein has written:  "that personhood need not be conferred upon an animal in order to grant it various legal protections against abuse or cruelty, even including legal standing for suit."  Animal Rights:  Current Debates and New Directions by Sunstein and Nussbaum.

At a risk of sounding somewhat extreme in my own views, I will propose to you that many among the environmentalist and animal rights movement have developed the same attitude about the human race that was stated so starkly by Agent Smith in The Matrix movie franchise:

This attitude of devaluation of human life came to full fruit in the 1930s and 40s in fascist and communist societies overseas.  But it pervaded the U.S. at that time as well.  Americans had a serious flirtation with the socialistic philosophies of the collective.  So much so, that one of the "most beloved" American playwrights of the era, George Bernard Shaw, publicly and brashly extolled the virtues of Italy's Mussolini and Germany's Hitler.  And he, like many other American socialists placed much more value on the collective, on the "greater good" than on human life.

government health care system based on the ideology of collectivism where in order to ration and properly distribute outcomes, those with less value to the collective -- less value to society as a whole, to the "greater good" -- are to be sacrificed for the benefit of the state.  This is exactly what George Bernard Shaw was saying in those bad old days -- applied these days to health care.

It is a demeaning of the sanctity of life.  It is a devaluation of the individual.  It is an extension of the disrespect for human society emanating from the environmental and animal rights movement.

Now you may think this is painting with too broad a brush -- that life is still considered sacrosanct.  You may think that these are fringe extreme beliefs that I am citing -- in complete disregard for the mainstream and elite positions of the sources themselves.  Well, may I offer you one final chilling, scary source for consideration?  If this doesn't wake people up, what will?

Two eminent American bioethicists in an online article in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, of Duke University, and Franklin G. Miller, of the National Institutes of Health believe that “killing by itself is not morally wrong...".  I urge you to read this article:  Is it morally wrong to take a life? Not really, say bioethicists.

Yes, you read that correctly!  These two mental defectives who unjustly occupy prestigious positions go on to say:  “[T]he dead donor rule is routinely violated in the contemporary practice of vital organ donation. Consistency with traditional medical ethics would entail that this kind of vital organ donation must cease immediately. This outcome would, however, be extremely harmful and unreasonable from an ethical point of view [because patients who could be saved will die]. Luckily, it is easily obviated by abandoning the norm against killing.”

Did you get that?!  According to the National Institutes of Health and Duke University, hospitals "routinely" harvest organs from human beings who are not "really" "fully" dead, but have "lost their value" to themselves and to society.  All right, I'm paraphrasing to make a point.  It is what they said, right?

And finally these "ethicists" compare killing humans to weeding a garden.  They argue that there is nothing sacred about human life:  “[I]f killing were wrong just because it is causing death or the loss of life, then the same principle would apply with the same strength to pulling weeds out of a garden. If it is not immoral to weed a garden, then life as such cannot really be sacred, and killing as such cannot be morally wrong.”

If this is what "ethics" has come to in this country, I want out!  See how far those corrosive ideas have brought us?  We are again on the threshold of eugenics, euthanasia, purges, and all the bad, evil things that were brought to you by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Guevarra, and Chavez.

I want to know.  What is it going to take to wake people up!


Bill Cochrane

__America has had a love-hate relationship with wealth since Andrew Jackson kicked John Quincy Adams and the "corrupt aristocrats of the East" out of the White House, inviting the D.C. area rabble to celebrate his "common man" inaugural with a party so raucous that it nearly destroyed the interior of the nation's Executive Mansion.

Our country and indeed our Constitution celebrate the ideal of individual liberty with the added notion that with hard work, there is no barrier to success.  And, in accord with this formula, the property that results from that success is protected from arbitrary government seizure.  It is a way of life that has made our nation the most universally prosperous on Earth.

But in the midst of great wealth, in a country where even the "poor" have cellphones, cars and color televisions, politicians like to profit from the natural desire of man to covet his neighbor's possessions.  It was this theme that permeated the president's State of the Union address this past week.

Historically, Barack Obama is not alone.  Democrat William Jennings Bryan demanded that the government "free silver" so it could be used to equalize the lack of wealth found in the Midwest with the comparative great wealth of the East.  Like Obama, Bryan wanted to create more money, an inflated currency, so it could be distributed more widely.

The "Progressives" and "Populists" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were, in this sense little different than liberals today:  Inflate and "progressively" tax the currency, reducing its value, to the detriment of those who, in the opinion of the government, have too much of it.

In other words, while Obama might claim that his State of the Union address was filled with new ideas and new initiatives, the truth is that it contained nothing new and was replete with ideas that the nation discussed and, in the end, rejected for centuries.

What is even more disquieting is the hypocrisy with which liberals like Obama have dealt with wealth.

When Franklin Roosevelt entertained his first lady at Hyde Park, N.Y., or his mistress at Warm Springs, Ga., it was "elegant."  It was just as elegant when Jackie Kennedy patronized the opera.  But when Republican Nelson Rockefeller became vice president or Nancy Reagan wore a designer dress, that wealth needed a thorough investigation.

So, too, is the plight of Mitt Romney, whose wealth is probably less than that of the Kennedy family, but whose success even some Republicans use for populist "red meat."

The fact is that the American economy has a manufacturing and jobs problem.  Even the President recognized that.  We need to manufacture and sell more steel, more software and more industrial goods.

But our steel industry was not created by government; it was created by entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie.  Our oil fields were not developed by Congress; they were developed by individuals like John Rockefeller.

Even our car industry was not a creature of government.  It was made successful by the likes of not only Henry Ford, but also Mitt's father, George Romney, who created American Motors.  This was the company that later rescued America's Jeep from obscurity.

No government subsidy was ever found in the garage of Steve Jobs. Microsoft Windows was not a federal program.  It was the entrepreneur, uninhibited by government, that established our nation's prosperity.  But Obama showed little understanding of that in his speech this past week.

None of us know whether Mitt Romney will ever become president or even a Republican nominee.  He faces challenging competition from other very able candidates.  But without his wealth and entrepreneurial spirit, no one at Staples, Domino's Pizza or Sports Authority would have a job.

We all might want "free silver," but the truth is that the only ways to get it are to tax it, borrow it, or earn it.  If we tax it away from those who earn it, they will see no reason to continue their efforts.  If we borrow it, eventually we will run out of "silver" to pay it back.

Indeed, the only road to wealth is to "do it the old-fashioned way -- earn it." And we should neither criticize those who do earn wealth nor destroy their efforts to do it.  If we do such, the evil is not within the wealth of the wealthy, but within our own envy.

Robert M. Levy is chairman of the Moore County Republican party.

_The left-wing Occupy fools keep talking about the richest 1%.  Just who is the 1%?  You are.  It doesn't matter how rich you think you are.  To the world, you are the 1%.  The Occupy folks are the 1%, too.  They're simply either too stupid to know it, or they are lying to accomplish a redistributive agenda for the Left.

You see, the Left likes to talk about the high rates of poverty in the U.S.  But, the problem is, they intentionally set the bar very high in order to claim poverty -- in order to convince a large portion of the American populace that they are impoverished, kept down, victims of the evil rich.  Vote for Big Government, and Big Government will lift everyone up and make sure everyone gets equal stuff.  Let's examine again whether that makes any sense at all.

What we first need to understand is that the entire "Green" "Environmental" movement is aimed at redistributing wealth throughout the world through a scheme involving carbon credits, international taxes and fees, and transfer of jobs and technology.  Why.  Because the rest of the world is relatively poor.  The U.S. has already transferred almost all of our manufacturing jobs to other countries.  We give huge sums of money through various channels (e.g. foreign aid, military assistance & expenditures, huge transfers to the International Monetary Fund, secret grants and loans from the Federal Reserve, humanitarian aid, and funds channeled through the United Nations).  Our high taxes and regulations have spurred a migration of the wealthy and educated to friendlier countries such that there is a six month to two-year backlog on processing repatriation paperwork for ex-US-citizens.

But, in spite of all this transfer of wealth that has been taking place, the data show that we in the U.S. are still by far the richest nation on the face of the earth.  Americans make up a full one-half of the world's richest 1%.  Did you get that?  Let me repeat:  Americans make up a full one-half of the world's richest 1%.

What income level does it take to be counted within the top 1% of the world's richest people?  It only takes $34,000 a year, after taxes, to be among the richest 1% in the world.  That's for each person living under the same roof, including children.

What is the income level of the world's "middle class"?  In fact, people at the world's true middle -- as defined by median income -- live on just $1,225 a year.

Now, I guarantee you that those "poor" "oppressed" Occupy people are almost certainly among the 1% they so like to condemn publicly.  What hypocrites!

No, let's not just call them hypocrites.  They are servants of a global redistribution (read Socialist/Communist) agenda to transfer wealth from all of us to the world.   But the entire U.S. population accounts for only about 5% of the world's population.  If all the world's wealth were redistributed to give everybody equal stuff, would everyone be richer?  Or would everyone then be poor?

The answer is obvious.  If global socialism were ever truly implemented, the entire world would be equally impoverished.  But everyone would have equal stuff in their extreme poverty.  Wouldn't that be paradise?  But then, who would pay for all the solar panels?

Read:  Americans make up half of the world's richest 1%


Bill Cochrane