The real stakes on Nov. 4 transcend issues....
Lady Liberty celebrated her 128th birthday last Monday. Later, Emma Lazarus's famous poem, "The New Colossus" (1903) was added:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Recent news items warn us that the Golden Door is being kept open without security--think Obama's planned post-election mass amnesty for illegals-- while inside the flame of Liberty is being extinguished. Comes Bill Clinton, still the master of American politics, who bluntly warns of identity politics peril:
“I believe that in ways large and small, peaceful and sometimes violent, that the biggest threat to the future of our children and grandchildren is the poison of identity politics that preaches that our differences are far more important than our common humanity.”
OK, so his wife is Ms. Identity Politics for Boomers....
George Will writes on a major abuse of state power: state police & prosecutorial resources have been dedicated to the proposition that Gov. Scott Walker, who had the temerity to take on the powerful public employee unions, must be defeated for re-election. GW describes the tactic:
The early-morning paramilitary-style raids on citizens’ homes were conducted by law-enforcement officers, sometimes wearing bulletproof vests and lugging battering rams, pounding on doors and issuing threats. Spouses were separated as the police seized computers, including those of children still in pajamas. Clothes drawers, including the children’s, were ransacked, cell phones were confiscated, and the citizens were told it would be a crime to tell anyone of the raids.
Some raids were precursors of, others were parts of, the nastiest episode of this unlovely political season, an episode that has occurred in an unlikely place. This attempted criminalization of politics in order to silence persons occupying just one portion of the political spectrum has happened in Wisconsin, which often has conducted robust political arguments with Midwestern civility....
Wisconsin, which to its chagrin produced Republican senator Joe McCarthy, has been embarrassed by Milwaukee County’s Democratic district attorney, John Chisholm. He has used Wisconsin’s uniquely odious “John Doe” process to launch sweeping and virtually unsupervised investigations while imposing gag orders to prevent investigated persons from defending themselves or rebutting politically motivated leaks, which have occurred.
Will notes that the courts curbed the tactic, but not until much political activity inconvenient to Wisconsin democrats had been suppressed. And going forward there is the deterrent effect such police-state tactics have. Fundraising has been curbed, with innocent people forced to spend money on lawyers to fight government thugs. And there is the chilling prospect that this will happen again come the presidential election in 2016, with far greater stakes in play. So the runaway DA has accomplished much, albeit trashing the state constitution he had taken an oath to uphold, and the federal constitution has was legally obligated to obey. Will adopts Michael Barone's "gangster government" term to cover these outrages.
Meanwhile, the nationa's top due process violator, the IRS, has been seizing bank accounts of small business owners upon mere suspicion of fragmenting deposits to evade IRS bank account reporting rules, calling for reports as to deposits above $10,000. The agency is using against ordinary citizens tools intended for going after drug lords & crime bosses, whose extraordinary resources frustrate criminal prosecution under normal rules. One grocery-store owner kept deposits below $10,000 because his insurance coverage was limited to $10,000. Some owners have forfeited hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, and are unable to afford to sue. Judges have failed to protect people from such thuggish abuse, which the IRS now claims it will curtail--a promise likely to be ignored by the agency.
G. W. Bush appointee Reggie Walton ludicrously declared True-the-Vote's case v. the IRS "moot" because the IRS had granted tax-exempt status to TTV. That the IRS did so after the 2012 election, and that successful harassment of conservative groups then surely will deter future political activity, apparently means nothing to this judge.
Fox News reports that CBS star investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson found her computers skilfully hacked as she investigated the Obama administration:
From the moment that Sharyl Attkisson met a shadowy source I’ll call Big Mac, she was plunged into a nightmare involving mysterious surveillance of her computers.
They met at a McDonald’s in Northern Virginia at the beginning of 2013, and the source (she dubs him Number One) warned her about the threat of government spying. During their next hamburger rendezvous, Big Mac told Attkisson, then a CBS News reporter constantly at odds with the Obama administration, that he was “shocked” and “flabbergasted” by his examination of her computer and that this was “worse than anything Nixon ever did.”
Attkisson’s forthcoming book--“Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction and Intimidation in Obama’s Washington”—reads in part like a spy thriller. Just when you think Attkisson’s imagination might be running away with her comes wave after wave of evidence that both her CBS computer and personal iMac were repeatedly hacked and its files accessed, including one on Benghazi. A consultant hired by CBS reached the same conclusion. Further scrutiny of her personal desktop proves that “the interlopers were able to co-opt my iMac and operate it remotely, as if they were sitting in front of it.” And an inspection revealed that an extra fiber-optics line had been installed in Attkisson’s home without her knowledge....
In the fall of 2013, with White House officials accusing Attkisson of being biased in her Benghazi reporting, the files in her MacBook Air suddenly began deleting at hyperspeed right before her eyes. She videotaped the process and showed it to two computer experts. "They're [blanking] with you," one says. "They're trying to send you a message," says the other. The experts also found evidence that the intruders had tried to cover their tracks by erasing 23 hours of log-in information.
Space aliens, perhaps?
Last but hardly least, NRO's Mona Charen presents evidence that Democrats benefit from non-citizens unlawfully voting: TTV found 6.9 million duplicate voter registrations in 28 surveyed states. MC frames the argument made by Democrats about "voter suppression" (one study found that 98 percent of whites & 97 percent of blacks have voter ID):
Voter-ID laws, passed by thirty states so far, are efforts by legislatures to ensure the integrity of votes. Being asked to show a photo ID can diminish several kinds of fraud, including impersonation, duplicate registrations in different jurisdictions, and voting by ineligible people including felons and non-citizens.
The Democrats have made a number of arguments against voter-ID laws. They argue a) that the problem of voter impersonation or in-person voter fraud is nonexistent; b) that black and poor voters are more likely than others to lack a valid ID; and c) that Republicans are attempting to “suppress” the votes of Democratic constituencies in a bid to revive Jim Crow.
To believe a), you must assume that Americans, who engage in widespread tax evasion (an estimated $2 trillion in income goes unreported), insurance fraud (an estimated $80 billion dollar’s worth in 2006), identity theft (15 million victims annually), and thousands of other deceptions and crimes large and small are perfect angels when they step into the voting booth. Vote fraud simply “doesn’t exist,” pronounced Attorney General Eric Holder.
One study showed 1/4 of non-citizens registered to vote; about 80 percent of those who vote will vote Democratic. Illegal votes may provide the margin in crucial Senate races, and if so perhaps enable the Democrats to retain control of the Senate.
Bottom Line. Perhaps more important than the economy, even perhaps more so than foreign-policy retreat, is the police-state atmosphere promoted by Team Obama. We could lose our liberties at home faster than they might be eroded by adversaries overseas or by a stagnant domestic economy.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, Conservative Politics
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