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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Colorado</title>
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	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
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		<title>Hey, Bloomberg: Mind Your Own Crumbling City</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michellemalkin/hey-bloomberg-mind-your-own-crumbling-city/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hey-bloomberg-mind-your-own-crumbling-city</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/michellemalkin/hey-bloomberg-mind-your-own-crumbling-city/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2014 04:25:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gun]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Bloomberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York City]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rolling stone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Second Amendment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236211</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The real reason the former NYC mayor lashed out at "rural" Colorado. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Bloomberg-angry.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236212" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Bloomberg-angry-427x350.jpg" alt="Bloomberg-angry" width="268" height="220" /></a>Some sore losers just don&#8217;t know when to pick up their billion-dollar marbles and go away. Far, far away.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m looking at you, Michael Bloomberg.</p>
<p>The former New York City mayor mouthed off about my adopted hometown of Colorado Springs and my friends in nearby Pueblo in Rolling Stone magazine this month. He snidely bashed our neighborhoods as backwater holes &#8220;where I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s roads. It&#8217;s as far rural as you can get.&#8221;</p>
<p>Snotty Bloomberg is as clueless about geography as he is about the Second Amendment. Colorado Springs and Pueblo are the second and seventh largest cities in the state, respectively. If we&#8217;re hee-haw, everyone&#8217;s hee-haw. (And what&#8217;s wrong with hee-haw, anyway?)</p>
<p>Why such vitriol and hatred for the Rockies from the man who pompously co-founded the &#8220;No Labels&#8221; movement for &#8220;civility&#8221; in politics?</p>
<p>Simple: Bloomberg&#8217;s still smarting from the ground-breaking losses he and his gun-grabbing East Coast elite pals suffered last fall.</p>
<p>Grass-roots activists — independents, former Democrats, constitutional conservatives and Republicans — successfully recalled two top gun control zealots in our state legislature.</p>
<p>The recall organizers were outspent by a whopping 7-to-1 margin. Bloomberg poured $350,000 into the failed effort to stave off the historic recalls.</p>
<p>Listen up, Bloomie: Butt out of our state and mind your own crumbling city before you bash anyone else&#8217;s infrastructure.</p>
<p>You were mayor of New York City for 12 years. How are your roads, bridges and utilities doing, Pal?</p>
<p>According to the Center for an Urban Future&#8217;s Adam Forman, &#8220;1,000 miles of water mains, 170 school buildings and 165 bridges were constructed over a century ago.</p>
<p>The city&#8217;s public hospital buildings are 57 years old, on average, and 531 public housing towers were built prior to 1950.&#8221; The center&#8217;s report documented 403 water main breaks last year. And in 2012, &#8220;162 bridges across the city — or 11 percent of the total — were structurally deficient,&#8221; and 47 of these were deemed &#8220;fracture critical.&#8221;</p>
<p>Take a Big Gulp of these additional fun facts:</p>
<p>— &#8220;Thirty seven percent of all subway signals exceed their 50-year useful life, slowing the movement of trains.&#8221;</p>
<p>— &#8220;Approximately 4,000 miles of sewer pipe across the city are made of vitreous clay, a material susceptible to cracking and blockage.</p>
<p>— Meanwhile, 1,500 of the 2,600 public housing buildings do not comply with local standards for exterior and facade conditions.</p>
<p>— In Manhattan and Staten Island, less than 60 percent of roads were rated &#8220;good&#8221; by residents. A &#8220;staggering 65.9 percent of streets in West Harlem/Morningside Heights&#8221; were in &#8220;fair to poor condition.&#8221;</p>
<p>— Highway maintenance has deteriorated over Bloomberg&#8217;s tenure. In 2012, 51 percent of highways were rated poor to fair, compared to 38 percent in 2008. &#8220;Conditions have declined in every borough except Brooklyn.&#8221;</p>
<p>Oh, and dare I mention to you and your city slicker clique that embarrassing time you had a few Christmas seasons ago dealing with a few feet of snow. Hundreds of ambulances were left stranded. Mass transit was paralyzed. Businesses suffered. Your bungling and AWOL jet setting (Bloomberg was flying to Bermuda while New Yorkers braced for the storm) cost taxpayers the entire $40 million snow removal budget and $30 million in city overtime.</p>
<p>But we&#8217;re the bumbling yokels?</p>
<p>Go home, Nanny Bloomberg. Keep your high-and-mighty nose out of our business, your hands off our guns and your money out of our state.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
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		<slash:comments>25</slash:comments>
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		<title>Despite Legalization, Drug Dealers Continue to Do Business and Kill in Colorado</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/despite-legalization-drug-dealers-continue-to-do-business-and-kill-in-colorado/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=despite-legalization-drug-dealers-continue-to-do-business-and-kill-in-colorado</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/despite-legalization-drug-dealers-continue-to-do-business-and-kill-in-colorado/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 06 Apr 2014 22:26:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drug users]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=222856</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ “If you can get it tax-free on the corner, you’re going to get it on the corner.”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/RTR310DH.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-222857" alt="A woman holds a sign at a pro-marijuana rally at the University of Colorado in Boulder" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/RTR310DH-450x320.jpg" width="450" height="320" /></a></p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, legalizing drugs doesn&#8217;t actually work. It leads to an increase in tax revenue which is more than offset by the expenses created by its users. And th<a href="http://www.leadertelegram.com/news/daily_updates/article_b5468274-bd47-11e3-b2b6-001a4bcf887a.html">e illegal drug market keeps rolling right along</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>A 25-year-old is shot dead trying to sell marijuana the old-fashioned, illegal way. Two men from Texas set up a warehouse to grow more than they would ever need. And three people buying pot in a grocery store parking lot are robbed at gunpoint.</p>
<p>Arapahoe County, outside Denver, has seen “a growing number of drug rips and outright burglaries and robberies of people who have large amounts of marijuana or cash on them,” said District Attorney George Brauchler.</p>
<p>“It has done nothing more than enhance the opportunity for the black market,” said Lt. Mark Comte of the Colorado Springs police vice and narcotics unit. “If you can get it tax-free on the corner, you’re going to get it on the corner.”</p>
<p>His district has seen at least three homicides linked to pot in recent months and a rising number of robberies and home invasions.</p>
<p>Among them was a February case in which a 17-year-old boy said he accidentally shot and killed his girlfriend while robbing a man who had come to buy weed.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, prosecutors say, Nathaniel Tallman, 25, was killed during a January drug deal when he was robbed and shot, and his body dumped in Wyoming.</p></blockquote>
<p>And Colorado&#8217;s drug market is now becoming a regional problem.</p>
<blockquote><p>If some Colorado drug dealers have lost business to legal retailers, some also have made up for it by transporting weed to other states.</p>
<p>A Lakewood man was arrested in March after postal inspectors intercepted a package he was mailing containing a pound of pot. Drug task force officers who later searched his home found scores of gallon-sized bags of marijuana and 76 plants.</p></blockquote>
<p>But don&#8217;t worry, this is just a temporary transition period, said every ideologue ever.</p>
<blockquote><p>Pot advocates say the state is in a transition period, and while pot-related crimes will continue, they will begin to decline as more stores open and prices of legal marijuana decline.</p>
<p>“It’s just a transition period,” activist Brian Vicente said. “Marijuana was illegal for the last 80 years in our state, and there are some remnants of that still around. Certainly, much like alcohol, over time these underground dealers will fade away.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Sure, sure. Just give it a few years and everything will be fine. It&#8217;s just &#8216;remnants&#8217; of the old way.</p>
<p>The USSR kept saying that right before it fell. Ideologues always assume that people will behave in line with their ideology and contrary to human nature.</p>
<p>And people always go on behaving according to human nature instead.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the pot advocates will say that if the state stops taxing pot, then the drug dealers will go away, even though their whole legalization argument rested on tax revenue.</p>
<p>And then when that doesn&#8217;t work, they&#8217;ll call for penalizing organizations that claim drug abuse is wrong.</p>
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		<slash:comments>16</slash:comments>
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		<title>Welfare Stoners: $5,475 Withdrawn on Food Stamp Cards in Colorado Pot Stores</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/welfare-stoners-5475-withdrawn-on-food-stamp-cards-in-colorado-pot-stores/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=welfare-stoners-5475-withdrawn-on-food-stamp-cards-in-colorado-pot-stores</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/welfare-stoners-5475-withdrawn-on-food-stamp-cards-in-colorado-pot-stores/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Feb 2014 15:12:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EBT]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marijuana]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219623</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["Why do Democrats think it’s okay for welfare beneficiaries to withdraw  benefits in pot shops?"]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Colorado_Cannabis_staver_0911362524706.jpg"><img class="alignnone  wp-image-219624" alt="Colorado_Cannabis_staver_0911362524706" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Colorado_Cannabis_staver_0911362524706.jpg" width="424" height="283" /></a></p>
<p>I don&#8217;t think <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371814/welfare-money-goes-pot-colorado-jillian-kay-melchior">pot is covered by food stamp cards</a>, but by <a href="http://weaselzippers.us/176340-ebt-cards-used-in-colorado-weed-shops-ay-least-64-times-in-january/">the time the left gets done with Colorado,</a> it probably will be.</p>
<blockquote><p>During the first month of Colorado’s experiment with legal marijuana, welfare beneficiaries withdrew thousands of dollars in public-assistance cash from ATMs at weed shops, according to records obtained by National Review Online.</p>
<p>At least 64 times, public-assistance benefits were accessed at businesses selling marijuana. A total of $5,475 in public benefits was withdrawn at ATMs in establishments that sell pot.</p>
<p>The amounts withdrawn ranged from $20 to $400, averaging $85.55, according to the transaction records. In Colorado, the average household receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits includes one adult and two children, and the maximum monthly benefit for them is $462.</p>
<p>Colorado lawmakers recently failed to pass legislation that would have prohibited EBT withdrawals at retail marijuana shops, medical-marijuana dispensaries, and strip clubs.</p>
<p>“When we passed Amendment 64 to legalize marijuana, the main mantra of the campaign was, ‘Legalize marijuana like alcohol,’” Representative Dan Nordberg, a Republican from Colorado Springs, tells NRO. “But the bill was killed in the state senate, party line. Truth be told, you would think this is common sense, yet I’ve still not received a straight answer for why [Colorado’s Democrats] killed our bill and think it’s okay for welfare beneficiaries to withdraw public benefits in pot shops and strip clubs.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Because that&#8217;s why they vote for Colorado Democrats in the first place.</p>
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		<slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
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		<title>Colorado Loses $85 Million a Year Over Dem Gun Control Jihad</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/colorado-loses-85-million-a-year-over-dem-gun-control-jihad/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=colorado-loses-85-million-a-year-over-dem-gun-control-jihad</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/colorado-loses-85-million-a-year-over-dem-gun-control-jihad/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 05 Jan 2014 17:56:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bloomberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[magpul]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214595</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I hope that Bloomberg money was worth it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/600x39926.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-214597" alt="Josh Westerlund" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/600x39926-450x299.jpg" width="450" height="299" /></a></p>
<p>I <a href="http://weaselzippers.us/?p=166631">hope that Bloomberg money was worth i</a>t. Unlike Magpul, Bloomberg isn&#8217;t going to be opening up shop in Colorado.</p>
<blockquote><p>Democrats came under heavy criticism Friday for driving Magpul Industries out of Colorado by pushing an aggressive gun-control agenda, a move that could cost the state more than $80 million annually.</p>
<p>Officials at Magpul, which makes polymer firearms accessories, announced Thursday that the company will move its corporate headquarters to Texas and its manufacturing facility to Wyoming. Both are now based in Erie, Colo.</p>
<p>The relocation comes as a result of a measure signed by Gov. John Hickenlooper in March that limits ammunition-magazine capacity to 15 rounds. Magpul is among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the law.</p>
<p>Prior to the signing, Magpul officials told state officials that the company contributes more than $85 million annually to Colorado’s economy. The company employs 200 people and supports another 400 supply-chain jobs.</p></blockquote>
<p>Colorado has a 6.8% unemployment rate. Texas has a 6.2% unemployment rate. Wyoming has a 4.2% unemployment rate. I wonder why that is.</p>
<p>The civilian labor force in Colorado has kept on falling. So clearly this is the time to dump more people out of the workforce over a liberal values issue.</p>
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		<slash:comments>26</slash:comments>
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		<title>Nation&#8217;s Largest Teachers&#8217; Union Funds Ads Accusing 2nd Amendment Supporters of Being Pedophiles</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/nations-largest-teachers-union-funds-ads-accusing-2nd-amendment-supporters-of-being-pedophiles/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=nations-largest-teachers-union-funds-ads-accusing-2nd-amendment-supporters-of-being-pedophiles</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/nations-largest-teachers-union-funds-ads-accusing-2nd-amendment-supporters-of-being-pedophiles/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Nov 2013 03:43:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NEA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=211843</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The NEA is really staying classy in the Colorado recall battles]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The NEA, the nation&#8217;s largest teachers&#8217; union, is really staying classy in the Colorado recall battles <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/365036/gun-control-movements-thug-tactics-colorado-charles-c-w-cooke">pitting supporters of the Second Amendment</a> against their elected officials.</p>
<p>In a desperate effort to convince Coloradans not to sign any more recall petitions, the Democracy Defense Fund distributed these door hangers accusing the petition collectors of being criminals and pedophiles.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/DoorHangers.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-211844" alt="DoorHangers" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/DoorHangers-262x350.jpg" width="432" height="577" /></a></p>
<p>Though Colorado Democrats have denied any connection to the door hangers, the Democracy Defense Fund <a href="http://tracer.sos.colorado.gov/PublicSite/SearchPages/CommitteeDetail.aspx?OrgID=26422">lists Kathryn Wallace </a>as its registered agent. <a href="http://data.denverpost.com/election/candidates/kathryn-wallace/">Wallace has run for office</a> several times and <a href="http://jeffcodems.org/web/Documents/2009ER_DONORFormA9.pdf">appears to be affiliated with the</a> Jefferson County Democratic Party.</p>
<p>More significantly, the Democracy Defense Fund is drawing its money from reliable liberal donors. <a href="http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2013/11/26/union-dollars-help-group-backing-sen-hudak-rake-in-120k-to-fend-off-recall/102995/#more-102995">Mainly unions who play power games</a> with the forced contributions of workers.</p>
<blockquote><p>Finance reports filed late Monday night reveal the Democracy Defense Fund, which is backing Hudak, received about $120,000 in the reporting period from Oct. 21 until Nov. 19.</p>
<p>A snapshot of the reports reveals the NEA Fund for Children and Education, a Washington, D.C. – based political action committee, bankrolled the group with $25,000 and the union AFSCME doled out $20,000. Colorado’s AFL-CIO contributed $15,000, while the International Association of Firefighters contributed $10,000.</p>
<p>Last week, Recall Hudak Too, the group looking to oust Hudak, reported raising $64,600 in the same time frame, with most of the money coming from hundreds of small dollar contributors.</p></blockquote>
<p>So the NEA Fund for Children and Education is intervening in a Colorado local election to help fund accusations that citizens who favor recalling anti-Second Amendment politicians are pedophiles.</p>
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		<slash:comments>21</slash:comments>
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		<title>Colorado Gov Suddenly No Longer a Fan of Gun Control</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/colorado-gov-suddenly-no-longer-a-fan-of-gun-control/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=colorado-gov-suddenly-no-longer-a-fan-of-gun-control</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/colorado-gov-suddenly-no-longer-a-fan-of-gun-control/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 15 Sep 2013 14:15:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hickenlooper]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=204213</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Wonder what could have happened last week to change his mind.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/bilde.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-204214" alt="bilde" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/bilde-450x316.jpg" width="450" height="316" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/hickenlooper-nervously-defends-gun-control-laws-after-colorado-recalls/article/2535664">Wonder what could have happened</a> last week to change his mind.</p>
<p>Democrats had learned to stay off Gun Control. But Obama&#8217;s arrogance really knew no boundaries and after shoving through everything from gay marriage to amnesty, he thought gun control would be easy.</p>
<p>It turned out to be as easy as invading Syria. Democrats in gun-friendly states are about to start retreating in a big way.</p>
<blockquote><p>Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado defended his record on gun control after two Democratic state senators were recalled by their constituents in an election on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Hickenlooper admitted that the special election results were likely the result of the new laws limiting high-capacity magazines and requiring universal background checks for firearms purchases, but suggested that it was an overreaction.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s worth saying Colorado has maintained people&#8217;s right to own a gun &#8212; we&#8217;ve maintained the full respect for the Second Amendment,&#8221; he insisted during a press conference on Wednesday.</p>
<p>One reporter asked Hickenlooper if he would sign the bills again today if he had to do them all over again.</p>
<p>&#8220;You know I&#8217;m not going to second guess myself … every time I do that, it invariably gets me into trouble,&#8221; Hickenlooper said as he ended the press conference.</p></blockquote>
<p>That&#8217;s not the way he was talking a little while ago.</p>
<blockquote><p>Hickenlooper said large-capacity magazines &#8220;have the potential to turn killers into killing machines.&#8221; He also said he realized some gun owners may be inconvenienced but that &#8220;the potential for damage seems to outweigh, significantly, the inconvenience that people would have,&#8221; he said.</p></blockquote>
<p>But this is what he sounds like now.</p>
<blockquote><p>He admitted, however, that he was never as &#8220;fired up&#8221; about limits on ammunition magazines.</p>
<p>&#8220;That was a tough one,&#8221; he said.</p></blockquote>
<p>No the recalls were tough.</p>
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		<title>Gun-Grabbers Go Full Femme-a-Gogue in Colorado</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/michellemalkin/gun-grabbers-go-full-femme-a-gogue-in-colorado/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=gun-grabbers-go-full-femme-a-gogue-in-colorado</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/michellemalkin/gun-grabbers-go-full-femme-a-gogue-in-colorado/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Sep 2013 04:10:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Abortion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Contraception]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gun]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Second Amendment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203119</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Exposing the true misogynists who want to strip women of the right to defend themselves. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/gty_gun_control_rally_ll_121218_wg.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203120" alt="gty_gun_control_rally_ll_121218_wg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/gty_gun_control_rally_ll_121218_wg-450x342.jpg" width="270" height="205" /></a>COLORADO SPRINGS — Out: The boy who cried wolf. In: The girl who cried birth control. Desperate Democrats are imposing false-alarm feminist politics on a high-stakes recall election in Colorado this month. It&#8217;s a golden opportunity for independent-minded women to reject empty femme-a-goguery and tear up the Sandra Fluke card.</p>
<p>On September 10, Colorado Springs and Pueblo will decide whether to boot two top state Democrats (state Senate Majority Leader John Morse and state Sen. Angela Giron) over their support for radical gun- and ammo-control measures spearheaded by outside special interests. Left-wing billionaires Michael Bloomberg of New York City and Eli Broad of Detroit have poured $700,000 between them into defending the endangered Colorado Democrats.</p>
<p>A whiff of elitist progressive panic is polluting the Rocky Mountain air. Polls show &#8220;moderate&#8221; Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, who was against anti-Second Amendment gesture theater before he was for it, losing favor here. The libs&#8217; gun-control laws (including more intrusive background checks and ammo mag limits) have driven manufacturing jobs away, made it more difficult for law-abiding gun-owners to conduct business, and done little to increase public safety. No wonder Hickenlooper has barely lifted one of his wavering, wet fingers in the wind to assist the recall targets.</p>
<p>Extremist liberal groups are filling the vacuum. They&#8217;re trotting out ridiculous fear-mongers to demonize Morse&#8217;s GOP challenger Bernie Herpin and Giron&#8217;s challenger George Rivera as misogynistic zealots hell-bent on confiscating every condom, morning-after pill and key to an abortion clinic in the Pikes Peak region. Exhale. Consider the newly formed 527 political action group &#8220;We Can Do Better, Colorado,&#8221; which put out ominous mailers and TV ads created by a Chicago-based firm. The spots are narrated by an angst-filled female who asks:</p>
<p>&#8220;What would you call someone who supports a ban on common forms of birth control? Interferes with our personal decisions?&#8221; &#8230;</p>
<p>&#8220;Someone who supports a plan that could even allow police to investigate miscarriages and question the grieving woman like a criminal?&#8221;</p>
<p>The narrator frets that if birth control warriors don&#8217;t rise up against the Neanderthals, they might soon be calling Herpin and Rivera &#8220;state senators.&#8221; Gasp! The Republican challengers appear in the ads as shadowy threats in black-and-white photos. All that&#8217;s missing are the wire hangers.</p>
<p>Locals here also report that their college-age children are receiving push calls zeroing in on GOP opposition to taxpayer-subsidized birth control, abortion and the so-called Personhood amendment — none of which sparked the recall in the first place and are not at issue in the special elections.</p>
<p>The reality? Both Herpin and Rivera are pro-life, mainstream Republicans focused on increasing economic opportunity and government accountability. Their recall campaigns have zeroed in on the control freak Democrats&#8217; underhanded subversion of transparency and the deliberative process during their gun-control hearings.</p>
<p>The true misogynists are Morse, Giron and their Bloomberg-bolstered gang who shut out Colorado citizens, disparaged Second Amendment-supporting rape victims and female concealed-carry permit holders, and cut off the testimony of countless sheriffs who opposed the sovereignty-infringing gun-control measures. Women voters here and across the country should not forget that these Nanny Staters told grandmothers, mothers and daughters last spring that they don&#8217;t need handguns to defend themselves, because &#8220;rape whistles,&#8221; &#8220;call boxes&#8221; and &#8220;ballpoint pens&#8221; are sufficient.</p>
<p>The gun-grabbing femme-a-gogues think they can do what they did to Colorado U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck in 2010: hammer the GOP into submission and defeat over their phony &#8220;reproductive rights&#8221; agenda. Enough. &#8220;Our bodies, our choice&#8221; does not just apply to abortion and birth control. It applies to every woman&#8217;s right to defend herself as she sees fit.</p>
<p>The Dems&#8217; presumptuous paternalism aims to keep independent women both physically and intellectually disarmed. I say: Think and act with your lady smarts, not your lady parts.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>One Nation Under Allah &#8212; on The Glazov Gang</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/one-nation-under-allah-on-the-glazov-gang/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=one-nation-under-allah-on-the-glazov-gang</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 28 Jun 2013 04:25:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov Productions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Glazov Gang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[allah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pledge of allegiance]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=194091</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why are our children in a Colorado public school saying the Pledge of Allegiance to Islam's Allah in Arabic?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/liberty1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-194831" alt="liberty" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/liberty1-267x350.jpg" width="267" height="350" /></a>This week&#8217;s <em>Glazov Gang</em> had the honor of being joined by <strong>Nonie Darwish</strong>, author of &#8220;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Devil-Dont-Know-Revolutions/dp/1118133390">The Devil We Don&#8217;t Know</a>,&#8221; <strong>Michael Chandler</strong>, an American Patriot, and <strong>Dwight Schultz</strong>, a Hollywood actor (<a href="http://www.dwightschultzfansite.nl/">dwightschultzfansite.nl</a>).</p>
<p>This week our Gang members gathered to discuss <em>One Nation Under Allah, </em>wondering why our children in a Colorado public school are saying the Pledge of Allegiance to Islam&#8217;s Allah in Arabic.</p>
<p>The guests also discussed <em>The Brotherhood Game, </em>focusing on how Islamists play the “moderate” charade that we desperately embrace.</p>
<p>And much, much more. . . .</p>
<p>To see both parts of this two-part series, see below:</p>
<p><strong>Part I:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WBU7fOwk0OA" height="325" width="425" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part II:</strong></p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Opipozc57TU" height="325" width="425" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>The Anti-Choice Left&#8217;s Disarming of American Women</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/michellemalkin/the-anti-choice-lefts-disarming-of-american-women/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-anti-choice-lefts-disarming-of-american-women</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/michellemalkin/the-anti-choice-lefts-disarming-of-american-women/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Feb 2013 04:25:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attacks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[safety]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self defense]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=178325</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[To females who face sexual predators, leftists say "passive resistance may be your best defense." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/michellemalkin/the-anti-choice-lefts-disarming-of-american-women/womangun/" rel="attachment wp-att-178326"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-178326" title="WomanGun" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/WomanGun.jpg" alt="" width="322" height="236" /></a>If radical gun-grabbers have their way, your daughters, mothers and grandmothers will have nothing but whistles, pens and bodily fluids to defend themselves against violent attackers and sexual predators. Women of all ages, races and political backgrounds should be up in arms over the coordinated attack on their right to bear arms.</p>
<p>In Colorado this week, male Democratic legislators assailed concealed-carry supporters and disparaged female students who refuse to depend on the government for protection. The Democrat-controlled House passed a statewide ban on concealed-carry weapons on college campuses, along with several other extreme gun-control measures that will undermine citizen safety and drive dozens of businesses out of the state.</p>
<p>Condescending Democratic Rep. Joe Salazar of Colorado asserted that young women can&#8217;t be trusted to assess threatening situations at their colleges or universities: &#8220;It&#8217;s why we have call boxes, it&#8217;s why we have safe zones, it&#8217;s why we have the whistles,&#8221; Salazar said during floor debate. &#8220;Because you just don&#8217;t know who you&#8217;re gonna be shooting at. And you don&#8217;t know if you feel like you&#8217;re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone&#8217;s been following you around, or if you feel like you&#8217;re in trouble when you may actually not be&#8230;&#8221;</p>
<p>Colorado Sen. Jessie Ulibarri, another elitist Democrat, argued that instead of firing back at a crazed gunman, innocent victims would be better off using &#8220;ballpoint pens&#8221; to stab him when he stops to reload. Colorado Rep. Paul Rosenthal, another Democrat, told women to rely on the &#8220;buddy system&#8221; instead. And on Tuesday, after personally lobbying Colorado Democrats to restrict self-defense options, Vice President Joe Biden blithely dismissed a woman&#8217;s concerns about family security. He advised her, &#8220;You don&#8217;t need an AR-15&#8243; — even though it is the long arm of choice of three million law-abiding citizens, half of whom are veterans, law enforcement officers or both.</p>
<p>The presumptuous paternalism of gun-grabbing male Democrats is not confined to the political arena. On college campuses across the country, the literal disarming of women is standard operating procedure.</p>
<p>At the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, officials advise women that &#8220;passive resistance may be your best defense.&#8221; The school&#8217;s recommendation to girls: &#8220;Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating.&#8221;</p>
<p>If that fails, it&#8217;s time to deploy other assault bodily fluids! No joke. UCCS seriously advises potential victims: &#8220;Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone.&#8221;</p>
<p>In a quick survey of campus tips for women, Twitchy.com editor Jenn Taylor notes that at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, women are also told that &#8220;passive resistance (vomiting, urinating, telling the attacker you&#8217;re diseased or menstruating) may be your best defense.&#8221; The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh tells girls to &#8220;(c)ry or create a scene of emotional or mental instability.&#8221; Instead of a Glock, the school prefers students take a page from &#8220;Glee.&#8221; Yes, ladies, when you fear for your lives, it&#8217;s time to engage in theatrics by faking a &#8220;faint&#8221; or &#8220;seizure.&#8221; And at Oregon State, female students are advised to tell sexual predators they are &#8220;sick or pregnant,&#8221; because guns and knives are banned on campus.</p>
<p>As I&#8217;ve noted before, colleges and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregated dorms, politically correct academic departments and designated &#8220;safe spaces&#8221; to protect students selectively from speech the left deems &#8220;hateful.&#8221; Instead of teaching students to defend their beliefs, American educators shield them from vigorous intellectual debate. As the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense. Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance.</p>
<p>Where are the War on Women warriors of the left when you need them? Paging Ashley Judd, Eva Longoria, Sandra Fluke and every indignant feminist who (rightly) took Todd &#8220;legitimate rape&#8221; Akin to task — as I did — last fall. The sexist stance of gun-grabbers goes far beyond Akin-esque junk science about magical wombs that can prevent pregnancy. The idea that women can&#8217;t be trusted to know when they are at risk takes direct aim at their very sovereignty and security.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s anti-self-determination. It&#8217;s anti-freedom. It&#8217;s anti-choice.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Hope-a-Nomics Disaster: One Company&#8217;s Horror Story</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/michellemalkin/the-hope-a-nomics-disaster-one-companys-horror-story/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-hope-a-nomics-disaster-one-companys-horror-story</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/michellemalkin/the-hope-a-nomics-disaster-one-companys-horror-story/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Nov 2012 04:30:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado Distribution Group]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Department of Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[solar panels]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=164576</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A case study in Obama's bureaucratic tyranny. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/michellemalkin/the-hope-a-nomics-disaster-one-companys-horror-story/dept-of-energy/" rel="attachment wp-att-164611"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-164611" title="dept-of-energy" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/dept-of-energy-432x350.gif" alt="" width="302" height="245" /></a>President Obama promises to move the country forward with his recycled pledge of five million green jobs. But in the real world, small businesses are struggling to stay afloat as they deal with the fiscal wreckage of this administration&#8217;s disastrous venture socialism. Here&#8217;s the tale of just one Colorado company victimized by the Obama Department of Energy (DOE).</p>
<p>Colorado Distribution Group is a privately held storage and shipping company based in Denver. Thanks to hope-a-nomics, its warehouse is saddled with nearly 7,000 pallets of federally subsidized solar panels (one-third of which are completely spoiled and unsalable), along with related detritus such as broken glass and stray module parts.</p>
<p>While $22,000/month in storage costs go unpaid, the panels consume up to a third of the company&#8217;s warehouse space. Legal costs have forced CDG to slash payroll and lay off at least three employees. A source with knowledge of CDG&#8217;s woes told me this week the company is facing pressure by the Department of Energy to drop its petition to recoup those costs. The feds want CDG to swallow a $1.4 million tab to dispose of the bum solar panels.</p>
<p>In July, according to Dow Jones, CDG asked a Delaware bankruptcy court &#8220;for permission either to sell or collect rent on the property Abound Solar Inc. has at its facility, saying the situation is threatening its ability to stay in business.&#8221; Like many private enterprises in the Age of Obama&#8217;s Brass-Knuckled Politics of Revenge, fear of retribution holds back many from coming forward publicly about such attempted shakedowns.</p>
<p>CDG serves industries ranging from automotive to food and beverage, electronic, medical, furniture, clothing, sporting goods and telecommunications. Founded in 2005, CDG handles distribution, fulfillment, transportation, logistics and inventory management using a high-tech data system. For the past three years, the company warehoused solar panels manufactured by Fort Collins-based Abound Solar.</p>
<p>Yes, Abound Solar. Also known as: Colorado&#8217;s own Solyndra.</p>
<p>In June, less than a year after fellow Obama green boondoggle Solyndra went belly up, Abound filed for bankruptcy. As I reported in March, the financial outlook of the $400 million DOE loan guarantee recipient was based on false hope and imaginary change.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s envirocrats ignored bright red flags from Fitch Ratings about Abound&#8217;s substandard technology and failures to meet basic efficiency targets.</p>
<p>Abound borrowed $70 million against its $400 million Obama DOE loan guarantee; taxpayers will lose up to $60 million on the loan after the bankruptcy proceedings are complete. Nearly 125 Abound Solar employees lost their jobs. Screwed-over companies like CDG that did business with Abound are not alone. At least one other warehouse in Colorado is storing the costly panels. And an untold number of related contractors and businesses have been stiffed. &#8220;I did a lot of machining for Abound,&#8221; one business owner told me this summer, &#8220;and they went under owing me a fair amount.&#8221;</p>
<p>Recently released internal documents show that customers demanded replacements for the panels after experiencing &#8220;low performance,&#8221; &#8220;under performance&#8221; and &#8220;catastrophic failures.&#8221; Credit and technical advisers at DOE complained about having &#8220;major issues&#8221; with the Abound Solar deal and expressed concern over the &#8220;transaction pressure under which we are all now operating.&#8221; The documents fly in the face of Obama&#8217;s denial — just days before Election Day — that his White House played any role in this fiscal disaster.</p>
<p>The investigative work of Colorado&#8217;s Todd Shepherd at CompleteColorado.com, Amy Oliver at the Independence Institute and Michael Sandoval now of the Heritage Foundation exposed Abound&#8217;s crony ties to the Obama administration. Like Solyndra, Abound had a deep-pocketed bundler with ties to the White House. Progressive activist and billionaire heiress Pat Stryker, a repeat visitor to the Obama White House, owns an investment firm that invested considerably in Abound and donated nearly $500 million to the Democrats between 2008 and 2012.</p>
<p>Criminal and civil probes into Abound Solar&#8217;s alleged malfeasance — there are reports that the firm knowingly sold faulty goods — have been launched in both Colorado and on Capitol Hill. The stench of pay-for-play abounds. While Obama giddily promises his cronies and sycophants that &#8220;the best is yet to come,&#8221; small-business owners are fighting for their lives. Where&#8217;s their &#8220;fair share&#8221;?</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Politicizing Tragedy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/politicizing-tragedy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=politicizing-tragedy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/politicizing-tragedy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jul 2012 04:50:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Aurora]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[James Holmes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Piers Morgan]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138682</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Whenever tragedy strikes, liberals pounce.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/piers.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-138685" title="piers" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/piers.jpg" alt="" width="384" height="288" /></a>After last Friday morning’s devastating shootings in Aurora, Colorado by maniac James Holmes, the liberal media responded with unbridled rage … at conservatives. First, ABC News’ Brian Ross attempted to label Holmes a Tea Partier based on nothing other than a quick Google search that turned up a “Jim Holmes” engaged in Aurora, Colorado Tea Party activity. As it turned out, the Tea Partier Jim Holmes was a fiftyish Hispanic male; the shooter was a 24-year-old white male.</p>
<p>Next, liberals leapt to the conclusion that lax gun control laws made the attacks possible. CNN’s Piers Morgan quickly tweeted, “America has got to do something about its gun laws. Now is the time.” He followed up that gem with this one: “More Americans will buy guns after this, to defend themselves, and so the dangerous spiral descends. When/how does it stop?” The answer, of course: the cycle stops when people defend themselves and shoot incipient murderers in self-defense.</p>
<p>Piers was merely the first to jump the gun, so to speak. “Soothing words are nice,” intoned New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, between seizing the sodas of passersby. “But maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country.”</p>
<p>Bloomberg’s line is the most telling. Liberals love nothing better than to myopically focus on one event, blow it out of proportion, and then use it as an excuse for national legislation. It’s the same pattern they pursued in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting, when suddenly the apparent killing of a teenage hoodlum by an overzealous neighborhood watchman turned into a national story about race … which, predictably enough, turned into a national controversy about “Stand Your Ground” laws and voter ID. Even though George Zimmerman, the shooter, hadn’t even initially claimed a defense under the “Stand Your Ground” statute.</p>
<p>But that’s the pattern: take an instance, freeze it, magnify it, polarize it, use it as a weapon. It’s pure Alinsky. That’s how the media turns the shooting of Gabby Giffords by Jared Loughner into a national debate over civility in politics. Ignoring the actual identities of the shooters in these cases is crucial – the facts usually cut against a good leftist narrative; so the left simply ignores the facts.</p>
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		<title>Aurora &amp; Fort Hood: A Tale of Two Massacres</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/aurora-fort-hood-a-tale-of-two-massacres/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=aurora-fort-hood-a-tale-of-two-massacres</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jul 2012 04:21:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Aurora]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fort Hood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[James Holmes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nidal Hasan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138056</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What the two tragedies reveal about the leftist mind. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Picture-41.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-138186" title="Picture-4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Picture-41.gif" alt="" width="375" height="245" /></a>The murder victims of James Holmes, who slaughtered 12 and wounded 50 at the <em>Dark Knight Rises</em> movie premier in Aurora Colorado, were still sprawled in the theater when ABC News chief investigator Brian Ross on-air tried to link the killer to the Tea Party––without even a modicum of vetting the information, as ABC’s apology later admitted. A quick fact-check would have revealed that the Colorado Tea Party James Holmes is a 52-year-old Hispanic, not a 24-year-old white PhD candidate. Indulging another left-wing narrative cliché, CNN’s Piers Morgan tweeted, “America has got to do something about its gun laws. Now is the time.” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg chimed in as well with the “gun-control” meme, seemingly oblivious to the lack of evidence that shows strict gun control laws reduce murder-rates. Over at the Huffington Post, Michael Shank fingered America’s “highest income inequality rates in the rich world,” which correlate “strongly with high rates of social-health problems, from homicide and violent crime to mental illness and drug addiction.” This is a variation of the “poverty-made-’em-do-it” argument that the current recession, which has seen rates of violent crime go down, not up, refutes.</p>
<p>Here we see the enduring banality of the progressive mind, mired in discredited psychological, social, and economic theories like a fly in amber. Yet progressives fancy themselves the product of enlightenment and reason, with knowledge about human nature and behavior superior to those Neanderthal conservatives who “get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion,” as Obama said during the 2008 campaign. Those benighted, racist reactionaries are consumed with repression and fear of the “other,” full of resentment over the declining power of their “white-skin privilege,” and fiercely resistant to the improving changes engineered by their betters to achieve “social justice.” Psychotic as they are, it’s no surprise they endorse policies that compensate for their insecurities and ignorance by seeking to exclude the historical victims of oppression. And to the progressive it’s an obvious truth that a few such souls will occasionally explode into the sort of violence perpetrated in Colorado.</p>
<p>The fact that most of these mass-murderers are loners and lunatics with no political agenda at all hasn’t deterred progressives like Brian Ross from jumping to the same conclusions. It was just last year that their zeal to link the shooter of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords to the Tea Party blew up in their faces. No matter, the “narrative,” as they like to call it, of conservative psychosis is too politically useful, too flattering of progressive pretensions to superior intellect. The irony, of course, is that such reflexive assertions are the sign of a mind woefully lacking in critical capacity and hence vulnerable to politically and personally gratifying fairy tales.</p>
<p>Which brings us to the second massacre, equally revealing of progressive addled thinking. Major Nidal Hasan, the jihadist who in 2009 murdered 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood to cries of “Allahu Akbar,” had left a super-highway of evidence about his terrorist inclinations and eagerness to kill for Allah. As the recently released Webster Commission <a href="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/images/07/19/william.webster.pdf">investigation</a> into the FBI’s handling of that evidence shows, several months before his rampage at Fort Hood, the FBI and anti-terrorism task force agents had perused 18 emails Hasan had sent to Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born jihadist consigliore later killed in Yemen. In these emails, Hasan displayed his eagerness for supporting terrorist outfits like Hamas, and inquired about the theological arguments for killing his fellow soldiers and other innocents. “I would assume,” he wrote in one email, “that a suicide bomber whose aim is to kill enemy soldiers or their helpers but also kill innocents in the process is acceptable.” Other evidence for Hasan’s inclinations was available as well, including a Power-Point presentation at Walter Reed hospital that quoted Mohammad’s famous “great commission” to his disciples: “I was told to fight all men until they say there is no god but Allah”––quoted as well by the Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden as justification for their own jihadist murders.</p>
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		<title>Exploiting The Colorado Theater Massacre</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/exploiting-a-tragedy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=exploiting-a-tragedy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/exploiting-a-tragedy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 20 Jul 2012 04:54:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Aurora]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[James Holmes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tea Party]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138045</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The hate-America media unleashes. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/colorado-shooting-2.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-138049" title="colorado-shooting-2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/colorado-shooting-2.gif" alt="" width="375" height="263" /></a>It didn&#8217;t take long. Despite <a href="http://www.myfoxla.com/story/19071506/12-dead-71-injured-at-shooting-during-dark-knight-midnight-opening">12 dead</a> and more than 71 injured, including ten bodies that still remain in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater at this writing, reckless media were looking to exploit the rampage perpetrated by alleged killer, James Holmes, as quickly as possible.</p>
<p>ABC News reporter Brian Ross <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/abc-news-reporter-links-colorado-shooter-to-local-tea-party/">led</a> the despicable charge, immediately attempting to politicize the issue. “There’s a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea Party site as well, talking about him joining the Tea Party last year. Now, we don’t know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it’s Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado,” Ross irresponsibly told <em>Good Morning America&#8217;s</em> George Stephanopoulos. Yet within hours, the network was forced to make a <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/abc-news-reporter-links-colorado-shooter-to-local-tea-party/">retraction</a>. &#8220;An earlier <em>ABC News</em> broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect,&#8221; ABC News said in a statement. &#8220;ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted.&#8221;</p>
<p>On CNN, criminal profiler Pat Brown <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnn-contributor-rushes-to-blame-video-games-for-co-shooting-teenaged-psychopaths-get-inspired/">theorized</a> that the rampage constituted the &#8220;best night&#8221; of alleged killer Holmes&#8217; life, one for which he had &#8220;planned extensively,&#8221; and that such planning likely involved violent video games. “This has been something he has really been into. And now we’re going to find, probably on facebook or anybody who knows him will say, ‘Yeah, he did have a lot of interest in that. He was always playing the video games,&#8221; said Brown. &#8220;And I’m not saying video games make you a killer. But if you’re a psychopath, video games help you get in the mode to do the killing. So it is a problem in our society with teenaged psychopaths, that they do get inspired by this and want to make it real. So it is a danger but it doesn’t make you a psycho.”</p>
<p><em>Time Magazine&#8217;s</em> Michael Grunwald, in a <a href="http://swampland.time.com/2012/07/20/the-aurora-shooting-sometimes-theres-nothing-wrong-with-politicizing-a-tragedy/">piece</a> titled &#8220;The Aurora Shooting: Sometimes There’s Nothing Wrong With Politicizing a Tragedy,&#8221; contends that the &#8220;telegenic schoolmarms we call pundits are all denouncing the politicization of the tragedy in Aurora, calling out the crass opportunists who would dare to use human suffering to advance their preferred public policy choices. I feel terrible about what happened in that movie theater, and I’m agnostic about gun control, but there is nothing wrong with politicizing tragedy.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>Global Warming Blame-ologists Play with Fire</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/michellemalkin/global-warming-blame-ologists-play-with-fire/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=global-warming-blame-ologists-play-with-fire</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/michellemalkin/global-warming-blame-ologists-play-with-fire/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 09 Jul 2012 04:10:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al gore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wildfires]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=136904</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How eco-radicals have created an explosive tinderbox out of the West.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/6-13-12-Colorado-wildfire_full_600.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-136905" title="6-13-12-Colorado-wildfire_full_600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/6-13-12-Colorado-wildfire_full_600.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Good news: The Waldo Canyon fire, which forced 32,000 residents (including our family) to flee, claimed two lives and destroyed 347 homes, is now 100 percent contained. Bad news: Radical environmentalists won&#8217;t stop blowing hot air about this year&#8217;s infernal season across the West.</p>
<p>Al Gore slithered out of the political morgue to bemoan nationwide heat records and pimp his new &#8220;Climate Reality Project,&#8221; which blames global warming for the wildfire outbreak. NBC meteorologist Doug Kammerer asserted: &#8220;If we did not have global warming, we wouldn&#8217;t see this.&#8221; Agriculture Department Undersecretary Harris Sherman, who oversees the Forest Service, claimed to the Washington Post: &#8220;The climate is changing, and these fires are a very strong indicator of that.&#8221;</p>
<p>And the Associated Press (or rather, the Activist Press) lit the fear-mongering torch with an eco-propaganda piece titled &#8220;U.S. summer is what &#8216;global warming will look like.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>The problem is that the actual conclusions of scientists included in AP&#8217;s screed don&#8217;t back up the apocalyptic headline. As the reporter acknowledges under that panicky banner:</p>
<p>&#8220;Scientifically linking individual weather events to climate change takes intensive study, complicated mathematics, computer models and lots of time. Sometimes it isn&#8217;t caused by global warming. Weather is always variable; freak things happen.&#8221;</p>
<p>So, this U.S. summer may or may not really look like &#8220;what global warming looks like.&#8221; Kinda. Sorta. Possibly. Possibly not.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the AP reporter concedes, the &#8220;global&#8221; nature of the warming and its supposed catastrophic events have &#8220;been local. Europe, Asia and Africa aren&#8217;t having similar disasters now, although they&#8217;ve had their own extreme events in recent years.&#8221;</p>
<p>A more hedging headline would have been journalistically responsible, but Chicken Little-ism better serves the global warming blame-ologists&#8217; agenda.</p>
<p>More inconvenient truths: As The Washington Times noted this week, the National Climatic Data Center shows that &#8220;Colorado has actually seen its average temperature drop slightly from 1998 to 2011, when data is collected only from rural stations and not those that have been urbanized since 1900.&#8221;</p>
<p>Radical green efforts to block logging and timber sales in national forests since the 1990s are the real culprits.</p>
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		<title>Santorum Sweep</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/santorum-sweep/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=santorum-sweep</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ryan-mauro/santorum-sweep/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:50:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ryan Mauro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Minnesota]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Missouri]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mitt romney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rick Santorum]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ron Paul]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=121863</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Surprise triple victory for the former senator highlights a race that defies prediction. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/santorum-thumbs-up1.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-121870" title="santorum-thumbs-up" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/santorum-thumbs-up1.gif" alt="" width="375" height="259" /></a></p>
<p>The contest for the Republican presidential nomination has, yet again, taken a surprising turn. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum won the caucuses in Missouri and Minnesota yesterday and topped the night off with a come-from-behind surprise victory in Colorado.</p>
<p>Mitt Romney lost Missouri in 2008 and did not make a play for the caucus, which isn’t awarding any delegates. Newt Gingrich failed to make it onto the ballot, leaving Rick Santorum and Ron Paul to battle it out. Santorum prevailed, winning Missouri with 55% of the vote. Romney came in second with 25%. Ron Paul finished with 12%. This was not a surprising victory, as Santorum was leading in the polls there.</p>
<p>The media assumed that Romney would win Colorado and focused on Minnesota. Romney won the state by 19% in 2008, but the polls showed Santorum with a comfortable lead as the caucus took place. At the time of this article’s publication, Santorum was shown winning Minnesota with 45%. Ron Paul is in second with 27%, Romney has 17% and Gingrich has 11%. If these totals hold, this will mean that Santorum rose from a 2-point <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/february_gop_caucuses_primaries.html">lead</a> on February 4 in Public Policy Polling’s survey to a 9-point lead on February 6 and ultimately won by a whopping 18%.</p>
<p>The media thought Santorum’s landslide victory in Minnesota would be the story of the night, but they were wrong. Romney won Colorado in 2008 by 42%. The polls consistently showed him with double-digit leads. The last poll had him <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/february_gop_caucuses_primaries.html">ahead</a> by 10%. Amazingly, Santorum pulled off an upset and won a solid victory in Colorado. With 99% of districts reporting, Santorum had attained 40% of the vote, while Romney had 35%, Gingrich had 13% and Paul had 12%. This is a remarkable feat for a candidate who was dismissed as he languished in the low single digits for the majority of the campaign.</p>
<p>Santorum gave his victory speech after the results in Missouri and Minnesota were announced. He likely didn’t think he’d win Colorado at that point. Trumpeting his electability, Santorum proudly said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t stand here to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”</p>
<p>He made the case that last night’s contests were the most reflective of what the general election campaign will look like. Mitt Romney was unable to overwhelm his opponents with immense finances and superior organization, Santorum argued. He made the point that President Obama’s organization and fundraising will outmatch his Republican opponent, and so Romney will not be able to count on those advantages to win. Santorum argued that the only way Obama could be beaten is if a sharp contrast is drawn and that he is the best candidate to do that.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Summer of Corruption</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/michellemalkin/obamas-summer-of-corruption-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-summer-of-corruption-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/michellemalkin/obamas-summer-of-corruption-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:03:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[former president bill clinton]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62505</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What new dirty secrets will be exposed in the coming months? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Obama_I_had_no_contact_with_Blagojevich.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-62506" title="Obama_I_had_no_contact_with_Blagojevich" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Obama_I_had_no_contact_with_Blagojevich-300x242.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="242" /></a></p>
<p>In Chicago politics, there&#8217;s an old term for the publicly subsidized pay-offs and positions meted out to the corruptocrats&#8217; friends and special interests: boodle.</p>
<p>In the age of Obama, Hope and Change is all about the boodle. So it was with the stimulus. And the massive national service expansion. And the health care bill. And the financial reform bill. And the blossoming job-trading scandals engulfing the White House.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s always been an ageless, interdependent relationship between Windy City politicos and &#8220;goo-goos&#8221; (the cynical Chicago term for good government reformers). Chicago-style &#8220;reform&#8221; has always entailed the redistribution of wealth and power under the guise of public service. And it has inevitably led to more corruption.</p>
<p>In March 2010, this column first took note of allegations by Democrats Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff that the White House had offered them jobs in exchange for dropping their respective bids against Obama-favored incumbent Sens. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and Michael Bennet in Colorado. White House legal counsel Bob &#8220;The Fixer&#8221; Bauer&#8217;s attempt to bury questions about the Sestak affair with a Memorial Day weekend document dump failed. So has the attempt to make Rahm Emanuel-enlisted former president Bill Clinton the sole scapegoat.</p>
<p>Bauer&#8217;s memo mentions &#8220;efforts&#8221; (plural, not singular) to woo Sestak. But the White House refuses to divulge what offers besides Clinton&#8217;s were extended to Sestak. Moreover, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has now denied that Team Obama was involved in the one Clinton offer that has been publicized — an unpaid appointment on an intelligence board for which Sestak was ineligible.</p>
<p>After months of silence, Romanoff finally stepped forward last week to acknowledge that the White House had dangled several positions before him, too. He released e-mails detailing not one, not two, but three different paid positions offered by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina — whose boss, Emanuel, was subpoenaed this week by impeached former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois to testify in his Senate pay-for-play corruption trial.</p>
<p>So, can I say &#8220;I told you so&#8221; now?</p>
<p>In July 2009, when &#8220;Culture of Corruption&#8221; was first released, liberal critics scoffed:</p>
<p><em>How could you possibly write a 400-page book about Barack Obama&#8217;s rotten administration when he&#8217;s only been in office six months?!</em></p>
<p>When I proceeded to rattle off case after case of Chicago-style back-scratching, transparency-trampling and crooked special interest-dealing in the new White House, liberal critics such as &#8220;The View&#8217;s&#8221; Joy Behar interjected:</p>
<p><em>B-b-b-but what about Bush? Why don&#8217;t you write a book about Bush? Wha-&#8217;bout-Bush? Wha-&#8217;bout-Bush? Wha-&#8217;bout-Bush?</em></p>
<p>When I pointed out that I had reported extensively on cronyism in the Bush era (see Harriet Miers, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security), and when I further pointed out that while the Bush-bashing market overflowed, there remained a massive vacuum of critical analysis of Obama, liberal critics sputtered:</p>
<p><em>So what? Doesn&#8217;t every administration have corruption?</em></p>
<p>When I patiently explained that no other administration in modern American history had set itself up as loftily as the Hope and Change reformers had done, or when I cited endless examples of Obama&#8217;s broken promises on everything from lobbyists to transparency to Washington business as usual, liberal critics changed the subject again:</p>
<p><em>RACIST FASCIST EVIL FOX NEWS RIGHT-WING HATE MONGER!</em></p>
<p>Two major job-trading scandals plus the start of the Blago trial this past week — on top of a year&#8217;s worth of uninhibited White House wheeling and dealing, broken transparency pledges, Justice Department stonewalling and brass knuckle-bullying of political opponents — have finally turned the once-derided thesis of my book &#8220;Culture of Corruption&#8221; into conventional wisdom.</p>
<p>Obama sold America a Chicago-tainted bill of goods. A nation of slow learners is finally figuring it out.</p>
<p><em>Michelle Malkin is the author of &#8220;Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks &amp; Cronies&#8221; (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com</em></p>
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		<title>Sabotaging the Tea Parties</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/michellemalkin/sabotaging-the-tea-parties/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=sabotaging-the-tea-parties</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:12:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Alinsky-ite Left declares war on limited-government activists.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/tea-party-008.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-58164" title="tea party 008" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/tea-party-008.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>One of the popular signs spotted at Tea Party protests across the country over the past year goes like this: &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t matter what this sign says. You&#8217;ll call it racism, anyway!&#8221; It&#8217;s a pithy, perfect rejoinder to the fusillade of attacks that limited-government activists have weathered from their Democratic detractors and a hostile national media. Committed Alinsky-ites never let reality get in the way of a good Tea Party-bashing narrative.</p>
<p>The radical acolytes of Chicago&#8217;s late left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky also understand the importance of manufacturing demons. &#8220;Before men can act,&#8221; Alinsky preached, &#8220;an issue must be polarized. Men will act when they are convinced their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels, and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil.&#8221; This explains the left&#8217;s relentless campaign to sabotage the anti-tax, anti-bailout movement from Day One.</p>
<p>President Obama&#8217;s community organizing allies whispered &#8220;racist,&#8221; &#8220;fascist&#8221; and &#8220;fringe&#8221; in the earliest days of the stimulus demonstrations in January and February 2009, when hundreds of first-time protesters turned out on the streets in Washington State, Colorado, Arizona and Kansas. The whispers turned to hysterical screams as hundreds became thousands and thousands became millions of peaceful marchers who gathered for the first nationwide Tax Day Tea Party. Some fringe, huh?</p>
<p>The latest effort to smear Tea Partiers involves self-appointed agents provocateurs who are organizing a &#8220;Crash the Tea Party&#8221; campaign to discredit the April 15 Tax Day Tea Party by making up bogus racist signs and providing false portrayals of grassroots activists to the press. An online punk, Jason Levin, is spearheading the infiltration effort to &#8220;act on behalf of the Tea Party in ways which exaggerate their least appealing qualities&#8221; and &#8220;damage the public&#8217;s opinion of them.&#8221; Never mind that public opinion polls now show that the majority of Americans stand with the core principles of fiscal responsibility espoused by Tea Party activists.</p>
<p>Levin may be a lone wolf operator, but he has many fellow travelers in the Democratic establishment and left-wing fever swamps.</p>
<p>And their efforts wouldn&#8217;t be possible without friendlies in the press who have openly insulted Tea Party activists with endless vulgar sexual taunts and Taliban comparisons.</p>
<p>A few months ago, Craig Varoga — a Washington-based Democratic political operative and overseer of a convoluted, money-shuffling web of political action committees — launched &#8220;TheTeaPartyisOver.org&#8221; to target Republicans who supported the Tea Party movement. The site declared that it would prevent the &#8220;radical&#8221; and &#8220;dangerous&#8221; fiscal accountability agenda from &#8220;gaining legislative traction.&#8221; Varoga&#8217;s money funneling is designed to obscure the Big Labor/progressive <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin.html" target="_blank">funding</a> of his enterprises under the umbrella of his &#8220;American Public Policy Center (APPC).&#8221;</p>
<p>After conservative blogs and Fox News exposed his deceptive web of grassroots groups, Varoga password-protected his website so that the Democratic plotting against Tea Party activists could be conducted out of view.</p>
<p>I speak from direct experience about the underhandedness of Tea Party smear merchants. On Feb. 17, 2009, at one of the country&#8217;s first tax revolt rallies in Denver, a man approached me amid a throng of bona fide anti-stimulus protesters and thrust a camera in my face. I obliged cheerfully, as I usually do after such speaking events. I later learned from the character assassins at Progress Now, a left-wing outfit that just happened to be there and just happened to snap a close-up photo of the interaction, that the man pulled out a sign at the last minute (which I didn&#8217;t see until later) sporting Obama&#8217;s name with a swastika on it. He held the sign away from me, but in direct view of the Progress Now cameraperson.</p>
<p>That cameraperson just happened to be a former CNN producer, whose blog post on the photo just happened to be immediately disseminated by the local press and to the hit men at the radical-left Media Matters website. The narrative was set: A conservative supporter of the nascent Tea Party movement posed for a photo with a man holding up a swastika at a protest against out-of-control spending! Ergo, the anti-stimulus protesters and the entire Tea Party membership are all racist, fascist menaces to society!</p>
<p>Fast-forward to April 2010. Alinsky&#8217;s avenging angels have declared open warfare on April 15. Will they be enabled again by &#8220;mainstream journalists&#8221; who have turned their Tea Party reporting assignments into search-and-destroy missions? The signs point to yes.</p>
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		<title>The Obama Way: Bluster, Bully, Bribe</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:06:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[A judgeship-for-Obamacare-vote deal?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/healthcare.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-53675" title="healthcare" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/healthcare.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="338" /></a></p>
<p>The White House took great offense recently when conservatives suggested President Obama might be trading a judicial appointment for a wavering Democrat&#8217;s vote on his <a href="http://www.creators.com/opinion/michelle-malkin.html#" target="_blank">health care</a> reform plan. &#8220;Absurd,&#8221; a miffed administration official told Politico.com. Wherever could the American people get such an impression? Let us count the ways.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, the very day Obama hosted 10 swing Democrats who had opposed the expansive health care takeover bill in November, the White House issued a press release trumpeting the nomination of Scott M. Matheson Jr. to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Matheson just happens to be the brother of Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah — one of the 10 Dems invited to sip wine and nosh on calorically correct appetizers with the arm-twister-in-chief.</p>
<p>The seat on the 10th Circuit has been vacant for nearly a year. When one of the judges, Michael McConnell, resigned to take a lucrative post at Stanford Law School last summer, Matheson — Rhodes Scholar, law school professor and dean — let the White House know right away he wanted the job. For nearly a year, there was no action.</p>
<p>Liberal groups have been complaining for months about the glacial pace of Obama&#8217;s judicial nominations — a predicament they blame not solely on obstructionist Republicans, but on Obama&#8217;s own team of incompetent, indecisive foot-draggers who put the issue at the bottom of their priority list. (It&#8217;s worth noting that Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch supports Matheson&#8217;s candidacy.)</p>
<p>As the National Law Journal pointed out at the beginning of this year, &#8220;the Obama administration has been slower than the Bush administration was in sending judicial nominations to the Senate, submitting 12 circuit nominations last year compared with 28 for Bush in 2001. The White House last named a circuit nominee on Nov. 4.&#8221;</p>
<p>Now, out of nowhere, comes the announcement of Matheson&#8217;s nomination — in the heat of White House vote-grubbing to salvage the Democrats&#8217; government health care designs? To quote Dana Carvey&#8217;s old Church Lady character on &#8220;Saturday Night Live&#8221;: How conveeenient.</p>
<p>Let us consider the possibility, for a brief moment, that this is all merely coincidence.</p>
<p>Is the White House so fantastically blind and tone-deaf that it failed to detect the blood-red flags and blaring alarm bells that Scott Matheson&#8217;s judicial nomination would raise coming on the very day Obama was wooing his brother? Incorrigibly corrupt or incorrigibly stupid. Take your pick.</p>
<p>The perception of a judgeship-for-Obamacare-vote deal is, of course, horribly unfair to Matheson, who seems more than qualified for the position. But full blame for creating that unmistakable perception lies squarely at the feet of the rank opportunists in the White House, whose timing is worse than a broken metronome.</p>
<p>This debacle comes on the heels of damning disclosures about other possible White House bribery. Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania admitted to veteran Philly newsman Larry Kane that Team Obama dangled a &#8220;high-ranking&#8221; position in the administration if he dropped out of the Senate race and left incumbent Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter alone.</p>
<p>In Colorado, the Denver Post reported last fall that Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina &#8220;offered specific suggestions&#8221; for an Obama administration job to far-left Democrat Andrew Romanoff if he withdrew his challenge to White House-backed incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet.</p>
<p>And earlier this month, The Washington Times noted that Mary Patrice Brown, the person assigned by the Justice Department to oversee an internal investigation into the shady dismissal of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation cases, is now &#8220;the leading candidate for a federal judgeship — for which she is being vetted by some of the same offices she supposedly is investigating.&#8221;</p>
<p>So, wherever did we get the impression that pay-for-play is the Obama way? Somewhere, Chicago corruptocrat Rod Blagojevich — who wanted to play, but didn&#8217;t get paid — is laughing bitterly.</p>
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		<title>Stopping the Imperial Senate</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/john-ellis/stopping-the-imperial-senate/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=stopping-the-imperial-senate</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:03:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Ellis]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[How can we prevent Senate Democrats from forcing through ObamaCare against the will of the American people? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/us-senate.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-53554" title="us-senate" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/us-senate.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="311" /></a></p>
<p>There is a story about legendary chess grandmaster Aaron Nimzowitsch, who detested cigar smoke. In the great New York tournament of 1927 his opponent Milan Vidmar took out his cigar case and began to fiddle with it. Nimzowitsch became agitated and complained to the tournament director. But he is not smoking, the director replied. “He is threatening to!” shouted the distraught Nimzowitsch. Vidmar got the better of Nimzowitsch in New York. The threat was enough.<strong> </strong></p>
<p>The GOP could learn a valuable lesson from Dr. Vidmar and protect the country from a disaster in the making. If the Senate Democrats force passage of ObamaCare through “reconciliation,” what will individual Democrat Senators have done? First, they will have ignored the clear and consistent message of the American people in poll after poll. In some states those who oppose the bill outnumber those in favor by 20 points or more. Second, they will have taken the unprecedented step of passing major social legislation without bipartisan support—in fact without a single opposition party vote. Third, they will have violated Senate rules which allow only a limited and technical role for reconciliation, not a use that to all intents and purposes abolishes the Senate’s 60 vote rule for substantive policy issues.</p>
<p>It is reasonable to conclude that this represents a series of morally indefensible actions on the part of the Senators involved. On the first point, they have treated the opinion of the people who elected them with contempt. On the second point, they have acted irresponsibly. On the third point they have cheated when the stakes were so huge that faithful adherence to the rules was essential. Take the three points together, and you have despicable behavior, behavior unworthy of a U.S. Senator.</p>
<p>Elected representatives have been recalled for much less than this. California’s Governor Gray Davis was recalled simply for failing to halt runaway legislative spending, and that doesn’t come close to the immorality of jamming through legislation of massive national import with parliamentary tricks and ruthless partisanship over the strong objection of the American people. Recalls are as a rule both difficult and dangerous. They easily create a backlash in favor of the incumbent as the electorate becomes irritated with a process that seems to question its judgment in having elected the individual in the first place. In 1967, the attempt to recall Frank Church probably strengthened his position for reelection, which he won by a large margin. But given the mood of the country with respect to ObamaCare, that danger is now minimal.</p>
<p>What of the difficulty of the process? The answer to this is that there are severe limits to what can be done, but that there are nonetheless some real opportunities. Only eighteen states provide for recall of U.S. Senators: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin. (The question whether state recall statutes are legally enforceable for federal offices is not completely clear, but I’ll return to that in a moment.) That is 18 states, so a total of 36 senators are potentially subject to recall. Of these, 11 are at the moment Republicans, which leaves us with 25. A recall would be pointless for 7 of those, because they are up for reelection this year. Among the remaining 18, only Kent Conrad has said that “Reconciliation cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform.” We are thus left with 17 senators in 12 states: Alaska’s Begich; California’s Feinstein; Colorado’s Udall; Louisiana’s Landrieu; Michigan’s Levin and Stabenow; Minnesota’s Franken and Klobuchar; Montana’s Baucus and Tester; New   Jersey’s Lautenberg and Menendez; Oregon’s Merkley; Rhode   Island’s Reed and Whitehouse; Washington’s Cantwell; Wisconsin’s Kohl.</p>
<p>All but four of these are states carried by Gore, Kerry and Obama. Anything is possible in a climate in which a Republican took Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, but it would certainly be hard to get a blue state to recall a Democrat. However, the chances are quite good in the three states carried by both George W Bush and McCain: Alaska, Louisiana and Montana. And then there is Colorado, which Bush carried twice.</p>
<p>If we look at the mood in these four states, it’s clear that their five Democratic Senators are all vulnerable. In Alaska, Mark Begich’s approval rating has fallen to 35% according to a recent Public Policy Polling poll. In Colorado, Mark Udall’s approval numbers had dropped into minus territory already by April of 2009, and that was a time when Obama’s numbers were still high. But when you add to this the fact that Obama’s current polling in Colorado is worse than his national average, that the incumbent Senate Democrat up for reelection this year is now behind by 14 points, and that in an especially ominous poll Coloradans say they trust the judgment of the American people more than their political leaders by 74 to 11 percent, this looks to be fertile ground for a recall. In Louisiana Mary Landrieu’s polls plummeted following the Louisiana purchase, and the state’s incumbent Republican Senator is 24 points up in his reelection campaign this year. In Montana, a recent poll showed a huge margin against ObamaCare (74 to 26) and Max Baucus’ approval rating instantly dropped 20 points to 44% because of his role in promoting it. If Baucus or Jon Tester vote for ObamaCare by reconciliation in this climate of opinion in their state they can expect a firestorm.</p>
<p>But states vary in the difficulty of mounting a recall: some make it easy, while in others the hurdles are almost impossible to overcome. Fortunately, Alaska, Colorado and Montana are among the easiest. In Alaska and Colorado, the number of signatures needed to qualify a recall petition is 25% of the vote received in the last election by the person to be recalled. That means roughly 38,000 signatures for Begich and 50,000 for Udall—easily doable. In Louisiana and Montana the number is a percentage of the total eligible voters (not those who actually voted) in the last election. In Louisiana, that percentage is one third, which means 800,000 signatures, and that would be hard to do. But in Montana the percentage is a mere 10%, so it would take only 75,000 to recall Tester or Baucus, and that is feasible. Recall efforts would create the kind of national attention that would generate more than enough money to finance the collecting of signatures.</p>
<p>To be sure, there are many ways in which recall drives can fail. There is a school of legal thought which holds that a recall interferes with the federally determined term of six years, and is thus unconstitutional. I don’t find this convincing, but some people I respect do. The least we can say is that it is not clear what the U.S. Supreme Court would do. The outcome could well be that U.S. Senators can’t be recalled after all—we simply don’t know. But back to Dr Vidmar: just take out the cigar case and fiddle with it, and see what happens. The threat is a powerful one. If tomorrow the state Republican chairs in these four states were to announce that any vote for ObamaCare by reconciliation would trigger a drive to recall the Senator who cast it, these five would have to decide whether they wanted to take the risk.</p>
<p>At the very least, the recall drive would be embarrassing to them, and would provide a forum in which the full extent of their betrayal of their constituents, of responsible government, and of Senate rules and traditions could be spelled out, discussed, publicized, denounced. And in the worst case scenario, the Supreme Court might decide that those state statutes are not in fact unconstitutional. It might hold, say, that the six year term only specifies a limit; after all, Scott Brown was not elected to a six year term, and nobody thinks that unconstitutional. Or it may hold that a recall from a six year term is an action that cancels the term completely, and does not change the definition of a full term. My hunch is that that is what the court would do, because it makes the most sense. But we just don’t know—and the point is that the Senators can’t know either. We can be sure that they don’t really want to cast this vote. The announcement that they will face a recall effort could easily be enough to tip them over the edge. Go to it, Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, and Montana.</p>
<p><em>John Ellis is President of the California Association of Scholars, and a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz.</em></p>
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		<title>Conservatives: Beware of McCain Regression Syndrome</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/michellemalkin/conservatives-beware-of-mccain-regression-syndrome/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=conservatives-beware-of-mccain-regression-syndrome</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/michellemalkin/conservatives-beware-of-mccain-regression-syndrome/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:08:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
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Gov. Jane Norton]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47231</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Because McCain isn't going gently into that good night.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47232" title="john_mccain2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/john_mccain2.jpg" alt="john_mccain2" width="450" height="338" /></p>
<p>Pay attention: In the afterglow of the Massachusetts Miracle, there are flickers of peril for the right. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but like Paul Revere&#8217;s midnight message, consider this warning “a cry of defiance, and not of fear.” Conservatives have worked hard to rebuild after Big Government Republican John McCain&#8217;s defeat. But McCain isn&#8217;t going gently into that good night.</p>
<p>Red Flag No. One: A reader from Arizona informed me the day after the Bay State Bombshell that he had received a robo-call from Massachusetts GOP Sen.-elect Scott Brown. “He basically wanted me to vote for John McCain in November,” the reader said in his description of the automated campaign call supporting the four-term Sen. McCain&#8217;s re-election bid. “No wonder [Brown] said he hadn&#8217;t had any sleep. … He was busy recording phone messages!”</p>
<p>Red Flag No. Two: Also in the wake of the Massachusetts special election, the nation&#8217;s most popular conservative political figure Sarah Palin announced she would be campaigning for her former running mate in Arizona in March. Palin told Facebook followers that she&#8217;s going to “ride the tide with commonsense candidates” and help “heroes and statesmen” like McCain.</p>
<p>Facing mounting conservative opposition in his home state and polls showing him virtually tied with possible GOP challenger and former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, McCain welcomed the boost: &#8220;Sarah energized our nation and remains a leading voice in the Republican Party.&#8221;</p>
<p>Savor the irony: After a career spent bashing the right flank of the party, McCain is now clinging to its coattails to save his incumbent hide.</p>
<p>And pay attention to the hidden, more troubling irony: While he runs to the right to protect his seat, McCain&#8217;s political machine is working across the country to install liberal and establishment Republicans to secure his legacy.</p>
<p>In Florida, McCain&#8217;s Country First Political Action Committee is supporting the Senate bid of fellow illegal alien amnesty supporter and global warming alarmist GOP Gov. Charlie Crist, whose crucial 2008 primary endorsement rescued McCain from disaster. Grassroots conservatives support former GOP state House leader Marco Rubio — who is hitting Crist hard for lying to voters about his embrace of President Obama&#8217;s pork-laden, fraud-ridden stimulus package.</p>
<p>In Colorado, McCain and his meddlers infuriated the state party by anointing former Lt.</p>
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<p>Gov. Jane Norton to challenge endangered Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet. She&#8217;s a milquetoast public official who has served on a lot of task forces and GOP clubs — and who happens to be the sister-in-law of big Beltway insider Charlie Black. An estimated 40 percent of her coffers are filled with out-of-state money (and much of that is flowing from the Beltway).</p>
<p>The mini-McCain of Colorado claims to oppose “special interests,” but has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from D.C. lobbyists at McCain&#8217;s behest — stifling the candidacies of strong conservative rivals led by grassroots-supported Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, an amnesty opponent whose aggressive illegal-immigration prosecutions have earned him the rage of the far left and big-business right. A recent Rasmussen poll showed Buck and GOP candidate Tom Wiens beating Bennet — despite the huge cash and crony advantage of frontrunner and blank-slate Norton.</p>
<p>In California, McCain&#8217;s PAC supports former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina — a celebrity name with deep pockets of her own, massive media exposure and a checkered business record. Fiorina served as the economic adviser to McCain, who supported the $700 billion TARP bailout, the $25 billion auto bailout, a $300 billion mortgage bailout and the first $85 billion AIG bailout. As GOP rival and grassroots-supported Chuck DeVore&#8217;s camp notes, Fiorina has also vacillated publicly over the Obama stimulus. With taxpayer “friends” like this, who needs Democrats?</p>
<p>With all due respect to McCain&#8217;s noble war service, it&#8217;s time to head to the pasture. As the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, he was wrong on the constitutionality of the free-speech-stifling McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulations. He was wrong to side with the junk-science global warming activists in pushing onerous carbon caps on America. He was on the wrong side of every Chicken Little-driven bailout. He was wrong in opposing enhanced CIA interrogation methods that have saved countless American lives and averted jihadi plots. And he was spectacularly wrong in teaming with the open-borders lobby to push a dangerous illegal alien amnesty.</p>
<p>Tea Party activists are rightly outraged by Palin&#8217;s decision to campaign for McCain, whose entrenched incumbency and progressive views are anathema to the movement. At least she has an excuse: She&#8217;s caught between a loyalty rock and a partisan hard place. The conservative base has no such obligations — and it is imperative that they get in the game (as they did in Massachusetts) before it&#8217;s too late. The movement to restore limited government in Washington has come too far, against all odds, to succumb to McCain Regression Syndrome now.</p>
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