Sunday, March 1, 2015

TPP Suicide


ISDS: The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause that everyone should be against, Posted on March 1, 2015 Written by Senator Elizabeth Warren, washingtonpost.com
A police woman removes a woman protest­ing the Trans-Pacific Part­ner­ship (TPP) on Capi­tol Hill in Wash­ing­ton Jan­u­ary 27, 2015. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
The United States is in the final stages of nego­ti­at­ing the Trans-Pacific Part­ner­ship (TPP), a mas­sive free-trade agree­ment with Mex­ico, Canada, Japan, Sin­ga­pore and seven other coun­tries. Who will ben­e­fit from the TPP? Amer­i­can work­ers? Con­sumers? Small busi­nesses? Tax­pay­ers? Or the biggest multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions in the world?
One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The pro­vi­sion, an increas­ingly com­mon fea­ture of trade agree­ments, is called “Investor-State Dis­pute Set­tle­ment,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agree­ing to ISDS in this enor­mous new treaty would tilt the play­ing field in the United States fur­ther in favour of big multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions. Worse, it would under­mine US sovereignty.
ISDS would allow for­eign com­pa­nies to chal­lenge US laws — and poten­tially to pick up huge pay­outs from tax­pay­ers — with­out ever step­ping foot in a US court. Here’s how it would work. Imag­ine that the United States bans a toxic chem­i­cal that is often added to gaso­line because of its health and envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences. If a for­eign com­pany that makes the toxic chem­i­cal opposes the law, it would nor­mally have to chal­lenge it in a US court. But with ISDS, the com­pany could skip the US courts and go before an inter­na­tional panel of arbi­tra­tors. If the com­pany won, the rul­ing couldn’t be chal­lenged in US courts, and the arbi­tra­tion panel could require Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers to cough up mil­lions — and even bil­lions — of dol­lars in damages.
If that seems shock­ing, buckle your seat belt. ISDS could lead to gigan­tic fines, but it wouldn’t employ inde­pen­dent judges. Instead, highly paid cor­po­rate lawyers would go back and forth between rep­re­sent­ing cor­po­ra­tions one day and sit­ting in judg­ment the next. Maybe that makes sense in an arbi­tra­tion between two cor­po­ra­tions, but not in cases between cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ments. If you’re a lawyer look­ing to main­tain or attract high-paying cor­po­rate clients, how likely are you to rule against those cor­po­ra­tions when it’s your turn in the judge’s seat?
If the tilt toward giant cor­po­ra­tions wasn’t clear enough, con­sider who would get to use this spe­cial court: only inter­na­tional investors, which are, by and large, big cor­po­ra­tions. So if a Viet­namese com­pany with US oper­a­tions wanted to chal­lenge an increase in the US min­i­mum wage, it could use ISDS. But if an Amer­i­can labor union believed Viet­nam was allow­ing Viet­namese com­pa­nies to pay slave wages in vio­la­tion of trade com­mit­ments, the union would have to make its case in the Viet­namese courts.
Why cre­ate these rigged, pseudo-courts at all? What’s so wrong with the US judi­cial sys­tem? Noth­ing, actu­ally. But after World War II, some investors wor­ried about plunk­ing down their money in devel­op­ing coun­tries, where the legal sys­tems were not as depend­able. They were con­cerned that a cor­po­ra­tion might build a plant one day only to watch a dic­ta­tor con­fis­cate it the next. To encour­age for­eign invest­ment in coun­tries with weak legal sys­tems, the United States and other nations began to include ISDS in trade agreements.
Those jus­ti­fi­ca­tions don’t make sense any­more, if they ever did. Coun­tries in the TPP are hardly emerg­ing economies with weak legal sys­tems. Aus­tralia and Japan have well-developed, well-respected legal sys­tems, and multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions nav­i­gate those sys­tems every day, but ISDS would pre­empt their courts too. And to the extent there are coun­tries that are riskier polit­i­cally, mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion can solve the prob­lem. Coun­tries that respect prop­erty rights and the rule of law — such as the United States — should be more com­pet­i­tive, and if a com­pany wants to invest in a coun­try with a weak legal sys­tem, then it should buy political-risk insurance.
The use of ISDS is on the rise around the globe. From 1959 to 2002, there were fewer than 100 ISDS claims world­wide. But in 2012 alone, there were 58 cases. Recent cases include a French com­pany that sued Egypt because Egypt raised its min­i­mum wage, a Swedish com­pany that sued Ger­many because Ger­many decided to phase out nuclear power after Japan’s Fukushima dis­as­ter, and a Dutch com­pany that sued the Czech Repub­lic because the Czechs didn’t bail out a bank that the com­pany par­tially owned. US cor­po­ra­tions have also got­ten in on the action: Philip Mor­ris is try­ing to use ISDS to stop Uruguay from imple­ment­ing new tobacco reg­u­la­tions intended to cut smok­ing rates.
ISDS advo­cates point out that, so far, this process hasn’t harmed the United States. And our nego­tia­tors, who refuse to share the text of the TPP pub­licly, assure us that it will include a big­ger, bet­ter ver­sion of ISDS that will pro­tect our abil­ity to reg­u­late in the pub­lic inter­est. But with the num­ber of ISDS cases explod­ing and more and more multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions head­quar­tered abroad, it is only a mat­ter of time before such a chal­lenge does seri­ous dam­age here. Replac­ing the US legal sys­tem with a com­plex and unnec­es­sary alter­na­tive — on the assump­tion that noth­ing could pos­si­bly go wrong — seems like a really bad idea
This isn’t a par­ti­san issue. Con­ser­v­a­tives who believe in US sov­er­eignty should be out­raged that ISDS would shift power from Amer­i­can courts, whose author­ity is derived from our Con­sti­tu­tion, to unac­count­able inter­na­tional tri­bunals. Lib­er­tar­i­ans should be offended that ISDS effec­tively would offer a free tax­payer sub­sidy to coun­tries with weak legal sys­tems. And pro­gres­sives should oppose ISDS because it would allow big multi­na­tion­als to weaken labor and envi­ron­men­tal rules.
Giv­ing for­eign cor­po­ra­tions spe­cial rights to chal­lenge our laws out­side of our legal sys­tem would be a bad deal. If a final TPP agree­ment includes Investor-State Dis­pute Set­tle­ment, the only win­ners will be multi­na­tional corporations.

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Common Core Unconstitutional

Common Core Testing Regime Ruled Unconstitutional Posted on March 1, 2015 Written by thenewamerican.com
In a devel­op­ment with mas­sive impli­ca­tions for the Obama administration’s ongo­ing attempt at nation­al­iz­ing edu­ca­tion with Com­mon Core, a Mis­souri judge ruled this week that the fed­er­ally funded test­ing regime for the con­tro­ver­sial stan­dards was uncon­sti­tu­tional. The rul­ing means that the state of Mis­souri is offi­cially pro­hib­ited from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the “Smarter Bal­anced Assess­ment Con­sor­tium” (SBAC), a key ele­ment of Com­mon Core enforce­ment, because it’s an “uncon­sti­tu­tional inter­state compact.”
The law­suit against par­tic­i­pa­tion in the scheme was filed late last year by a group of tax­pay­ers seek­ing to uphold the rule of law, safe­guard pub­lic funds, and stop Com­mon Core. Judge Daniel R. Green, with the Cir­cuit Court of Cole County, Mis­souri, ruled in favor of the plain­tiffs and ordered the state to imme­di­ately halt all involve­ment with the fed­er­ally funded “multi-state” test­ing regime. In par­tic­u­lar, Judge Green noted that Con­gress had never approved the inter­state com­pact being foisted on states by the Obama administration’s Depart­ment of Education.
“The Court finds that the Smarter Bal­anced Assess­ment Con­sor­tium, a.k.a. Smarter Bal­anced, Smarter Bal­anced at UCLA, SBAC, and SB, is an unlaw­ful inter­state com­pact to which the U.S. Con­gress has never con­sented, whose exis­tence and oper­a­tion vio­late the Com­pact Clause of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, Arti­cle I, § 10, cl. 3, as well as numer­ous fed­eral statutes,” the judge ruled. “Missouri’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Smarter Bal­anced Assess­ment Con­sor­tium as a mem­ber is unlaw­ful under state and fed­eral law.”
As such, the court declared that “any puta­tive oblig­a­tions, includ­ing the oblig­a­tion to pay mem­ber­ship fees, of the State of Mis­souri to the Smarter Bal­anced Assess­ment Con­sor­tium … are ille­gal and void.” The judge also declared that “no Mis­souri tax­payer funds may be dis­bursed to SBAC in the form of mem­ber­ship fees, whether directly or indi­rectly.” Finally, the court per­ma­nently pro­hib­ited state offi­cials, and “all those in active con­cert with them,” from “tak­ing any action to imple­ment or oth­er­wise effec­tu­ate any pay­ment of Mis­souri funds as mem­ber­ship fees to SBAC, whether directly or indirectly.”
The suit against state offi­cials, from Demo­c­rat Gov­er­nor Jay Nixon on down, argued that Nixon and his offi­cials attempted to cede Missouri’s sov­er­eignty over edu­ca­tion pol­icy to the ille­gal entity “oper­at­ing under the influ­ence of fed­eral reg­u­la­tors located in Wash­ing­ton, DC.” Even though state law­mak­ers over­whelm­ingly repu­di­ated the stan­dards scheme in 2014 with veto-proof mar­gins, state offi­cials con­tin­ued in their efforts to send mil­lions of tax­payer dol­lars to the ille­gal entity.
Also cited in the law­suit was the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amend­ment, which reserves all pow­ers to states and the peo­ple if they were not specif­i­cally del­e­gated to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. “It has long been rec­og­nized that edu­ca­tional pol­icy is an area of core state com­pe­tence and con­cern that is not del­e­gated to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment under the Con­sti­tu­tion and our sys­tem of fed­er­al­ism,” the con­cerned tax­pay­ers argued in their com­plaint, adding that fed­eral statutes going back almost 50 years also pro­hibit the U.S. gov­ern­ment from con­trol­ling edu­ca­tion pol­icy, cur­ricu­lum, or assess­ment programs.
Com­mon Core, the suit argued, vio­lates those fed­eral laws and the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. It has also sparked nation­wide out­rage across the polit­i­cal spec­trum, the peti­tion observed. Nonethe­less, Gov­er­nor Nixon, with­out autho­riza­tion from the people’s elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives, uni­lat­er­ally signed an agree­ment pur­port­ing to force Mis­souri to impose the flawed and unlaw­ful stan­dards. The Obama admin­is­tra­tion, mean­while, using bribes and law­less “waivers” from other uncon­sti­tu­tional fed­eral edu­ca­tion schemes, was work­ing to impose its nation­al­iza­tion plan on Mis­souri and other states, explained the lawsuit.
State law­mak­ers, at least, appear to have got­ten the mes­sage. “The House will act imme­di­ately to strip all SBAC fund­ing from the bud­get with the goal of end­ing our mem­ber­ship with this group that is in clear vio­la­tion of the fed­eral and state con­sti­tu­tions,” said Mis­souri House Speaker John Diehl, a Repub­li­can, after the rul­ing. “The peo­ple of Mis­souri have made it clear they have a dis­taste for Com­mon Core and that they do not want to see their tax dol­lars wasted on these federally-produced stan­dards. Going for­ward, we will con­tinue to focus our efforts on devel­op­ing Missouri-based stan­dards that will best serve the needs of our young people.”
Indeed, last year, law­mak­ers over­whelm­ingly voted to kill the Com­mon Core scheme in Mis­souri and to have a state panel cre­ate new, supe­rior state stan­dards. In inter­views with The New Amer­i­can, the plain­tiffs involved in the law­suit against SBAC par­tic­i­pa­tion sounded opti­mistic that the nation­al­iza­tion scheme would fail in Mis­souri — as well as nation­wide. How­ever, as this mag­a­zine has reported, more than a few states have offi­cially “with­drawn” from Com­mon Core, owing to wide­spread pub­lic pres­sure, only to keep it largely in place after mak­ing a few minor changes.
Still, activists with the Mis­souri Coali­tion Against Com­mon Core remain hope­ful, and cel­e­brated the court’s rul­ing. “The SBAC law­suit was, at its foun­da­tion, about the rule of law,” Anne Gas­sel, one of the tax­pay­ers involved in the law­suit, told The New Amer­i­can. “Should tax pay­ers be forced to pay for some­thing that was cre­ated through the col­lu­sion of pri­vate enti­ties and the gov­ern­ment which cir­cum­vented the rule of law, in this case the Con­sti­tu­tion?” Her answer is a strong no.
In the recently decided case against SBAC and the gov­er­nor, “the court agreed that those who cre­ated the Smarter Bal­anced Assess­ment Con­sor­tia did not fol­low the rule of law and obtain Con­gres­sional approval in estab­lish­ing the con­sor­tia,” she added. “We believe, there­fore, that the Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment signed by our state for the Race To The Top Grant pro­gram, and the NCLB [No Child Left Behind] waiver we applied for, which required that our state be a mem­ber of a test­ing con­sor­tia, can­not bind the state and the tax­payer to pay for mem­ber­ship in the ille­gal consortia.”
Gas­sel and the other two plain­tiffs — for­mer Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­ial can­di­date Fred Sauer and par­ent activist Gretchen Logue — expect the gov­er­nor to appeal the rul­ing. How­ever, the case appears to be rel­a­tively straight­for­ward: State gov­ern­ments and the Obama admin­is­tra­tion defied the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion and an array of state and fed­eral laws to foist Com­mon Core on the unsus­pect­ing Amer­i­can peo­ple. In fact, in a phone call with The New Amer­i­can, Gas­sel and Logue indi­cated that, if the test­ing scheme is uncon­sti­tu­tional in Mis­souri, it is also unlaw­ful in other states. State activists hope the grow­ing bi-partisan move­ment against Com­mon Core across Amer­ica can learn from Mis­souri and kill the test­ing regime in other states. Many have already backed out.
As The New Amer­i­can has been report­ing for years, the fed­er­ally funded test­ing con­sor­tia — SBAC and the Part­ner­ship for Assess­ment of Readi­ness for Col­lege and Careers (PARCC) — are cru­cial to the Obama administration’s nation­al­iza­tion plot. Essen­tially, the administration’s tests, if imposed, will dic­tate what must be taught in the class­room. As chief Com­mon Core financier and population-control zealot Bill Gates put it in a speech to the National Con­fer­ence of State Leg­is­la­tures in 2009: “When the tests are aligned to the com­mon stan­dards, the cur­ricu­lum will line up as well.” The test­ing regime is also a cru­cial com­po­nent of the Orwellian data-gathering and data-mining plot.
Of course, the Com­mon Core-pushing estab­lish­ment — Big Busi­ness and Big Gov­ern­ment, mostly — has no inten­tion of sur­ren­der­ing. How­ever, with out­rage over what one state law­maker and edu­ca­tion expert described to The New Amer­i­can as “state-sponsored child abuse” con­tin­u­ing to sweep the nation, the bat­tle is far from over. Par­ents, tax­pay­ers, edu­ca­tors, and more are cross­ing party lines to smash the plot. If Amer­i­cans hope to restore proper edu­ca­tion and local con­trol, though, the grow­ing grass­roots upris­ing against Com­mon Core will have to ratchet up the pres­sure even more.

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Stop Internet Takeover

SECRET NEW INTERNET RULES LOOM FOR AMERICANS, Posted on February 28, 2015 Written by pamelageller.com
Feds look to adopt 322 pages of fresh taxes, reg­u­la­tions; FCC Chair Refuses to Tes­tify before Congress
Another wild power-grab. Power with­out account­abil­ity.  The net is the very last fron­tier for free speech.
Despite google algo­rithms that con­sis­tently ren­der day in day out, year in year out always ren­der left-wing sites on  first page search results;
Despite fil­ters that block my site and sites like mine (Jihad Watch, The Reli­gion of Peace, Creep­ing Sharia, Sharia Unveiled, et al) at work, school, and even US army bases and gov­ern­ment agen­cies;
Despite search engines refus­ing to include news sites like mine in the news searches;
Despite the fact that the main­stream broad­cast and print media, with the excep­tion of the tepid Fox News, are noto­ri­ously left;
Despite the fact that we are a mere fly buzzing around the mam­moth head of the main­stream media;
Despite the fact that they should win by over­whelm­ing num­bers because it’s David vs. Goliath;
They fail, because their ideas fail. Which is why they must destroy us.
“The issue is not slav­ery for a “good” cause ver­sus slav­ery for a “bad” cause; the issue is not dic­ta­tor­ship by a “good” gang ver­sus dic­ta­tor­ship by a “bad” gang. The issue is free­dom ver­sus dic­ta­tor­ship.” — Ayn Rand
FCC Chair Refuses to Tes­tify before Con­gress ahead of Net Neu­tral­ity Vote, The Cor­ner, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2015
by Andrew John­son Feb­ru­ary 25, 2015 (thanks to Van)
Two promi­nent House com­mit­tee chairs are “deeply dis­ap­pointed” in Fed­eral Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion chair­man Tom Wheeler for refus­ing to tes­tify before Con­gress as “the future of the Inter­net is at stake.” Wheeler’s refusal to go before the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee on Wednes­day comes on the eve of the FCC’s vote on new Inter­net reg­u­la­tions per­tain­ing to net neu­tral­ity. The committee’s chair­man, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jason Chaf­fetz (R., Utah), and Energy and Com­merce Com­mit­tee chair­man Fred Upton (R., Mich.) crit­i­cized Wheeler and the admin­is­tra­tion for lack­ing trans­parency on the issue. “So long as the chair­man con­tin­ues to insist on secrecy, we will con­tinue call­ing for more trans­parency and account­abil­ity at the com­mis­sion,” Chaf­fetz and Upton said in a state­ment. “Chair­man Wheeler and the FCC are not above Con­gress.” The vote on the new Inter­net reg­u­la­tions is sched­uled for Thurs­day. The FCC’s two Repub­li­can com­mis­sion­ers have asked Wheeler to delay the vote to allow more time for review. The changes would allow the com­mis­sion to reg­u­late the Inter­net like a pub­lic util­ity, set­ting new stan­dards that require the pro­vi­sion of equal access to all online content.

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Dangerous Convention of States

Publius Huldah will speak at Article V convention events in Indiana and Ohio, Mar 1, 2015
I will speak on *the deadly danger* of an Article V convention, and of the two remedies our Framers actually told us to use when the federal government usurps power, at the following events:

 

Date: *March 2, 2015 in Wabash, Indiana.*

Host: Wabash C3 Citizens Committed to the Constitution

Location: Bachelor Creek Church of Christ, 2147 N. State Road 15, Wabash, Indiana 46992. Time: 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., Eastern Time.

 

On Face Book: Go to the “Wabash C3 Presents: Publius Huldah” page. On internet: http://www.wabashc3.org/index.html

 

 

Date: *March 3, 2015 in Columbia City, Indiana.*

Host: Whitley County Patriots

Location: The Church of the Nazarene, 506 N. Main Street, Columbia City, Indiana, Time: 7:00 p.m.

 

 

Date: *March 4, 2015 in West Chester, Ohio.*

Host: Building Blocks for Liberty

Location: Lakota West Freshman Auditorium, 5050 Tylersville Road, West Chester, Ohio 45069 Time: 7:00-8:30 p.m.

 


 

Love to see you there!  And if you can't come, please forward to your contacts in these areas.

 


 

Comments

 

The Convention of States is being promoted by Communist organizations funded by George Soros.  If it is a good idea, why would these groups promote it? It can be stopped at the state level by the state legislature. Google the Newstates Constitution to see what they want to use to replace the US Constitution.  It’s not just about a Balanced Budget Amendment.

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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Rand Paul wins CPAC

CPAC: Paul edges Walker in straw poll By David Jackson, USA TODAY 6:40 p.m. EST February 28, 2015 Rand Paul wins CPAC
The Kentucky senator carried 25.7% in the Conservative Political Action Conference poll, while Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker finished second with 21.4% — a closer-than-expected tally in this early test of political strength among conservative Republican activists.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, finished third with 11.5%, followed closely by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson with 11.4%.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush — perhaps the most criticized candidate at this conservative conclave — finished fifth at 8.3%.
Other potential presidential candidates — including Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and Rick Perry — had less than 4% in the straw poll. Paul also won CPAC contests in 2013 and 2014.
The straw poll highlighted the four-day conference at which conservative delegates generally agreed they need to elect one of their own to the presidency in 2016, but disputed the best way to go about it.
Some CPAC delegates said Republicans should nominate a true believer, someone who can repeal health care, shrink the size of the federal government and aggressively wage war on the Islamic State militant group.
Others agreed on the need for a conservative nominee but said the GOP needs to reach out to moderates who may hold different views on immigration, education and foreign policy and will be needed to win the presidential vote in 2016.
"I am 60% confident right now," said attendee Brian Long in-between conference sessions. "I'd like to say I'm 80% confident."
As CPAC members swapped stories and handed out buttons and pamphlets in the hallways, the longtime tension between "real conservatives" and "establishment Republicans" surfaced repeatedly. It could be seen in the reactions to one prospective candidate in particular: Jeb Bush.
Although some CPAC members applauded Bush's call for "reform" conservatism, others described the former Florida governor as a dreaded RINO — Republican In Name Only. "He should be a Democrat," said Christmas Simon, a public speaker from Yorba Linda, Calif.
Bush's name drew boos during some of Saturday's wrap-up sessions.
Noelani Bonifacio, 26, a legislative aide to a state senator in Hawaii, said conservatives fight each other too much. Bonifacio said she knows people who backed former Texas congressman Ron Paul during the 2012 Republican primaries, then refused to vote for eventual nominee Mitt Romney in the general election.
"We have a lot of disagreements — which is good — but I think we spend too much time attacking each other," said Bonifacio, who voted for Rubio, a Florida senator, in the straw poll. "We should be attacking Democrats."
Bonifacio said Bush "is not my first choice," but she would vote for him in the general election if he is the nominee because "he is better than the alternative."
Not everyone at CPAC agreed. Some cited Bush's support of a pathway to citizenship for migrants who are in the country illegally. Others criticized his support of education standards known as "Common Core."
Simon — who cast her straw vote for "hard-core conservative" Cruz, the Texas senator — said voters want people who "really stand firm on what they believe in."
Comments
Conservatives interested in restoring and preserving the US Constitution and Bill of Rights (as written) collect around Rand Paul. This group includes Tea Party, Constitutionalists and lots of young people, but it also contains tens of millions of voters who want their economy back.
Hawks won’t like Rand Paul, because he will make Congress think through foreign entanglements and agree to less expensive and bombastic solutions. But Rand Paul is right. Our defense of US sovereignty and rights should take precedence over the defense of foreigners. We can’t bribe our way to peace. Our current foreign policy is bankrupt.
There will be lots of opposition by those who prefer our current circumstances.  They know Rand Paul will repeal the laws that led us to this place and their “special deals” would melt away.  They will claim that if Rand Paul becomes President, the sky would fall.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  They are scared to death of Rand Paul.  Watch the liberal media bias go on steroids.
We need to elect the candidate the “establishment” is most afraid of; that would be Rand Paul.  We would see a $trillion in spending cuts and we won’t notice a thing.  Most of what the federal government does is harmful.  Cutting it in half removes half the harmful stuff.
The federal government is corrupt and bankrupt. The unconstitutional departments and agencies need to close and have those functions returned to the states. Rand Paul will take us there.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
 
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Life at Conception Act

- H.R.1091 — 113th Congress (2013-2014) Introduced in House (03/12/2013)
Life at Conception Act - Declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being beginning at the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual comes into being. Prohibits construing this Act to authorize the prosecution of any woman for the death of her unborn child.
Source:National Pro-Life Alliance
 
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52 GOP Reps Stand with Us


Republican rebels stand fast against Boehner, amnesty 'If it's illegal, it's illegal,' declares member of GOP resistance, by Drew Zahn 

In the contentious voting over a Homeland Security funding bill Friday night, nearly 50 mostly conservative Republicans openly defied House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio – not once, but twice.

Only a last-minute change of heart by Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., spared the Republican speaker from an embarrassing defeat and a possible shutdown of part of the DHS.

At issue was whether the three-week spending bill backed by GOP leadership would be passed with or without funding President Obama’s executive action lifting the threat of deportation from millions of illegal immigrants. Many in Boehner’s party were not willing to pass a bill paying for what they’re calling Obama’s unconstitutional “amnesty” action.

“It does not make any difference whether the funding is for three weeks, three months or a full fiscal year,” argued Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who voted against the measure. “If it’s illegal, it’s illegal.”

Fifty-one other Republicans joined Brooks in voting against the measure, leading to a 224-203 defeat for Boehner and the GOP leadership.

Later in the evening, the proposal was put forward to pass a bill funding the DHS for just one week, and this time, 55 Republicans voted against the measure.

Pelosi, however, rallied Democrats to switch their votes and agree to what she called “a 7-day patch.”

“Your vote tonight,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to fellow Democrats, “will assure that we will vote for full funding next week.”

Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., however, continued the resistance from within the Republican Party, voting against the funding for a second time.

“Passing bills that do nothing but kick the can down the road is something that has become commonplace in Washington,” Salmon said. “I pledge to continue this fight in one week, so we can responsibly fund the Department of Homeland Security without funding the president’s unconstitutional actions.”

The Senate immediately passed the one-week funding measure in a voice vote, and President Obama signed the bill just before midnight.

Democrats have been tight-lipped on what brought about the sudden change of heart, and Boehner spokesman Michael Steel firmly denied rumors that a deal was cut between Boehner and Pelosi to get the measure passed.

“We did not make any such ‘deal’ or promise,” Steel said.

Republicans who voted against the three-week measure are listed in alphabetical order below:

  1. Justin Amash, R-Mich.
  2. Brian Babin, R-Texas
  3. Lou Barletta, R-Pa.
  4. Joe Barton, R-Texas
  5. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.
  6. Dave Brat, R-Va.
  7. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla.
  8. Mo Brooks, R-Ala.
  9. Curt Clawson, R-Fla.
  10. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla.
  11. Scott DesJarlais, R-Tenn.
  12. Sean Duffy, R-Wis.
  13. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas
  14. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn.
  15. John Fleming, R-La.
  16. Randy Forbes, R.Va.
  17. Trent Franks, R-Ariz.
  18. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas
  19. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.
  20. Morgan Griffith, R-Va.
  21. Jody Hice, R-Ga.
  22. Richard Hudson, R-N.C.
  23. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kansas
  24. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.
  25. Robert Hurt, R-Va.
  26. Sam Johnson, R-Texas
  27. Walter Jones, R-N.C.
  28. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio
  29. Steve King, R-Iowa
  30. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho
  31. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo.
  32. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga.
  33. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.
  34. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.
  35. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C.
  36. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas
  37. Pete Olson, R-Texas
  38. Steve Pearce, R-N.M.
  39. Scott Perry, R-Pa.
  40. Ted Poe, R-Texas
  41. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas
  42. Tom Rice, R-S.C.
  43. Phil Roe, R-Tenn.
  44. Thomas Rooney, R-Fla.
  45. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz.
  46. Mark Sanford, R-S.C.
  47. Lamar Smith, R-Texas
  48. Mark Walker, R-N.C.
  49. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio
  50. Roger Williams, R-Texas
  51. Rob Wittman, R-Va.
  52. Kevin Yoder, R-Kansas

In the second vote, nine additional Republicans resisted the one-week extension, while six who voted against the three-week funding bill agreed to the one-week “patch.” The roll call on the second vote can be found by clicking here.

Obama has vowed to veto any legislation that undercuts his immigration action.

Source:http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/republican-rebels-stand-fast-against-boehner-amnesty/
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