United Liberty

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) has had a rough last couple of weeks. His willingness to break his no-tax pledge to Georgians has set off grassroots fiscal conservatives. Chambliss now finds himself in a vulnerable position, according to a new survey from Public Policy Polling, and potentially facing a primary challenge.

The blowback has been substantial. According to Daniel Malloy at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Gov. Nathan Deal (R-GA) declined endorse Chambliss in a recent interview, claiming that it was “too early to pick winners and losers”:

Malloy: “There is a lot of talk going around the state about Saxby Chambliss getting a Republican primary challenge. Would you support him if he does?”

Deal: “It’s way too early to be picking winners and losers and people that you’re going to support and not support. He’s a friend of mine. I served with him in the U.S. House and he will continue to be a friend of mine.”

During a recent interview with CNN, Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), who is emerging as the favorite among grassroots activists, declined to say whether or not he’ll run against Chambliss:

Just last week I wrote about the threat of free speech coming under attack. Specifically I was talking about the offensive video recently found on YouTube and Google’s decision to remove the video in countries where it would be most offensive. Here’s what I said:

My concern in all of this is that people will use this instance as a reason to support some measures by which the U.S. government could censor content on Google’s web sites. We should be watching carefully for that type of movement. Censorship, like so many other issues, is best handled by the people, not by government.

Well, it’s happening already. We shouldn’t be shocked. Anyone watching for this would have seen it coming. Pakistani Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, said in a recent CNN interview that the U.S. should “rethink how much freedom is okay.”

It’s easy to understand the sentiment without agreeing with it. The argument is that people shouldn’t be allowed to say or do things that cause other people to go on massive killing sprees. Sure, that’s understandable. Nobody wants to hear reports of violence that erupted because of somebody’s opinion.

But this notion that because people get upset over somebody else’s opinion we should be restricting speech is preposterous!

Let me put everyone at ease over the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) recent purchase of 174,000 rounds of pistol ammo. According to the AP and CNN they are merely for training and normal police work of the 259 agents of the Social Security Administration’s Inspector General’s Office.

I’m glad the official propaganda arm (a.k.a. the AP and CNN) of the U.S. federal government has put to rest the crazy conspiracy theory that the Feds are preparing for civil unrest.

I feel better already don’t you? Unfortunately, the fact remains that the United States government has purchased or plans to purchase 1.4 billion rounds of ammo to be used not overseas but inside the U.S. That is not a conspiracy!!!

The CNN article and the AP article both highlight the State’s version of the SSA purchase as “normal.” In both stories they quote the Social Security Administration.

“These investigators have full law enforcement authority, including executing search warrants and making arrests,” the agency said in an August post. “Our investigators are similar to your state or local police officers. They use traditional investigative techniques, and they are armed when on official duty.”

Hollow point bullets are standard-issue items for many police agencies, the Social Security Administration said. The bullets expand when they hit a target and can help prevent injuries to bystanders from bullets passing through a body, according to police.

Investigators “use this ammunition during their mandatory quarterly firearms qualifications and other training sessions, to ensure agent and public safety,” the administration added.

Democratic National Committee chairperson apparently doesn’t think that accuracy really matters, so long as Team Blue gets the win in the long run.  Now, why would I say such a thing?  Well,it stems from a fundraising email that Debbie Wasserman Schultz sent out where she says this:

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are now, incredibly, saying they don’t agree with the policies of the party whose nomination they’re about to accept, but guess what? The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the platform was, and I quote, “written at the direction of Romney’s campaign.”

This is some pretty unbelievable stuff, even by Mitt Romney standards.

It’s up to us to make sure voters see through this and know just how dangerously wrong for women these candidates are — but we can’t do it without your help. Donate $3 or more today.

Quote courtesy of Townhall.com

The above quote deals with abortion, and particularly with Romney and Ryan’s stances on abortion.  Romney in particular does agree with some exceptions to an abortion ban.  Three of them, as a matter of fact: Rape, incest, and the life of the mother.  However, Wassermann Schultz says that the GOP platform - you know, the same one with a call for a constitutional amendment banning abortion? - was “written at the direction of Romney’s campaign.”

As expected, the attacks on Paul Ryan’s budget proposals are well under way. Specifically, President Obama’s campaign is attacking Ryan’s Medicare reform plan, which was a plan pieced together with Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon.

The proposal would offer a competing plan different than the current “fee-for-service” model, by giving new enrollees — those younger than 55-years-old — the option of a voluntary voucher program to purchase health insurance. Nothing would change for seniors already in the system.

But President Obama is already demagoguing the issue, claiming that the Ryan-Wyden plan would have hurt Medicare, which is our most costly long-term entitlement, and refuses to acknowledge that his own health care law cuts more than $700 billion from the government-run health insurance program for seniors.

During an interview with Wolf Blitzer yesterday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) tried to tear down Ryan, who was picked by Mitt Romney as his running mate, claiming that the plan is “extreme” and would hurt seniors. Blitzer came back at Wasserman Schultz’s talking points about Ryan’s proposal, noting that anyone over 55 would not be affected in any way and that the traditional “fee-for-service” option would still be available for those who want it.

Here’s the video:

Everyone wants to have a bogeyman they can point to and blame all the problems on that. Some say it’s universities. Others say it’s Democrats (while others say Republicans). More than a few lambast unions, whether public or private. There are even some crazies that continually blame Jews (or gays, or immigrants, or…) I generally shy away from these sort of “analyses,” because they are far too simplistic and don’t understand that many things have many causes.

But today, I’m going to do just that, and lay down hard on who I think are truly screwing this country over: our news media.

This year has been utterly disgraceful for them. There has been a litany of failings that I have not witnessed before; perhaps I was too young and didn’t understand, or they really weren’t there. But 2012 seems to be the year that the media has just totally, utterly, dropped the ball across the board, and in doing so they are doing this nation a monumental disservice.

Perhaps the first and most egregious entry was when an NBC news team edited the tape of the 9/11 call of George Zimmerman, in a very deceptive fashion. The editor who made that decision was later fired, but NBC botched their apology by doing it in an email to the Hollywood Reporter and not coming straight on TV to apologize, as it is their medium.

Last month, the House of Representatives took the extraordinary step of voting to find Attorney General Eric Holder in both criminal and civil contempt of Congress over his failing to comply with requests for documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal. Even though the Justice Department, which Holder oversees, will not pursue the criminal charges, House Republicans have indicated that they will follow through with the civil charge.

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has invoked “executive privilege” in order to conceal documents related to the ATF operation gone awry. Early polls indicated that Americans opposed use of “executive privilege,” but the Obama Administration has not back down from its stance.

Some observers feel that the fight over the Fast and Furious could be a political loser for Republicans, but a new CNN poll doesn’t seem to back that angle up, at least at this point:

According to a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday morning, 53% of people questioned say they approve of the House vote a week and a half ago to hold the attorney general in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents related to a controversial program called Operation Fast and Furious, with one in three saying they disapprove of the move and 13% unsure.

Nearly three-quarters of Republicans approve of the move, as do a majority of independent voters, while a plurality of Democrats oppose the vote.

We haven’t been paying attention to many general elections polls around here lately. Why? Because none of it really matters until around 60 days before voters casts their ballots. But there has been a narrative that Mitt Romney is performing poorly in swing states and President Barack Obama is well on his way to re-election. But a poll released by CNN earlier this week shows that Romney is up in the states that will decide the presidential election:

Mitt Romney has a sizeable lead in 15 battleground states, according to a CNN/ORC poll released late Monday.

The Republican candidate leads President Obama 51 percent to 43 in 15 states that will be critical in determining the outcome of the 2012 election.

Obama won 12 of these battleground states in 2008 — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin — and will need to keep about half of those in 2012 if he’s to secure reelection. The poll also included Missouri, Indiana and Arizona as battleground states.

That’s good news for Romney, showing he has a base of support in those states, though the blanket poll of 534 registered voters doesn’t give an indication of which candidate leads in an individual state, or by how much.
[…]
Obama holds a slim lead over Romney nationally in the CNN/ORC poll, 49 percent to 46, which is within the poll’s margin of error and unchanged from the same poll in May.

We’ve recently gone over Rick Santorum’s very un-conservative voting record on fiscal issues, noting that it makes him unfit for anyone claiming to be a Tea Party-minded voter. This was a point that Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), who is also seeking the GOP nomination, brought home yesterday in an interview with CNN:

Ron Paul on Sunday re-launched his attack that Republican presidential rival Rick Santorum is a liberal, adding he doubts the former Pennsylvania senator could beat President Barack Obama in November if he wins the party’s nomination.

“His voting record is, I think from my viewpoint, an atrocious voting record - how liberal he’s been in all the things he’s voted for over the many years he was in the Senate and in the House,” Paul said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
[…]
Paul has previously attacked Santorum for voting for the debt ceiling five times as a senator, as well as the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska that was considered unnecessary government spending.

On Sunday, the candidate specifically pointed to Santorum’s high-profile comments on the recent birth control controversy, in which the White House amended a rule that would have required religious institutions to pay for contraception coverage.

Paul also criticized Santorum for the focus on social issues, such as the recent controversy on contraception, when the economy should be the foremost concern in the Republican primary:

In case you haven’t already, Mitt Romney, the day after a very strong showing in Florida, stuck his foot in his mouth during an interview on CNN by saying that he is “not concerned about the very poor”:

After winning the Florida primary, GOP presidential nominee hopeful Mitt Romney explains to CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien that he is focused on a particular portion of the American population in his campaign. Romney says, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair , I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich…. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

O’Brien asked him to clarify his remarks saying, “There are lots of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say, ‘That sounds odd.’” Romney continues, “We will hear from the Democrat party, the plight of the poor…. You can focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus…. The middle income Americans, they’re the folks that are really struggling right now and they need someone that can help get this economy going for them.”

Both anti-Romney conservatives and Democrats reacted to the comments, using them as another example of Romney being out of touch. Other, more reasonable conservatives, are just concerned that it feeds perceptions about Romney. For example, the Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll writes: