TELLING IT LIKE IT IS !

The Unilateral Disarmament Democrats: Putting Trial Lawyers Ahead Of Your Family’s Safety

It’s hard to think of an action that has put as many lives at risk as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D.-Calif.) declaration of unilateral disarmament in the War on Terror last week.

By refusing to renew our ability to monitor terrorist communications overseas, Speaker Pelosi has put Americans at risk. She has blinded our counterterrorism capability and shut down America’s most sophisticated defenses against the irreconcilable wing of Islam. As of midnight last Saturday, the law governing America’s defense is totally inadequate to stop terrorists.

Why? Because the Democratic left believes lining the pockets of trial lawyers is more important than stopping terrorists.

Suing Telecom Companies For Helping Keep America Safe

At issue is the extension of the Protect America Act that was passed last August to allow U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor foreigner-to-foreigner communications without a warrant. Congress has known for six months that this ability under the Protect America Act was set to expire on Sunday. So last week, by an overwhelmingly bipartisan majority, the Senate passed legislation to prevent the authority from lapsing.

But the House Democratic leadership, led by Speaker Pelosi, refused to let the House vote on the bill. This led to a House GOP walk out led by Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio), who said, “We will not stand idly by and watch the floor of the United States House of Representatives be abused for pure, political grandstanding at the expense of our national security.”

Why? Not because the bill lacked bipartisan support, but because it lacked trial lawyer support. The Senate-passed bill contains a provision granting immunity from lawsuits to telecommunications companies that have been cooperating with the government in the War on Terror.

Instead of putting her fellow Democrats in a position where they have to make a public vote in favor of trial lawyers over the safety of Americans, Speaker Pelosi opted to leave Washington for vacation.

The President Just Wants To Protect American Telephone Companies

As Robert Novak reported Monday , the trial lawyers – the Democrats’ most important source of political contributions – have filed dozens of lawsuits seeking millions of dollars against phone companies for helping keep us safe by responding to the request of intelligence agencies to provide critical information about suspected terrorist communications without a warrant.

The continued cooperation of the telecom companies in monitoring terrorist communications is crucial to America’s defense, which is why the Senate bill contained the immunity provision.

The simple fact is that if a company cooperates with the United States government in tracking down terrorists, it should receive our thanks and gratitude, not a lawsuit.

But some Democrats evidently don’t agree. Note that House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) chose to attack the bill and the President’s support for it by siding with the trial lawyers: “This is not about protecting Americans. The President just wants to protect American telephone companies.”

The House’s Unilateral Disarmament Contrasts Sharply With the Senate’s Leadership

Speaker Pelosi’s and the House Democratic leadership’s unilateral disarmament contrasts sharply with the Senate Democrats who joined in the bipartisan 68-vote majority to strengthen America’s defenses against terrorism.

The Senate bill was a compromise between Senate Democrats and the White House. As former Justice Official Andy McCarthy put it: “Democrats surely did not want to give President Bush this legislative victory, and President Bush certainly did not want to cave on these issues. But both sides compromised precisely because they understood that failing to do so, failing to preserve current surveillance authority, would endanger the United States.”

Senate Democrats such as Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Jim Webb (Va.) deserve thanks for putting the safety of America ahead of their partisan political interests.

The Law Was Never Meant To Protect Foreign Terrorists

So what is the state of our national defenses as I write this today?

The Protect America Act amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that was passed in 1978 to protect people inside the United States from being monitored by U.S. intelligence without a warrant proving they were agents of a foreign government.

This point is crucial: FISA was never meant to apply to foreigners outside the United States communicating with other foreigners outside the United States.

For 30 years, this was the understanding of the law. But a court case last year said that foreigner-to-foreigner overseas communications now have FISA protections – that is, they require a warrant before they can be monitored – because technology has changed and these non-U.S. communications now technically may pass through U.S. channels in the global telecommunications network.

The result is that for U.S. intelligence to monitor suspected terrorist communications between a Pakistani and an Afghani, they have to go through the time-consuming, bureaucratic procedure of having the attorney general and others approve lengthy affidavits proving that the targets are agents of a foreign power.

As of Midnight Saturday, American Lives Are At Risk

So as of midnight last Saturday, if U.S. intelligence discovers a new terrorist threat, it must spend valuable time preparing bureaucratic documents and seeking approval of busy officials before their communications can be monitored. By the time they’ve jumped through the bureaucratic hoops forced on them by House Democrats, it may be too late.

What’s more, American telecommunications companies are less inclined to cooperate with intelligence officials because they lack protection from lawsuits under the law.

In short, Americans are at greater risk today than we were four days ago.

Don’t Take My Word for It – Listen to the Intelligence Professionals

But don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell – an intelligence professional who served under President Clinton as well as President Bush – told “Fox News Sunday”:

“Our situation now, when the terrorist threat is increasing because they’ve achieved – al Qaeda’s achieved de facto safe haven in the border area of Pakistan and Afghanistan – the threat is going up.

“And therefore, we do not have the agility and the speed that we had before to be able to move and try to capture their communications to thwart their planning.

“…[Our country is in] increased danger, and it will increase more and more as time goes on. And the key is the – if you think about the private sector global communications, many people think the government operates that.

“Ninety-eight percent of it is owned and operated by the private sector. We cannot do this mission without help and support from the private sector. And the private sector, although willingly helped us in the past, are now saying, ‘You can’t protect me. Why should I help you?'”

Obama and Clinton Were AWOL on Protecting Americans

The potential threat to our safety is so great that the situation calls for leaders of all political parties to come together to call for Congress to act – without delay – to restore these crucial authorities to U.S. intelligence.

Senators and presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama missed the vote that passed the Senate to extend the Protect America Act. But they now have an obligation to keep America safe by joining President Bush in calling for the House return to Washington and pass the Senate bill.

No presidential primary, no 12-day vacation, is more important than the safety and security of our country.

Our leaders and would-be leaders must act!

The United States Congress by its inaction has created a gap in our national defense. A gap we can now only hope will not be filled by our enemies. Congress has the solemn responsibility not to put politics over American security. The President should implore Congress, as a national security priority, to return to Washington and pass the Protect America Act to give our intelligence agencies the tools they need to defeat our enemies.

Spitzer Spits in the Eye of Life

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer (D) is pushing a bill in his state’s legislature that seeks to declare abortion a fundamental right for all women. The bill would make abortions virtually immune to state regulation, end conscience protections, and most likely force the numerous Christian-run hospitals in the state to close rather than be forced to violate their faith by carrying out abortions or referring women to abortuaries. The bill also would expand the field of people who can perform abortions while eliminating the possibility of passing restrictions that have wide public support, such as parental notification, informed consent laws, and waiting periods. Governor Spitzer rose to power in New York State with tremendous support from NARAL and Planned Parenthood, mainly due to his adamant support of abortion and his unbridled hostility towards pregnancy care centers. Coincidentally the two leading Democratic nominees for President, Senators Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barak Obama (R-Ill.) are cosponsors of a similar bill in the U.S. Senate introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calf.) that, if enacted, would effectively overturn most state laws on abortion. States, like Georgia, that are currently trying to reflect the pro-life majority among their population would be left with little choice but to subsidize abortions with taxpayer dollars if this legislation is passed and signed into national law.

Planned Parenthood Plans Six-Story Clinic In Houston

An entire floor will be dedicated to late-term abortions.

In October, Planned Parenthood opened the nation’s largest abortion clinic – 22,000 square feet – in Aurora, Ill.

But that’s last year’s news.

Its Denver clinic, at 50,000 square feet, is under construction. And its new, six-story Houston clinic, which will dwarf the others at 78,000 square feet, will have an entire floor for late-term abortions.

Despite complaints from Planned Parenthood officials around the country about the closing of clinics, their strategy of opening larger, mega-clinics shows they are still well-invested in the killing of preborn life,” said Dawn Vargo, associate bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family Action. “While their tactics may be changing, the number of abortions they do each year continues to increase.”

In 2005, Planned Parenthood ended the lives of 264,943 preborn babies nationwide, according to its annual report. That was up almost 15 percent from 2002.

Planned Parenthood of Houston & Southeast Texas will open the abortion center in the fall, just outside the gates of the University of Houston’s main campus.

Christine Melchor, director of Houston’s Coalition for Life, said: “They like to be situated in some of the poorer, minority neighborhoods – that’s exactly where this building is – and close to college campuses; there are several colleges in that area.”

Are the world’s ice caps melting because of climate change, or are the reports just a lot of scare mongering by the advocates of the global warming theory?

Scare mongering appears to be the case, according to reports from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that almost all the allegedly “lost” ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels.

Moreover, a February 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

The Daily express recalls the photograph of polar bears clinging on to a melting iceberg which has been widely hailed as proof of the need to fight climate change and has been used by former Vice President Al Gore during his “Inconvenient Truth” lectures about mankind’s alleged impact on the global climate.

Gore fails to mention that the photograph was taken in the month of August when melting is normal. Or that the polar bear population has soared in recent years.

As winter roars in across the Northern Hemisphere it seems to have joined the ranks of the skeptics.

As the Express notes, scientists are saying the northern Hemisphere has endured its coldest winter in decades, adding that snow cover across the area is at its greatest since 1966. The newspaper cites the one exception – Western Europe, which had, until the weekend when temperatures plunged to as low as -10 C in some places, been basking in unseasonably warm weather.

Around the world, vast areas have been buried under some of the heaviest snowfalls in decades. Central and southern China, the United States, and Canada were hit hard by snowstorms. In China, snowfall was so heavy that over 100,000 houses collapsed under the weight of snow.

Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman, and northern Saudi Arabia report the heaviest falls in years and below-zero temperatures. In Afghanistan, snow and freezing weather killed 120 people. Even Baghdad had a snowstorm, the first in the memory of most residents.

AFP news reports icy temperatures have just swept through south China, stranding 180,000 people and leading to widespread power cuts just as the area was recovering from the worst weather in 50 years, the government said Monday. The latest cold snap has taken a severe toll in usually temperate Yunnan province, which has been struck by heavy snowfalls since Thursday, a government official from the provincial disaster relief office told AFP.

Twelve people have died there, state Xinhua news agency reported, and four remained missing as of Saturday.

An ongoing record-long spell of cold weather in Vietnam’s northern region, which started on Jan. 14, has killed nearly 60,000 cattle, mainly bull and buffalo calves, local press reported Monday. By February 17, the spell had killed a total of 59,962 cattle in the region, including 7,349 in the Ha Giang province, 6,400 in Lao Cai, and 5,571 in Bac Can province, said Hoang Kim Giao, director of the Animal Husbandry Department under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, according to the Pioneer newspaper.

In Britain the temperatures plunged to -10 C in central England, according to the Express, which reports that experts say that February could end up as one of the coldest in Britain in the past 10 years with the freezing night-time conditions expected to stay around a frigid -8 C until at least the middle of the week. And the BBC reports that a bus company’s efforts to cut global warming emissions have led to services being disrupted by cold weather.

Meanwhile Athens News reports that a raging snow storm that blanketed most of Greece over the weekend and continued into the early morning hours on Monday, plunging the country into sub-zero temperatures. The agency reported that public transport buses were at a standstill on Monday in the wider Athens area, while ships remained in ports, public services remained closed, and schools and courthouses in the more severely-stricken prefectures were also closed.

Scores of villages, mainly on the island of Crete, and in the prefectures of Evia, Argolida, Arcadia, Lakonia, Viotia, and the Cyclades islands were snowed in.

More than 100 villages were snowed-in on the island of Crete and temperatures in Athens dropped to -6 C before dawn, while the coldest temperatures were recorded in Kozani, Grevena, Kastoria and Florina, where they plunged to -12 C.

If global warming gets any worse we will all freeze to death.

Wheaton College is once again featuring a pro-homosexual activist as a featured speaker at its Center for Applied Christian Ethics.

Wheaton first came under fire for inviting self-proclaimed “gay Christian” (oxymoronical by grammatical definition and sinner by biblical definition) activist Harry Knox to participate in a panel discussion during which he repeated the claim that his sexual preference is a “gift from God.” While there are gifts from God – this is not one of them. God does not give a gift of something He condemns in His own book, the Bible.

On this evening Wheaton will feature Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine and author of the new book The Great Awakening, in which Wallis claims the effort to legitimize homosexual relationships in the law is “a justice issue.” No matter what type of issue you may want to categorize something in … if it is sin it is still sin! … categorization is irrelevant and doesn’t change that fact!

Peter LaBarbera, with Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, says the college is failing both its Bible-centered charter and its obligations to academic integrity. “We find it hard to believe that somebody who believes in the Bible – and the Bible teaches that homosexuality is an abomination,” states LaBarbera, “… could call support for so-called ‘civil rights’ based on egregiously sinful behavior – how you can call that ‘a justice issue’?”

LaBarbera is calling for the college to invite a speaker with an opposing view to speak along with Wallis. But LaBarbera understands why the college would view Wallis as being a good draw for the event. “He seems to be one of the secular media’s favorite evangelicals because he’s basically saying that the Religious Right is wrong with all their focus on abortion and being against homosexuality,” he points out.

While LaBarbera agrees with Wallis that Christians should do a better job of caring for the poor and opposing no-fault divorce, he says those failings in no way justify support for clearly immoral choices like homosexuality or abortion. Wallis also is in favor of civil unions, another reason why LaBarbera feels Wallis is not a good role model or speaker for this event.

Wallis is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

When will these “Christian” colleges stop doing this nonsense and listen? …when the contributors stop giving so they have to terminate these liberal presidents and hire real Christians. Homosexuality proponents do not belong on a Christian campus.

Christians who ignore the clear teachings of the Scriptures are no Christians at all.

Tragic, another Christian college being taken over by liberal thought. That can be expected though when people choose to override what God’s Word says in light of trying to legitimize sin instead of calling it what it is … SIN!