Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Posts Tagged ‘Rights’

Another day, another Obama scandal.

Erin McCann reports at Healthcare IT News:

The Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.

According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.

“This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service agents,” the complaint reads. “No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records,” it continued.

Read more at Healthcare IT News

John Hayward remarks:

How much money is on the line in this suit?  Oh, a mere $25,000 in compensatory damages.  Per violation.  Which adds up to “a minimum of $250 billion.”

Has Congress begun those emergency sessions to shut down ObamaCare yet?  What else do they need to hear?

Read more at Human Events

Lawsuit Accuses IRS of Stealing Medical Records of 10 Million Americans

Who Trusts The Scandal-Ridden IRS To Not Abuse Access To Confidential Patient Health Information?

Big Brother Healthcare: Obamacare Includes Random Health ‘Inspections,’ Mandatory Reporting Of Your Health Stats To Gov’t

Farewell, Personal and Medical Privacy: ObamaTax is Here

No, You Can’t Google My Private Health Records: Obamacare’s Intrusive Data Grab

New HHS Regulation Creates Government Database of Your Private Health Information

If they’ve already proven themselves capable of targeting conservatives with only their tax information, what will they be capable of when they have even more information on their targets?

If they’ve already illegally released conservatives’ confidential tax information, what’s to stop them from leaking dissidents’ personal health information as well?

Peter Suderman warns:

Obamacare is not merely a massive overhaul of the health care system. It is also a substantial expansion of the Internal Revenue Service. That’s because the law relies on the tax collection agency to both enforce its individual mandate and administer the tax credits the law offers to subsidize the purchase of health insurance. Following recent revelations that agents in multiple IRS offices, including tax officials in Washington, targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny, a number of former and current Republican legislators are already counseling caution about the agency’s role in administering the law.

Concerns about the agency’s oversight of the health law are well-founded—and not only because of general concerns about the agency’s judgment.

For one thing, the IRS appears to have specifically targeted groups that opposed the health care law. According to The Washington Post, “although some of the groups were explicitly labeled ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot,’ others that came under intense scrutiny were focused on challenging the Affordable Care Act — known by many as Obamacare — or the integrity of federal elections.”

In other words, the agency has singled out Obamacare opponents for unusual treatment. That does not speak well of the agency’s ability to fairly carry out its duties under the law.

Read more at Reason

Indeed it does not.

The editorial board at Investors Business Daily is similarly concerned:

[O]bamaCare’s individual mandate takes effect in 2014, all Americans who file income-tax returns must deal with and report personal health information to the IRS.

The IRS will require the name and health insurance identification number of the taxpayer, the name and tax identification number of the health insurance company, the number of months the taxpayer was covered by this insurance plan and whether the plan was purchased in one of ObamaCare’s “exchanges.”

Heavy fines will be levied for failure to jump through all the government’s hoops.

The new tax mandates and penalties in ObamaCare will require up to 16,500 new IRS personnel to collect, examine and audit new tax information mandated on families and small businesses, according to an analysis by the Joint Economic Committee and the then-minority GOP staff of the House Ways & Means Committee in 2010.

Will the IRS enforce the mandate rules impartially, or will it go after only those who support individual liberty and oppose government encroachment on it?

Will ObamaCare resisters also be considered enemies of the state?

Read more at IBD

The IRS Targeting Scandal Could Disrupt Obamacare

Gingrich: IRS Targeting Scandal Raises Issues About Obamacare

IRS Claims It Can Read Your E-mail Without A Warrant

IRS Goes On Hiring Frenzy To Enforce Obamacare Penalties/Tax Hikes

Get Ready For More Taxes, More Intrusive IRS

Translation: Don’t think. Don’t Question.  Just go along with whatever the ruling class tells you to do.

Erica Ritz reports:

A year to the day after kicking off his re-election campaign at Ohio State University, President Barack Obama returned to the college campus and told graduates that only through vigorous participation in their “democracy” can they right an ill-functioning government and break through relentless cynicism about the nation’s future.

Obama also urged the students to “reject these voices” that warn of the evils of government, saying:

Still, you’ll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works; or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule is just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems, nor do we want it to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government.

[...]

The cynics may be the loudest voices—but they accomplish the least. It’s the silent disruptors—those who do the long, hard, committed work of change—that gradually push this country in the right direction, and make the most lasting difference. [Emphasis added]

Read more at The Blaze

Doug Powers makes a powerful observation:

Interesting. Obama said that those who warn others to be on the lookout for government tyranny run counter to the reason this “brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule” called the United States of America was formed, when in fact a stand against government tyranny is precisely why this country came into existence. Can somebody please flick the paradox switch on the teleprompter to the “off” position?

Thomas Paine wrote about the “government and society should be a single entity” approach in Common Sense, and concluded the two should never be indistinguishable:

“Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one;”

Read more at Michelle Malkin

Gordan Runyan remarks:

Two things:

1. We need no further proof to justify a chorus of horse-laughter over his claim to being a Constitutional scholar. Because a Constitutional scholar would have read a book or two. Specifically, say, the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers. He would’ve seen that the nation was extremely concerned about tyranny in America in the run-up to the ratification of the federal Constitution. Indeed, those on the Anti-Federalist side seem more like prophets with each passing day, as they were convinced that the new Constitution would not, in fact, keep tyranny from happening here. Warning about government tyranny is practically the sine qua non of the American experiment.

President Reagan spoke as an American in this honorable tradition when he quipped that the scariest words in our language were, “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.” Mr. Obama speaks those words in earnest, like he really means them, and wonders why anyone would be nervous about it.

2. I really have no idea who he’s talking about, these mysterious voices warning of tyranny lurking around the corner. Everyone I know who is paying any attention is aware that tyranny is here right now, out in the open! I wish we lived in a time when tyrants were still afraid to show themselves!

Read more at Last Resistance

I especially like Trifecta’s take on this:

View on YouTube

Obama advice to grads: Antithesis of Jefferson’s warning on governmental tyranny

Why All of Us Should Mistrust the Government

Washington’s Message to Americans: ‘We Own You’

Mark Steyn: ‘Rights’ Have Been Perverted Into Gifts That Kings Bestow Upon Subjects

We the Serfs

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

THIS is why we need the Parental Rights Amendment!

Parents don’t even realize that the state now considers their parental rights something that are delegated to them by the state, rather than being unalienable rights endowed by Nature and Nature’s God! If a doctor decides to play god or someone decides to make a false accusation, your rights as a parent can be suddenly revoked, and you’re considered guilty until proven innocent!

News 10 reports:

A Sacramento family was torn apart after a 5-month-old baby boy was taken from his parents following a visit to the doctor.

The young couple thought their problems were behind them after their son had a scare at the hospital, but once they got home their problems got even worse.

It all began nearly two weeks ago, when Anna Nikolayev and her husband Alex took their 5-month-old boy Sammy to Sutter Memorial Hospital to be treated for flu symptoms, but they didn’t like the care Sammy was getting.

For example, one day Anna asked why a nurse was giving her son antibiotics.

“I asked her, for what is that? And she’s like, ‘I don’t know.’ I’m like, ‘you’re working as a nurse, and you don’t even know what to give to my baby for what,’” Anna explained.

According to Anna, a doctor later said Sammy shouldn’t have been on the antibiotics.

Anna said Sammy suffers from a heart murmur and had been seeing a doctor at Sutter for regular treatment since he was born. After Sammy was treated for flu symptoms last week, doctors at Sutter admitted him to the pediatric ICU to monitor his condition. After a few days, Anna said doctors began talking about heart surgery.

“If we got the one mistake after another, I don’t want to have my baby have surgery in the hospital where I don’t feel safe,” Anna said.

Anna argued with doctors about getting a second opinion. Without a proper discharge, she finally took Sammy out of the hospital to get a second opinion at Kaiser Permanente.

“The police showed up there. They saw that the baby was fine,” Anna said. “They told us that Sutter was telling them so much bad stuff that they thought that this baby is dying on our arms.”

Medical records from the doctor treating Sammy at Kaiser Permanente said the baby as clinically safe to go home with his parents. The doctor added, “I do not have concern for the safety of the child at home with his parents.”

“So police saw the report from the doctors, said, ‘okay guys, you have a good day,’ and they walked away,” Anna said.

Read more at News 10

That SHOULD have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t.   Many doctors are no longer recognizing the right of parents to disagree with their recommendations and/or seek a second opinion.  With god-like arrogance, they seek to intimidate, threaten and punish any patient that dares to question them, and the law allows them to do it.

Political Outcast continues:

Evidently the doctors and staff at Sutter were offended that Anna wanted to seek a second opinion because the day after the two hospital visits, police and Child Protective Services showed up at their house.  Alex met them outside the door and says that the police pushed him against the house and then smacked him down to the ground.  The police then opened the door without asking permission and entered the house.  Anna, who was frightened to death, turned her camera on to record what was happening.  She recorded one of the police officers telling her:

“I’m going to grab your baby, and don’t resist, and don’t fight me ok?”

The policeman took Sammy from them and turned him over to the CPS agent.  They told the shocked and frightened parents that they had a report that Sammy had been severely neglected and that an investigation was being launched.

Alex and Anna have retained an attorney to help them sort the whole thing out.  Their attorney says that there are absolutely no signs of neglect and that the exact opposite is true.  The parents have never missed an appointment and they have the doctor’s records from Kaiser indicating that Sammy was okay to go home and that he was not in any danger.

Read more at Political Outcast

Even though the baby shows no signs of neglect and the parents have not been charged with any crime, CPS forced them to agree to restrictions on their parental rights in order to regain custody.   They have lost their right to disagree with the doctors over their son’s treatment, and must allow  intrusive “follow up” visits into their home.  ”Follow up” for what?  Further proof that the parents have done nothing wrong?  These parents are being treated as if they are guilty until proven innocent!

News 10 reports:

Five-month-old Sammy, who was removed from his parents’ custody by Sacramento County Child Protective Services last week, will be transported to Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, a Sacramento County judge ruled Monday. The baby has been in protective custody at Sutter Memorial Hospital.

The Nikolayevs have since been fighting to get their baby back and talking with local and international media to explain their case.

The court also ruled Monday the parents must following all medical advice from now on, including not taking their child from Stanford without proper discharge.

A county social worker will make regular house visits to check on Sammy once he is returned home.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Paul Seave said he believed all of the attorneys involved worked in the best interest of Sammy.

Read more at News 10

The “best interest of Sammy” was to be left with his parents the minute the cops saw he was in no danger, investigate the first hospital’s false reports to CPS, and investigate CPS’s unlawful abuses of power to harass and tear apart an innocent family!

ParentalRights.org explains why the Parental Rights Amendment is desperately needed:

Traditionally, the Supreme Court has recognized the “fundamental liberty interest of natural parents in the care, custody, and management of their child,” found in the Fourteenth Amendment’s “Due Process” clause. Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745 (1982) This protection, however, has been lost on Sacramento CPS. It is also being weakened through judicial erosion in the courts.

Passage of the Parental Rights Amendment will provide parents an explicit constitutional protection; otherwise, they’ll have to rely on the courts, hoping they will continue to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment as they traditionally have (but increasingly no longer do). And the PRA will allow organizations like CPS to know exactly what the rules are that they must follow.

“The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their child is a fundamental right. Neither the United States nor any State shall infringe this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.”

These two sentences would make clear that CPS cannot take a child away unless it is prepared to prove that the child was in danger caused by abuse or neglect. In this case, it would increase the chances that common sense would prevail and baby Sammy would have gotten to stay home safe and sound with his mom and dad.

Read more at ParentalRights.org

Imagine how many more incidents like this we are likely to see with a government takeover of health care!

Confiscating the baby: Obamacare and Parental Rights

Calif. Parents Whose Baby Boy Was ‘Snatched’ by Police Tell Their Unbelievable Story; Lawsuit ‘Absolutely’ Forthcoming

Couple calls for CPS reforms after reuniting with baby

The Child: America’s Battle for the Next Generation

MSNBC Host: Kids Don’t Belong To Their Parents, They ‘Belong To Their Communities’

Attorney General Holder: Parents Have No Right to Educate their Children

Attorney General Holder: Parents Have No Right to Educate their Children

DOJ: Children Do Not Need – and Have No Right to – Mothers or Fathers

Threat to Parents’ Rights a Bigger Issue than Rights of a Child

Who will raise kids: Mom, Dad or state?

Who needs a Bill of Rights or due process of law?   The same government that claims to be “of the people, by the people, for the people”  really considers itself completely above the law and unaccountable to the people.

When will Americans finally stand up to these abuses of power and say, “ENOUGH”?

Declan McCullagh reports at CNET:

The Internal Revenue Service doesn’t believe it needs a search warrant to read your e-mail.

Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers say that Americans enjoy “generally no privacy” in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications — meaning that they can be perused without obtaining a search warrant signed by a judge.

That places the IRS at odds with a growing sentiment among many judges and legislators who believe that Americans’ e-mail messages should be protected from warrantless search and seizure. They say e-mail should be protected by the same Fourth Amendment privacy standards that require search warrants for hard drives in someone’s home, or a physical letter in a filing cabinet.

An IRS 2009 Search Warrant Handbook obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union argues that “emails and other transmissions generally lose their reasonable expectation of privacy and thus their Fourth Amendment protection once they have been sent from an individual’s computer.” The handbook was prepared by the Office of Chief Counsel for the Criminal Tax Division and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Read more at CNET

By that reasoning, a letter or package that leaves your home on it’s way to the intended recipient would would have no “reasonable expectation of privacy” either….except that it DOES.

If the government is not permitted to snoop through your physical mail without a warrant, neither should they be permitted to snoop through your electronic communications.

IRS to taxpayers: We don’t need a warrant for email snooping, GPS tracking

IRS Goes On Hiring Frenzy To Enforce Obamacare Penalties/Tax Hikes

ATF Seeks ‘Massive’ Database Of Americans’ Most Personal Info

U.S. To Allow Spy Agencies To Snoop Through Americans’ Financal Records Without Warrants

Earlier today, 7 anti-gun bills were defeated in the senate (2 more remain to be voted on Thursday).

Never one to take defeat graciously, Obama threw a full-blown tantrum in the bully pulpit, using Gabby Giffords and the Newtown families as political props as he declared the Senate vote “shameful” and slammed 2nd Amendment advocates as “liars.”

Ben Shapiro at Breitbart observes:

With the failure of the Democrats’ attempt to exploit the Newtown school shooting to press forward gun control measures, President Obama took to the microphones along with the relatives of Sandy Hook victims to demonize his opposition. This, of course, was his strategy all along: knowing that he did not have 60 votes in the Democrat-controlled Senate to pass his gun control legislation, he pressed forward anyway, hoping to paint Republicans as intransigent, immoral tools of the gun lobby who don’t care about dead children. After demonizing Republicans, Obama hopes, he can press Americans into voting Democrats back into power in the House of Representatives.

On Wednesday afternoon, Obama played his part to perfection. Mark Barden, father of a first-grader murdered in Newtown, introduced him. Flanking Obama were other Newtown victims; Vice President Joe Biden, face creased in supposed emotional agony, his arm around the mother of a Sandy Hook victim; and former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who has been one of the lead advocate for gun control on behalf of the administration.

“On behalf of the Sandy Hook parents, I would like to thank President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden,” said Mark Barden, father of a first-grader murdered in Newtown. “We will not be defeated. We are not defeated and we will not be defeated ….. I’d like to end by repeating the words by which the Sandy Hook promise begins: Our hearts are broken. Our spirit is not.”

He then introduced President Obama, who blasted away in a carefully calculated and calibrated assault on gunowners, Republicans, and all those with the temerity to disagree on his gun control proposals. Lashing out with more emotion than he has on any issue of his presidency, Obama played up to the cameras, all the while using gun violence victims as a backdrop.

Obama said that he had acted in response to the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and Sandy Hook. “Families that had known unspeakable grief,” Obama said, reached out “to protect the lives of all children …. A few minutes ago, a minority in the Senate decided it wasn’t worth it.” Standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook has become rote for this president.

[...]   All of this was setup for the coup de grace: a request for more power. Because, after all, Obama was never going to win this debate. He didn’t have the votes, he didn’t have the evidence, and he didn’t have a decent piece of legislation to propose. What he did have was unbridled faux moral indignation and a compliant press.

But he needs more. He needs a majority in the House. And he asked for it. “So all in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington. But this effort is not over,” said Obama. “If this Congress refuses to listen … the real impact is going to have to come from the voters.”

“The memories of these children demand [gun control],” Obama concluded.

What he meant was obvious: the memories of dead children in Sandy Hook demands that voters give Obama more Senators and more Congresspeople. How convenient for him.

Read more at Breitbart

Neither Obama nor the media are interested in hearing from family members of gun violence victims who opposed his gun control scheme, such as this father from Newtown, and the father of 9-year-old Christina Green, who was shot and killed in the Tuscon attack.

They’re only interested in exploiting those grieving families they can use to forward their own political agenda.

Obama Throws Tantrum Over Gun Control Defeat

Obama Just Gave One Of The Angriest Speeches Of His Presidency: ‘I See This As Just Round One’

Obama angrily denounces gun-rights groups as willful liars

Hollywood Mourns Senate Demise of Obama’s Gun Control Legislation

Sen. Feinstein: ‘NRA Money Stops My Gun Bans.’ Reality: ‘Bloomberg Alone Spent Same Amount.’

Opportunist-In-Chief Exploits Dead Children To Push For Liberal Wish List

Obama Campaign Exploits Mass Shooting For Fundraising, Fiscal Cliff Talking Points

Obama Goes After Guns, Ignores Evidence That ‘Gun Control’ Increases Violent Crime

Stats Prove Gun Control Does Not Work

The Moral Relativist Left in Canada isn’t outraged by the practices of murdering women and sexually mutilating children.  But they are outraged if someone dares to call these abuses “barbaric”:

Michael Kravshik reports at Front Page Mag:

Cultural relativism has reached a new point of absurdity in Canada when the “barbarity” of female genital mutilation and honor killings is questioned and becomes a controversy.

A recently introduced manual by the Government of Canada intended to teach newcomers about Canadian values and Canadian society has been met with ongoing hostility from left-wing Canadians and politicians over the choice of words in describing female genital mutilation and honor killings. Jinny Sims, the immigration critic of the opposition New Democratic Party of Canada, suggested the word “barbaric” might “stigmatize some cultures.”

[...]   Taking up the relativist banner was also none other than Justin Trudeau, front-runner for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, and son of the infamous Canadian Prime Minister who brought multiculturalist policy to Canada. He attacked the Conservatives for using the term “barbaric,” and suggested that the term was a “pejorative” and that “there needs to be a little bit of an attempt at responsible neutrality.”

Read more at Front Page Mag

“Neutrality” on murder and sexual mutilation?  Are you kidding me???

Now, Amnesty International, which supposedly exists to fight for human rights, is objecting to calling a spade a spade:

Recently, I penned an article about  an Amnesty International initiative: an art project for which the organization had commissioned artists and designers to address the devastating problem of female genital mutilation, or FGM – using 8,000 paper rose petals.  The petals had been gathered as part of a petition action to bring attention to – and to end – the practice of FGM, and were each signed by a member of the public who participated in the petition.  It was a laudable project, and I said so.

Amnesty responded with great appreciation for my story – but took exception to one detail.  I had  called FGM “barbaric,” and, said an Amnesty official, “we try not to use this word.”  In an e-mail, she explained, “The use of the word ‘barbaric’ suggests that the people who do this are less than human, which isn’t so because they are being led by social pressure which is what needs to be fought. So we avoid using this word to not judge the people.”

Overlooking the fact that “barbaric,” which means simply “uncultured,” “uncivilized,” or “uneducated,” does not quite suggest “less than human,” I could not help but wonder about the “not to judge them” part.  After all, if you set out to change a thing – a behavior, a place, a custom  (and especially if you set out to end it) – haven’t you already implicitly expressed a judgment?  And how is calling a custom, a practice, “barbaric,” conferring a judgment on the people who perform it?

[...]   If, say, a Park Avenue Protestant family carried out FGM on their daughter, that, too, after all, would be barbaric. And anyone would be right to say so.  But barring the use of that word, should we use another one, like “different?”  But wait – isn’t “different” somewhat alienating, as well? Does it not imply a judgment?

And so on. At this rate, the only workably acceptable term would seem to be “normal” or “okay.”

And it is not.

These are the times I worry that we stand upon a precipice, and fear for the ideas and the ideals that form the fundament of civilization and democracy.  We censor words and language, as Howard says, bending our knee to the tyranny of political correctness, concerning ourselves more with the sensitivities of the perpetrators than the lives and safety of the victims.

Read more at the Clarion Project

Some things are just EVIL, and SHOULD be called “barbaric!” There’s no other way to describe them!  But according to the Left, the only thing that’s “barbaric” is criticizing the EVIL practices of an EVIL “religion” that glorifies misogyny and child abuse!

Islam and Sexuality, a Presentation by Ann Barnhardt

Women Under Islam: Female Genital Mutilation

The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam

Violent Sexual Obsession and Rape as Expression of Islamic Spirituality

A Complete Guide to Pedophilia in Islam

Funny how Marxists don’t recognize your unalienable right to keep the fruits of your labor (especially if you happen to be more successful than they think you should be), but they claim that they have a “right” to demand free goodies at the expense of others.

Erica Ritz reports at The Blaze:

Speaking outside on a sunny day, Harris-Perry says in an ad that aired Wednesday morning:

Americans will always want some level of inequality, because it’s a representation of meritocracy.  People who work hard and sacrifice and save their money and make major contributions — we think that they should earn a little more.  They should have more resources, and that’s fine.  But we also, however, have to have a floor under which nobody falls.  And if you’re below that — especially if you’re a child and you’re below that — we are not going to accept that.  You do have the the right to health care, and to education, and to decent housing and to quality food at all times.  ​[Emphasis added]

Read more at The Blaze

When something is a “right” (your life or conscience, for instance), it means you don’t have to do anything to earn it. You get to have it just for existing. It’s a gift from your Creator.

When you describe goods and services like food and housing as “rights,” you are saying that the people who produce these goods and services are obligated to provide them for you, whether you pay for them or not. There’s a word for this: slavery. Only slaves are forced to produce for others without compensation. TRUE rights come from God, and are unalienable. They cannot be provided by others, who could just as easily take them away.

You have an unalienable right to work and trade for goods and services. You do NOT have a “right” to demand them free of charge from others.

Sunstein: Obama Wants ‘Second Bill of Rights’

Barack Obama and “The Second Bill of Rights”

Where do your rights come from?

Mark Steyn: ‘Rights’ Have Been Perverted Into Gifts That Kings Bestow Upon Subjects

MSNBC Host: Kids Don’t Belong To Their Parents, They ‘Belong To Their Communities’

Melissa Harris-Perry: All Your Kids Belong to Us (Not the Parents)

View on YouTube

I’ve seen the village, and I don’t want it raising my kids!

In a scripted MSNBC promo, Melissa Harris-Perry made the following statement:

“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had a private notion of children, your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children.  So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”

Got that?  You kid doesn’t belong to you.  He/she belongs to the “collective” – meaning, the state.

Ironically, this is the same woman who calls unborn babies “things that turn into humans.”

How do I put this politely?  Stay the **** way from my kids!

Erick Erickson observes at Red State:

So kids belong to whole communities? Didn’t we fight a war back in the 1800s to prove that people weren’t owned by the state or anyone else, but were, in fact, people? Seriously?

But take that out of it. This is amazingly stupid commentary. All of us who own property (real property, not children) pay property taxes to fund a public education system to educate our children. We have democratically elected school boards to make the decisions on how tocollectively educate our kids to common, state approved standards.

It is failing spectacularly. And I suspect that the tangible efforts to improve it, from neutering teachers unions to giving parents choices in where to send their children, are opposed by Melissa Harris-Perry.

I never thought I’d see the day when self-styled progressives advocated the state owning the people.

Read more at Red State

Ken Shepherd at Newsbusters correctly points out that this is actually Maoist philosophy she’s spewing:

[T]he notion of collective responsibility for children was a philosophy that undergirded the Cultural Revolution in Communist China under Chairman Mao. I bring that up because, as you may recall, another Harris-Perry “Lean Forward” spot contains a reference to a “great leap forward,” which calls to mind the disastrous agricultural reform plan which starved millions of Chinese to death in the 1950s.

Read more at Newsbusters

The Five on Fox made some great points about this collectivist mentality while discussing this around the table:

View on YouTube

Sarah Palin tweeted a few ingenious responses to this:

Love it! After having spent 22 hours of my life in labor, I heartily agree!

After the justifiable outrage and backlash, Harris-Perry is trying to walk back her statements and blame the views for misunderstanding her.   Nice try.   This is typical for the Left.  They float a trial balloon and then pretend it was all an innocent misunderstanding when they get called for dropping their mask. The mask goes back up, but the ugliness behind it doesn’t go away. They work by desensitizing people over time, so that what sounds outrageous now will actually start to sound reasonable a few years from now. I don’t buy her “backpedaling” for a second.

Sign the petition to adopt the only Constitutional Amendment that will protect children from this kind of power grab – the Parental Rights Amendment!

The Child: America’s Battle for the Next Generation

Sarah Palin: It’s unflippingbelievable that MSNBC thinks your kids don’t belong to you

‘Is an unborn child owned by the collective?’: Greg Gutfeld, ‘The Five’ blast MSNBC’s collectivist Borg

Attorney General Holder: Parents Have No Right to Educate their Children

DOJ: Children Do Not Need – and Have No Right to – Mothers or Fathers

Threat to Parents’ Rights a Bigger Issue than Rights of a Child

Who will raise kids: Mom, Dad or state?

Plain meaning: if government militias get to carry arms, so do the citizens!

This is one of the reasons why it is an incredibly dangerous conflict of interest for the government to be shaping the hearts and minds of future voters.  Clearly, the Left wants the next generation of Americans to believe that they have no unalienable right to self-defense, from the government or anyone else.   They start by indoctrinating the young.

The Left knows it’s better to apologize after the fact than ask for permission. The seeds of deception have already been planted in these kids’ minds. They’ll let the outrage settle down, and then try again. This is why parents should have the choice to send their children to a school that isn’t out to indoctrinate their kids!

Todd Starnes reports at Fox News:

The father of a Connecticut child is furious after discovering that his son’s school is teaching students that Americans don’t have a Second Amendment right to bear arms.

“I am appalled,” said Steven Boibeaux, of Bristol. “It sounds to me like they are trying to indoctrinate our kids.”

Boibeaux’s son is an eighth grader at Northeast Middle School. On Monday his social studies teacher gave students a worksheet titled, ‘The Second Amendment Today.’

“The courts have consistently determined that the Second Amendment does not ensure each individual the right to bear arms,” the worksheet states. “The courts have never found a law regulating the private ownership of weapons unconstitutional.

The worksheet, published by Instructional Fair, goes on to say that the Second Amendment is not incorporated against the states.

“This means that the rights of this amendment are not extended to the individual citizens of the states,” the worksheet reads. “So a person has no right to complain about a Second Amendment violation by state laws.”

According to the document, the Second Amendment “only provides the right of a state to keep an armed National Guard.”

Boibeaux said he discovered the worksheet as he was going over his son’s homework assignments.

“I’m more than a little upset about this,” he told Fox News. “It’s not up to the teacher to determine what the Constitution means.”

Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, called the lesson propaganda – that is “absolutely false.”

“In fact, the US Supreme Court has affirmed that the Second Amendment ensures the individual the right to bear arms,” Staver told Fox News. “The progressive interpretation of the Second Amendment is that it doesn’t give you the right to bear arms – that it’s a corporate right of the government – but that has been rejected by the Courts.”

Read more at Fox News

Gun Hysteria Leads To Harrassment Of Innocent Children In Public Schools

Schools’ ‘Zero Tolerance’ Weapons Policies Used To Bully Innocent Children

Brainwashing Kids About Guns

Brainwashing Kids About Guns: the Sequel

The Second Amendment: Much Ado about Firearms

What We Believe, Part 5: Gun Rights

My grandparents sacrificed and saved for years so they could have a comfortable retirement and still leave an inheritance for their children.  They succeeded.   They live comfortably independent well into their 80′s, and left a legacy to be proud of.   We used to call this responsibility.

According to the Obama administration, however, people who make wise retirement choices need to be reigned in.   The government should decide how much you can save, and how “comfortable” your retirement lifestyle is permitted to be (keep in mind that with today’s lifespan, an average person can live up to 20 or 30 years after they retire, which means they need to save MORE than previous generations, not less).

As far as the Left is concerned, there is no such thing as private property.   There is only what the ruling class “allows” you to keep.

Peter Roff warns at US News:

What President Barack Obama has planned in his upcoming budget, while not exactly a Cypriot-style, government-based raid on private savings accounts, comes too close for comfort. As widely reported Monday, the Obama budget document – which is already a month late – will include a new proposal to limit the total amount an individual can put aside in tax deferred retirement savings like 401Ks and IRAs to an amount sufficient to generate an annual income in the golden years of less than $250,000 per year.

Why do it? According to a senior administration official, The Hill reported, “wealthy taxpayers can currently ‘accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.’”

Who says? It is true that some people use retirement savings plans as a form of tax avoidance, but tax avoidance was, the last time anyone checked, still legal. Major corporations that have the imprimatur of approval from the Obama administration like General Electric and General Motors do it all the time.

What the White House may propose is not a matter of fairness, as the president and his allies are sure to cast it, but one that strikes at the heart of the right to keep for ourselves the product of our hard work.

To Obama, that idea that some may have saved more than others for their retirement is unfair, So is the idea, apparently, that some people make more than others. It’s class envy at its most ugly, designed to appeal to the more than 40 percent of Americans who pay no income tax and who voted for the president in 2012.

It is not a legitimate function of government to determine when a person has saved enough for retirement. “Enough” is a nebulous word just like “rich.” If a cap is in the offing in the near term, can confiscation, a la Cyprus, be far behind?

Read more at US News

It’s theft.  Pure and simple.

Great news! White House finds new ways to soak the wealthy

Obama Budget Proposes Prohibiting Individuals From Accumulating More Than 3 Million In Retirement Accounts

Democrats Push For Government Takeover Of Private Retirement Savings

Obama Begins Push To Confiscate Private Retirement Savings, Nationalize Retirement System

Uncle Sam coming after your retirement savings?

Obama Needs Your 401(k) to Balance His Budget

Obama’s Pension Grab

Class Warfare’s Next Target: 401(k) Savings

The foundation for the housing crisis was laid with the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977, where the government took it upon itself to encourage home ownership by pressuring banks to lend to lower-income buyers, often to meet arbitrary racial quotas. Obviously they haven’t learned a thing from where that got us.

Would it surprise anyone to learn that as a lawyer, Obama sued banks to force them to issue subprime loans?  He also worked for ACORN, which specialized in using the Community Reinvestment Act to shake down banks and pressure them to loan money to low-income minorities or face “discrimination” charges.

David Harsanyi reports at Human Events:

According to the Washington Post, the Obama administration is pushing big banks to make more home loans available to Americans with bad credit – the same kind of  government guidance that helped blow up the housing market:

In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default.

Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.

Think about this statement. The administration is asking banks – banks that Washington bails out; banks that Washington crafts regulations for — to embrace risky policies that put the institution and its investors (not to mention, all of us) in a  precarious position. So precarious, in fact, that banks have to ask government if they can be freed of any legal or financial consequences.

Read more at Human Events

What could possibly go wrong?

John Perazzo warns at Front Page Magazine:

These types of government policies initially emerged the mid-1970s, when “progressive” Democrats in Congress began a campaign to help low-income minorities become homeowners. This led to the passage, in 1977, of theCommunity Reinvestment Act (CRA), a mandate for banks to make special efforts to seek out and lend to borrowers of meager means. Founded on the premise that government intervention is necessary to counteract the fundamentally racist and inequitable nature of American society and the free market, the CRA was eventually transformed from an outreach effort into a strict quota system by the Clinton administration. Under the new arrangement, if a bank failed to meet its quota for loans to low-income minorities, it ran the risk of getting a low CRA rating from the FDIC. This, in turn, could derail the bank’s efforts to expand, relocate, merge, etc.  From a practical standpoint, then, banks had no recourse but to drastically lower their standards on down-payments and underwriting, and to approve many loans even to borrowers with weak credit credentials. As Hoover Institution Fellow Thomas Sowell explains, this led to “skyrocketing rates of mortgage delinquencies and defaults,” and the rest is history.

The CRA was by no means the only mechanism designed by government to impose lending quotas on financial institutions. For instance, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) developed rules encouraging lenders to dramatically hike their loan-approval rates for minority applicants and began bringing legal actions against mortgage bankers who failed to do so, regardless of the reason. This, too, caused lenders to lower their down-payment and income requirements.

Moreover, HUD pressured the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest sources of housing finance in the United States, to earmark a steeply rising number of their own loans for low-income borrowers. Many of these were subprime mortgages—loans characterized by higher interest rates and less favorable terms in order to compensate lenders for the high credit risk they were incurring.

Additional pressure toward this end was applied by community organizations like the pro-socialist ACORN. By accusing banks—however frivolously or unjustly—of having engaged in racially discriminatory lending practices that violated the mandates of the CRA, these groups commonly sued banks toprevent them from expanding or merging as they wished. Barack Obama, ACORN’s staunch ally, was strongly in favor of this practice. Indeed, in a 1994 class-action lawsuit against Citibank, Obama represented ACORN in demanding more favorable terms for subprime homebuyer mortgages. After four years of being dragged through the mud, a beleaguered Citibank—anxious to put an end to the incessant smears (charging racism) that Obama and his fellow litigators were hurling in its direction (to say nothing of its mounting legal bills)—agreed to settle the case.

Forbes magazine puts it bluntly: “Obama has been a staunch supporter of the CRA throughout his public life.” In other words, he has long advocated the very policies that already have reduced the real-estate market to rubble. And now he is actively pushing those very same practices again.

Read more at Front Page Magazine

Housing Crisis Redux: ‘Community Reinvestment Act’ that caused mortgage crisis is back, as if 2008 never happened

How Obama Enabled Unscrupulous Banks to Foreclose on Innocent Homeowners

How Government Caused The Mortgage Crisis

Democrats in their own words: Covering up the Fannie/Freddie scam that caused our Economic Crisis

The Free Market Was Framed: Government Intervention Caused The Financial Crisis

The Law of Unintended Consequences: How Government Created the Subprime Mess and Led Us to the Brink of Financial Disaster

Terrifying Chart Proves Obama’s Policies Lead Towards Catastrophic “Cloward-Piven” Orchestrated Financial Crisis

Obama Pushing Banks to Offer Sub-Prime Mortgages Again

Holder Launches Witch Hunt Against ‘Racist’ Banks That Won’t Lend To Minorities With Bad Credit

The Senate voted earlier to block the U.S. from joining the treaty, but Obama is likely to sign it anyway.

He’s already heading out onto the never-ending campaign trail to stump for more gun control.   He wants to stir up public pressure to force the Senate to ratify it.  If they do, you can kiss your 2nd Amendment rights good-bye.

Ted Bromund writes at the Heritage Foundation:

This morning, by a vote of 154 nations in favor (including the United States), 23 abstentions, and three against (Syria, North Korea, and Iran), the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The treaty will be open for national signature on June 3, 2013, and will enter into force for its signatories when it has been signed and ratified by 50 nations.

Though the vote in favor of the treaty seems overwhelming, a closer look shows something different. Among the major exporting and importing nations, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Russia abstained. So did most of the Arab Group, as well as a range of anti-American regimes, including Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua, and a smattering of others, including Belarus, Burma, and Sri Lanka.

A further 13 nations did not vote, including some known opponents of the treaty, such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Finally, while Pakistan voted in favor of the treaty, its statement in explanation implied that it was voting for the treaty because it anticipated that India would abstain, and it wanted to look good by comparison.

Thus, what the U.N. vote amounts to is the tacit rejection of the treaty by most of the world’s most irresponsible arms exporters and anti-American dictatorships, who collectively amount to half of the world’s population.

Read more at the Heritage Foundation

Ken Klukowski warns, “What Americans Need To Know About The UN Gun Control Treaty“:

Today the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a global gun control treaty called the Arms Trade Treaty. Now the fight begins here at home. There are several things gun owners need to know to protect their constitutional rights.

Now that it’s been proposed, the treaty goes to all the member states to decide on whether to join. Per the U.S. Constitution, in America it must first be signed by the president (which it will), then be ratified by two-thirds of the U.S. Senate (which it won’t). The United States is not likely to join the treaty as a nation, though President Barack Obama will likely push for it.

The General Assembly can’t do anything at the United Nations except propose (not establish) treaties and admit new U.N. members. Most of the power at the U.N. is in the Security Council, which consists of five permanent members (including the U.S.) and ten rotating seats among all the other U.N. members. So the General Assembly did one of the only things it can by recommending this treaty to its member states.

However, the first danger is that U.S. courts have held we’re bound by “customary international law,” sometimes called the “law of nations.” If enough U.N. member states were to adopt this treaty, a liberal federal court could rule it has become customary international law. The current Supreme Court would never affirm such a ruling, but there is a real danger if Obama changes the balance of the Court over the next three years.

Because federal statutes and treaties are of equal force under the U.S. Constitution, whenever they are in direct conflict, the most-recently passed of the two prevails. So, if somehow this treaty were ratified by the Senate, if Congress were to later pass a statute taking the opposite position, it would trump the treaty.

Of course, you need a president’s signature to pass a statute or two-thirds of Congress to override a presidential veto, so we would need a president in 2016 who supports the Second Amendment to pass such a law.

[...]   The dangers are obvious, however. If Barack Obama manages to get an anti-gun politician like Hillary Clinton or Andrew Cuomo to follow him in 2016 as president, and changes the balance of the Supreme Court over time, then the Arms Trade Treaty could open America up to a worldwide U.N. gun control regime. That could lay the groundwork and set up a system that a decade or two from now could restrict lawful firearm ownership in this nation.

Read more at Breitbart

Obama admin sponsors UN small arms treaty, despite Senate disapproval

White House ‘pleased’ by UN action on arms treaty

‘A Dangerous Threat’: Texas Attorney General Vows to Fight ‘Unconstitutional’ U.N. Global Arms Treaty

Gun rights advocates fear U.N. treaty will lead to U.S. registry

U.N. Arms Trade Treaty Threatens 2nd Amendment Rights Of American Gun Owners *UPDATED*

UN gun control treaty threatens right to self-defense

U.N Gun-Grabbers Coming after Americans’ Second Amendment Rights 

If the goal is to save lives, liability insurance isn’t going to do it.  But of course, this isn’t really about saving lives.  It’s about control.  It’s about putting up as many hurdles as they can think of between the average, law-abiding American and their right to self-defense.

Alex Pappas reports at The Daily Caller:

A contingent of liberal Democrats in Congress is proposing a new federal gun control idea: mandatory liability insurance for gun owners.

When New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney introduced the legislation last month with eight other Democrats, she boasted that it is “the first bill to require liability insurance of gun buyers nationwide.”

Maloney’s “Firearm Risk Protection Act” requires gun buyers to have “a qualified liability insurance policy” before they are able to legally purchase a firearm.

It also calls for the federal government to impose a fine as much as $10,000 if a gun owner doesn’t have insurance on a firearm purchased after the bill goes into effect.

Read more at The Daily Caller

Want to guess who this would hurt most?  You got it: poor people living in dangerous neighborhoods, who would be barred from defending themselves due to the high cost of insurance.

The smart ones will go to the black market and arm themselves anyway.

Firearms Risk Protection Act Could Stick Gun Owners With $10,000 Fine

NRA Urges Americans to ‘Stand and Fight’ In Powerful New Video

Justice Dept. Admits Obama’s Gun Control Plan Would Require Universal Registration, Confiscation

2nd Amendment Preserves The God-given Right To Shoot Tyrants, Not Deer

The Second Amendment: Much Ado about Firearms

What We Believe, Part 5: Gun Rights

Short answer: because if they acknowledge parents’ fundamental right to educate their children, they will have to recognize it for all parents here, as well.

Dell Tackett warns at Truth Observed:

Uwe and Hanna are home-school parents from Germany. But Germany doesn’t tolerate home schooling. Those who do are harassed, fined, imprisoned, and can lose custody of their children. Uwe and Hanna had such a religious and moral problem with what German government schools were teaching that they chose to school their children themselves, just as millions in this country do every day. But Germany’s laws, based upon a 1938 law signed by Adolph Hitler, believe that Germany’s children belong to the State from an educational standpoint. The law prohibits parents from educating their own children so that Germany can prevent a different worldview, or “society” as the law states, from arising.

After increased persecution from the German state, Uwe and Hanna fled to the United States. A Federal judge heard the arguments and granted them asylum, stating that Germany’s law and policy was “Nazi-esque”.

Immediately, the Obama Administration filed suit against the ruling and will bring the case before the United States Court of Appeal for the Sixth Court on April 23. They are seeking to deport the Romeike family, which would send Uwe and Hanna back to Germany to face jail and possibly the loss of their children.

Why does the administration seek to do this?

Because it agrees with the German law. It doesn’t believe that parents have a right to educate their children. It is more in line with the National Education Association that homeschooling shouldn’t be allowed. It believes that the government can best educate “America’s children”. It doesn’t want another worldview taught in this country. It wants America’s children to have one worldview and one worldview only.

That is why they don’t want to grant asylum to the Romeike family. That would affirm parental rights—rights that have been fought for by so many courageous parents over the last 40 years in this country. Rights that I believe will take a serious hit if this case is won by the Administration.

Think of it this way: if the Administration wins this case, the legal statement and precedence will be set that parents do not have a fundamental right to educate their children and if the State were to ban home schooling, it would not be a violation of parental rights at all.

Read more at Truth Observed

A plea from abused homeschoolers

Attorney General Holder: Parents Have No Right to Educate their Children

German Homeschooling Family Flees to US

Flashback: US grants home schooling German family political asylum

Crackdown on Homeschooling in the Near Future?

Threat to Parents’ Rights a Bigger Issue than Rights of a Child