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Judge strikes down healthcare reform law
02/01/2011
Search Engine Friendly URL: http://www.patriotfreedom.org/news_20110201_8416/judge-strikes-down-healthcare-reform-law/
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Patriot FreedomJudge strikes down healthcare reform law
(Reuters) - A federal judge in Florida struck down President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare overhaul as unconstitutional on Monday in the biggest legal challenge yet to federal authority to enact the law.
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled that the reform law's so-called individual mandate went too far in requiring that Americans start buying health insurance in 2014 or pay a penalty.
"Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void," he wrote, "This has been a difficult decision to reach and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications."
Referring to a key provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Vinson sided with governors and attorneys general from 26 U.S. states, almost all of whom are Republicans, in declaring the Obama healthcare reform unconstitutional.
"Regardless of how laudable its attempts may have been to accomplish these goals in passing the act, Congress must operate within the bounds established by the Constitution," Vinson, who was appointed to the bench by Republican President Ronald Reagan, ruled.
The Obama administration said it would appeal Vinson's ruling and believed it would prevail on a highly politicized issue likely to end up at the Supreme Court.
"We strongly disagree with the court's ruling today and continue to believe -- as other federal courts have found -- that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional," Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said.
A White House official told reporters the administration planned to continue with implementation of the law.
"We'll continue to operate as we have previously and suspect that the states will do the same," said the senior administration official, who asked not to be named.
"Obviously this case will be appealed ... and so implementation would proceed apace ... This is not the last word by any means," the official said.
But the fact that the judge did not issue a stay of his ruling pending appeal by the government could threaten the application of many of the provisions of the healthcare law.
RULING DRAWS ATTACK, PRAISE
The plaintiffs represent more than half the U.S. states, so the Florida case has more prominence than some two dozen similar lawsuits filed in federal courts.
The healthcare overhaul enacted last year, a contentious cornerstone of Obama's presidency, aims to expand health insurance to cover millions of uninsured Americans while also curbing costs. Administration officials insist it is needed to stem huge projected increases in healthcare costs.
Two other district court judges have rejected challenges to the individual mandate. But a federal district judge in Richmond, Virginia, last month struck down that central provision of the law.
Vinson's ruling was dramatically broader and drew immediate strong reaction.
"Healthcare reform is the law of the land and, now that Americans see its benefits, a majority of them oppose Republicans' dangerous plans to repeal a law that put patients in control of their own healthcare," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid.
Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an influential national advocacy group that pushed for the healthcare overhaul, called Vinson's decision an example of "radical judicial activism run amok."
Republican House Speaker John Boehner was among those who applauded Vinson's ruling. "Today's decision affirms the view, held by most of the states and a majority of the American people, that the federal government should not be in the business of forcing you to buy health insurance and punishing you if you don't," Boehner said in a statement.
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which says it represents small businesses across America and was a plaintiff in the lawsuit, also welcomed the ruling. CONFLICTING RULINGS
The individual mandate is key to the law's mission of covering more than 30 million uninsured. Officials argue it is only by requiring healthy people to purchase policies that they can help pay for reforms, including a provision that individuals with pre-existing medical conditions cannot be refused coverage.
Vinson's ruling comes after the U.S. House of Representatives, with a new Republican majority, voted earlier this month to repeal the healthcare reform law. The repeal measure is unlikely to go any further as the Democratic-controlled Senate is expected to drop it.
Shares of U.S. health insurers were little changed immediately after the ruling, with UnitedHealth Group Inc and Aetna roughly flat and WellPoint Inc down 0.8 percent.
"This just adds to the conflicting nature of the rulings that we've seen so far," said Matthew Coffina, an analyst with Morningstar. "I think everyone watching the industry at this point has been expecting the Supreme Court to ultimately decide this situation."
States involved in the lawsuit were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, Maine, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
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World leaders are now looking at what is going on between Washington and Cairo. Everyone grasps the message: "America's word is worthless ... America has lost it."
02/01/2011
Search Engine Friendly URL: http://www.patriotfreedom.org/news_20110201_4282/world-leaders-are-now-looking-at-what-is-going-on-between-washington-and-cairo.-everyone-grasps-the-message-americas-word-is-worthless-...-america-has-lost-it./
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Jim Kelly
PATRIOT FREDOM
Israel shocked by Obama's "betrayal" of Mubarak
"Throughout Asia, Africa and South America, leaders are now looking at what is going on between Washington and Cairo. Everyone grasps the message: "America's word is worthless ... America has lost it."
Reuters) - If Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak is toppled, Israel will lose one of its very few friends in a hostile neighborhood and President Barack Obama will bear a large share of the blame, Israeli pundits said on Monday.
Political commentators expressed shock at how the United States as well as its major European allies appeared to be ready to dump a staunch strategic ally of three decades, simply to conform to the current ideology of political correctness.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told ministers of the Jewish state to make no comment on the political cliffhanger in Cairo, to avoid inflaming an already explosive situation. But Israel's President Shimon Peres is not a minister.
"We always have had and still have great respect for President Mubarak," he said on Monday. He then switched to the past tense. "I don't say everything that he did was right, but he did one thing which all of us are thankful to him for: he kept the peace in the Middle East."
Newspaper columnists were far more blunt.
One comment by Aviad Pohoryles in the daily Maariv was entitled "A Bullet in the Back from Uncle Sam." It accused Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of pursuing a naive, smug, and insular diplomacy heedless of the risks.
Who is advising them, he asked, "to fuel the mob raging in the streets of Egypt and to demand the head of the person who five minutes ago was the bold ally of the president ... an almost lone voice of sanity in a Middle East?"
"The politically correct diplomacy of American presidents throughout the generations ... is painfully naive."
Obama on Sunday called for an "orderly transition" to democracy in Egypt, stopping short of calling on Mubarak to step down, but signaling that his days may be numbered. [nN30161335]
"AMERICA HAS LOST IT"
Netanyahu instructed Israeli ambassadors in a dozen key capitals over the weekend to impress on host governments that Egypt's stability is paramount, official sources said.
"Jordan and Saudi Arabia see the reactions in the West, how everyone is abandoning Mubarak, and this will have very serious implications," Haaretz daily quoted one official as saying. Egypt, Israel's most powerful neighbor, was the first Arab country to make peace with the Jewish state, in 1979. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who signed the treaty, was assassinated two years later by an Egyptian fanatic.
It took another 13 years before King Hussein of Jordan broke Arab ranks to made a second peace with the Israelis. That treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated one year later, in 1995, by an Israeli fanatic.
There have been no peace treaties since. Lebanon and Syria are still technically at war with Israel. Conservative Gulf Arab regimes have failed to advance their peace ideas. A hostile Iran has greatly increased its influence in the Middle East conflict. "The question is, do we think Obama is reliable or not," said an Israeli official, who declined to be named.
"Right now it doesn't look so. That is a question resonating across the region not just in Israel."
Writing in Haaretz, Ari Shavit said Obama had betrayed "a moderate Egyptian president who remained loyal to the United States, promoted stability and encouraged moderation."
To win popular Arab opinion, Obama was risking America's status as a superpower and reliable ally.
"Throughout Asia, Africa and South America, leaders are now looking at what is going on between Washington and Cairo. Everyone grasps the message: "America's word is worthless ... America has lost it."
(Writing by Douglas Hamilton, editing by Diana Abdallah) REUTERS |
Monumental worldwide rallying cry for freedom threatens to derail new world order agenda
01/30/2011
Search Engine Friendly URL: http://www.patriotfreedom.org/news_20110130_4273/monumental-worldwide-rallying-cry-for-freedom-threatens-to-derail-new-world-order-agenda/
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Jim Kelly
PATRIOT FREEDOM
Monumental worldwide rallying cry for freedom threatens to derail new world order agenda
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s much feared “global political awakening” is in full swing. Revolts in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and other countries represent a truly monumental worldwide rallying cry for freedom that threatens to immeasurably damage the agenda for one world government, but only if the successful revolutionaries can prevent themselves from being co-opted by a paranoid and desperate global elite.
During a Council on Foreign Relations speech in Montreal last year, co-founder with David Rockefeller of the Trilateral Commission and regular Bilderberg attendee Zbigniew Brzezinski warned of a “global political awakening,” mainly comprising of younger people in developing states, that threatened to topple the existing international order.
Reading the full extent of Brzezinski’s words in light of the global revolts that we now see spreading like wildfire across the planet provides an astounding insight into how crucially important the outcome of this phase of modern history will be to the future geopolitical course of the world, and in turn the survival and growth of human freedom in general.
For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive… The resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination… The worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening… That awakening is socially massive and politically radicalizing… The nearly universal access to radio, television and increasingly the Internet is creating a community of shared perceptions and envy that can be galvanized and channeled by demagogic political or religious passions. These energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a challenge both to existing states as well as to the existing global hierarchy, on top of which America still perches…
The youth of the Third World are particularly restless and resentful. The demographic revolution they embody is thus a political time-bomb, as well… Their potential revolutionary spearhead is likely to emerge from among the scores of millions of students concentrated in the often intellectually dubious “tertiary level” educational institutions of developing countries. Depending on the definition of the tertiary educational level, there are currently worldwide between 80 and 130 million “college” students. Typically originating from the socially insecure lower middle class and inflamed by a sense of social outrage, these millions of students are revolutionaries-in-waiting, already semi-mobilized in large congregations, connected by the Internet and pre-positioned for a replay on a larger scale of what transpired years earlier in Mexico City or in Tiananmen Square. Their physical energy and emotional frustration is just waiting to be triggered by a cause, or a faith, or a hatred…
[The] major world powers, new and old, also face a novel reality: while the lethality of their military might is greater than ever, their capacity to impose control over the politically awakened masses of the world is at a historic low. To put it bluntly: in earlier times, it was easier to control one million people than to physically kill one million people; today, it is infinitely easier to kill one million people than to control one million people.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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Updated LIST OF ALL THE WAIVER EXEMPTIONS FROM OBAMACARE
01/30/2011
Search Engine Friendly URL: http://www.patriotfreedom.org/news_20110130_6530/updated-list-of-all-the-waiver-exemptions-from-obamacare/
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Jim Kelly
PATRIOT FREEDOM
-If Obamacare is such a great law, shouldn't it apply equally to everybody?
FOR An Updated LIST OF ALL THE WAIVER
EXEMPTIONS FROM OBAMACARE..see below
Dont worry, You will still have to pay
This is a picture of any American WAITING TO BE SEEN BY A DOCTOR UNDER
THE GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM...Don't let it be YOU
REMEMBER THIS SAYING....“Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.”
- Vladimir Lenin
Health care mandate to be enforced by IRS 'bounty hunters'
Indeed, some prominent government officials who lobbied hardest for Obamacare are now also joining waiver-mania — including liberal Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who has been pushing for an individual mandate exemption for his state of Oregon, and Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who is pushing to waive Obamacare’s burdensome 1099 reporting requirements of small businesses. Fearful of retribution by HHS Secretary and chief inquisitor Kathleen Sebelius, who has threatened companies speaking out about Obamacare’s perverse consequences
also included is STATE MANDATED POLICIES
on the Health Care Socialized Medicine Program
Obamawant to shove down your throat...
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Robert E. Lee: A Man Without a Country for 110 Years
01/30/2011
Search Engine Friendly URL: http://www.patriotfreedom.org/news_20110129_7403/robert-e.-lee-a-man-without-a-country-for-110-years/
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Jim Kelly
PATRIOT FREEDOM
Robert E. Lee: A Man Without a Country for 110 Years
Several states officially recognize and celebrate January 19 as Robert E. Lee’s birthday, including the state of Virginia as part of Jackson-Lee Day which falls on the Friday before the third Monday in January, Martin Luther King Day. The state of Texas celebrates Lee’s birthday on the 19th of January as part of Confederate Heroes Day, while Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi celebrate it concurrently with MLK day. On the other hand, Georgia commemorates Lee’s birthday on the day after Thanksgiving, while Florida names January 19 as a legal and public holiday in honor of the Confederate general.
Following his victory at Fredericksburg, General Lee, a normally quiescent and thoughtful individual, was “jubilant, almost off-balance, and seemingly desirous of embracing everyone who calls on him,” according to the Richmond Examiner. At Chancellorsville, Lee, outnumbered five to two, won what some historians consider his greatest victory of the war, while his victory at the Battle of Cold Harbor caused Union General Ulysses S. Grant later to write: "I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made.... At Cold Harbor no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained." Even the Seven Days Battles, which ended essentially in a draw, caused Lee to note how close a major victory was over his numerically superior enemy: “Our success has not been as great or complete as we should have desired … Under ordinary circumstances the Federal Army should have been destroyed.” James M. McPherson, in his book Battle Cry of Freedom, noted that at the Battle of the Wilderness, "Both flanks [of Grant’s army] had been badly bruised, and [his] 17,500 casualties in two days exceeded the Confederate total by at least 7,000." The Second Battle of Bull Run had the same result as the first, with the Union army retiring from the field of battle. Union forces suffered about 10,000 killed or wounded, while Lee’s Confederates lost about 8,300, and Union General Pope’s reputation was ruined as a result. As noted by Brig. Gen Alpheus S. Williams, A splendid army almost demoralized, millions of public property given up or destroyed, thousands of lives of our best men sacrificed for no purpose. I dare not trust myself to speak of this commander [Pope] as I feel and believe. Suffice to say … that more insolence, superciliousness, ignorance and pretentiousness were never combined in one man.
In addressing the Southern Historical Society on February 18, 1874, Benjamin Hill referred to Robert E. Lee as “The Marble Man":
He was a foe without hate, a friend without treachery, a soldier without cruelty, a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices, a private citizen without wrong, a neighbour without reproach, a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar, without his ambition, Frederick, without his tyranny, Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward.
Lee was also, following the end of the war, a man without a country.
In agreeing upon terms of the surrender of his army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, Lee appointed three officers to oversee the parole of his army. The Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon for Lee’s soldiers that resulted had several excepted classes, including field commanders who had to make a special application to the president to regain full citizenship in the Union. Since Lee was excepted, he applied to President Grant, and sent this letter to President Johnson on June 13, 1865:
Being excluded from the provisions of amnesty & pardon contained in the proclamation of the 29th [of May], I hereby apply for the benefits & full restoration of all rights & privileges extended to those included in its terms.
I graduated at the Military Academy at West Point in June, 1829. Resigned from the U. S. Army [in] April, 1861. Was a General in the Confederate Army, & included in the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia 9 April, ’65.
On October 2, 1865, Lee signed his Amnesty Oath which says, in part, "I, Robert E. Lee, at Lexington, Virginia, do solemnly swear, in the presence of almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Union of the States thereunder, and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves, so help me God."
That Oath, however, was never processed until an archivist at the National Archives discovered it in 1970. On August 5th, 1975 a joint resolution by both houses of Congress was signed into law by President Gerald Ford, finally giving Robert E. Lee, the man without a country for 110 years, full rights of citizenship. As President Ford said:
This legislation corrects a 110-year oversight of American history….Lee’s dedication to his native State of Virginia charted his course for the bitter Civil War years, causing him to reluctantly resign from a distinguished career in the United States Army and to serve as General of the Army of Northern Virginia. He, thus forfeited his rights to U. S. citizenship….
Lee’s character has been an example to succeeding generations, making the restoration of his citizenship an event in which every American can take pride.
Today those citizens who remember their history honor the birth of a man who, when faced with hard choices, made the one that reflected his character, integrity, and loyalty to eternal principles.
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