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March 2014

DNC Vows to Increase Voter Rolls, Fight Voter ID in Run-Up to Midterms By Rodrigo Sermeño

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/dnc-vows-to-increase-voter-rolls-fight-voter-id-in-run-up-to-midterms/

WASHINGTON – Members of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) resolutions committee approved a series of platform points at the annual winter meeting, including a measure on voter ID with an eye to upcoming midterm elections.

Hundreds of members from all around the country converged in D.C. last week to debate resolutions and rules as well as organize their “ground game” ahead of November elections.

Among the resolutions approved were those in support of some of the major issues on the Democrats’ agenda, including women’s rights, immigration reform, and the minimum wage.

The resolutions committee approved a measure to promote and protect what they see as eroded voting rights.

The measure cites language from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent to the Shelby County v. Holder decision in which she defined “second-generation barriers” to the ballot box as indirect efforts to diminish the impact of minority voters.

The DNC resolution defines second-generation barriers as “an ever growing number of restrictive voting laws such as requiring limited photo identification, proof of citizenship, increasing regulation of third party voter registration drives, and limiting early voting and same day registration opportunities.”

GOVERNOOR MOONBEAM GROW UP: ROGER SIMON

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2014/03/05/legal-weed-governor-moonbeam-grows-up/?print=1 I smoked pot in Jerry Brown’s house. I know you’re thinking that’s just a showoff lede (and it is), but it happens to be true. It was back in the 1970s when Jerry had a place in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon. I went to a party there that was pretty wild and virtually everyone was […]

LORI LOWENTHAL MARCUS: THE ALTERNATIVE : ON CAROLINE GLICK’S BOOK “THE ISRAELI SOLUTION”

Glick’s plan is liberal, democratic, and it provides the best chance of a good life for the greatest number of people who live in the area, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian.

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/glick-wrote-the-alternative-jewish-democratic-one-state-israel/2014/03/05/0/

For three hours on Monday, March 3, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met in the Oval Office with U.S. President Barack Obama. Obama has been carrying the torch for the so-called “Two State Solution,” which he inherited from his predecessors. He made it clear, as he has repeatedly in the past, that he wants Netanyahu to get with the program. If Netanyahu “does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach,” Obama said. “It’s hard to come up with one that’s plausible.” Not really. Caroline Glick, the journalist and deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post has articulated precisely that. And right on cue, too. Glick’s book, “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East” (Crown Forum 2014) was released on Tuesday, March 4, and this Jewish Press reporter sat down with her that afternoon in a mid-town delicatessen in New York City, to talk about the book. Glick wrote the book, she said, because she realized that the vast majority of pro-Israel Americans think the only way to support Israel is to support the option of the so-called “Two State Solution.” They believe that because it is the only thing they hear from their leadership. “But after twenty years of abject failure, of nothing but death and destruction in the wake of the Two State effort, surely it is time to begin a discussion about alternatives. My book is meant to be the starting point for that discussion,” Glick said. “And I can’t thank President Obama enough for providing me with the perfect invitation!” Glick’s credentials for writing such a book are comprehensive.

SARAH HONIG: WORTHLESS GUARANTEES

http://sarahhonig.com/2014/03/05/worthless-guarantees/

Ultra-popular in cyberspace these days is a cartoon showing Vladimir Putin as a shrewd strategist executing moves on a chessboard, while a laid-back Barack Obama incongruously plays a single checkers piece and yells “Bingo!”

We may agree or disagree with this depiction but such is the widespread perception of the Ukrainian crisis and the invasion of Crimea. The Russian leader is regarded as having handily outmaneuvered the American president and with him the entire West.

For Israelis, though, this is no laughing matter. We aren’t mere spectators on the sidelines. This sad spectacle couldn’t be more relevant to Israel. The implications to our own predicaments are compelling and quite inescapable.

From our vantage point there are no saints in this scenario. Our sympathies aren’t clear-cut. Ukrainians are recalled in Jewish history as the second-greatest-ever mass-murderers of Jews – directly after the Germans (with whom many Ukrainians avidly collaborated during the darkest days of the Holocaust).

And yet there’s a key element in the current Ukrainian travails that is particularly pertinent to the complexities and pressures which Israel faces.

ISRAELI STRATEGY IN THE CASE OF A NEW COLD WAR: LOUIS RENE BERES

http://www.jpost.com/Experts/Israeli-strategy-in-the-case-of-a-new-Cold-War-344372?prmusr=W%2b55kjX%2f%2b8zBI%2bk%2fLwFHuiHfBDd5eKTl4a1v0s45AJ%2bbvwwZBQlSKluZMeE84zjw In the fashion of every other state, the state of Israel would exist more or less precariously, amidst the hardening animosities of a new Cold War. Photo by: REUTERS At first glance, whatever happens in the Ukraine ought not to have any obvious impact upon the Middle East, least of all upon Israel’s strategic […]

DR. SHERWIN NULAND R.I.P…..SEE NOTE PLEASE

‘How We Die’ author Sherwin Nuland passes, aged 83 Jewish medical ethicist was critical of profession’s obsession with prolonging life when treatment was futile

DR. NULAND ALSO WROTE A SPLENDID BOOK ON MAIMONIDES IN 2008

Product Details
Maimonides (Jewish Encounters) by Sherwin B. Nuland (Aug 26, 2008)

HAMDEN, Connecticut — Dr. Sherwin Nuland, a medical ethicist who opposed assisted suicide and wrote an award-winning book about death called “How We Die,” died at age 83 on Monday.

He died of prostate cancer at his home in Hamden, said his daughter Amelia Nuland, who recalled how he told her he wasn’t ready for death because he loved life.

“He told me, ‘I’m not scared of dying, but I’ve built such a beautiful life, and I’m not ready to leave it,’” she said Tuesday.

Sherwin Nuland was born Shepsel Ber Nudelman in the East Bronx neighborhood of New York in December 1930 to a pair of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from what is today Moldova and Belarus.

He taught medical ethics at Yale University in New Haven. He was critical of the medical profession’s obsession with prolonging life when common sense would dictate further treatment is futile. He wrote nature “will always win in the end, as it must if our species is to survive.”

MORE ON TRUAX…STRONG ENDORSEMENT FOR DOUG TRUAX IN ILLINOIS…..

Chicago Tribune strongly endorses Truax for U.S. Senate

DOWNERS GROVE — In a strongly worded endorsement, the Chicago Tribune has recommended Doug Truax be nominated in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate.

If the Republican Party is to outgrow its loss of stature in Illinois, it needs to recruit and promote candidates who are more like Truax. At 43 he’s a West Point graduate, a former Army Ranger and captain, and majority owner of a small Oak Brook firm that helps employers address the costs of their health care, retirement and other benefits programs.

The endorsement continues:

Truax projects confidence in what a growth-oriented federal agenda could accomplish: He stresses that without more vibrant economic activity, America won’t solve chronic joblessness. He impresses us with smart ideas for rescuing entitlement programs, curbing federal tax loopholes, and empowering states to expand school choice: “I favor charter schools and maximum flexibility for parents and students to escape bad schools and a cycle of poverty.” And as a health insurance consultant, Truax offers fresh and detailed proposals for accomplishing what Obamacare cannot: affordably providing good coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions.

The Tribune sums up the choice:

RICHARD BAEHR: HOPE FOR THE ILLINOIS GOP…..SEE NOTE PLEASE

THE ILLINOIS PRIMARY IS ON MARCH 18, 2014…AND THE ELECTION  SERIES AT FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS WILL HAVE THE FULL RESULTS…..DOUG TRUAX IS AN IMPRESSIVE CANDIDATE…. Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/03/hope_for_illinois_gop.html   Illinois is one of the bluest states in the country, but disgust with the mismanagement and corrupt leadership by Democrats, who have complete control of the […]

AIR-HEAD AMERICA: RACHEL MADDOW: DANIEL GREENFIELD

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Liberal media succeeds best when it isn’t identified as such. The reason for that can be seen in numerous polls where Americans of both parties identify themselves with conservative values.

The left is adept at selling its agenda through biased mainstream media coverage, but when it discards the disguise of objectivity on radio or television the end result is shrill, irritating and off-putting.

The playwright and director David Mamet achieved an epiphany while listening to NPR. Unfortunately for NPR the epiphany was that he was no longer a liberal. “I felt my facial muscles tightening,” he described, “and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the f___ up.”

The unfiltered left with its onslaught of sanctimonious bleating often brings out that reaction.

It’s why Air America not only couldn’t compete with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other conservative talk radio hosts, but it couldn’t even remain solvent. MSNBC, the bastard child of a ridiculous union between Microsoft and NBC, spent years drifting in search of an identity only to become the new Air America.

SYDNEY WILLIAMS:SCIENCE, HUMANITARIANISM AND HUMAN EVOLUTION

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Do science, technology and humanitarian relief affect natural selection, in regards to the human species? Will these developments have unintended adverse consequences for the propagation of our species? In studying evolution, Charles Darwin developed the theory of natural selection, which stated that only the fittest of any species would survive. In simple terms, that meant the healthy, strong and intelligent. In the interest of improving the human condition, have we altered natural development?

Over the four and a half billion-year life of our planet, thousands of species from mammals to plants have come into being and subsequently died out; so, too, will man, at some point. It is the natural order of things. What allows one species to survive longer than another is the ability to adapt to such inevitable changes as weather, pestilence and predators. While Homo sapiens date back a mere 100,000 years, there has been life on Earth for a long time. The Trilobite, for example, dates to the Devonshire Period, 400 million years ago. In the last few years species such as the Pinta Island Tortoise and the Western Black Rhinoceros have died out. Other species have recently been discovered, like the Carolina Hammerhead Shark and the New Turkish Scorpion.

Better medicines and healthcare and improved humanitarian efforts, like the Feed the World Campaign that began in Ethiopia in 1984, have allowed millions of children to live that only a few years ago would have died. The population of Ethiopia, during the ensuing thirty years has grown from 34 million to 86 million. The country remains one of the poorest in the world, with an estimated annual income per person of $410. While mortality statistics have improved substantially, infant mortality at 58.3 per 1000 births is still one of the highest in the world, as is maternal mortality at 590 per 100,000. Humanitarian aid has allowed the population to expand, but has done little for the well-being of the people. In the West, drugs and healthier lifestyles have allowed the average person to live longer, while some relatively newer practices, like better sanitation, risk compromising immune systems.