RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/nebraska-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand?f=must_reads

Primary: May 13, 2014

To see the actual voting records of all incumbents on other issues such as Foreign Policy, Second Amendment Issues, Homeland Security, and other issues as well as their rankings by special interest groups please use the links followed by two stars (**).
U.S. Senate

Deb Fischer (R) Next election in 2018
Mike Johanns (R) Is retiring in 2014
Ben Sasse (R) Challenger
https://www.sassefornebraska.com/
ISSUES
HEALTHCARE He opposes ObamaCare not just because:
it was passed by a dishonest legislative gimmick
it is based on a premise that Government can successfully plan 18% of our economy
it puts bureaucrats between patients and doctors
it infringes on religious liberty and forces people of conscience to pay for abortion
its information technology systems won’t work, and will likely lead to massive data leaks of Americans’ confidential financial and health data
…though all those things are true.

He’s also against it for a much more basic reason: Ben opposes ObamaCare because he rejects the worldview underlying it. It’s a worldview that says:

“If there’s a problem, only the Federal Government can solve it.”

“Fake budget projections are fine, it’s OK to hide the truth from the American people because “DC knows what America needs and the ends justify the means”

“The Executive branch has the authority to just fill in parts of the law that are unfinished, grant special waivers to politically connected friends, and change parts of the law that are politically inconvenient.”

“The American people need Government to care for them and permanent dependency isn’t just an acceptable outcome, it’s a goal of this Administration.”

This does not work. Republicans must be ready with conservative solutions to the crisis Obamacare has caused. Otherwise we will be forced into a single-payer system.
Real health care reform can only be achieved through patient-centered health policy solutions, not more bureaucracy. The health care sector was a mess before Obamacare-not because we didn’t have enough government, but because we already had too much.
JOBS AND ECONOMY Ben knows that the government does not create jobs – businesses and local communities create jobs. The way to get a real economic growth agenda is by rolling back the regulatory state and letting job creators go to work. One area where over-regulation has been most obvious is the energy sector. The Keystone XL pipeline should have been approved years ago. Ben believes that we need an all-of-the-above energy policy. This approach would lower energy prices, create as many as three million jobs, and reduce our dependence on the Middle East.
When government gets out of the way, America can compete – and win – in any industry. We’ve got the people; we’ve got the talent; and most of all we have the work ethic – the will to create something lasting for our families and our neighbors- if we can just get the federal government out of the way, and let our people build.
IMMIGRATION The Federal Government’s primary responsibility is to protect Americans from enemies foreign and domestic. The American people are not safe unless we know who is entering and leaving our country. Neither Party has been willing to get serious about border security, dating back to the mid-80s when a Republican president agreed to amnesty in exchange for promises of securing the border later. It never happened.

President “You can keep your doctor” Obama refuses to lead on this issue because he is more concerned about turning Texas into a Democrat state than he is about solving the problem. Republicans must not make a deal with President Obama. We must secure the border. End of story.
FOREIGN POLICY A strong America is a more prosperous and secure America, and American leadership makes for a safer and more peaceful world. But President Obama’s policies have done more to weaken our nation than anyone since Jimmy Carter. Under the Obama Administration, America’s global standing has deteriorated to dangerous levels. Our adversaries don’t fear us and our friends don’t trust us. Russia’s attack on Ukraine shows the folly of President Obama’s naive, liberal worldview that international aggression is out of date. Dictatorships like China and North Korea have become emboldened by Obama’s lead-from-behind weakness. His passivity on Syria has led to a dramatic increase in the number of jihadist terrorists, and on his watch Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than ever before. Restoring America’s credibility means strengthening our alliances, deterring our enemies, and leading the world from the front.

Dave Domina (D) Challenger
http://www.davedomina.com/

District 1

Jeff Fortenberry (R) Incumbent
http://www.supportfort.com/wpmain/ http://fortenberry.house.gov/#dialog
http://www.ontheissues.org/house/Jeff_Fortenberry.htm**
Rated -3 by AAI, indicating anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012

ISSUES

NUCLEAR LEADERSHIP
American nuclear leadership: America’s role as the leading enforcer of the norms and laws guiding the global nuclear security order.orMaintaining a strong American deterrent: Making the right investments to ensure a strong and affordable U.S. deterrent to combat 21st century threats, including the role of missile defense, Global Strike, and cyberspace.
Preventing nuclear terror: Preventing dangerous regimes or sub-state actors from acquiring or advancing nuclear ambitions and capabilities.
Securing global nuclear materials: Advancing efforts to secure nuclear materials worldwide
Safe civilian nuclear power: Ensuring that responsible nations can utilize nuclear power without increasing nuclear proliferation.

ENERGY Voted YES on opening Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling.
Voted YES on barring EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.
Voted NO on enforcing limits on CO2 global warming pollution.
Voted for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline without limiting amendments.

HEALTHCARE Rep. Jeff Fortenberry wants to retain portions of the Affordable Care Act while moving to a new health care reform model that combines catastrophic care coverage with expanded use of individual health savings accounts.
August 8, 2013-Nebraska Republican Jeff Fortenberry was pressed at a town hall in his district this week about the many votes the House GOP has taken to repeal or dismantle parts of Obamacare.
Fortenberry called the 40 votes the House has taken on the health care law “theatrics,” the Columbus Telegram reported on Thursday. “Some people are beginning to ridicule us for that. To be honest, some of it is theatrics. You keep doing this over and over and over again and it doesn’t get anywhere. It is theatrics,” Fortenberry said according to the paper. He said he remains opposed to the law, but was supportive of some of the more popular provisions like allowing children to stay on their parent’s health plan until they turn 26.

Dennis Crawford (D) Challenger
http://denniscrawford2014.com/

ISSUES

CREATING JOBS My top priority will be to work across party lines to pass legislation that will create jobs. That’s why I support government investments in infrastructure. We need to upgrade our aging highways, bridges and electrical grid. Currently, the infrastructure in the U.S. is ranked 14th in the world and is declining. As recently as 2008, our infrastructure was ranked 7th. In 2011, a jobs bill was introduced in the Congress that would have invested in infrastructure and cut the Social Security payroll tax. This legislation – if enacted – would have created almost 2 million jobs while reducing the unemployment rate by 1 percentage point. It was supported by both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO. As both AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said: “[W]e hope that Democrats and Republicans in Congress will also join together to build America’s infrastructure.” Unfortunately, the bill has never been granted an up or down vote. This is yet another example of how Washington’s dysfunction is hurting the economy and the people of Nebraska CD 1.
MAKING GOVERNMENT WORK The government shutdown that Jeff Fortenberry supported and voted for on September 20th, 2013 is unacceptable. It cost our economy $24 Billion and 120 thousand jobs. I plan to reach across party lines to arrive at solutions that are beneficial to the people of CD1. We need a farm bill and a jobs bill. I’m running because I want my children and their generation to have the same kind of opportunities my wife and I had when we were growing up.
EXPANDING CLEAN ENERGY Every time I drive down I-80 through Iowa, I marvel at all of the wind turbines. We need to do the same thing here in Nebraska. We have great potential here in Nebraska to produce great amounts of wind energy. That is why I support investments in renewable sources such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal. The development of renewable energy is a great job creation tool as well as a way to reduce America’s dependence upon oil from unstable parts of the world. The development of renewable energy sources has the potential to bring about the same kind of positive technological and economic spin offs that we saw from the interstate highway system and the space program in the 1950s and 1960s. The production of more renewable energy will also reduce the amount of green house gases emitted into the atmosphere. This is truly a win-win proposition for everybody in Nebraska CD1. If I’m elected, I would make this one of my top priorities.
PROTECTING ELECTION INTEGRITY We need to begin to take steps to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. That decision made it possible for well-heeled special interests to pour large amounts of anonymous money into political campaigns. An activist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court created a new, dysfunctional campaign finance system that is now one dollar, one vote. We need to get special interest money out of campaigns and restore the voices of the middle class and working people by overturning Citizens United.

District 2

Lee Terry (R) Incumbent
http://leeterry.com/ http://leeterry.house.gov/
http://www.ontheissues.org/house/lee_terry.htm**
Rated -2 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

ISSUES
HEALTHCARE The cost of health care poses the greatest single threat to the fiscal health of the United States, threatening our economic stability in the future. Today, the U.S. spends more on health care per person than other country in the world, yet it ranks 37th in overall quality according to the World Health Organization. Clearly, there are problems with our system and they need to be addressed, before they do serious damage.
That’s why I voted against the President’s health care reform plan. It’s already proven that more money and new government programs won’t solve our health crisis in American; but rather we need to reform our health care delivery system.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that President Obama signed into law raises taxes; increases the nation’s deficit; and, fails to address the problems of rising health care costs and insurance premiums. The end result threatens access for millions of Medicare beneficiaries and that is something that cannot be accepted.
Another reason I voted against PPACA is because it created the Independent Payment Advisory Board that puts Medicare payment decisions in the hands 15 unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. Over three years later, evidence indicates that the new health care law is failing America’s health care system. A growing number of employers include those I’ve spoken with in Nebraska’s Second District are considering eliminating employer sponsored coverage and forcing their employees to go to an exchange. These new taxes and mandates are hurting small businesses and their ability to hire new employees.
Another way to rein in health care costs is permanent fixing Medicare’s sustain growth rate (SGR) that sets the formula for how doctors are reimbursed for their services. The SGR is an antiquated policy that it was meant to control how much Medicare pays for physician services, but it simply doesn’t fit our nation’s 21st century health care needs. Evidence of this is how many times Congress has had to pass a temporary patch for the SGR, or “doc fix.” We cannot expect Medicare patients to go year-to-year or month-to-month hoping that Congress will continually fix this broken formula. I am happy that my committee has taken the lead on addressing this major issue and I believe that rather than reimbursing doctors for the quantity of services, we need to explore ways to reward them for the quality of patient outcomes.
ENERGY Terry Reaction to State Department Delay of Keystone XL Pipeline – Washington, Apr 18 | 2014 Congressman Lee Terry (R-NE) released the following statement after today’s announcement by the State Department that they will delay making a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline:
“Yesterday, the President had the audacity to stand at the podium at the White House press office and lecture Republicans in Congress about the need to make tough decisions. But today, he punted a tough decision in the name of political expediency.
“It’s shameful that as we begin spring construction season, that hundreds of my constituents will be denied an opportunity to go to work on a project that will help secure America’s energy future solely because the President wants to placate his political base in an election year.”
IMMIGRATION Congress must act on this important issue. We have lost control of both our northern and southern borders. Our maritime border is porous and anyone with the most innocent or worst of intentions can walk or drive into and assimilate into our communities. This illegal immigration must be stopped. Securing our border is the proper first step. I support authorizing more border patrol agents, who are properly equipped with modern technology to monitor those coming into our country. More needs to be done to properly secure our ports of entry along our east and west coasts and our northern and southern borders. This is a very large, but very important task.

Employers must be provided better means to information, allowing them to determine whether or not the potential hire is properly documented. If employers fail to seek information about a potential employee, the full force of the law should be brought against them. Once the borders are secure from illegal immigrants we must reform our current, archaic immigration laws. We must develop sensible, labor-based non-amnesty guest worker programs.

Brad Ashford (D) Challenger
https://www.facebook.com/AshfordForOmaha

District 3

Adrian Smith (R) Incumbent
http://www.joinadrian.com/ http://www.ontheissues.org/house/adrian_smith.htm**
http://adriansmith.house.gov/
Rated -4 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

ISSUES
ENERGY Smith Statement on Keystone XL Pipeline Study, Jan 31, 2014 , Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE) issued the following statement after the State Department released its final environmental impact study on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The final study concluded the pipeline would pose minimal environmental risk.
“The State Department has once again confirmed the Keystone pipeline would be safe and in the best interest of our nation. Protecting the natural resources of Nebraska and our nation has always been a key factor in considering this project. With today’s technology, we can transport energy safely while protecting our environment. “With the environmental review now complete, it’s time to move forward with this project which would improve our energy security, create jobs, and spur economic growth.
“I encourage the President to follow the science and facts, and approve this project.”
HEALTHCARE More Evidence Obamacare is Hurting Americans – New Report Predicts Millions of Job Losses, Fewer Insured – Feb 4, 2014 Issues: Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE) made the following statement today after a new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicted the President’s health care law will reduce the number of full-time workers by roughly 2.3 million people, and the online exchanges will insure 1 million fewer people this year than previously estimated:
“This new report is just the latest evidence of what Nebraskans have told me all along: Obamacare makes our health systems worse, not better, and the law discourages economic growth and job creation.
“House Republicans have offered hundreds of ideas to make health care more affordable and accessible in America. Earlier today, I joined my colleagues on the Ways and Means Committee in approving two bills to prevent part-time workers, volunteer firefighters, and other emergency workers from being hurt by the Obamacare employer mandate. “I hope this report will encourage President Obama and Senator Reid to consider these and other Republican solutions instead of continuing to block the process. As the report indicates, we can and must do better.”

Mark Sullivan (D) Challenger
http://marksullivan2014.com/
ISSUES
I will fight to preserve Social Security, Medicare, and the family farm.
I’m going to work hard for deficit reduction and job growth.
To balance our budget we need a careful, balanced , and fair approach to fiscal security. Spending cuts and Revenue increases must necessarily be equally employed to successfully deal with our deficit. This great endeavor must involve shared sacrifice. Americans have never shrunk from a challenge if they are sure they are united in their efforts and sacrifices!
To promote jobs I would encourage improving infrastructure. We need to maintain and improve our broadband services, highways, railroads, and electrical power grid. Spending on infrastructure is an investment in our nation’s future.
We must defend our nation in the most effective way possible. New technology should be employed to make our country safe, save lives, save money, and put less boots on foreign soil. We owe our citizens a strong defense, but we can’t bankrupt our nation and risk our soldier’s lives. We need to follow Theodore Roosevelt’s advice to, “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Steady diplomatic pressure and financial sanctions will continue to give us better results than gunboat diplomacy.
We must develop a comprehensive energy program. We need to expand and promote new renewable and sustainable energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal. While we work on these sources we must continue to utilize our existing resources. Improved efficiency, conservation, and environmental safety should be of the highest priority. A big cash bank balance could seem very insignificant if our children and grandchildren inherit a nation with polluted air, undrinkable water, and eroded soil.

Last week, before embarking on a three-day visit to Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Pope Francis stated that his trip would be “strictly religious.” A key reason for his short sojourn, he said, was to “pray for peace in this land that has suffered greatly.”

After arriving, however, he spent less time engaged in prayer than in politics.

This would have been completely appropriate had the bishop of Rome and the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church addressed the religious nature of the Islamist war being waged against Christians and Jews. It would have befitted the head of the Holy See to stand at the believed-to-be sites of Jesus’ birth and baptism and bemoan the fate of his flock at the hands of Muslim fanatics bent on subjugating all “infidels.” It would have been in keeping with his mission to reassure the world’s Christians that good will prevail over evil.

Sadly, this is not how the pope’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land panned out. Though he did mention the plight of his people when in Amman last Saturday, it was to praise Jordan’s “climate of serene coexistence” between Muslims and Christians.

“I thank the authorities of the kingdom for all they are doing,” he said, while meeting with King Abdullah II and Queen Rania at their palace. “And I encourage them to persevere in their efforts to seek lasting peace for the entire region. This goal urgently requires that a peaceful solution be found to the crisis in Syria, as well as a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

On Sunday, the pontiff went to Bethlehem. There he met with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, whom he called “a man of peace.”

As always, Abbas and his cronies put their best lies forward, undoubtedly denying Christian flight in droves from Palestinian-controlled areas on the one hand, while blaming Israel for the phenomenon on the other.

The remaining tiny Christian minority in Bethlehem was then treated to a mass delivered by the pope at Manger Square. But his words were drowned out by the muezzin of the Omar Mosque calling Muslims to prayer and blasting “Allahu akbar” (God is great) into a loudspeaker.

The cult of Obama has entered laughingstock territory. The West Point graduates who stayed seated when a standing ovation was attempted were far too polite to openly laugh at the president, but the behavior yesterday of reporters at the State Department indicated their scorn with less restraint.

During a press conference, Jen Psaki, the State Department’s official spokeswoman, claimed at a news conference yesterday, “I would argue the president doesn’t give himself enough credit for what he’s done around the world, and that’s how the secretary feels too.”

The response from the reporters gathered there was laughter.

Keep in mind that these are mostly reporters assigned to the State Department beat, who are knowledgeable about foreign affairs, and who are well used to diplomatic language being used for evasion and puffery.

The follow-on questions were sarcastic:

Q: But isn’t this a potential mission accomplished situation?

PSAKI: Absolutely not.

Q: Jen, you would argue the president doesn’t give himself enough credit? How much credit would you give him?

PSAKI: Well, I think what I’m — I would give him more than he has given himself. That’s what I just said.

Q: What, like, 200 percent credit?

PSAKI: So would the secretary.

Q: So — and for — and for –

Its climate-change policies set up the administration for a fall on Election Day.

On June 2, the Environmental Protection Agency is going to announce new rules for existing coal-fired power plants, most likely a 20 percent reduction in allowable carbon dioxide emissions. The only way this will be possible will be by upgrading almost all combustion units, and the ultimate cost of the upgrades will make coal noncompetitive with much-less-expensive natural gas–fired facilities.

EPA’s proposed new greenhouse-gas regulations are a campaign promise come true. In 2008, Senator Barack Obama announced that, if elected, his climate policies would “necessarily bankrupt” anyone who wanted to build a new coal-fired power plant.

Public comments on EPA’s proposal to do just that closed on May 9, and there is no chance that the president will renege — or that this policy will have any detectable effect on global temperature.

The EPA’s own model, ironically acronymed MAGICC, estimates that its new policies will prevent a grand total of 0.018ºC in warming by 2100. Obviously, that’s not enough to satisfy the steadily shrinking percentage of Americans who think global warming is a serious problem.

MAGICC tells us that the futility of whatever Obama proposes for existing plants will be statistically indistinguishable from making sure that there are no new coal-fired ones. In fact, dropping the carbon dioxide emissions from all sources of electrical generation to zero would reduce warming by a grand total of 0.04ºC by 2100.

This is hardly going to stop the crescendo of global-warming horror stories, perhaps best summarized by the government’s recently released “National Assessment” of the effects of climate change on our country.

For example, the assessment tells us that global warming will increase mental illness in our nation’s cities. The obvious implication is that people in Richmond are crazier than they are in Washington, 100 miles to the north. Or that people must really be loony in Miami.

Should we really police all discourse for fear of the reaction of a microscopic minority?
Can we please stop holding the country hostage to crazy people?

Every year a tiny number of mentally ill people go on horrific killing sprees. It just happened in California. I won’t name the person, because I think the media attention lavished on these horror shows encourages some of these young men — and they are almost all young men — to seek fame or validation through bloodshed.

In an entirely human response, we get spun up into a frenzy of finger-pointing. In the aftermath of the Gabby Giffords shooting, many of the country’s leading journalists and politicians suggested the former congresswoman was shot because of the “violent” political rhetoric of Sarah Palin, Representative Michele Bachmann, and other tea-party-affiliated politicians. It was beyond stupid and slanderous. It was also utterly devoid of evidence. (The culprit was a severe paranoid schizophrenic who abused drugs.)

In 2012, at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo., another mentally ill young man allegedly murdered twelve people. Because he had dyed his hair orange and booby-trapped his home the way the comic-book villain the Joker might have, many speculated that he was motivated by the Batman movies to kill.

After the particularly horrifying mass murder in Newtown, Conn., many speculated that the mentally ill killer was at least partially driven to kill by violent video games.

In the wake of the recent murder spree in California, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday tried to lay some of the blame on romantic comedies:

“I have a dreadful feeling in my bones that future historians may write of the May 2014 elections: ‘This was the wake-up call from which Europe failed to wake up.'” — Timothy Garten Ash, The Guardian.

Anti-establishment parties from both the left and the right won big in the 28-nation European Parliament elections that ended on May 25.

Riding a wave of voter discontent over the existing political order in Europe, the electoral victories—especially those by euro-skeptic politicians in major EU countries such as Britain, France and Germany—mark a clear turning point in the debate over the future of the European Union.

The surge of anti-EU parties represents an important blow to the legitimacy of plans by the European establishment to transform the continent into a United States of Europe.

Europe-wide, nearly 150 representatives from anti-establishment parties won seats in the European Parliament. This is up from around 60 seats in the 2009 election. Established pro-EU parties will remain in control of roughly 70% of the 751-seat parliament, which manages the EU’s €143 billion ($200 billion) annual budget and passes EU-wide laws that affect more than 500 million citizens.

Moreover, Europe’s ruling elites are unlikely to allow these or any other election results to derail their quest to build a European superstate. Although European voters have sent an unmistakable message, efforts are already underway to discredit euro-skeptics by branding them as extremists.

Anti-establishment parties are also divided among themselves on many issues, a weakness that, if not overcome, will blunt their effectiveness in the European Parliament.

In summary, the euro-skeptics face a daunting set of long-term challenges to stop the seemingly relentless march toward European federalism. In the near term, however, the greatest impact of their electoral victories will be felt at the local and national levels.

Coming off a week where President Obama laid out an Afghanistan withdrawal timetable and put forth his foreign policy vision, Secretary of State John Kerry declared Thursday that this administration is “more engaged” with the world “than at any time in American history.”

“I don’t think the president, frankly, takes enough credit for the successes that are on the table right now,” Kerry told PBS. “I mean, if you look at what has happened in Ukraine, the president led an effort to try to keep Europe unified with the United States, to put difficult sanctions on the table. Europe wasn’t thrilled with that. But they came along. That was leadership. And the president succeeded in having an impact ultimately, together with the Europeans, on the choices that face President Putin.”

“In Syria, the president obviously made his decision to strike Syria, and appropriately sent that decision to Congress. Congress didn’t want to move. But we came up with another solution, which was get all of those chemical weapons out, rather than just have one or two days of strikes,” he added.

Kerry then claimed “the president has now succeeded in getting 92 percent of those weapons out of Syria.”

“There is one last transfer that has to take place to get to 100 percent,” he said. “I believe it will take place.”

A May 23 letter to the UN Security Council from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon obtained by the New York Times paints a bleaker picture, noting that only five of 18 known chemical weapons production facilities had been closed in Syria. The deadline to clear the program is supposed to be June 30.

The Assad regime has also been using chlorine gas as its new chemical weapon of choice, a substance prohibited for weapons use under the Chemical Weapons Convention that Assad joined last year to avoid strikes.

Big Gulp banning Mayor Mike Bloomberg delivered an extraordinary speech at Harvard University. With conservative speakers getting banned and/or uninvited from university commencement ceremonies, Bloomberg took the opportunity at Harvard to, basically, tell the banners and uninviters to knock it off. He likened them to McCarthyism, which is unfair as McCarthy was actually fighting a totalitarian idea that was being pushed into the US by a hostile foreign power for the express purpose of weakening us and overthrowing capitalism. But that bit of moral confusion aside, and his support for the Ground Zero mosque aside along with it, Bloomberg delivers a strong defense of free speech. Stirring, even.

I’m as stunned to write that as you surely are reading it.

The important part starts after the six minute mark.

Bloomberg’s defenses of freedom of thought and speech are not a mere sidebar in the speech. They are the speech. Bloomberg strongly defends all dissent from the current leftist orthodoxy, even on gay marriage, and calls out universities for going so far left that they have become the very forces of intolerance they claim to oppose. And earns applause. No one even threw a pie at him.

Via Allahpundit, a few quotes.

“It is just a modern form of McCarthyism,” Bloomberg said of university “censorship” of conservatives. “Think about the irony: In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left wing ideas. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species.”

“And that is probably nowhere more true than it is here in the Ivy League,” declared Bloomberg…

More than 60,000 illegal children below the age of 18 will cross the border this year unaccompanied by an adult, and the government thinks that number is likely to double next year.

The flood of children from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and other Central American nations is putting a tremendous strain on government resources. Reuters reports that not only is there simply no room to house the children, but the budget problem makes it difficult to adequately care for them. It costs the U.S. $252 a day to care for each child and the total cost this year could reach $868 million. That number is expected to climb to $2 billion next year.

The tenfold increase in illegal minors crossing the border alone since 2011 is partly the result of relaxed deportation policies of the Obama administration. But it is also true that many of these children are escaping poverty, abuse, and rampant violence in their home countries.

The shortage of housing for these children, some as young as 3, has already become so acute that an emergency shelter at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, has been opened and can accommodate 1,000 of them, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in an interview with Reuters.

The issue is an added source of tension between Democrats and Republicans, who disagree on how to rewrite immigration laws. With comprehensive legislation stalled, President Barack Obama is looking at small, administrative steps he could take, which might be announced this summer. No details have been outlined but immigration groups are pressing him to take steps to keep families with children together.

The minors flooding over the border are often teenagers leaving behind poverty or violence in Mexico and other parts of Central America such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They are sometimes seeking to reunite with a parent who is already in the United States, also without documentation.

“This is a humanitarian crisis and it requires a humanitarian response,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski said in an interview. The Maryland Democrat, a former social worker, has likened the flood of unaccompanied children to the “boat people” of past exodus movements.

Emerge USA is a Florida-based organization whose unstated goal is to give radical Muslims a political voice in America. One way they do this is by getting their leaders placed in key positions of power. Another way is by making friends with those already in power. United States Representative from Florida, Joe Garcia, is one of those friends. He has accepted thousands of dollars from Emerge for his 2014 reelection bid, and he has returned the favor by helping the group raise more money.

Earlier this month, Emerge held its annual fundraising dinner in Miami, at the DoubleTree Hotel and Airport Convention Center. Featured at the event was Sayed Ammar Nakshawani, an Islamic lecturer from England who is a devotee of Iran’s deceased terrorist leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and who has called for the destruction of Israel.

In a speech found on YouTube and the lecture section of his website, titled ‘Sayed Khomeini’s Quds Day,’ Nakshawani states, “The shame in this world is that, if we put ourselves down to a two-state solution, we would allow a country which has broken 60 UN resolutions to have their own freedom of peace. It is barbaric that this Zionist state is allowed to continue.”

Emerge advertised Nakshawani in an event flyer as well as an Emerge-produced video of Nakshawani telling people to attend.

Given Emerge’s past, having this man speak was no surprise. What was a surprise, though, was that a sitting U.S. Congressman, Joe Garcia, would also be speaking at the event, even after the leader of his political party, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, cancelled her keynote address in front of the same group just two years prior.

One of the two co-chairmen of Emerge is South Florida attorney Khurrum Basir Wahid. According to his bio, Wahid specializes in defending “individuals charged with allegedly committing or conspiring to commit acts of terrorism.”

Wahid’s clients include: Rafiq Abdus Sabir, who received a 25 year prison sentence for conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaeda; al-Qaeda member Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who was given a life sentence for plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush; Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami al-Arian, who is presently under house arrest in Virginia; and Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, a Miami, Florida imam who was convicted of funneling tens of thousands of dollars to the Taliban for the express purpose of murdering American troops.

Prior to helping found Emerge, Wahid was a legal advisor for the national office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a director of CAIR’s Florida chapter. In 2007 and 2008, CAIR was named by the U.S. Justice Department as a co-conspirator to the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas.

In 2011, Wahid himself was placed on a U.S. government terrorist watch list.