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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323949404578314741758153624.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTSecondBucket

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From the City Journal

he American economy has had little to cheer about since the 2008 financial meltdown and the resulting recession. Recovery has been feeble, and many states continue to struggle. One bright spot in the general gloom, however, is Texas, which began shining long before 2008. Not only has Texas created jobs at a stunning rate; it has also—pace critics like the New York Times’s Paul Krugman—created lots of good jobs. Indeed, the rest of the nation could turn to the Lone Star State as a model for dynamic growth, as a close look at employment data shows.

The first thing to point out is that Texan job creation has far outpaced the national average. The number of jobs in Texas has grown by a truly impressive 31.5 percent since 1995, compared with just 12 percent nationwide, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data (see Figure One). Texas has also lapped California, an important economic rival and the only state with a larger population. The Texas employment situation after the financial crisis was far less spectacular, of course, with the number of jobs growing just 2.4 percent from 2009 through 2011. But that was still six times the anemic 0.4 percent growth rate of the overall American economy.

Illustrations by Alberto MenaThe National Establishment Time-Series (NETS) Database, which provides detailed information on job creation and loss for firms headquartered in each state, can tell us more about Texas’s employment growth. NETS data are divided into two periods—the first from 1995 to 2002, the second from 2002 to 2009. During the 2002–09 period, small businesses of fewer than ten employees were the Texas employment engine, adding nearly 800,000 new jobs; of those, about three-quarters were in firms with two to nine employees, as Figure Two indicates. Larger Texas companies—those with 500 or more employees—lost a significant number of jobs over this span, and medium-size firms likewise shrank, trends that also showed up on the national level.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/warrantless-searches-proposed-for-third-time-by-wa-democrats/?print=1

Imagine if Republicans in Utah or Alabama, responding to a horrifying sex crime, introduced a bill allowing warrantless searches of homosexuals’ homes to make sure they weren’t holding little boys as sex slaves.

The national media would be discussing this gross violation of the Fourth Amendment incessantly, using it as an example of how fundamentally fascist the Republican Party is — everywhere.

Cut to Washington State: in this case, liberal Democrats in the legislature have introduced an assault weapon ban that includes annual inspections of the homes of people that already own assault weapons to make sure that they are being safely stored [1].

There is no need for a warrant; there is no probable cause requirement; and the Seattle Times columnist writing about this clearly unconstitutional law observes that the sponsors include “Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, a lawyer who typically is hyper-attuned to civil-liberties issues.”

After a stream of criticism, the author withdrew the warrantless search section of the bill, calling it a “mistake.” Yet, as Bryan Preston points out [2], the warrantless search section – word for word — was included in bills by Kline in 2009 and 2005.

Mistake? I think he was just finally caught and called out this time.

http://www.nextgeneration.tv/?cmd=register
The Black Father Famine Is Destroying Families and Communities
7 minutes

Allen West talks with Tamon Pearson of Urban Game Changers about the issues plaguing Black America. From the lack of fathers to the high dropout rate, is the black community at a tipping point? Tune in, and join the discussion.

February 21, 2013

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/hillary_clintons_middle_east_legacy.html

Most of the time foreign policy barely registers on the radar screens of American voters. That’s why it’s easy for Hillary Clinton fans to promote the false notion that she was a first-rate Secretary of State despite her four-year string of failures.

“I’ve done what was possible to do,” Clinton told reporters just hours before she resigned.

Apparently, it was not possible to strengthen our relationships with allies like Britain, Israel, Canada, Mexico, Poland, and the Czech Republic, but easy to throw the Middle East into turmoil.

Clinton’s reset with Russia has been a diplomatic disaster.

The State Department pivot to Asia is a retreat from events that are spinning out of control in the Middle East. Attempting to contain China at the very time our navy is being downsized will result in increased Chinese assertiveness (see here, here, and here) and a further erosion of the trust our friends in the Asia-Pacific region have in us.

Women’s Rights

In America, Hillary Clinton is touted as a global champion of women’s rights. Yet the Arab Spring that took place on her watch has set Muslim women’s rights back fifty years in newly-formed Middle East governments dominated by Islamic fundamentalists.

Libya

When the U.S. engages in sustained military activity, as in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, public interest in foreign policy is heightened somewhat. However, when we launched cruise missiles and used A-10 ground attack aircraft, B-2 stealth bombers, AV-8B Harrier jump-jets, and both F-15E and F-16 fighters in a brief war against Libya in 2011, few Americans bothered to ask why.

The State Department offered a flimsy, largely unsubstantiated justification for U.S. military intervention in Libya, and many people accepted it.

The U.S. role in destabilizing Libya, along with the secret Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) raids across North Africa authorized by John Brennan — Barack Obama’s then-Deputy National Security Adviser, and now his nominee to head the CIA — have increased uncertainty in the region.

According to a recent book co-authored by former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb and former Green Beret Jack Murphy, entitled Benghazi: The Definitive Report, a JSOC attack on the Islamic group Ansar al-Sharia days before September 11, 2012 may have triggered a retaliatory strike against the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

Michael Kelly, writing for Business Insider, has reported the possible involvement of American Ambassador Christopher Stevens in the covert movement of heavy weapons from Libya to Syrian rebels. Stevens, along with three other Americans, was killed in the Benghazi attack, deaths that Hillary Clinton failed to prevent.

Britain, with it’s culture of free-speech and anti-establishment activism, is a fertile breeding ground for extremism. It will remain so until we develop a sense of national cohesion http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2779/lessons_from_the_recent_birmingham_terrorist_plot The recent convictions of three Muslim men, who were at the advanced stages of planning a spectacular terrorist attack targeting Birmingham city centre, has led to […]

3) The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) $ 142 billion per year

2) Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) $ 184.8 billion per year

1) EnvironMental Perversion Agency (EPA) $ 353 billion per year

The “most expensive” translates into the most powerful.

As Iain Murray noted in The Really Inconvenient Truths, the false notions advanced by the EPA have led to questionable regulations and policies to “save” the environment, including the effort to limit access to vital energy resources (except in Brazil) and impinge on private property rights. In actuality, these policies have endangered more species, caused more human fatalities and squandered more energy.

EnvironMentalism has been used as an anti-capitalism tool, employing faulty data and politically engineered studies to restrict personal freedom, increase government control and spending, reduce or limit economic growth and curtail free enterprise all the while continuing to masquerade as a benevolent protector of natural resources.

(NOTE: The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of the most powerful pieces of legislation on the books. No other government mission overrules the ESA’s objective of protecting endangered species. (They take precedence over humans). The law can even close military bases and training facilities. The effects of the ESA are so far-reaching that it enables the U.S. government to prohibit property owners from using their land with no reimbursement provided for its disuse and reduced value and no cessation of customary taxation. The ESA does NOT specify a time frame or plan for completion of species recovery. ESA violations carry steep fines in excess of $50,000 and imprisonment of up to one year. Rewards are issued to individuals who report violators).

Janet Levy,
Los Angeles

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/02/19/the-islamic-cloud-over-brennan-and-hagel/ Two key national security nominations by President Obama are up for confirmation following Congress‘ recess this week: former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel to be secretary of defense, and John O. Brennan, the president’s key counterterrorism adviser, to be the director of the CIA. Both candidates have had to address issues based on their past […]

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/02/19/how-muslim-proselytizing-creeps-into-public-schools/ The Loudoun County School Board is reaching the denouement of a multiyear deliberation about an application for a charter school that has strong ties to Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish Islamist. His followers have already started some 135 American charter schools. Their focus is to promote an increasingly Shariah-dominated Turkey. Incredibly, the school board’s members […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3596/syria-assad-reckoning Whatever the fate of Bashar Assad, Iran is unlikely to abandon its investment in Hezbollah or in other Syrian groups, but Iran’s interests go well beyond the Syria/Hezbollah axis. Iranian influence in predominantly Shiite Iraq continues to grow and there are reports of Iran building Iraqi Hezbollah militias as the security situation continues to […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3597/iran-rial-collpase The Iranian banking system is rife with corruption and embezzlement. Of loans to public entities, over 90% are non-performing. The Ayatollahs seem to understand that the real threat to their hold on power comes from Iranians on the street and in the bazaar – people who understand that the government, not sanctions, has ruined […]