IRS Officials In Washington Targeted Conservatives, California Offices Now Involved

IRS Officials In Washington Were Involved In Targeting Of Conservative Groups – Washington Post

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.

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IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.

Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.

In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.

“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.

Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ­(TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

Then-Commissioner Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who stepped down in November, received a briefing from the TIGTA about what was happening in the Cincinnati office in May 2012, the aides said. His deputy and the agency’s current acting commissioner, Steven T. Miller, also learned about the matter that month, the aides said.

The officials did not share details with Republican lawmakers who had been demanding to know whether the IRS was targeting conservative groups, Republicans said.

“I wrote to the IRS three times last year after hearing concerns that conservative groups were being targeted,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Monday. “In response to the first letter I sent with some of my colleagues, Steven Miller, the current Acting IRS Commissioner, responded that these groups weren’t being targeted.”

“Knowing what we know now,” he added, “the IRS was at best being far from forth coming, or at worst, being deliberately dishonest with Congress.”

In a news conference Monday, President Obama said he learned of the investigating in media reports on Friday and has “no patience with it.”

“If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on, and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous,” Obama said. “And there’s no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday that the White House counsel’s office learned of an upcoming IRS inspector general’s report on April 22 as part of a routine notification but had not received access to the report.

On Capitol Hill, two Senate panels – the Finance Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations – announced Monday that they will investigate. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Ways and Means Committee have been looking into reports of IRS attempts to single out organizations on the right for heightened scrutiny. Ways and Means has called IRS officials to testify Friday.

“These actions by the IRS are an outrageous abuse of power and a breach of the public’s trust,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). “The IRS will now be the ones put under additional scrutiny.”

Separately, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) introduced companion bills Monday that would require the IRS to fire any employee found “willfully” violating “the constitutional rights of a taxpayer,” according to statements by both lawmakers. The bills also would make them criminally liable for their actions.

Even as Obama vowed that his administration “will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this,” however, the IRS offered no new information on how it selected which groups to single out for scrutiny.

The White House is legally barred from contacting the IRS about a tax matter, under a prohibition adopted after the Watergate scandal. And although it can contact the Treasury Department about tax issues, neither Treasury nor the IRS can disclose specific taxpayer information. The IRS can release information about a petition for tax-exempt status only after it has been approved.

Obama is not in a position to remove Lerner, a career official who can be terminated for cause only under normal civil service proceedings. The IRS has two political appointees: the commissioner, who serves a five-year term, and the chief counsel.

As the IRS came under broader political attack Monday, more details surfaced on how the exempt-organizations division struggled to determine which nonprofits should receive “social welfare” status after the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling. That decision, which allowed corporations and unions to raise and spend un­limited amounts of money on elections, opened the door for groups to accept undisclosed contributions as long as their “primary purpose” was not politics.

In a Jan. 9, 2012, letter to the Richmond Tea Party, IRS specialist Stephen Seok asked questions including “the names of the donors, contributors and grantors,” as well as the size of the contributions and grants, and when they were given.

Richmond Tea Party President Larry Nordvig, whose group applied for tax-exempt status in December 2009 and received it in July 2012, said the extended inquiry had “a very chilling effect” on how much money the group could raise because its donors preferred anonymity.

The Wetumpka Tea Party of Alabama experienced a two-year delay after submitting its initial application.

Becky Gerritson, a 44-year-old stay-at-home mother and the group’s president, said the IRS sent a questionnaire asking for the names of all volunteers, donor identification and contribution amounts, the names of any legislators its members had communicated with directly or indirectly, and the contents of all speeches its members had made, among a long list of other details.

“I was outraged,” Gerritson said. “Being an election year, I felt like it was intimidation.”

The group did not provide the information. Approval came only after the group sought help from the American Center for Law and Justice, which threatened a lawsuit against the IRS, Gerritson said.

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 a June 3, 2011, letter to the IRS, Mitchell questioned the agency’s motivations for delaying recognition of one of her clients who had filed nearly two years earlier, writing, “Is the [group’s] opposition to Obamacare and the takeover of America’s healthcare system by the government the reason that this application has been held up and not approved?”

Catherine Engelbrecht, president of the Houston-based True the Vote, first filed for tax-exempt status in July 2010. At one point, Engelbrecht – who is still awaiting a determination from the IRS regarding her voting rights organization and a separate tea party group, King Street Patriots – said an IRS employee informed her: “I’m just doing what Washington is telling me to do. I’m just asking what they want me to ask.”

The IRS did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

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Something you might not know about Abortionist Kermit Gosnell

James Taranto dos some digging into the past of Gosnell

It was called the Mother’s Day Massacre. A young Philadelphia doctor “offered to perform abortions on 15 poor women who were bused to his clinic from Chicago on Mother’s Day 1972, in their second trimester of pregnancy.” The women didn’t know that the doctor “planned to use an experimental device called a ‘super coil’ developed by a California man named Harvey Karman.”

A colleague of Karman’s Philadelphia collaborator described the contraption as “basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. . . . They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, . . . the gel would melt and these . . . things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus.”

Nine of the 15 Chicago women suffered serious complications. One of them needed a hysterectomy. The following year, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. It would be 37 more years before the Philadelphia doctor who carried out the Mother’s Day Massacre would go out of business. His name is Kermit Gosnell.

H/T 1389 Blog

 

Yet another example of how Democrats are the small business owners worst enemy

Warner Todd Huston has the story from, where else, Marxifornia

The State of California has one of the worst proposals of any legislature in the country this year with a new bill that would force every restaurant and food service business in the state to commission an expensive “risk assessment” test for every menu item

Such a test could cost thousands of dollars for every food item sold. This outrageous and cost prohibitive testing would certainly cause all but the biggest chain restaurants to go out of business almost instantly.

In another exercise in nanny-statism, California’s State Senate Democrats want this “risk assessment” conducted to determine whether food being sold “contributes significantly to a significant public health epidemic.”

The bill, Senate Bill 747, is an addition to the current health and safety codes and is currently set for a hearing on April 17. It was written and introduced by Sen. Mark DeSauliner (D, Concord).

The introduction of the bill clearly says that the law would require the food service companies to pay the state for the testing in order to fill state coffers. It notes that without the assessment, the state would have the right to shut an offending restaurant down.

This bill, known as the Public Health Epidemic Protection Act of 2013, would require the department, for every product intended for consumer consumption for which it has credible evidence that the product significantly contributes to a significant public epidemic, to conduct a risk assessment evaluation to determine whether the product contributes significantly to a significant public health epidemic, as defined, and whether the adverse public health risk would have a fiscal impact on the state of $50,000,000 or more. The bill would authorize the department to charge the manufacturer of the product for the reasonable costs of producing the risk assessment and would create the Public Health Fund, to be used by the department, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to fund the program. If the department determines that the criteria are met, the bill would require the manufacturer to create, for approval of the department, a public health impact report (PHIR) containing specified information, including a list of adverse public health impacts and a mitigation plan for those impacts. The bill would authorize the department to enforce the PHIR and would authorize the department to restrict or suspend sales of the product in the state if the PHIR is insufficient or if the manufacturer is not complying with the terms of the PHIR.

The Nanny State rolls on, destroying jobs, dreams, and liberty wherever it is implemented

 

Sexual Discrimination Bill Would Protect Pedophiles From Being Banned As Preschool Teachers

Pedophilia Is A Sexual Orientation Under CA Bill[?] – Retink Society

California Congresswoman, Rep. Jackie Speier CA (D), wants to federalize a state law to prohibit counseling to change a person’s sexual orientation.

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Under the bill’s language, a mental health counselor could be sanctioned if there was an attempt to get a gay individual to change his or her behavior or speak negatively about their behavior as it relates to sexuality.

The bill calls on states to prohibit efforts to change a minor’s sexual orientation, even if the minor requests it, saying that doing so is “dangerous and harmful.”

The text of the legislation doesn’t specifically ban “gay” conversion therapy. Instead, it prohibits attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation.

“Sexual orientation change efforts’ means any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation,” the bill says.

In regards to California state law SB 1172, which was initiated to ban conversion therapy in California, there were questions regarding the text of the bill.

“This language is so broad and vague, it arguably could include all forms of sexual orientation, including pedophilia,” said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute. “It’s not just the orientation that is protected – the conduct associated with the orientation is protected as well.”

Who Cares If Pedophilia Is A Sexual Orientation?

It also means that, if pedophilia is a sexual orientation, that discrimination laws also apply to pedophiles. That means you cannot block a pedophile from being a preschool teacher or any other high-risk occupation.

Recently, a United States District Court Judge, William Shubb, sided with Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) by granting their plaintiffs a preliminary injunction against the legislation, which is known as California SB 1172.

“Because the court finds that SB 1172 is subject to strict scrutiny and is unlikely to satisfy this standard, the court finds that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims based on violations of their rights to freedom of speech under the First Amendment,” wrote Judge Shubb.

“This victory sends a clear signal to all those who feel they can stifle religious freedom, free speech, and the rights of parents without being contested,” said PJI President, Brad Dacus. “We at PJI are ready to fight this battle all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.

“This will be a long, grueling battle with tremendous consequences for generations to come. We are grateful to those who are willing to support us in this critical time to preserve our freedoms and protect our children,” he continued.

Thankfully, for the time being, this legislation has been blocked, but many questions still remain.

This bill establishes a dangerous precedent for normalizing the behavior of pedophiles while stripping parents of their rights and peace of mind.

One can certainly make the argument that homosexuals are “born that way,” and we generally would not dispute that. However, when we have legislators that are, by default, leaving the door open to extend the “born that way” defense to pedophiles, this crosses a very dangerous line.

Whether a pedophile is born that way or not, it still does not make their behavior acceptable in any way.

If so, then you could declare rapists are “born that way.” They can’t help that they need to rape! Poor them!

Let’s be real.

Sex between an adult and a child too young to understand what is going on is not the same thing as sex between two consenting adults.

The operative word here is “consenting.” Children – by both law and basic common sense – cannot “consent.”

What liberals conveniently ignore is the fact that all societies who participated in pedophilia – such as the Hittites, Canaanites, Greeks, and Romans – eventually caved in on themselves due to corruption and depravity.

Further, let’s not also forget that their favorite form of entertainment was watching people get torn to shreds by lions, hacked to death, and burned alive.

Recognizing sexual ‘orientation’ is walking a razor’s edge. Unlike gay-oriented legislation, pedophilia has victims who must be protected.

We don’t put pedophiles in prison to make them stop being pedophiles; we put them there because they threaten the safety of the most vulnerable people in a society.

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California’s High-Speed Rail Project To Cost $97 Million More Than First Projected, Could Bankrupt State

Report: Rail Project To Cost $97 Million More – KTTV

The costs for California’s bullet train project has doubled since its first projection. And a new report says the design will cost an extra $97 million.

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…………………….Click on image above to watch video.

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Rail authority spokesman Rob Wilcox says that money isn’t an increase.

“It’s just part of the budget, part of the anticipated costs,” says Wilcox. “We’re going to be spending billions of dollars on this project. That doesn’t mean that the costs are going up. That’s anticipated.”

But Assemblyman Brian Jones (R-Santee) tells our investigative producer Heidi Cuda he’s concerned the high-speed rail project might bankrupt the state.

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The Feinstein Assault Weapons Ban is DOA

Dream on Senator Gun Grabber

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that he will not include California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban in his gun control legislation.

Reid said that an assault weapons ban, which would be able to pass with a simple majority, would have less than 40 votes in the Senate.

Democrats control 53 Senate seats and also count independents Bernie Sanders and Angus King in their caucus, meaning that at least 15 members of the Democratic caucus did not get on board with the assault weapons ban.

Heartache for a Leftist

 

20,000 Illegal Aliens Applying For Financial Aid Under California’s New Dream Act

California Dreaming: 20,000 Illegal Aliens Apply For State Financial Aid For First Time – Gateway Pundit

California Dreaming.

More than 20,000 California illegal aliens are seeking state financial aid for the first time under the state’s new Dream Act.

Contra Costa Times reported:

More than 20,000 college-bound students are seeking state financial aid for the first time under California’s new Dream Act laws that allow them to get the help despite their immigration status.

While far from a complete picture, that number is the best indicator yet of how many students hope to benefit from a pair of laws that could radically change the college experience for a generation of students whose parents brought them to the U.S. illegally when they were young – the same group that has taken center stage in the national immigration reform debate.

“For many of them, it’s a game-changer,” said Meng So, who coordinates UC Berkeley’s months-old Undocumented Student Program.

As college-bound high school graduates await word of their state financial aid – Cal Grants – other kinds of help have begun to flow for students already enrolled in public colleges and universities.

For the record… California has more debt than Greece.

Click HERE For Rest Of Story

Your Sunday Funday Rule 5 Linkfest Updated!

UPDATE! Linked at The Other McCain, which is the blog that started all this rule 5 madness

90 Miles From Tyranny kicks this puppy off with a tasteful nude

Animal Magnetism has Brunettes!

DaleyBabes Two Words Nora Salinas, and Jennifer Love Hewitt has a birthday! Also, who is hotter Japanese girls? Or Ebony beauties?

Pitsnipes is stricken with Yellow Fever again

A Trainwreck in Maxwell has Bobbi Starr Fever

Uncoached has pretty girls making faces

The Chive has Bare Back Babes

TC Mag has Claudia Romani

Soylent green has Tamara NSFW

The Smoking Jacket has girls getting out of pools, and more

FHM asks if Bernice Marlohe is the best Bond Girl ever?

Gunaxin has the first English UFC Ring Girl

Fritz still loves Katherine Heigl

Daisy watts catches Donald Douglas’s eye

Angry Mike has some Smokin’ Hot Gals

Load Heat has a Jennifer Paige moment

Bob Belvedere has some Rule 5 women that you must see

Pick Me Up News Picks Jessica Rafalowski

Reaganite Republican likes those Mexican Weather Girls

Maxim has their Hot 100 voting going on

Madatory has Rachel Burr

Wirecutter has Friday treats

Izismile explains those beach volleyball signals

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EBL has Oscar Rule 5

The Eye sees Jennifer Lawrence

Grouchy Old Cripple has- WHOA!!

I’m 41 has SE Cupp exposed?

Hookers and Booze? Yes please

Heavy offers up the 20 hottest pics of Roxanne Pallet

Guyism asks if we like a French model in body paint? Well YES!

Guy Speed has Maryse

Funtasticus has a Brazilian babe

It Ain’t Holy Water has Pin Up gals

American Perspective likes Hot women that can throw a punch

William Teach sees Hooter Girls and gals with BIG trucks

Proof Positive has Danica Patrick,  Vintage babe Barbara Hershey

Randy has Cameron Russell

Feral Irishman has Gals with Guns

Egotastic has tons of hot pics

Double Trouble has short shorts

COED has Miss COED of the Year!

The Chive has Sexy Chivers

Subject to Change has armed chicks

Wyatt Earp offers to paddle bikini models?

Theo has Bath Time and Totty!

Zion’s Trumpet: My Kinda Woman

A Nod to the Gods misses golf babes

Busted Coverage has After Dark Links

Barn-O-Rama has Joanne Krupa

Bleacher Report has Johnny Football’s hot gal pal

Brosome has hand bra mania

Bro Bible has the Hottie Index

Bro My god has Gingers

Thanks Barack… California Facing Doctor Shortage Amid Obamacare Implementation

California Facing Doctor Shortage Amid Obamacare Implementation – Daily Caller

California, the state that first attempted to implement President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, has realized there aren’t enough doctors to care for the large influx of newly insured patients.

The Los Angeles Times reports that only 16 of the state’s 58 counties meet the federal government’s recommended standard of primary care physicians, and almost 30 percent of California’s doctors are close to the retirement age – the highest percentage nationwide.

“We’re going to be mandating that every single person in this state have insurance,” Democratic state Sen. Ed Hernandez told the Los Angeles Times. “What good is it if they are going to have a health insurance card, but no access to doctors?”

Hernandez has led an effort in the state legislature to expand the definition of who can provide health care services to patients. Lawmakers have proposed allowing physician assistants to treat more patients and permitting nurse practitioners to have independent practices.

Also, pharmacists and optometrists could become primary care providers and be allowed to treat some chronic illnesses.

“We don’t have enough providers,” said Beth Haney, president of the California Association for Nurse Practitioners, “…so we should increase access to the ones that we have.”

However, proposals to expand patient treatment options have been met with resistance from doctors, who say that such reforms could jeopardize patient safety and increase costs to patients.

“Patient safety should always trump access concerns,” Dr. Paul Phinney, president of the California Medical Association, told the Times.

This fight over who can treat patients to meet the growing demand for medical services is ongoing in other states, as well. The Times reports that in the past two years, approximately 350 laws redefining what health professionals may treat have been enacted across the country, and more than 50 proposals have been put forward in 24 states since the beginning of this year.

To alleviate the problem, the California Medical Association has suggested expanding participation in a loan repayment program for medical school graduates, which now gives doctors as much as $105,000 for working for three years in under-served communities.

“We’re not going to produce thousands of additional doctors in any kind of short-term time frame,” said Democratic state Assemblyman Roger Dickinson. “It makes sense to look at changes that could relieve the pressure that we’re going to undoubtedly encounter for access to care.”

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California No Longer Requiring Eighth Graders To Take Algebra

California No Longer Requiring Eighth Graders To Take Algebra – Daily Caller

California will no longer require eighth-graders to take algebra – a move that is line with the Common Core standards being adopted by most states, but that may leave students unprepared for college.

Last month, California formally shifted to the Common Core mathematics standards, which recommend that students delay taking algebra if they aren’t ready for it. Previously, algebra class was a requirement for all eighth-graders in the state.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative, which is sponsored by the National Governor’s Association, is an effort to unify diverse state education curricula. Forty-five other states and the District of Columbia have signed on so far.

But some education experts worry that the change will further damage struggling students’ college chances, since early proficiency in Algebra I is an excellent predictor of college graduation, according to the Mercury News.

Black and Latino students in California are significantly more likely to fail eighth-grade algebra, and 80 percent of those who fail it once will fail it again when they take it in high school.

A study published by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area claims that some minority students who score well enough to place into advanced math classes are often mistakenly held back.

“School districts have been disproportionately requiring minority students to repeat Algebra I even after they scored proficient or advanced on the Algebra I California standardized tests,” said Kimberly Thomas Rapp, executive director of the committee, in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The new standard is a step back for California, and may leave students, particularly minority and low-income students, unprepared for college, said Rapp.

“Back in ‘97 when the state went to a standard that expected students to take Algebra 1 in the eighth grade, that was really about looking forward to college competitiveness and preparing our public school students to be ready to compete to access college systems after high school,” she said. “The reality is what we’re now doing is lowering the standards.”

Instead, Rapp proposed that California schools improve the mathematics curriculum for students in the fifth, sixth and seventh grades, so that they are better prepared for Algebra I in eighth grade.

The Council of Chief State School Officers, which set the Common Core standards, did not respond to a request for comment.

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Pharmacy owners shoots, kills gunman, second gunman in costudy

Still waiting for some snarky “look at me” tweets from noted douche nozzle David Frum. Story at Weasel Zippers

MADERA, Calif. (KFSN) – The second suspect in a deadly shooting has been arrested in Southeast Fresno. He’s accused of trying to kill a Madera pharmacy owner and his mother.

The shooting happened inside the pharmacy on Almond and Emily Way around 6:30 pm.

The pharmacy owner Bryan Lee said he left the back door of his store unlocked for a customer stopping by after business hours. Shortly after the customer left, Lee said two men in ski-masks barged in through the back door and started shooting.

The mother and son said they ducked behind the counter as bullets kept flying. One of them hit the mother in the leg. “It was not a robbery so much as an execution,” Lee said. “It was an attempted assassination, they didn’t make any demands, they simply came in, reached over, and it was basically shooting us almost in the back of the head.They shot my mother and almost shot me, I was just surrounded by holes.”

Lee grabbed a gun and started shooting at one of the two suspects.

Police Chief Steve Frazier said he had information that the suspect was shot in the face, in the torso, and then once in the leg.

Frazier said the suspect, 31-year-old Aquilla Bailey, fell to the floor, and then managed to run out of the store and down the block before collapsing. Bailey later died at the hospital.Officers spent the day searching for the second suspect and piecing together a possible motive.

“The information we’ve developed is that the pharmacy was targeted probably specifically for the drugs on hand there, we don’t have any information that the owner was specifically targeted at this point,” Frazier said.

 

 

CA Law Allows Convicted Rapist To Go Free Because Woman Wasn’t Married

CA Law Allows Convicted Rapist To Go Free Because Woman Wasn’t Married – KABC

An obscure state law on rape has freed a convicted rapist from prison.

The law is controversial because if the victim was married during the crime, the suspect would remain guilty. However, because the victim was not married at the time, the suspect was not guilty.

The appellate judges admitted they did this reluctantly, but their hands were tied by a law many people didn’t even know existed.

After seeing her boyfriend leave late at night, a man enters the bedroom of an unmarried woman and has sex with her while pretending to be her boyfriend.

According to a California appellate judges’ ruling:

“Has the man committed rape? Because of historical anomalies in the law and the statutory definition of rape, the answer is no, even though, if the woman had been married and the man had impersonated her husband, the answer would be yes.”

“This provision of the law where it only applies to a married woman as a victim really dates back to the mid 1800s, and while the legislatures had many opportunities to amend and revise the rape statute, for some unexplained reason they never got around to amending this particular statute,” said ABC7 legal analyst Dana Cole.

The night began for the victim, identified as Jane Doe, at a party drinking several beers. She left the party with her boyfriend, Victor, grabbed some fast food, and headed home where friends joined them.

According to court documents, Jane invited her boyfriend to spend the night, but since he didn’t have a condom, they decided against it and she fell asleep. Victor then left the room to go home.

Prosecutors say Jane then woke up to the sensation of having sex. When the light coming through a crack in the bedroom illuminated the face of the person having sex with her, she realized it was not Victor and tried to push him away.

Despite the struggle, the defendant, Julio Morales, continued and eventually left the room after Jane’s cries.

Morales later told police “she probably thought I was her boyfriend.”

The appellate judges said the jury that convicted Morales may have done so based on bad information from prosecutors.

“The law really requires the person be someone who impersonates her husband. And that was not the specific fact of this particular case,” Cole said.

“An impersonation of anyone to rape should be a felony,” said Patti Giggans, executive director of Peace Over Violence.

Giggans says she’s determined to now work with Sacramento lawmakers on closing this loophole.

“I think there is now a heightened interest to take a look at something like this so I have a feeling we will be able to make a difference on this law,” she said.

Morales has already served three years behind bars for his original conviction. The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office says it is looking into the possibility of re-trying the case.

Click HERE For Rest Of Story

A Marine responds to Dianne Feinstein’s gun ban

Saw this at Victory Girls. It is short, to the point, and written in the spirit of the Founders! If we only had political leaders with this Marine’s character and sense of duty.

Her gun ban legislation has made one person in particular so concerned that he, as an active duty Marine, decided to come out of the shadows and go public with his feelings. His name is Corporal Joshua Boston and he wrote a very polite but direct letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein regarding her gun ban legislation. You can read it below.

CNN’s iReport letter from Cpl Joshua Boston to Senator Dianne Feinstein:

Senator Dianne Feinstein,

I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.
I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

We, the people, deserve better than you.

Respectfully Submitted,
Joshua Boston
Cpl, United States Marine Corps
2004-2012

God bless this man.

 

Ah yes, OF COURSE, here comes the “blame toy guns” crowd

IDIOTS!

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) –  A crusade against toy guns that began in 1987 is being re-launched following the elementary school shooting in Connecticut that left dozens dead.

Santa Monica activist Jerry Rubin says a personalized merit award will be sent to children who write to him about why they don’t like playing with toy guns.

Rubin says his anti-toy gun project used to reward children who sent in their toy guns with teddy bears in exchange, but stopped after he ran out of the 5,000 donated stuffed animals.

STUCK ON STOOPIT!

California’s Huge Tax Grab Sparks Mass Exodus

California’s Huge Tax Grab Sparks Mass Exodus – Palookaville Post

After last month’s vote that makes Californians among the highest-taxed victims of progressive policies and liberally wasted spending in the country, many of the state’s highest wage earners are planning to leave the formerly golden state for more friendly economic surroundings.

Two time Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown successfully pushed the tax increase on his servants by suggesting that high-earners, those making above minimum wage including tips, must shoulder the largest burden in bailing out the state, particularly its politically correct liberalized debt-ridden public school system.

“I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore,” said a very wealthy Lake Tahoe resident who currently lives on the California side of the border. But he can save nearly $100,000 per year in onerous taxes by moving just a few miles east to swank Incline Village, Nevada’s state income tax free community.

“People laugh at me as soon as they find out I’m from California,” said a high income resident who wished to remain anonymous for obvious reasons. “But when they stop ridiculing me for paying unfathomable tax rates, they always ask me if I know David Hasselhoff from Knight Rider or Loni Anderson from WKRP in Cincinnati.”

The actual 47% unemployment and multi-billion dollar government debt have already sent residents fleeing in large numbers , an estimated 2,250,000 annually for imgresthe past 10 years. Statisticians estimate that California will be a veritable wasteland by 2014.

“If it weren’t for the illegal immigrants coming into the Spanish speaking state you would think this was a ghost town,” offered an assistant to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. “People think the mayor is pro illegal alien because he’s Hispanic, but he really just needs people to rule over… or he’s out of a job.

The Mayor is contemplating “Free Taco Tuesdays” every week just to stop the illegals from going back home. And Washington D.C. won’t take him so he’s stuck in L.A.”

Much of the debate has raged around why the resident’s voted Jerry Brown back into the Governor’s office after he led the state to near collapse in the 1970′s.

“Most Democrats voted for Brown automatically,” said a key pollster. “But Brown made his gains with independent and conservative voters because they assumed he would bring singer Linda Ronstadt back into the state’s floundering entertainment industry.”

Ronstadt, a former love interest of Brown’s during his disgraceful first go around as California Governor, was the most successful female singer of the 1970′s and sold enough records to keep the state from financial ruin.

Brown broke off his relationship with the singer after her “friendship” with Rita Coolidge was exposed. Coolidge, a descendant of the Cherokee nation, was very close to Ronstadt and their relationship would have damaged the politician’s chances for national office in the days of racial and homosexual prejudice. Ronstadt never married.

“More is never enough for these people,” Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assoc., said about the Democrat-backed increase. “It’s hard to believe people will not leave.”

The California tax increases that passed in November, known as Proposition 30, are expected to generate at least an additional $6 billion annually if the population stays the same, but will cost the state $13 billion if people wake up and abandon the merciless tax grabbing state.

“The rich Californians will never leave this state because they have nowhere else to go,” said Governor Brown’s head intern. “New York won’t take them seriously as intellectuals, and the fly over states are simply way too boring… rich people don’t go to rodeos.”

PalookavillePost.com discovered a clause in Prop 30 that mandates California border guards inspect the wallets and purses of anyone crossing the state line with more than $10. Any dollar amount greater than $10 will be taxed at the usual 47% rate.

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California City Manager Paid $677K To Manage City Of 5,000

California City Manager Paid $677K To Manage City Of 5,000 – Big Government

California’s economy is going south at a dizzying rate, but not everyone is suffering, especially in the government. The former city manager of Indian Wells, a town near Palm Springs with a population of 5,000, made a nice chunk of change last year.

Well, perhaps more than a nice chunk. Would you believe a gargantuan chunk? A chunk worth $677,172?

……..
……Former Indian Wells city manager Greg Johnson – right

Yes, you heard that correctly. Greg Johnson received $230,697 in salary and another $446,475 in severance pay last year.

This exorbitant sum of money came at a time when public employees in California received more than $17.6 billion in wages. Unlike Johnson, the average chunk for city employees around the state was $61,259.

There was no comment offered by mayor Mary Roche and the city’s interim manager, Roderick Wood.

Not even, “I knew I was in the wrong job.”

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California’s Berkeley To Give College Scholarships To Illegal Aliens

California’s Berkeley To Give College Scholarships To Illegal Immigrants – Yahoo News

The University of California’s Berkeley campus announced on Tuesday that a private foundation has given $1 million to fund scholarships for illegal immigrants.

The scholarships will go to nearly 200 students who are not eligible for federal grants, government-backed loans or work-study positions, the school said.

The Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, a private family foundation, provided the scholarship grant. It is the largest scholarship for undocumented immigrants ever given to a U.S. university, the foundation said.

“These motivated, hardworking and inspiring students are an asset to our state and our country,” the fund’s president, Ira Hirschfield, said in a statement. “Now that it’s legal to do so in California, we encourage other foundations and private donors to consider providing funding to help undocumented students achieve their potential.”

Higher education has become a battleground in the nation’s immigration wars that have seen the Obama administration grant leniency to young people brought into the country illegally as children even as a number of states have sought to crack down on illegal immigrants within their borders.

Last year, California signed into a law a bill dubbed the California Dream Act that allows illegal immigrants to receive privately funded scholarships to attend the state’s public colleges and universities after attending at least three years of high school in the state.

The California law is named after national legislation in Congress to give young, undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years a pathway to citizenship through college or military service.

The federal bill failed to win passage in December 2010, and its chances have dimmed since a Republican majority took control of the House of Representatives.

Critics say the California Dream Act gives illegal immigrants a false promise because their status will not change after graduating from college and they will remain unable to find legal employment.

But that reality may well be shifting. President Barack Obama will push for comprehensive immigration reform during his second presidential term, his spokesman said in November.

And the Obama administration already relaxed deportation rules earlier this year by allowing for some illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children to be given temporary legal status.

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CA Student Sues School After Allegedly Being Suspended For His Politics (And He Has Video Evidence)

California Student Sues School After Allegedly Being Suspended For His Politics (And He Has Some Noteworthy Video Evidence) – The Blaze

A California conservative at Fresno State University is suing his school after allegedly being put on disciplinary probation because of his politics.

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The school’s leadership – particularly University President John Welty – is reportedly outspoken in its support for liberal policies like the DREAM Act. The school’s newspaper took things so far last May that they published a poem that begins: “America, the land robbed by the white savage.”

Neil O’Brien is active in student government, and has made no secret about his opposition to the DREAM Act. He decided to ask the professors in the Chicano and Latin American Studies Department – at least one of whom seems to be a faculty advisor for the paper – what they thought of the poem.

Fox News has more on what happened next:

When O’Brien approached the professors separately in their offices, the same thing happened in each case: they said they didn’t want to talk with him. Openly recording the encounters on a video camera, O’Brien told them he just wanted to ask questions. They again told him to leave, and closed their doors.

What happened next is what got O’Brien in trouble: The professors called the police. According to police reports, the professors said that O’Brien had been “threatening” and “harassing” them. Police took O’Brien in for questioning, but decided not to file charges after watching video he took of the incident (which O’Brien has posted online here.)

Though the police chose not to pursue the matter, the school seemingly felt that punishment was still warranted.

Fox News continues:

O’Brien’s troubles continued when he was called into the Dean’s office and told he would face a disciplinary hearing in which he would not be allowed to have a lawyer present.

In the disciplinary hearing, O’Brien says he repeatedly asked his questioners to watch the video of the incident – but they refused, even though he brought a DVD with the footage to the hearing.

University Vice President Paul Oliaro ultimately gave O’Brien disciplinary probation for a semester – which forbade him from serving as the president of a student group he formed (a chapter of Young Americans For Liberty) and banned him from going “within 100 feet of the Chicano Latin American studies faculty or staff or their offices or classrooms in which they are teaching.”

“You can see that even though the video completely exonerates me, I still went through all this hell,” he told FoxNews.com.

In O’Brien’s opinion, the only conclusion is that he is being reprimanded for his politics.

“I can’t think of a reason besides that they just don’t like conservatives, and just don’t like to answer questions on anything,” he remarked.

O’Brien’s lawyer, Brian Leighton, added: “What these professors can’t stand is that Neil shows up to all these university meetings… and he says what he thinks.”

School representatives say they cannot provide details on the case, since it has to do with disciplinary action against a student, but insist that personal politics were unrelated to O’Brien’s punishment.

“Fresno State strongly values and supports the First Amendment rights of all students, faculty, staff and administrators. We encourage individuals to exercise their freedom of speech, provided they do so in an appropriate manner,” the school’s spokeswoman Kathleen Rhodes Schock commented.

Though this ​is​ related to politics, it should be noted that a quick Google search reveals O’Neil seemingly had a website called “therealpedro.com” about the “lies, crimes, and possible cover-up” of the school’s president Pedro Ramirez, who was found to be an illegal immigrant in late 2010. The website has not been updated since May.

But O’Brien remains firm: “This school is totally Orwellian… I just want to share my opinion when I disagree, and I shouldn’t be treated like a criminal for it.”

Here is O’Brien’s video – the one that school professors called the police on him for saying he was “threatening” and “harassing” them. Skip to about 13 seconds:

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Click HERE For Rest Of Story

Another Leftist-Run State Doubles Down On Tax-The-Rich Stupidity

Despite Tax Increase, California State Revenues In Freefall – Big Government

California State Controller John Chiang has announced that total state revenue for the month of November 2012 fell $806.8 million, or 10.8%, below budget.

Democrats thought they could hammer “the rich” by convincing voters to pass Proposition 30 to create the highest state income tax in the nation. But it now appears that high income earners have already “voted with their feet” by moving themselves and their businesses out of state, resulting in over $1 billion shortfall in corporate and income taxes last month and the beginning of a new financial crisis.

Passage of Proposition 30 set off euphoria and expectations of higher spending for public employees. The California Teachers’ Association (CTA) trumpeted: “California students and working families won a clear victory today as voters clearly demonstrated their willingness to invest in our public schools and colleges and also rejected a deceptive ballot measure aimed at silencing educators, other workers and their unions.”

State bureaucrats immediately ramped up deficit spending far beyond the state’s $6 billion annual tax increase, with the Departments of Health Services and Developmental Services increasing this month’s spending by over $1 billion versus last year. The lower tax collection and higher spending drove the State’s deficit after the tax increase to $2.7 billion for the first 5 months of this fiscal year. State Controller John Chiang reported:

November’s disappointing revenues stand in stark contrast to recent news that California is leading the nation in job growth, has significantly improved its cash liquidity to pay bills, and even long-distressed home values are starting to inch upward… This serves as a sobering reminder that, while the economy is expanding, it is doing so at a slow and uneven pace that will require the State to exercise care and discipline in how its fiscal affairs are managed in the coming year.

The improved “cash liquidity” Chiang referred to turns out to be $24.9 billion of debt.

During the election campaign, Governor Jerry Brown and his pro-tax coalition had the California Board of Equalization request a report from the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, which claimed to have looked at state tax records and found no risk of the super-rich leaving. Based on their access to California state income tax records from 1992 to 2009, the researchers concluded that millionaire migration is a myth by anti-tax advocates and “other factors, such as personal and business contacts, seem to weigh more heavily in deciding where to live.”

The study’s authors, Stanford’s Cristobal Young, an assistant professor of sociology, and Princeton’s Charles Varner, a doctoral candidate in sociology, expounded that the temporary nature of high earnings may help explain why the additional taxes didn’t cause a noticeable flight of millionaires. Top income tax payers seem to fall into and out of the millionaire income bracket as their income rises and falls across the million-dollar mark from year to year.

Personal connections weigh more heavily than tax rates in deciding where to live, and “people are tied to states for different reasons,” Young said. “They don’t want to take their kids out of school; they want to stay connected with friends, with families… with business contacts. People crowd together, from Silicon Valley to New York City, because of the returns associated with collaboration.” The findings dispel the “market metaphor,” in which states advertise low tax rates in a competition to woo high-income individuals. “This is a poor representation of how people decide where to live.”

Young added that looking at the tax flight issue only scratches the surface of state financial woes. “People need to think about the depth of California’s budget problems,” he said. “I think there’s much, much bigger things to worry about than this issue of tax flight because it’s really hard to find any evidence of it… I hope people hear, listen to and absorb what the evidence says on this issue,” Young insisted.

Following the tax increase victory, Reuters published an article titled “Super-rich flight from California? Not so fast.” Authors Jim Christie and Peter Henderson attempted to reassure readers there was very little risk that wealthy Californians would depart for income tax-free Nevada, Washington, and Texas. Although some Silicon Valley business owners had expressed interest in a move after California’s top rate was raised by 29% to 13.3%, they wrote, “business groups from the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce to the tech industry policy group TechNet backed the tax, and the state Chamber of Commerce took no position.”

As panic spreads that goosing taxes on the rich may have created enough “tax flight” that the California will actually collect less taxes, there was welcome news that a business had committed to opening in the State. Executives of the 99 Cents Only Stores Inc. proclaimed they would be opening a new location in Beverly Hills on formerly posh Rodeo Drive.

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So, if there is NOT a war on Christmas….

…I would hate to see if there was, because I am reading a whole bunch of stories like this

Via Fox News:

Residents of a senior adult apartment complex in California staged a protest after the management of their building announced a ban on Christmas trees and menorahs in communal areas.

“We’re all angry,” resident Fern Scheel told the Los Angeles Daily News. “We want that tree. Where’s our freedom? This is ridiculous.”

JB Partners Group sent a memorandum to The Willows in Newhall, Calif. ordering them to remove the Christmas tree from the community room because they deemed it a religious symbol, the newspaper reported.

Odd isn’t it? On one hand we often hear Atheists mock Christmas by saying that Christmas trees are from a pagan origin, yet, they just as often seek to remove them because they are symbols of Christmas. How convenient. Also odd is that groups like the one behind this bit of madness will seemingly offend everyone so as to not offend some whiny screwball, who MIGHT get offended!

The truth is that those who scream bloody murder when they see a Christmas tree, or Santa, or a manger scene, or the colors red and green, or hear that kids might be shown A Charlie Brown Christmas are backasswards, intolerant, malcontents who think they are entitled to make everyone else bow to their ways. And those that give in to them are cowards and fools.