How desperate is the Senate to force Obamacare down everyone’s throat? VERY. Now that it is clear pro-life Democrats won’t budge on their principles, the Senate is considering to trick the American people with a deceptive move dubbed the Slaughter solution.

House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.

Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.

Mark Tapscott explains this in a nutshell:

Each bill that comes before the House for a vote on final passage must be given a rule that determines things like whether the minority would be able to offer amendments to it from the floor.

In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House “deems” the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but House members would be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.

Here is what they are hoping for:

Democrats who think the Senate bill doesn’t sufficiently limit abortion rights would never have to be on record as having voted for it. (Because the Senate abortion language can’t be fixed in [the reconciliation bill] for procedural reasons, some Democratic aides say there is talk about a later bill that would handle these issues.)

What a transparant Congress we have. I’m glad they drained the swamp. On the bright side, if Democrats do this you can all but call it a Republican Congress next year.

Michelle Malkin has the call to action!

Keep the [protest] no-mentum going.

Panic at the Democratic disco?

Riding a wave of opposition to Democratic health-care reform, GOP upstart Scott Brown is leading in the U.S. Senate race, raising the odds of a historic upset that would reverberate all the way to the White House, a new poll shows.

Although Brown’s 4-point lead over Democrat Martha Coakley is within the Suffolk University/7News survey’s margin of error, the underdog’s position at the top of the results stunned even pollster David Paleologos.

“It’s a Brown-out,” said Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center. “It’s a massive change in the political landscape.”

The poll shows Brown, a state senator from Wrentham, besting Coakley, the state’s attorney general, by 50 percent to 46 percent, the first major survey to show Brown in the lead. Unenrolled long-shot Joseph L. Kennedy, an information technology executive with no relation to the famous family, gets 3 percent of the vote. Only 1 percent of voters were undecided.

Democrats are sweating buckets! Who knows how this will turn out, but it sure is fun to watch them squirm.

If this guy pulls this off its gonna rock the start of a wave of energy through the Conservative base. I’m seeing a lot of people already excited about the prospects of 2010 and taking back some power from the loonies. What better way to start than to get Brown elected so he can put a stake in the heart of Obamacare.

If you remember, the main defense of ACORN was that the Philadelphia office threw the investigative reporters out and called the cops. Media clung to this narrative as much as they could. Looks like they’ll be wiping egg from their face today.

From Ed Morrissey:

Big Government will air the full, unedited video and audio streams later today or tomorrow, in order to demonstrate the poor performance of the media in this story. Bertha Lewis and ACORN will be shown to have lied, and outlets like the Washington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer will have to scrape the egg off of their faces for accepting their word at face value.

Can the FEDS stop funding this corruption already? Thanks Big Government!

The Supreme Court will be hearing the ACLU’s attempt to supress religious freedom by tearing down a war memorial tomorrow.  This will be a historic case that will affect future views on our First Amendment.  Former ACLU lawyer and good friend of mine, Rees Lloyd writes a good article to get people tuning in to how important this is.

From Joseph Infranco and Rees Lloyd’s email:

General Douglas MacArthur famously noted that “old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” Sometimes, though, before they fade away, they get angry. And a case being argued in the Supreme Court Wednesday has veterans seeing red, white, and blue — but mostly red.

Unsurprisingly, the case will go to the court courtesy of an ACLU lawsuit.

The object at the center of the case is a small, unadorned cross sitting in a remote part of the Mojave Desert Preserve in Southeast California. A veterans’ group erected this memorial cross on private land in 1934 to honor the dead of all wars.

Driving by this secluded location today, however, you’ll see a curious-looking plywood box hiding the memorial, the way someone might cover a condemned building. That box is there because one person filed suit, with the help of ACLU attorneys, claiming he was “offended” by the memorial cross. One offended man has somehow trumped the wishes of millions of veterans.

If a federal appeals court has its way, the box and the memorial soon will be gone forever. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court will review the ruling at the request of the Department of Justice, and in this case, millions of veterans, speaking through The American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, have added their voices in support. In fact, the American Legion Department of California and the Alliance Defense Fund have joined forces and filed a brief in support of the Department of Justice, asking the Supreme Court to dismiss the lawsuit.

The U.S. Government recently acquired the land on which the memorial sits when the site became part of the Mojave Federal Preserve. After the ACLU lawsuit was filed, Congress worked with veterans to honor their wishes and preserve the monument. It took an act of Congress to rescue the memorial from a federal court decision ordering its destruction. As part of its action, Congress voted to give an acre of land containing the memorial back to the veterans who maintained it for decades, in exchange for five acres deeded to the government. Giving up one acre to get five, and honoring veterans in the process, seemed like a good deal.

But not to the ACLU and its “offended” client. To them, even this reasonable arrangement was intolerable. They pressed forward with their lawsuit saying the memorial must not be allowed to stand and the land transfer must be overturned; their hostility to a passive symbol of this sort is simply too great.

However, as bad as this case is, veterans know much more is at stake in this case than one memorial in the California desert.

Military memorials commonly use the cross as part of a display to honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice to defend our nation. While the cross is a religious symbol, the military has also used it as a symbol of courage, sacrifice, and honor. For example, the nation’s second highest military award is the Distinguished Service Cross. Visitors to the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery can see several commemorative crosses, like the Canadian Cross of Sacrifice, a gift from former Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King that was dedicated at Arlington in 1927.

If the Supreme Court does not overturn the appeals court, religious symbols that have graced monuments for many decades may become a thing of the past. Memorials to military veterans, police officers, firefighters, and other heroes will be whitewashed, covered up, or torn out to appease the politically correct agenda of intolerant extremists.

Veterans are being asked to surrender to the thin-skinned sensitivity of an individual who has managed to be offended by a small memorial, literally in the middle of a desert. Is this truly an offense worthy of a lawsuit? Apparently, the fanatical agenda of the ACLU to expunge religious symbols has really come this far, and now the Supreme Court has the opportunity to weigh in.

One person’s offense should not diminish the sacrifice made by America’s heroes and their families. Why would we not wish to allow the men and women who have served and defended this nation to choose how they wish to honor their dead? Even if old soldiers “fade away,” their memory should not.

[Cross-posted from Stop the ACLU.]

The Louisiana Attorney General is now saying that $5 Million was embezzled from ACORN while brothers Wade and Dale Rathke kept the organization’s books.  Earlier investigations had revealed that Dale Rathke made nearly $1 million in improper credit card charges in 1999 and 2000 (which were repaid by Rathke and a charitable donor to avoid legal trouble).  Now it appears that the sum was much greater.

Louisiana’s attorney general has broadened the scope of an investigation of ACORN to include a possible embezzlement of $5 million a decade ago within the community organization, five times more than previously reported….

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has been conducting an investigation of ACORN since June. He issued subpoenas in August seeking documents related to former ACORN International President Wade Rathke and his brother Dale Rathke, who kept the group’s books. Those subpoenas were focused on possible ACORN violations for non-payment of employee withholding taxes, obstructing justice and violating the Employee Retirement Security Act….

The attorney general had inquired in June into an alleged embezzlement within ACORN that happened 10 years ago. The group last year dealt with an internal dispute and a lawsuit involving accusations that Dale Rathke made nearly $1 million in improper credit card charges in 1999 and 2000. The brother and a donor repaid the money….

“Current high-ranking members of ACORN have publicly acknowledged that embezzlement did in fact occur, but the exact amount of the embezzlement was unknown until it was recently acknowledged in a board of directors meeting on Oct. 17, 2008, by Bertha Lewis and Liz Wolf that an internal review had determined that the amount embezzled was $5 million,” the new subpoena says….

Can we just get this entire organization outlawed already? This isn’t just a few bad apples. The whole bunch is rotten. [From Stop the ACLU Blog.]

Information about Obama’s “Safe School Czar” Kevin Jennings is raising serious concerns. Yet another one of the czars that never got vetted. We need to demand their resignation now! This one, in my opinion, is worse than Van Jones.

* Jennings failed to report a case of statutory rape of a 15 year old who confided in him that he had had sex with a much older man at a train station. Jennings did express concern that the boy use a condom.

* Jennings wrote the forward to a book called Queering Elementary Education. Bonus: Another familiar face wrote one of the endorsements on the book jacket — Bill Ayers. Ayers, of course, is the former Weather Underground bomber, and Obama pal, and ghostwriter, who worked with him on school related boards in Chicago during the nineties.

* Jennings and his organization, GLSEN sponsored conferences where homosexual activists instructed children age 14 and up on how to perform homosexual acts. How bad was it? When a recording from one of these conferences became public, the firestorm that ensued became known as “fistgate“.

* Jennings in 1997 reportedly praised Harry Hay of the North American Association for Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men. You can read the transcript of Jennings asserting that “one of the people that’s always inspired me is Harry Hay”, here.

* Jennings has a history of ridiculing and demeaning Christians: Reportedly said of Christians — “F___ ‘em” while speaking at Marble Collegiate Church in March of 2000.

The media are whitewashing Jennings, so the blogosphere needs to speak out loudly, and Americans need to demand that he resign.

Another perversion of the Constitution, this time a perversion of the meaning of establishing a church.

The constitutional prohibition was written to forbid the government endorsing one particular denomination as the true faith — which was the status of the “established” Church of England in Britain at the time. Nothing like that has ever been contemplated in America. From the Washington Post — The Old Secular Cross?

“It would be easy to miss among the yucca and Joshua trees of this vast place — a small plywood box, set back from a gentle curve in a lonesome desert road. It looks like nothing so much as a miniature billboard without a message.

But inside the box is a 6 1/2 -foot white cross, built to honor the war dead of World War I. And because its perch on a prominent outcropping of rock is on federal land, it has been judged to be an unconstitutional display of government favoritism of one religion over another.

Whether the Mojave cross is ever unveiled again — or taken down for good — is up to the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Next week, it will get its first major chance to divine the meaning of the First Amendment command that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

If the court reaches the constitutional issues at hand, all sides agree it could provide clarity to the court’s blurry rules on church-and-state separations. It could also carry important implications for the fate of war memorials around the country that feature religious imagery — the Argonne Cross in Arlington National Cemetery, for instance, or the Memorial Peace Cross in Bladensburg.

The Mojave cross’s protectors, which include veterans groups and the federal government, say the symbol is a historic, secular tribute; its original plaque from the 1930s said it was erected to honor “the dead of all wars.” They argue that Congress has taken the steps to distance itself from any appearance of endorsing a religious display.

But the American Civil Liberties Union, Jewish and Muslim veterans, and others say government actions have only deepened the problem. In an effort to avoid the lower courts’ rulings that it must come down, Congress has designated the site the country’s only official national memorial to the dead of World War I, elevating it to an exclusive group of national treasures that includes the Washington Monument and Mount Rushmore.

Cross-posted from Stop the ACLU Blog.

This is a notice for all bloggers. We are asking that you do not read or link Politico from this point forward. They have violated the cooperative spirit of the Blogosphere.

This boycott will continue until they drop their ridiculous threats accusing College Politico of trademark infringement. Here are some details:

A collegiate blog is facing legal threat from Politico, generating blogger sympathy in a fight over its domain name.

In a Sept. 16 letter to Stephen Gutowski, operator of thecollegepolitico.com, the company has claimed trademark infringement. The cease-and-desist demand, says Gutowski, calls for all use of his site to be relinquished to Capitol News Company LLC, publishers of Politico, within 10 days. Capitol News representatives, Dow Lohnes PLLC, contend his site and its contents are “confusingly similar” to their trademarks.

The origins of the word, “politico,” date to 1630, and signify a person active in party politics, according to Princeton’s WordNet.

Politico via counsel has issued similar cease and desist letters. In December 2007, the company forced the hand of an electronic trade publication aimed at political marketing to Hispanics. In a letter to readers, publisher Arturo Villar said the publication “reluctantly” changed their name from La Política to CandidatoUSA. Capitol News also holds the rights to Campus Politico, Wall Street Politico, Hollywood Politico, Mobilepolitico, El Policito and Politico TV.

“From a legal standpoint, [Politico] probably has a reasonable claim,” said Robert Cox, president of Media Bloggers Association. “The issue is whether people are likely to be confused.”

“It’s not even a close call,” said Jerald Fritz, Politico’s general counsel. “Brand and names are essential for any venture … we’re aimed at protecting our mark.” Fritz referred to Ford Mustang, Apple Computers and Greyhound as trademarks supportive of Politico’s claim. “There are countless examples. You can go on and on,” he said.

Ron Coleman, a commercial litigator and trademark lawyer at New York and New Jersey’s Goetz Fitzpatrick LLP., has targeted weak points in Politico’s argument on his blog, Likelihood of Confusion. Notably, said Coleman, generic words do not enjoy trademark protection, while descriptive words may only become trademarks if they have acquired distinctiveness.

“Politico’s problem is that although it may indeed be able prove that ‘POLITICO’ has acquired distinctiveness for online journals, it is still a rather weak trademark because of its descriptiveness,’ he said.

For example, search engine optimization gurus and sploggers (spam blogs) often utilize hyphens to trigger keywords in URLs that may create this kind of confusion. Helpful to Gutowski’s defense may be the lack of hyphenation in the address of thecollegepolitico.com. A Go Daddy query for “the-college-politico.com” (which also happens to be available for purchase) would yield far more results associated to Capital News’ trademarked Politico.com than his hyphen-less address.

If the trend continues, multiple sites, including politico.blogspot.com, mondopolitico.com and sandiegopolitico.com, may face legal battles over use of the word “politico” in their domain name.

In a live by links, die by links New Media world, some bloggers have even called for a ban on linking to Politico. “The blogosphere has been very good to Politico, and I think they should bear in mind the ill will they’re incurring as a result of their heavy-handed legal tactics,” said Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds in a recent post. “Until this threat is withdrawn, I plan to boycott Politico, and I encourage others to do the same,” stated a post at Patterico’s Pontifications.

The College Politico has been credited with breaking several stories and picked up by The Washington Post, USA Today and The Huffington Post. His coverage exposed Lyndon LaRouche supporters were behind “Obama=Hitler” signs.

“I certainly didn’t create [thecollegepolitico.com] with any odd intention of somehow tricking people into thinking I was affiliated with Politico,” said Gutowski, who has drawn support from a host of bloggers. “This seems like an ugly attempt to intimidate me into handing over a brand which I’ve worked extremely hard to build.”

“Politico has offering no compensation in the demand, and has asked that Gutowski, a recent graduate of Pennsylvania’s Messiah College, write the company a letter declaring he will permanently cease and refrain from all future use of “The College Politico” or anything similar to “politico.”

The current conflict echoes a two-and-a-half year battle between Microsoft and Lindows.com, Inc., in which Microsoft accused its competitor of trademark infringement. Lindows maintained the term “windows” was generic, and Microsoft agreed to pay $20 million in exchange for the Lindows name and a clutch of websites.

There are other nouns enjoying widespread implementation in the Blogosphere, such as pundit. Glenn Reynolds was likely the first to use it, but he isn’t suing all the others who admired him and piggy-backed on his idea — Gateway Pundit, PoliPundit, and Daily Pundit, who named the Blogosphere.

Related:

Patterico’s Pontifications — Politico to College Politico: Give Us Your Domain or We Will Sue You

Spread the word far and wide: we will not stand for such thuggish tactics. ….Until this threat is withdrawn, I plan to boycott Politico, and I encourage others to do the same.

Riehl World View — Politico: All Your Politicos Belong To Us!

Well, it was a nice word while it lasted, dating back to 1630. Now it seems the growing power of New Media has convinced Politico that they get to own a noun!! Man, wouldn’t I love to have me one of those.

Hot Air — Who owns the word “politico”?

It’s no surprise that the word gets exercised in the blogosphere, and also no surprise that a journalistic enterprise would want to use it for their somewhat unconventional approach to political coverage. But does that mean that they’re the only ones who can use that word?

---

Boycotting Politico so far:Stop the ACLU

American Daughter

Christmas Ghost

Rosemary’s Thoughts

No Sheeples Here

POWIP | Piece of Work In Progress

Patterico’s Pontifications

Spread the word far and wide: we will not stand for such thuggish tactics.

Ace of Spades HQ

Riehl World View

No links to Politico until this gets resolved and … I’d encourage other bloggers to climb on board.

Obama’s people have scheduled a partisan push for his health care bill on September 11. From The Foundry:

Today, President Obama’s campaign organization “Organizing for America” sent out a notice to its “grassroots” supporters. It asked them to wage a coordinated phone campaign for health care by calling their U.S. Senators on September 11 – also known as Patriot Day – in honor of the thousands of Americans killed by Al Qaeda terrorists eight years ago. It goes on: “All 50 States are coordinating in this – as we fight back against our own Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process, whipped to a frenzy by their Fox Propaganda Network ceaselessly re-seizing power for their treacherous leaders.” Please read that again.

A Louisiana blogger exposes the liberal ploy. From And So It Goes in Shrevenport:

Via The Foundry, I first read today about this apparent effort to reframe 9/11 by liberal Democrats and by the perpetual Obama Campaign Machine, Organizing For America. This is not the first report I’ve seen about the effort to rewrite the story of 9/11. The effort last year to make 9/11 “A Day of Service” was the first time it actually struck me as truly likely that the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on American soil was soon to be whitewashed….

Matthew Vadum at The American Spectator was on to something earlier this week … Vadum’s take was that 9/11 as a day of remembrance rekindles the fear, works against the liberals, and that’s why they’re trying to reframe the day. He could be right.

The bottom line is that it’s just wrong to politicize the day EITHER WAY. I don’t think Republicans have done that; I could be wrong, but I don’t recall the Republicans marshalling supporters to capitalize on the day to accomplish a political objective.

Vadum says “With the help of the Obama administration, the coalition is launching a public relations campaign under the radar of the mainstream media — which remains almost uniformly terrified of criticizing the nation’s first black president — to try to change 9/11 from a day of reflection and remembrance to a day of activism, food banks, and community gardens.”

Okay, so maybe those things – food banks, community gardens, activism, even political lobbying for your own personal cause – maybe those are all laudable. But why 9/11? As Vadum asks, there are 364 other days in the year to designate for that.

The bottom line is that it’s difficult to ignore the move by the left, and by Obama, to rebrand the day. It does seem as if they are trying to whitewash … the patriotism we felt immediately afterward; the America First coming-together attitude we all felt. Then, we WERE one. Then, we bonded together.

Now, we are ripped apart. And the Organizing for America post today further divides us.

The post has been scrubbed now, but don’t let the liberals live this one down. This event was planned for all 50 states. It’s a shame they are exploiting 9-11 for lobbying, and even more sickening they have forgotten what the day means. They have compared their political enemy to their real enemy….on the anniversary of the day their real enemies attacked our Nation no less. Think the MSM will report this outrage? Don’t bet on it.

Related:

Ed Driscoll — And Speaking Of Reframing 9/11

Huh. Curious that that an Obama Website uses languages that conflates politics and warfare. Didn’t see that coming!

The American Spectator — Obama’s Desecrators of 9/11

President Obama is counting on two Marxists who blame America for the 9/11 terrorist attacks to help turn Sept. 11 from a day of solemn remembrance into an unseemly celebration of radical environmentalism and Big Government. The two men charged with this politically correct exercise in desecration and icon-smashing are the boorish, self-absorbed Rev. Lennox Yearwood and the comparatively suave, articulate Van Jones. Jones is adept at concealing his radicalism; Yearwood is incapable of doing so.

A TowDog’s Blog — On Obama’s re-branding of 9/11

Let’s just make this “about me” instead…. Weak on national security as Democrats invariably are, it simply wouldn’t do to have the rascally Republicans continue to own the issue. What to do? Take the issue away by making 9/11 about Obama’s issues, Obama’s people; in short about Obama.

From the other side:

Idealist in NYC — September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance

911 Day Of Service — Official Website

New evidence has surfaced, thanks to the Attorney General’s war on the CIA, confirming what most already know. Nancy Pelosi is a hypocritical liar.

Remember last April when Nancy Pelosi was cornered exposing her hypocrisy on the enhanced interrogation techniques used against terrorists? She had been crying how evil Bush was and pretending she was in the dark on the issue. The CIA let the world know she had been briefed on the techniques and that they were being used. She claimed the CIA was lying.

“In that or any other briefing we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used. What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel opinions that they could be used.”

Uh oh! Documented evidence has surfaced! In a report given to congress by the National Intelligence Director this week, on September 4th 2002 Nancy Pelosi was briefed. Her name is in the column stating:

“Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.”

Now new evidence has come to light. In the Attorney General’s war against the CIA for using these enhanced techniques documents have been revealed showing Pelosi’s hands are not as clean as she would like people to believe.

The newly declassified CIA report on the interrogation of Islamist terrorists notes “in the fall of 2002, the agency briefed the leadership of the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committees on the use of both standard techniques and EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques).”

The CIA, according to the report, “continued to brief the leadership of the Intelligence Oversight Committees on the use of EITs and detentions in February and March 2003.”

And here’s the zinger: “The general counsel says that none of the participants expressed any concern about the techniques or the program….”

For months, Speaker Pelosi has claimed she and other high-ranking Democrats in Congress who were briefed by the CIA during President Bush’s first term “were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used.”

Others present with her at CIA intelligence briefings, like former House Intelligence Committee Chairman and CIA director Porter Goss, say otherwise.

Her credibility was also rattled by the revelation that Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat who succeeded Pelosi as ranking Democrat on the House intelligence panel, sent a classified letter to the CIA in February 2003 objecting to EITs.

Speaker Pelosi’s behavior reeks of the kind of cynicism and hypocrisy Americans have become used to seeing in Washington.

Her liberal instincts were to object to the CIA’s tough interrogation of terrorists.

But those briefings took place not long after the 9/11 attacks; the war in Afghanistan, home to al-Qaida and shelter for Osama bin Laden, was going well; and the Iraq War had not yet begun.

So there was no way for an ambitious politician like Pelosi to know which way the political winds would end up blowing.

At the time, President Bush was basking in popularity, and the nation was in lockstep behind his aggressive approach to waging the global war on terror — including in Iraq. For all Pelosi knew, it might stay that way for many years to come.

So she stayed quiet, keeping her options open. Now, with Democrats running the whole show in Washington and a Justice Department poised to criminalize CIA interrogators in a politicized national security witch hunt, she has chosen to revert to those liberal instincts.

Solid evidence showing what we already knew. Pelosi is a hypocritical liar. She should be held accountable.

Tail wag for the graphic: YID With LID