Obama Appointee linked to Federal Corruption and Fraud Probe
An employee of the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer and a private contractor were charged with corruption Thursday after an FBI raid at the former office of one of President Obama's appointees, Vivek Kundra. Last week, Kundra resigned from his post as D.C. chief technology officer to take a job in the Obama administration as the federal government's chief information officer. Yusuf Acar, 40, acting chief security officer of the D.C. Office of the CTO, was charged with bribery of a public official, money laundering, wire fraud and conflict of interest and is liked to Kundra.

Obama, Geithner Get Low Grades From Economists
The economists' assessment stands in stark contrast with Mr. Obama's popularity with the public, with a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll giving him a 60% approval rating. A majority of the 49 economists polled said they were dissatisfied with the administration's economic policies. On average, they gave the president a grade of 59 out of 100, and although there was a broad range of marks, 42% of respondents rated Mr. Obama below 60. Mr. Geithner received an average grade of 51. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke scored better, with an average 71.

Vitter calls pay raises 'offensive'
Vitter introduced the proposal last week as an amendment to a $410 billion spending bill headed for a Senate vote that could come Tuesday. "This system of auto-pilot pay raises really is offensive to the American people," Vitter, of Metairie, said on the Senate floor Monday. "It would simply say if we want a raise, we have to talk about it and then have an actual vote."

Card-Check Bill: The Most Radical Change in Collective Bargaining in 75 Years
The battle over the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is on – and Capitol Hill has become a battleground of union members and business owners arguing their respective cases to members of Congress. The bill, which is organized labor’s top priority, is about “righting economic wrongs,” according to its Senate sponsor, liberal Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)

South Carolina's Sanford to become first governor to reject funds
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is expected Wednesday to become the first governor to formally reject some of the federal stimulus money earmarked by Congress for his state.

Obama Intel-chief pick withdraws
President Obama's nominee for a top intelligence post withdrew his name from consideration today amid controversy concerning his associations and alleged business connections, including receiving large sums from Saudi Arabia and serving on the board of a Chinese government-owned company accused of acting against U.S. national security.

Taxpayers foot bill for Princess Nancy’s erratic demands for military planes
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been using the Air Force as an on-call taxi service and wasting taxpayer money by erratically canceling and rescheduling flights, according to a new report. Judicial Watch, a public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Defense and confirmed that the speaker has made multiple requests for military air travel. While the Department of Defense staff has attempted to answer Pelosi's numerous requests with military escorts and aircraft, her repeated last-minute rescheduling and cancellations have become a problem.

Hillary to Offer Free Education to Muslims!
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has announced a new million-dollar scholarship program to help Palestinian students enroll at Palestinian and American universities.

MSNBC poll: Obama earns 'F' on performance
President Obama has earned a grade of "F" for his performance in office. He received a failing mark in an MSNBC unscientific online survey after having spent less than two months in the White House.

Stocks turn in worst performance for new president
The election of Barack Obama offered the promise of a new set of fixes for the financial crisis and the economy, a do-over that might help nurse the stock market back to health. Since then, the market hasn't just gotten worse — it's turned in its worst performance ever for a new president. The Dow Jones industrial average has fallen 21 percent during Obama's first seven weeks in office. Count back to Election Day and the results are even bleaker: That afternoon, the Dow closed at 9,625. Now it stands at 6,547, a loss of 32 percent. Is this the Obama bear market?

Don't endanger free markets, Czech president warns
Massive government spending and tighter regulation would prolong recession, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Monday, as he urged U.S. President Barack Obama not to endanger the free market economy in his response to the financial crisis. In a speech at Columbia University in New York, Klaus, a former Czech prime minister who championed the free market after the fall of Communism 20 years ago, said he never expected to see such extensive government intervention again in his lifetime as he now sees around the world. "I am therefore convinced that fighting for freedom and free markets, something we always appreciated here in this country (the United States), remains the task of the day," Klaus said.

GOP Porker Senators Identified
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., is actually the second-biggest earmarker, according to the list, with 64 earmarks worth $114 million. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., is a few notches down, with 65 earmarks worth $76 million. Both are expected to support the omnibus bill along with Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, who has zero earmarks. They would help Reid attain the 60 votes needed to shut off debate on the bill and move it toward final passage. A number of other Republicans are considered possible supporters, and all of them have earmarks to gain. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., for instance has $86 million in earmarks; Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has $74 million; and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has $25 million.

Feds spending millions on Kennedy legacy in Mass.
More than one out of every five dollars of the $126 million Massachusetts is receiving in earmarks from a $410 billion federal spending package is going to help preserve the legacy of the Kennedys. The bill includes $5.8 million for the planning and design of a building to house a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. The funding may also help support an endowment for the institute.

EPA May Require Factories to Report Global Warming Emissions
Chemical, steel, automobile and other energy-intensive factories would have to submit annual reports to the federal government on their greenhouse gas emissions under a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposal that lays a foundation for fighting global warming.

Flashpoint: Mexican mayhem
Largely invisible to most Americans, just to the south, the security situation is worsening as a result of an intense conflict between the Mexican government and domestic drug cartels — and even among the narco-gangs themselves. Some observers have characterized the fighting in Mexico as a low-grade civil war. Worse yet, by many estimates, the violence is escalating — and getting increasingly grisly. For instance, in January, Mexican authorities arrested a man accused of dissolving as many as 300 bodies in bubbling vats of acid for a Tijuana-based drug lord, earning him the nightmarish nickname “El Pozolero,” after a local stew. The same week, Mexican prosecutors reported three severed heads found in an ice box. A headless body was also discovered in a canal in Ciudad Juarez, a town known as Mexico’s deadliest — just over the border from El Paso, Texas. Last year, the drug war in Mexico consumed nearly 6,000 lives — double the number in 2007.

Stem cell go-ahead puts Obama at odds with pope
President Barack Obama's lifting of restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research puts him at odds with Pope Benedict and the American Roman Catholic Church. After Obama signed the order on Monday, the Vatican and U.S. Church leaders condemned the move. One commentator said the test of "a real democracy" was its defense of the most defenseless.

Home from the war: British troops are greeted by abuse from Muslim protesters
Twice in two years they have fought in Iraq. Twelve of their regimental comrades paid the ultimate price there and in Afghanistan. Over the past two years they have spent day after day patrolling hostile territory, where every passer-by could have a gun or a bomb. So the 200 men of the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment perhaps had a right to expect a heroes’ welcome yesterday on a homecoming parade through Luton. Instead, they were faced with the hate-filled jeers of anti-war protesters waving placards saying: ‘Anglian soldiers: Butchers of Basra,’ and ‘Anglian soldiers: cowards, killers, extremists.’

Afghanistan Taliban leader was at Gitmo
The Taliban's new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan had been a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the latest example of a freed detainee who took a militant leadership role and a potential complication for the Obama administration's efforts to close the prison. U.S. authorities handed over the detainee to the Afghan government, which in turn released him, according to Pentagon and CIA officials.

State Run Home Investigated for “Fight Clubs” with Mentally Disabled at Participants
Seven employees at a state-run home for the mentally disabled have been suspended for allegedly staging a "fight club" among residents. Corpus Christi Police say the fight clubs were uncovered when someone gave an off-duty police officer a cell phone containing videos of fights at the Corpus Christi State School. The videos show mentally disabled adult clients punching, shoving, and striking each other while the employees watch.

Rush’s Revenues and Ratings Soar
Rush Limbaugh, the most listened to radio host in America, says recent efforts by the White House and Democrats to demonize him are actually helping his show in financial success and personal popularity. "Revenues at the EIB Network in the first quarter of 2009 are up 13 and a half percent over first quarter revenues of 2008," Limbaugh announced this afternoon, "and at our revenue baseline, that is not an insignificant percentage or amount represented by it." He also noted his staff had just finished an analysis of Arbitron listening data for the first few months of this year, and said the cumulative audience, meaning "total bodies" listening, was up 32 percent.

Feds Investigate Sheriff Joe for Civil Rights Violations on Illegals
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona following requests by congressional Democrats and allegations by liberal activists that the department has violated the civil rights of illegal aliens. Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), and Robert Scott (D-Va.) requested the investigation, and activists groups such as National Day Laborer Organizer Network and ACORN launched petition drives and rallies in support of the probe.

Waters Helped Bank Whose Stock She Once Owned
When Rep. Barney Frank was looking to aid a Boston-based lender last fall, the Massachusetts Democrat urged Maxine Waters, a colleague on the House Financial Services Committee, to "stay out of it," he says. The reason: Ms. Waters, a longtime congresswoman from California, had close ties to the minority-owned institution, OneUnited Bank. Ms. Waters and her husband have both held financial stakes in the bank. Until recently, her husband was a director. At the same time, Ms. Waters has publicly boosted OneUnited's executives and criticized its government regulators during congressional hearings. Last fall, she helped secure the bank a meeting with Treasury officials.

RNC Chairman Under Fire for Abortion Comments
New national Republican Party chairman Michael Steele has gotten himself in hot water with pro-life advocates for softening his pro-life views and then issuing a statement saying he hasn't backed down on abortion. The misstep is the latest Steele gaffe that has some calling for his resignation. Steele has taken a pro-life position in the past and has been endorsed by pro-life groups for his various political races -- including running for the U.S. Senate in Maryland. However, in an interview with GQ, Steele said he thought women have, according to the interviewer, a "right to choose abortion." "Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice," he said. "Yeah. Absolutely."

Huck Responds to RNC Chair Abortion Remarks
Comments attributed to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele are very troubling and despite his clarification today the party stands to lose many of its members and a great deal of its support in the trenches of grassroots politics. Since 1980, our party has been steadfast and principled in believing in the dignity and worth of every human life. We have supported a Constitutional amendment to protect life and the party has taken the position that no one individual has the supreme right to own another person in totality including the right to take that life. For Chairman Steele to even infer that taking a life is totally left up to the individual is not only a reversal of Republican policy and principle, but it's a violation of the most basic of human rights--the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. His statement today helps, but doesn't explain why he would ever say what he did in the first place.

Christians should confront today's secular and anti-religious society, says Cardinal
The Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, encouraged Christians this week “to recover their self-confidence and courage” in order to confront the growing problem of religious and secular intolerance in the West, as well as “to recover their genius for showing that there are better ways to live and to build a good society.”

Bishop: Obama’s pro-science rhetoric conceals ‘homicidal research’
President Barack Obama’s explanations of his decision to end restrictions on the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research have been criticized by Bishop of Phoenix Thomas J. Olmsted, who has argued that the president’s pro-science rhetoric conceals “homicidal research” that violates the right to life.

Obama VA: Let’s charge vets for care on service-related injuries
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.

Judge orders homeschoolers into public district classrooms
A North Carolina judge has ordered three children to attend public schools this fall because the homeschooling their mother has provided over the last four years needs to be "challenged." The children, however, have tested above their grade levels – by as much as two years.

ACORN/Teacher Union take over city council meeting
A school board meeting turned into a display of civil disobedience Tuesday as about 50 educators refused to leave, creating a brief standoff with police, who refused to make any arrests in the presence of media. The members of ACORN and United Teachers Los Angeles -- all wearing bright red shirts -- entered the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education meeting on Tuesday afternoon, sat down and began chanting.

Chicago Schools in Chaos
Avila was the 26th Chicago Public Schools student killed since the start of the school year, tying last school year's total. There are still nearly three months of school left.??On Thursday, Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Ron Huberman will meet with Police Supt. Jody Weis to talk about ways they can work together to try to tamp down the violence.

Maryland School to allow Coed Locker Rooms
In Maryland schools restrooms and showers will be opened up to cross-dressing or female affirming men, thereby allowing undressing in front of women and children in a woman's locker room," she said. "If HB474/SB566 passes, the use of sex (male or female biology) in such diverse areas as all-girls’ schools, school games, sports teams, bathrooms, locker areas, showers, or in sleeping and living areas in homes, prisons, and shelters will become a crime and subject to compensatory damages up to $400,000, as well as punitive damages," the organization said.

Millions in earmarks go to Topeka
More than $3.2 million is coming to Topeka through earmarked federal funds included in the Omnibus Spending Bill signed yesterday by President Barack Obama. Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback and former Rep. Nancy Boyda helped secure the money, which will help finance such things as a children's center, a highway realignment project, Topeka's transit system and the Kansas Attorney General's Office. Included in the earmarks is $475,000 for the Topeka Metropolitan Transit Authority for bus replacement and $95,000 to help develop a 16,000-square-foot Kansas Children's Discovery Center.

Senate panel hears voter ID testimony
The Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections continued to hear testimony Thursday on a bill that seeks to enhance voter identification requirements. The legislation would require that all voters show a valid form of identification, not just first-time voters.

Effort launched in Senate to reform Supreme Court nomination proces
A group of Kansas Senators, led by Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, has launched a long-shot effort to change the way state Supreme Court justices are nominated and appointed. Schmidt, an Independence Republican and a lawyer by profession, said he’d heard some opposing thoughts from fellow members of the bar association. The association would lose clout in the appointment process if a bill introduced late last week by Schmidt and 16 Senate co-sponsors becomes law.

Lower penalties for meth manufacturers and narcotics dealers
A House bill that would significantly reduce penalties for crimes ranging from methamphetamine production to narcotics sales could be debated on the House floor as early as this week. On Monday, the Joint Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice Oversight, on an unrecorded voice vote, forwarded the bill to the House floor. Conservative Judiciary Committee leaders reacted swiftly to oppose the liberal bill.

Sheriff’s Office Posts Mapping System for Sexual & Violent Offenders
Johnson County has created a mapping system showing where certain offenders live, work or go to school. People who have committed sex, violent or drug crimes are listed by name, and they are mapped according to the type of offense. The site also provides information as to the offender’s crime, address and a mug shot. “The public has a right to this information, and I want to make it easy and user-friendly for them,” Sheriff Frank Denning said in a statement. TKF wants to thank Sheriff Denning for taking another step in informing the public about dangerous criminals in their neighborhoods.

Kochs move up to 19th on list of world's billionaires
The net worths of Charles and David Koch took a big hit in the past year, but that didn't keep the Koch Industries executives from moving up several places on Forbes' list of the world's billionaires. Forbes estimated the brothers' net worths at $14 billion apiece. That's down from $17 billion last year. But they moved up to 19th on the list after being ranked 37th in 2008. Wichitan Phil Ruffin was 334th on the list at $2 billion, down from $2.1 billion last year. His ranking, however, rose from 573rd.

“The decision to build (the new courthouse) should not be based on the financial fitness of the economy….”

- Neal Angrisano, deputy facilities director for Johnson County, Kansas

From Proverbs 15:31
“He who listens to salutary reproof will abide among the wise.”

Gospel - Luke 16:19-31 19: "There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.
20: And at his gate lay a poor man named Laz'arus, full of sores,
21: who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table; moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
22: The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried;
23: and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Laz'arus in his bosom.
24: And he called out, `Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Laz'arus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.'
25: But Abraham said, `Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Laz'arus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.
26: And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.'
27: And he said, `Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house,
28: for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.'
29: But Abraham said, `They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.'
30: And he said, `No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'
31: He said to him, `If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.'"

Here We Go Again!

I’m at a loss for words. After being subjected to numerous tax increases, tax initiatives and the passage of the “Forever Tax” the liberals in Johnson County are at it again. This week Johnson County Commissioners say they want to move forward with the largest capital improvement project in county history.

The County Commissioners (6 Republicans/1 Democrat) agreed to take the first major step toward building a new courthouse in downtown Olathe. The project could cost in excess of $300 million. “I am really concerned about the safety of the public” and the accessibility of the courthouse,” said Commission Chairwoman Annabeth Surbaugh (R).

The plan calls for the courthouse to be completed by the end of 2014 and open the following year. County planners acknowledge the bleak economic landscape but say now may be the best time to make such a major investment. Commissioner Ed Eilert (R) said his number crunching showed that bonding a new courthouse would require all or more of the annual revenue generated by a quarter-cent sales tax, about $19 million. Another option, he said, could be a 15 to 17 percent increase in the property tax, on top of the public safety tax voters backed last year.

We all understand when courthouses and other public buildings are too cramped for staff to operate, but you could go to a million courthouses in America that are the same way. There are also a million businesses that would like to expand, but they do so only when revenues allow.

The question is about money and whether we have it or not. And right now we don’t. Our indebtedness is growing out of hand in this country and yet still our elected officials push us and push us into debt, taxes, and government spending. Enough is enough!