Michelle Malkin Plows through THE VIEW
Popular and brave author Michelle Malkin ("Culture of Corruption") seemed to come ready for a fight with the Obama sycophants on The View, but in the end the unprepared hosts were no match for Michelle, having no choice but to roll over while Michelle bested their arguments and made the case against the myth of Obama.

NY Mosque Location
The exact location of the proposed Muslim Community Center and Mosque as seen from the air. This is a slap in the face and the Terrorist World is laughing at our political correctness!

US Funding of UN at All Time High
The U.S. has been the largest financial supporter of the U.N. since the organization’s founding in 1945. The U.S. is currently assessed 22 percent of the U.N. regular budget and more than 27 percent of the U.N. peacekeeping budget. In dollar terms, the Administration’s budget for FY 2011 requested $516.3 million for the U.N. regular budget and more than $2.182 billion for the peacekeeping budget. However, the U.S. also provides assessed financial contributions to other U.N. organizations and voluntary contributions to many more U.N. organizations. According to OMB, total U.S. contributions to the U.N. system were more than $6.347 billion in FY 2009. This is more than $1 billion more than total contributions as compiled by OMB for FY 2005, and it is indicative of the rising budgetary trends in the U.N. and the consequential demand on U.S. financial support.

Fairway increases property taxes by 44.8%
The Fairway City Council voted late Thursday night to raise its property tax levy 44.8 percent to make up for a projected $450,000 budget shortfall next year. A packed city hall full of residents urged city leaders to make budget cuts rather than increase taxes and suggested using $200,000 from the city’s reserve fund to reduce the amount of the mill levy increase. Council members opposed to the 44.8 percent increase were Anthony Liu, Gail Gregory and Jim Poplinger. Contact these city council members and thank them for their vote against the tax increase. Conversely call the others and demand they re-examine their tax and spend ideologies.

Olathe approves budget with no tax increase
The Olathe City Council approved a 2011 budget tonight that cuts general fund spending by 4.8 percent in an effort to hold the line on city taxes.

Overland Park approves budget w/ no tax increase
Weathering another year of bad financial news, Overland Park has approved a new budget that cuts staff, keeps taxpayer services intact and doesn’t raise taxes.

Court halts Calif. gay marriages pending appeal
A federal appeals court put same-sex weddings in California on hold indefinitely Monday while it considers the constitutionality of the state's gay marriage ban. The decision, issued by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, trumps a lower court judge's order that would have allowed county clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Wednesday.

JoCo approves new budget with no tax increase
The Johnson County Commission unanimously approved a $794 million budget Thursday that doesn’t raise taxes and reduces spending by $15 million next year. All seven commissioners voted for the budget without comment.

Brownback wants more Ag-Related Plants
“A Brownback Administration will roll out the welcome mat for dairies to come or expand in Kansas,” he said. “Many of the advantages that have led feedlot operations to our state apply equally to dairy production.” Brownback said he would review the state’s regulations to determine how the state could help attract and grow such businesses. “We need a major cheese processing plant in Kansas to expand market opportunities for our milk,” Brownback said.

KDHE computer problems may cost $600,000+
What was supposed to be a “never event” — the crash of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment computer system — became a real event recently, causing a lot of heartburn and costing a lot of money, officials said Monday. The problems started Aug. 5 when a hardware failure began cascading through the system, affecting 85 percent of KDHE’s servers and putting out of reach millions of records, from marriage certificates to immunization files.

KS Supreme Court Nominating Process Problematic
Kansas has the most elitist Supreme Court justice selection process in the United States. It is the only state that gives its state bar association majority control in selecting its Supreme Court nominating commission. The system is elitist and needs to be changed, according to Dr. Stephen J. Ware, a law professor at the University of Kansas, because only 9,000 of Kansas’ 2.7 million residents holds majority power in electing commission members who select candidates for the Kansas Supreme Court. In the most recent commission member election only 30 percent of Kansas bar members voted, about one tenth of one percent of the state population.

Godsey on the Education Bailout
The governors of Missouri and Kansas are welcoming the passage of last week's $26 billion federal bailout. Missouri is expected to get about $400 million with almost $180 million going to Kansas. Officials claim the money will save 3,300 teaching jobs in the two states. Many Republicans said this bailout is a payoff to the National Education Association and other unions, who support Democratic candidates. Some question why all those teaching jobs need saving, after a Stanford researcher reported that since 1990, nationwide teacher employment has grown about twice as fast as student enrollment. States like Mississippi and Texas oppose the bailout, fearing that federal payments like this encourage states to spend more, increasing their future obligations. Our children's education is important, but so is a future free of staggering debt. Reckless spending like this postpones the bill that our children and grandchildren will pay.

Internet regulation would harm investment
At a luncheon event in Wichita, Bruce Mehlman of the Internet Innovation Alliance told an audience that increased regulation of the internet — the principle known as “net neutrality” — would harm capital investment in broadband internet service. Mehlman was formerly Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Technology Policy and now serves as co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance and as partner in a Washington lobbying firm. Mehlman laid out some of the facts of broadband internet: all the varied things businesses and people do with the high-speed transmission of data, the fact that broadband internet has been rapidly adopted, and the rapid growth of digital content.

Obama Backs Ground Zero Mosque
Speaking at a White House dinner celebrating the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, President Barack Obama on Friday forcefully endorsed building a mosque near ground zero saying the country's founding principles demanded no less. He was immediately blasted by Republican Rep. Peter King, who called it “insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero.

US Confidence in Media All Time Low
Americans continue to express near-record-low confidence in newspapers and television news -- with no more than 25% of Americans saying they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in either. These views have hardly budged since falling more than 10 percentage points from 2003-2007.

Keeping Rates Too Low 'Dangerous Gamble'
The Federal Reserve is undertaking a "dangerous gamble" by keeping rates at near zero for so long, and must start raising rates or risk damaging the nascent U.S. recovery, a top Federal Reserve official said on Friday. "To be clear, I am not advocating a tight monetary policy," Kansas City Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig said in the text of a speech to the Lincoln, Nebraska, Chamber of Commerce. "I am advocating a policy that remains accommodative but slowly firms as the economy itself expands and moves toward more balance."

Prop. 8 Judge: The Pope Hurts Homosexuals
In the 136-page ruling overturning California's ban on "gay marriage," Judge Vaughn Walker cites a document signed by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, to show that "religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful" can "harm gays and lesbians." The document that is referred to states that Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts 'as a serious depravity.'" However, Judge Walker did not note that the document he quotes also condemns any unjust actions against homosexuals.

Fund Helps Families With Special Needs Kids
Local families with special needs children are getting help through a special fund. The Bishop Sullivan Center has thousands of dollars available in the Brian Petrie Memorial Fund, and it is in honor of the 28-year-old who died. Petrie had muscular dystrophy.

State Goes After Monks for Selling Caskets
"We are not a wealthy monastery, and we want to sell our plain wooden caskets to pay for food, health care, and the education of our monks, said Abbot Justin Brown. “A casket is just a box and you do not even need one for burial,” said Institute for Justice senior attorney Scott Bullock. “There is no legitimate health or safety reason to license casket sellers.” “The monks’ story is just one example of a national problem in which industry cartels use government power to protect themselves from competition,” said Chip Mellor, president and general counsel of the Institute for Justice.

Jennifer Aniston: Who Needs Men?
“What 'can' be done is not always what 'should' be done,” Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America told LifeSiteNews.com in response to Aniston's statements. “A woman can have children without a father to raise them, but it's the children who pay the high price for that decision.”

Actor Neal McDonough Finds New Successes
Standing up for his religious and moral beliefs has paid off for Neal McDonough, Hollywood actor and family man, who was fired back in March from a television series for refusing to perform steamy sex scenes. Far from ending his career, the actor’s career is moving along with a role in a major Hollywood film and the lead in a new television series called “Vigilante Priest.”

Clearing Confusion Over Religious Expression
A student sneezes. "It is confusing," said Debbie Lewis, a paraprofessional at S.S. Dixon Primary School. "We are under the impression you cannot say 'bless you' or 'God bless you,' which is a natural reaction." (It is this kind of craziness that makes me glad that I send my kids to a parochial school).

Relic of True Cross Recovered
The relic of the True Cross, which had been housed in a reliquary in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston’s South End, was turned in to the Vermont State Police. Officials from the cathedral retrieved the relic on Aug. 15.

Has Porn Hijacked Sexuality?
Pornography today is not the old Playboy of thirty years ago. Author and sociologist Gail Dines says that internet porn may be changing the way people think of their own sexuality. There are 420 million internet porn pages, 4.2 million porn websites and 68 million search engine requests for porn every day.

'Sextortion' of Teens on the Rise
Teens who text nude cell phone photos of themselves or show off their bodies on the Internet are being contacted by pornographers who threaten to expose their behavior to friends and family unless they pose for more explicit porn, creating a vicious cycle of exploitation.

Urban Oufitters Pulls Planned Parenthood Condoms
Condoms have a typical-use failure rate as high as 36 percent among teens, and Planned Parenthood’s condoms scored at the very bottom in a 2005 Consumer Reports trial of condom effectiveness. The original Urban Outfitters Web page for the condoms, found in the "toys & novelties" section, billed them as a "safe bet" and noted that proceeds would "support advances in reproductive health."

Ten Great Reasons To Have Another Child
In a world that often denigrates the large family, here are 10 great reasons to cherish children and have more!

The Faces of the Blessed Mother
The Blessed Mother who knew Jesus better than anyone on earth has been a favorite among artists over the centuries. Here is an awesome morphing slide show of the Faces of the Virgin Mary presented over the "The Magnificat" sung by the Schola of the Institute's Seminary & by the Sister Adorers of the Royal Heart of Jesus.

America's Got Talent
Here's 10-year-old Jackie Evancho. This young girl has has been gifted with an amazing voice! Her audition solo of "Panis Angelicus" was authored by St. Thomas Aquinas in 1274, celebrating the Eucharist. The first line, by one translation, states: "Bread of Angels, made the Bread of men."

Dollars and Deception in Kenya
The national referendum on Kenya's new pro-abortion constitution is official with 67% of the voters casting their ballots for it. The previous Kenyan Constitution proclaimed that human life begins at conception, and that all human life was worthy of being defended. How could this change in Kenya happen? A large part of the blame can be placed upon the Obama administration, which spent over $23 million of US taxpayer money to promote passage of the new Constitution.

Kansas College Students Pay for Abortions
Yesterday, a national pro-life college student group unveiled new information showing how public university students in North Carolina may soon be forced to pay for abortions in student health insurance plans. A pro-life group in Kansas says it can understand how students don't appreciate having to do so. That's because it fought and lost a battle years ago to stop abortion funding in Kansas as pro-life advocates battled in state regents in 2006. At the time, regents restructured health insurance for public universities at Emporia, Fort Hays, K-State (Manhattan), KU (Lawrence), KU-Med, Pittsburg and Wichita and abortion coverage made its way into the plan.

Why demagogues love debating the 14th Amendment
Election year scripts are pretty well established in American politics. For Republicans, the script usually involves a polarizing issue, invariably some imagined threat to the nation or its traditional values, around which the party’s handmaidens in the conservative media can be counted on to help whip up hysteria.

Gospel of St. Matthew 19: 23-30

23 Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, I say to you, that the wealthy shall enter with difficulty into the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for the wealthy to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” 25 And upon hearing this, the disciples wondered greatly, saying: “Then who will be able to be saved?” 26 But Jesus, gazing at them, said to them: “With men, this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible.” 27 Then Peter responded by saying to him: “Behold, we have left behind all things, and we have followed you. So then, what will be for us?” 28 And Jesus said to them: “Amen I say to you, that at the resurrection, when the Son of man shall sit on the seat of his majesty, those of you who have followed me shall also sit on twelve seats, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And anyone who has left behind home, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or land, for the sake of my name, shall receive one hundred times more, and shall possess eternal life. 30 But many of those who are first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”

Cap-and-trade legislation has died, with little hope of resurrection for a long time to come. What the representatives of the people cannot accomplish, however, the Environmental Protection Agency can.

The EPA’s Lisa Jackson has denied ten petitions filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Republican attorneys general from Texas and Virginia, and other conservative groups. The petitioners asked the EPA to reconsider its finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The EPA has refused to reconsider, and plans to regulate emissions from new cars and trucks this year, and emissions from power plants next year. The state of Texas is now threatening not to conform to the new regulations.

Christians believe that when God created the world and created people in His image, He gave mankind a mandate to be stewards of the creation. Therefore, Christians should be especially concerned about treating the natural world with care and respect. At the same time, the stewardship responsibility includes all of the resources we have – nature, the ecosystem, and technology; as well as our bodies, talents, and relationships with other people.

People of faith have no intention or desire to pit these responsibilities against one another. When a proposal to improve the environment negative consequences for our economic and technological ability to steward our resources and care for people created in God’s image, Christianity teaches that we should investigate whether the environmental policy is truly necessary to accomplish its stated goal, and whether it is possible to care for the environment in a way that also enhances human life and productivity. To restrict energy usage is to restrict human ability to productively steward God’s creation. God ordained work as a good thing for Adam and Eve to do in the Garden of Eden before sin came into the world. For this reason, Christians believe that productive cultivation of natural resources can improve, rather than damage, the health of God’s creation.

However, the Environmental Protection Agency generally treats human economic activity as climate enemy number one. Unfortunately, discussing climate issues through the EPA bureaucracy does not lend itself to a full and open investigation of the options and issues at stake. The legislative branch set up the bureaucracy in such a way that it can make difficult policy choices without facing electoral accountability. Joe Postell of The Heritage Foundation has explained why the progressive movement began setting this system in place several decades ago:

The progressives sought to circumvent representative government by transferring power from Congress to a newly created fourth branch of government, our modern bureaucracy. Congress would no longer make laws but merely pass bills that consist of assignments to agencies. The actual laws then would be passed by agencies in the form of "rules" carrying the full force of law.

If the EPA believes it knows the best way to promote “public health and welfare,” it will not easily admit that it might be. EPA officials may have the best of intentions for crafting the best policy, but there’s no guarantee that they are safe from the lure of self-interest, much less from their own fallibility.

For instance, the EPA believes that regulating emissions will improve the American economy by creating “green” jobs. The evidence, however, does not support this line of reasoning. The government simply cannot create jobs in one industry without destroying jobs elsewhere. For every “green” job Spain has created by subsidizing wind and solar energy, it has destroyed 2.2 jobs created by the private sector. Green jobs have done nothing to improve Spain’s 19 percent unemployment rate. Denmark actually spends more money on creating jobs in the wind energy industry than the jobs actually pay.

Politicians in the United States have already tried unsuccessfully for years to create technological innovation by legislative mandate, and there’s no logical reason to expect that more government mandates will produce efficient energy technology.

Rather than stimulating the American economy, full regulation of carbon emissions will damage it severely. Essentially, a cap or a regulatory burden on carbon emissions would create energy scarcity, making it just as expensive to purchase energy from fossil fuels as it is to purchase energy from “renewable” sources. The supply of efficient energy would drop in order to encourage production and consumption of inefficient energy, and prices would skyrocket as a result. Politicians themselves, including Barack Obama as a presidential candidate, have admitted that skyrocketing prices are a crucial component of the carbon regulation strategy.

Under the cap-and-trade bill considered by the House of Representatives, the average American family would likely face a 90 percent increase in electricity prices, according to research done by The Heritage Foundation. Gasoline and natural gas prices would also rise by over 50 percent. The economic impact of EPA regulation would be even worse than the impact of cap-and-trade legislation, because regulation would involve more compliance, administrative, and legal costs.

Skyrocketing energy prices would cause the prices of most other goods and services to rise as well, because energy is the lifeblood of the economy. Almost nothing happens – no manufacturing, no transportation, and no sales – without energy. ?For people who already have plenty of money – think John Kerry and Bill Gates – this is not much of a problem. But economically vulnerable groups already spend much larger portions of their budgets on basic necessities than do those who are better off. The poor have less discretionary income to spend on things they don’t absolutely need, and therefore less room to breathe when expenses rise.

This economic burden would come in addition to other financial woes caused by carbon regulation. An economy struggling under dramatic decreases in employment, household income, and national GDP would make it even more difficult for low-income families to cover expenses, especially utilities. Families who could not afford to heat or cool their homes, especially the elderly, would risk their health and could end up homeless. After inability to pay rent, inability to pay utilities is the most common cause of homelessness. The Environmental Protection Agency justifies this onerous economic burden with its finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. However, its proposed regulation of emissions could endanger public health and welfare even more. Christian doctrine teaches that it is not acceptable to treat the poor unjustly, or take from them the ability to earn their own living and to productively steward the resources God has given them. Rather, we should investigate whether human economic productivity could be an ally rather than the enemy of our natural resources.

Source