Category: random

About 70 riders on horseback blocked traffic in Nevada’s capital city’s main highway to deliver petitions against the BLM over grazing reductions on federal land to Governor Brian Sandoval. The rally ended a weeklong, 300-mile trek orchestrated by Elko County Commissioner Grant Gerber that began on Memorial Day.

Gerber said the horseback protest, dubbed the “Grass March,” was modeled after Gandhi’s “Salt March” across India to protest British control of the salt supply in 1930, which he likened to BLM control of Nevada’s public lands.

“Across the board I would like to see the land transferred to the state of Nevada,” said Gerber, whose family began ranching in eastern Nevada in the mid-1800s. “Then people closer to the issue could make the decisions.”

Several dozen ranchers from around northern Nevada met with Sandoval in Carson City, who assured them he would take their concerns over grazing allotments in Battle Mountain to the highest officials in the federal agency.

“This is what makes Nevada great,” Sandoval said to the crowd packed in his reception area. “The fact that we’re all one family…that you feel you can come to Carson City and present and air your concerns.”

“I’m very proud of the efforts you’ve made,” he added, “I’m very humbled and honored that you would do it and very respectful of all of you being here today.”

The federal government owns more than half of the land in the 11 Western states plus Alaska, and for more than a century, ranchers have turned their cattle loose on many of those public lands in return for a grazing fee. But that arrangement has become more complicated since the rise of the environmental movement, when agencies like the BLM started having to manage lands for endangered species and green groups began pushing to rein in livestock grazing.

Federal officials claim they aren’t overly swayed by environmental groups, though the Western Watersheds Project group has recently lobbied the BLM to remove cattle from public lands, saying they cause damage to streams and other sensitive areas.

“We get pressure from a lot of places,” said Amy Lueders, the BLM’s director for Nevada, whose agency manages 71-percent of the state’s land area.

In Battle Mountain, the troubles for ranchers started when the local BLM office began implementing a statewide drought-management plan in 2013.

“The concern is, you want to make sure it isn’t grazed to bare dirt,” said Lueders.

Gerber disputes Lueders’ claim, “Without notice and without hearing, (they’re) reaching out and hurting the ranchers by not allowing them to turn out their cattle on the grass which is 18 inches to two feet tall.”

Meanwhile, Nevada ranchers signed a temporary agreement allowing them to graze their cattle on BLM lands, with strict limits in place on the amount of grass the cows can consume. If those requirements aren’t met, the cattle will be ordered off the land.

Ranchers worry the limits are “unattainable,” and they are pushing for the removal of Doug Furtado, the BLM district manager.

“The problem we have in the BLM district battle mountain is clearly Doug Furtado,” says Assemblyman Ira Hansen, “and that’s why there’s been a concerted effort to remove him from the position.

“The BLM will respond to the political will of the State of Nevada represented through the Governor,” added Hansen.

Furtado said he has tried to work with the ranchers and blamed “outside forces” for agitating the situation. He said he expected to sign a final agreement allowing the renewed grazing for 2014 within two weeks.

Pershing County rancher Mike Gottschalk summed it up best: “First they came to save the spotted owl, and we did not speak out and thousands of timber jobs were lost. Then they came to save the tortoise, and we did not speak out and all the Clark County ranchers were destroyed. Then they came to save the horses, and we did not speak out and our ranges are now overrun with them. Now they are coming to save the sage hen, and remove all the ranchers, recreationists and sportsmen. It is time we all stand up for our rights and speak out, or there soon will be no one left to speak for us.”

An American soldier held captive for nearly five years by terrorists during the Afghanistan war, has been released. The U.S. Special Forces extracted U.S Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, from his captors during a peaceful handover in eastern Afghanistan.

In exchange for Bergdahl’s release, five detainees at Guantanamo Bay will be released to Qatar. This will not set well with veterans.

The Idaho native was deployed to Afghanistan in May 2009 and captured by the Taliban on June 30, 2009, in Paktika province. Officials believes Bergdahl has been held for the bulk of his captivity in Pakistan.

It remains unclear when he was moved back to Afghanistan.

Oh, oh — the Washington Redskins have launched a Twitter attack on Senator Harry Reid in their effort to keep the team’s name. The Redskins instructed fans to tweet Reid to show their “RedskinsPride” and “tell him what the team means to you.”

Reid said last month that Redskins owner Dan Snyder should “do what is morally right” and change the name. Snyder has vowed never to change the name.

The Associated Press is doing its level best to make it sound like the campaign is back-firing, saying: “Many told Reid they support his efforts to change the name.

After looking through, there are a number of comments like: “I DO NOT have an issue with the logo” and “I wonder how much money the Oneida gave old Harry Reid?!”

Last week, half of the Senate, lead by Reid, wrote letters to the National Football League urging a change, calling the name is a racist slur. The team’s name of ‘Redskins’ is in honor of one of the team’s first coaches, Lone Star Dietz.

The odd thing is — neither of the Koch Brothers own any part of the team.

First lady Michelle Obama put out a call against a Republican proposal that allows a delay in enforcing her new school lunch standards.

“The last thing we can afford to do right now is play politics with our kids’ health,” she complained. “Now is not the time to roll back everything we have worked for.’’

The House Appropriations Committee announced last week it plans to let cash-strapped schools opt out of the nutrition regulations via waiver. The change would come through the 2015 agriculture spending bill.

Brian Rell, spokesman for Congressman Robert B. Aderholt, who sponsored House legislation that would grant qualifying school districts an opportunity to postpone enforcement of the new rules fired back

“These new federal regulations should not drive local school nutrition programs under water,’’ said Rell, “This temporary one-year waiver simply provides them a lifeline,” he said, noting that only districts that lost money in part of the past year would qualify for the waiver.

Leaders of the School Nutrition Association (SNA), which had supported the new school menu standards when they were approved in 2010 as part of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, also responded.

“SNA does not see the waiver as a rollback but as a way to hit the pause button,” said Leah Schmidt, the president of the group,

A pause is necessary, Schmidt added, because many schools are overwhelmed by the new requirements and are seeing dramatically increased waste and cost, while sales decline.

“Can we shift the conversation to what we need to do to help school districts that are suffering?” Schmidt asked.

The first lady says she has heard a different story from several past presidents of the SNA despite an SNA survey finding about four percent of its members will either leave the program this year, or are considering doing so.

“Students want it, families want it — and they are participating,” said David Binkle, deputy director of Food Services for the Los Angeles Unified School District. “It is no coincidence that our test scores are up, attendance is up and graduation rates are up,”

Meanwhile, the Laguna Beach Unified School District, in Southern California, is the latest district to rebel against the federal healthy lunch program.

Debra Appel, food services supervisor at the school, said, “It’s not the chicken nuggets, it’s not the popcorn chicken. It’s not the corn dogs and stuff that the kids really liked.”

The USDA, which administers the program, says about 100,000 schools have signed up for the program — fewer than expected.

“USDA continues to provide additional flexibility and technical assistance to schools as they all now work to offer healthier meals,” said Dr. Janey Thornton, deputy under-secretary for Food Nutrition and Consumer Services at the USDA, released in a statement.

Under the program, lunches must include fresh fruit, vegetables, and whole grains. And there’s a calorie cap: 850 for high school kids, 700 for middle school, and 650 for elementary school. In Kentucky, students thought the healthy food “tastes like vomit.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has already rolled back one of the standards about pasta — that only whole-grain can be used — after finding that the food fell apart when cooked in large volumes. A 2013 report released by the Government Accountability Office also found a number of problems with the National School Lunch Program.

The report, presented to a subcommittee of the House Education and Workforce Committee, detailed visits to eight school districts to see the impact of the regulations.

“Although the eight districts GAO visited expressed support for the improvements to the nutritional quality of school lunch, they reported additional challenges meeting the new requirements, such as student acceptance, food waste, costs, and participation,” the report states.

It notes cheeseburgers being removed from one district’s elementary and middle school lunch menus because adding cheese to the burger “would have made it difficult to stay within the weekly meat maximums.” Another district switched from shredded cheese to cheese sauce because the liquid cheese “does not count as a meat alternate, while another school district switched from whole grain chips to potato chips because “the potato chip did not count as a grain.”

The report also found some schools had trouble maintaining healthy options for students.

“…the [School Food Authorities] reported adding pudding to certain high school menus to bring the menus into compliance with the calorie minimum…added gelatin, ice cream, or condiments such as butter, jelly, ranch dressing or cheese sauce to become compliant…increased the amount of sugar, sodium, or fat in the meal, potentially undercutting the federal law’s goal of improving the nutritional quality of lunches.”

The GAO also noted the difficulty in complying with the calorie maximums for students based on grade, as students from varying grades use the same cafeteria lines.

“…Athletic coaches expressed concerns that student athletes were hungrier after school than they were in previous years and staff reported that more students were distracted during the final period of the school day than in previous years.”

Another problem is cost as student chose to boycott the lunchroom.

The Fairfield, Connecticut school district raised its lunch prices by 10-cents to deal with the changes.  Similarly, Portsmouth, New Hampshire schools increased their prices by 25 cents per meal, citing “dwindling participation” in the lunch program.

A New York district lost $100,000 last school year in its lunch program while an Indiana district lost $300,000.

Add to this the fact that Orthodox Jewish schools are finding it difficult to abide by the guidelines. That’s because the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act requires the serving of certain foods that some might consider non-kosher.

The Jewish newspaper The Forward which examined the issue reports:

“Their reason has nothing to do with the taste of spinach, kale, or cabbage. It is because these and other leafy greens might be infested with tiny insects that would render them non-kosher.”

It’s not only vegetables  posing a problem for Orthodox schools, but the grain-based food limitation also contradicts Jewish law as well.

“…students require a certain amount of bread, usually one slice. But that would take up all the grain allocation for a meal and would not allow other grain-based foods on the lunch plate.”

But Obama remains a big proponent.

“Because of this act…32 million children get more of the nutrition they need to learn and grow and be successful and I do hope it’s delicious — we’re working on that, yes, indeed,” Obama stated.

With public school students using #ThanksMichelle to tweet photos of their skimpy, stomach-turning school lunches, the Obama’s girls, who attend Sidwell Friends School, eat lunches from menus designed by chefs. Including chicken coconut soup, local butternut squash soup, crusted tilapia. They also eat foods their mother considers to be junk like meatball subs, BBQ wings and ice cream.

Oddly enough, Sidwell Friends School has also been rated as having one of the top rated School Lunch programs in America.

World-renowned author and poet Maya Angelou passed away at the age of 86. Lauded by Progressives as  a civil rights champion, an education reformer and supporter of President Barack Obama, there is one thing you may not know about her: Angelou was a gun owner and she used it to defend herself.

Interviewed by Time magazine in 2013, Angelou spoke of her experience.

Time: Did you inherit your mother’s fondness for guns?

Angelou: I like to have guns around. I don’t like to carry them.

Time: Have you ever fired your weapon?

Angelou: Of course!

Time: At a person?

Angelou: I’ve fired it period, not at a person I hope!

She continued, ‘I was in my house in North Carolina. It was fall. I heard someone walking on the leaves. And somebody actually turned the knob.’

So I said, ‘Stand four feet back because I’m going to shoot now!’ Boom! Boom!

The police came by and said, ‘Ms. Angelou, the shots came from inside the house.’

I said, ‘Well, I don’t know how that happened.’

Happily, everything turned out okay for her. But don’t be surprised if the next ‘bang’ you hear are the minds of the anti-gun lobby popping.

My mother would have freaked. Heck, she lost it anytime one of us kids let our dog eat from her plates.

A giraffe eating from a plate — while at the table — would have been too much for her. And she’d have beaten the child that allowed it to happen.

Michelle Obama has made ‘food deserts’ a part of her campaign against childhood obesity, saying that some people may have to take two or three buses or a taxi to get fresh fruit and veggies. The U.S. Department of Agriculture even has a locator for areas deemed ‘food deserts,’ where there is reportedly a low access to healthy food.

In case you’re wondering, there are specific criteria for how a ‘food desert’ is designated according to the USDA.

To qualify as a “low-income community,” a census tract must have either a poverty rate of 20 percent or higher, or a median family income at or below 80 percent of the area’s median family income; to qualify as a “low-access community,” at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract’s population must live more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store — for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles.

In March 2012, The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services Grants Management Unit implemented a strategic planning process intended to discuss food security in the state. They created a Food Security Steering Committee with four workgroups including Lead Nevada, Feed Nevada, Grow Nevada, and Reach Nevada, were created.

Lead Nevada had two goals that included establishing a state leadership structure for food security and promote a policy agenda to increase food security in Nevada.  The first goal is expected to be completed by July 1st with the second goal by January 1st, 2016.

Plans included adoption of an agency policy to improve efficiency, claims, and reduce errors; an Office of Food Security with a Deputy Director and Support Staff in DHHS; a Statewide Food Policy Advisory Council; an evaluation plan to measure progress on increasing food security; and a public awareness campaign.

Feed Nevada’s aim was to focus the organizations participation in each federal nutrition program available to the state. They also wanted to create an actual or virtual “one-stop-shop” system to increase access to food and other services.

All work is expected to be completed by January 1st, 2015. This included an increased participation in in-school meal programs; partnering with Women-Infants-Children and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; replication of effective out of school meal programs; a single, statewide database system; and expanded partnerships linked to a “one-stop-shop.”

Grow Nevada’s focus was simple: increase the number of servings of foods eaten that are produced in Nevada by January 1st, 2015. Milestones for this part of the program included an increased in collection centers; expanded programs and partnerships; a Food System Asset Map and an education and marketing plan.

Finally, Reach Nevada planned to change the way food is bought and shipped. It also planned to create a data base on those using the system that could be shared between other agencies and organizations. The first half of Reach Nevada is expected to be completed by January 1st, 2015, with part two to be completed six months later.

Again the plan includes internal goals like a “one-stop-shop” for agencies to acquire produce; a comprehensive client/community food supply assessment; a comprehensive benefit analysis study of the current state and nonprofit commodity system. Finally, they’ll begin sharing information on people using their services.

All of this is designed to cut ‘food insecurity’ in what the Obama Administration has dubbed ‘food deserts.’ Statistics are an unfortunate thing when it comes to both ‘food insecurity’ and ‘food deserts,’ in Nevada.

In July 2013, Wikipedia showed Nevada with its 110, 622 square miles had a population of 2,790,136 or 25.2 people per square mile. This makes Nevada the ninth least densely populated state in the U.S.

The latest numbers available, from 2009, show that only 10.5 percent of all Nevada residents have an income below the poverty level. The same stat show Nevadan’s with an income below 50% of the poverty level at 4.9 percent.

Also below the national average is Nevada’s adult obesity rate, which stood at 24.5 percent in 2009. Meanwhile, Nevada’s low-income preschool obesity rate is 13.2 percent.

Business aggregator, Manta.com shows that there are 1,559 stores that provide groceries in throughout Nevada. This includes major chain outlets, mom and pop stores, specialty shops and convenience stores.

Furthermore there are 942,147 restaurants throughout the state. This includes fast food restaurants, roadside cafes and five-star dining facilities.

Even the Department of Agriculture in 2010 estimated poorer individuals lived closer to grocery stores than those with higher incomes.

In a report to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation found no relation between California children and teens whose data he reviewed and the food they ate, their weight and proximity to food establishments within a mile and a half from their home. In a separate study publish in Public Health, Sturm looked at middle school children and saw no relationship between where the students lived and where they ate.

In another study conducted by Helen Lee of the Public Policy Institute of California, Lee gathered data on 8,000 students, including where they lived, went to school and how much they weighed. From there, she established where the students could be getting access to food around their home and even defined neighborhoods based on their economic status.

Dr. Lee found, that poor neighborhoods had nearly twice as many fast food restaurants and convenience stores as wealthier ones, and they had more than three times as many corner stores per square mile. But they also had nearly twice as many supermarkets and large-scale grocers per square mile.

Because of methodological difficulties, the idea of a ‘food desert,’ and ‘food insecurity,’ may be little more than junk science.

For example, some researchers look at neighborhood food outlets but don’t have data on how fat residents are. Others examined small areas, like part of a single city and projected the results on the nation as whole.

Still others had a different problem.

They looked at much bigger areas like ZIP codes, which include people of diverse incomes, making it hard to know what happened in pockets of poverty within those regions. Then some researchers counted only fast food restaurants and large supermarkets, missing small grocers who sold produce, while some tallied food outlets per 1,000 residents, which made densely populated urban areas seem to have fewer places per person to buy food.

In the end, it appears to all come down to data and money as Scott Walchek points out in his article, “The Wealth of Data,” for Jetset Magazine:

“An entire industry is profiting wildly on the market for your data. Massive data brokerage companies… are peering into your personal life, collecting data that is generated from everything you do online and much of what you do in the real world. And by generating billions in sales each year offering “analytical services” on nearly every household in the U.S., they are profiting from all that you do in the connected universe,” he states.

“Moreover,” Walchek adds, “this is just a fraction of the evolving…big-data industry now valued at over $300B a year and employing three million people in the United States alone…”

A judge placed a Connecticut girl in the permanent custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families in a legal dispute involving different medical diagnoses by two hospitals in March of this year. Juvenile Court Judge Joseph Johnston issued the ruling in the case of 15-year-old Justina Pelletier of West Hartford whose parents sought custody.

Tufts Medical Center had treated Justina for mitochondrial disease, a disorder that affects cellular energy production.  But Boston Children’s Hospital later diagnosed her problems as psychiatric.

When her parents rejected the new diagnosis and tried to take her back to Tufts in April 2013, the Massachusetts DCF took custody of her. Since then Justina’s condition has worsened.

Nothing has been said about her case by the Obama administration, though the President injected himself during the Florida vs. George Zimmerman murder case in March 2012, saying, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon Martin.”

In January 2013, Saeed Abedini was sentenced to eight years in an Iranian prison. His crime was returning to Iran to help build a state-run, secular orphanage where Iranian police pulled him off a bus and imprisoned him in September 2012.

This past March Abedini was taken to a hospital after an attack by gaurd at Iran’s Rajai Shahr prison.  Once there, he was shackled to a hospital bed and refused surgery for internal bleeding.

While the Obama Administration has taken the case to the United Nations and the European Union, the U.S. State Department has yet to officially demand Abedini’s release.

Also from Idaho is U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, taken captive and still being held by the Taliban in Afghanistan.  He’s the only known U.S. Prisoner-of-War being held since his disappearance in June 2009.

His whereabouts are unknown at this time. Rumors have even been floated that he is now a Taliban fighter and that’s why there are no real efforts being made to free him.

The missing serviceman’s fate is tied up in the Obama Administrations efforts to broker a peace deal between the Taliban and the Afghan government, something unlikely to happen until all U.S. troops are out of Afghanistan.

A U.S. citizen waits for her hanging execution in Sudan after she was found ‘guilty’ for the crime of apostasy. Meriam Yahya Ibrahim Ishag was also charged with adultery for marrying Daniel Wani, a Sudanese man and Christian with U.S. citizenship who lives in New Hampshire.

She was sentenced to 100 lashes after the court refused to recognize her 2011 marriage to Wani because they consider her a Muslim. Ishag, who is eight-months pregnant, also refused to convert to Islam because Christianity is the only religion she has known.

While the White House condemned her treatment and urged the Sudanese government to meet its obligations under international human rights law, the American Embassy in Sudan has denied her any help.

Since March, a U.S. Marine and Afghanistan war veteran has been held in a Tijuana, Mexico, prison.  Sergeant Andrew Tahmooressi accidentally crossed into Mexico with three personal firearms while on his way to meet friends in San Ysidro, California.

Tahmooressi had recently moved to the area to get treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder and was living out of his truck and now awaits a May 28 court date. Since his arrest a whitehouse.gov petition has been set up to draw attention to his imprisonment.

So far the petition has garnered nearly 70,000 signatures, about 30,000 short of the 100,000 required to get a response from the White House.

Yet no petition was required for the Obama Administration to deploy 80 members of the armed forces to Chad to help search for 276 kidnapped school girls. Boko Haram abducted the girls last month from Nigeria.

While the deployment is not based on any new intelligence leads, President Obama had to tell the House speaker and the president of the Senate of the move because the soldiers are armed.

It was learned earlier this month that the Obama administration intentionally released 36,000 illegal aliens in 2013. Citing a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo, the Center for Immigration Studies says those released included criminals convicted of homicide, sexual assault, kidnapping and aggravated assault.

Many of the releases were done at the discretion of the federal government and not in response to any requirements under the law and some were ordered “contrary to law,” the report said.

Maybe instead of releasing prisoners and ignoring those ‘illegally’ held abroad and here at home, Obama should study the playbook of another Progressive president, Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt faced an international dilemma in May 1904 when Ion Perdicaris was abducted along with his stepson from their Tangier home. Their abductor was Sherif Mulai Ahmed ibn-Muhammed er Raisuli, Lord of the Rif.

The Raisuli’s ransom demands included an indemnity of $70,000, land, the release of prisoners being held by the government, and the removal of the Bashaw, a local governor. Instead, Roosevelt ordered seven battleships from the Atlantic fleet to the Moroccan coast with the order: “…Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.”

Though there is much more to the story, such as Perdicaris actually being a Greek citizen and the Raisuli receiving his random, in the end Perdicaris was set free and Roosevelt went on to win a second term that November.

Progressivism, though its creep is slow and incessant, doesn’t change from generation to generation.

Senator Harry Reid plans to force a vote on legislation for a constitutional amendment giving Congress the power to regulate spending levels in federal campaigns. Reid said he’s pushing for the vote to combat what he claim’s an effort by the Koch brothers to “buy” the U.S. Senate this year.

“It’s unacceptable that the recent Supreme Court decisions have taken power away from the American voter, instead giving it to a select few of mega-billionaires,” Reid said on the Senate floor.

S.J. Resolution 19 would let Congress regulate the way money is raised and spent in federal campaigns, and let states do the same in statewide campaigns. It would also let Congress regulate spending on political action committees.

He also criticized the Supreme Court’s finding that spending money on campaigns is equal to free speech, and is not something government can regulate. Reid said if that’s true, that’s the same as saying poor people have less speech than the rich.

“If this unprecedented spending is free speech, where does that leave our middle class constituents, the poor? It leaves them out in the cold,” he said. “There should be no million-dollar entry fee to participation in our democracy.”

Reid’s office released a transcript of his planned remarks, much of it aimed once again at two private citizens. Here’s an excerpt:

“The Kochs’ bid for a hostile takeover of American democracy is calculated to make themselves even richer. Yet the Kochs and their Republican followers in Congress continue to assert that these hundreds of millions of dollars are free speech. For evidence of that, look no further than the Republican Leader, who has flat out said, ‘in our society, spending is speech.’…

This could, however, be another one of Reid’s infamous political smoke screens, as Obamacare is center stage in the courts again with yet another legal challenge aimed at derailing the Presidents signature law. But rather than going after the individual mandate, this newest suit challenges a legislative maneuver used by Reid to pass the bill.

The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) charge that Obamacare was first passed by the Senate and only later approved by the House in violation of the Constitution’s Origination Clause which reads: “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.”

The Obama administration rejects this argument.

“The Supreme Court has never invalidated an Act of Congress on the basis of the Origination Clause, and this suit presents no reason to break new ground,” Justice Department Attorney Alisa Klein wrote in her brief.

If the three judge panel agrees with PLF, the decision would invalidate Obamacare and send health care reform back to Congress for a do-over. But the judges agree with the administration, PLF lawyers are likely to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to look at the issue.

Unfortunately, one judges assigned to the case was appointed by Bill Clinton, the other two were appointed by President Obama.

Leading up to the vote on Obamacare, Reid used ‘shell bill,’ H.R. 3590 to satisfy the technical requirement that the legislation arrive from the House. That law, ‘Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009,’ offered tax credits to military members who were first-time homebuyers.

Reid eliminated the entire text of the six-page law and replaced it with the 2,000-plus page Obamacare bill. All that was left of the Home Ownership Tax Act was its bill number, H.R. 3590.

After winning Senate approval, the “amended” H.R. 3590 was sent to the House where the Democratic majority approved it. The bill was then sent to Obama who signed it into law in March 2010.

The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare in June of 2010.

“The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part and unconstitutional in part. The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage it. In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.”

The tax penalty associated with the health care mandate is expected to raise $4 billion a year in general government revenue by 2017.

To make matters worse, Reid has hinted he might change Senate rules again to make it easier to approve President Barack Obama’s nominations over Republican opposition. Reid also indicated that he is mulling a change to the rules on behalf of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Reid said Holder called him to ask what can be done to speed up the process in the Senate for approving judicial nominations.

“It’s hard to fathom that the work of Attorney General Eric Holder and his department is being recklessly hindered by Republican obstruction,” Reid said.

Last year, Reid changed the rule allowing Democrats to advance Obama’s nominees in a procedural vote without needing any Republican votes. Prior to Reid’s decision, 60 votes were needed for a procedural vote.

Under current rules, Republicans still have the right to delay final votes on nominees by requiring the Senate to sit through blocks of time that are reserved for debate. He pointed out that the current rule call for up to 30 hours of debate before a circuit court judge can be approved, and eight hours of debate for U.S. attorneys and assistant U.S. attorneys.

Reid said these were “arbitrary” numbers and hinted they could be shortened.

“I don’t plan on changing the rules today again, but how much longer can we put up with this?” Reid complained.

“Rather than live up to their responsibilities, Republicans are pouting, they’re pouting,” he add. “They are saying, ‘oh, they changed the rules getting these judges done, so we’re going to agree to nothing.’”

This is the same Harry Reid who offered up a plan from the senate floor to have Republican members who support the Koch Brother’s begin wearing NASCAR-like logo’s on their clothing.

“NASCAR fans can easily find their favorite drivers by simply looking at the cars as they fly by, because there are corporate emblems on the hood of the car, in fact they’re all over the car,” Reid said. “For our clothing here in the Senate, we don’t bear commercials logos. Many Republicans might as well wear Koch insignias.”

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” reads John 15:13. (KJV)

As we observe Memorial Day, the bodies of as many as 60 veterans have reportedly been kept at the Los Angeles County morgue for as long as 18 months without receiving a proper burial. The coroner’s office said the bodies were unclaimed and they did not know how long they had been there, blaming the delay on the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Assistant director of Riverside National Cemetery, Cindy Van Bibber denied the delay was a result of the VA adding that between February and May 22, the VA was told of only one body being kept by the coroner, “and that person was buried.”

“In order for us to schedule an interment, the VA has to be notified that a body is in need of burial, she said.

Van Bibber said the bodies of 28 veterans at the morgue were finally moved Friday for burial to the Riverside National Cemetery, but it may take a while for all of the veterans to be buried.

Every Wednesday morning, Richard Burns, a Marine veteran goes to the Riverside National Cemetery and volunteers to lead memorial services for the unclaimed and often indigent vets.

“I think it’s incomprehensible,” said Burns. “It’s kind of sad that these people don’t get the proper care that they deserve. Even after death.”

Steve L. Muro, the VA undersecretary who oversees all 131 U.S. national cemeteries claims the VA has verified eligibility for burial at Riverside National Cemetery of 37 of the bodies.

“Whether they have called and scheduled the interments through the scheduling office,” Muro said, “I have not been able to verify that as of yet.”

Shameful doesn’t even begin to describe this, and yet it isn’t the first time something like this has happened.

The U.S. Air Force confirmed in December 2008 that the unclaimed remains of 274 U.S. service members were disposed of in a Virginia landfill between 2003 and 2008. Officials said the dumping was hidden from families who had given authorization for the remains to be disposed of in a respectful and dignified manner.

Both Pentagon and Air Force officials said that figuring out how many remains had been sent to the King George County, Va., landfill would take combing through the records of more than 6,300 troops.

According to military records, 976 fragments from 274 personnel were cremated, incinerated and dumped in the landfill. An additional 1,762 remains, which could not be DNA tested because of damage from explosions, were gathered from the battlefield and dumped in a similar manner.

Our nation is only as good as the honor it affords its fallen heroes. That said, and as a military veteran myself, it seems we are on the precipice of evil.