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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.

The tiny town of Fort Dick is north of Crescent City, California, and only a few miles south of the Oregon state line. Also called ‘Russell’s Prairie,’ at one point, Fort Dick dates to before the official establishment of Crescent City, when an unknown settler’s log house served as a “fort” as a defense from the Indian attacks.

Jedediah Smith entered the area of Fort Dick and skirted the eastern edge of Lake Earl between June 14th and the 16th, 1828.  During this time, not only did they explore the area, but they made contact with the Tolowa Indians.

The company pushed up the beach until they struck a “low neck of land running into the sea where there was plenty of clover and grass for our horses” on June 14th and camped. The trappers were forced to take to the sea for several hundred yards at a time, “the swells some times would be as high as the horses (sic) backs.”

The company remained on the south bank of Elk Creek on the 15th, while several hunters went out, where one of them killed a buck elk, “weighing 695 lbs., neat weight.” A number of Tolowa came into camp at this time, “bringing fish, clams, strawberries, and camas roots,” which the party bought.

The next day, the company rode out, heading north-northwest, where they had a lot of difficulty in getting the horses across Elk Creek, and had to “to make a pen on the bank to force them across.” They then camped on the wooded flats south of Lake Earl.

Skirting the eastern margin of Lake Earl, the trappers camped three nights in between the lake and what would later be known as Kings Valley. On June 20th the company struck eastward, crossed Howland Hill, where Smith saw the river destined in later years to bear his name.

After they climbed the ridge separating the watersheds of Smith River and Myrtle Creek. The night of the 21st was spent overlooking the headwaters of Little Mill and Myrtle Creeks.

Instead of pushing on to High Divide, Smith led his men westward out of the mountains, halting for the night of the 22nd near where Morrison Creek flows into Smith River.  By the following day that had unknowingly entered the Oregon territory, where they pitched camp along the Windchuck Creek.

As they rode northward up the Oregon coast, the Mountain Men advanced along the shore where possible, though a rocky bluff often forced them inland. To ford the many water courses, Smith had to wait for ebb tide.

Although less difficult than passing through the mountains, progress was slow. The 12 miles made on June 25th, was called the ‘best march for a long time,’ by Smith.

By the evening of July 13th, the company had reached the Umpqua River. The next morning, as the men were cooking breakfast, they were attacked by 100 or more Indians.

Within a few minutes, all the party except Smith, Arthur Black, and John Turner were dead. Turner ran into Smith as he was returning from a reconnaissance, where he told Smith of the massacre.

Believing they were the only ones who escaped, the two started for the Willamette Valley. However, Black was able to track Smith and Turner, eventually joining them for the trek north.

Of the 18 white men who first entered the Fort Dick area, 15 died.  Their June 14th camp site is along Elk Creek, a quarter of a mile west of U.S. 101 and  Elk Valley Road.

Due to continuous unrest between the settlers and Indians, in 1862 the military was called in, at the request of the Department of Indian Affairs, to set up a presence at Fort Dick. However, the military selected a site at what is known as Camp Lincoln, jus’ east of Fort Dick.

In 1888 a shake and shingle mill, owned by the four Bertsch brothers (Frederick, Jacob, Joseph  and William H.) moved to Fort Dick and town was renamed ‘Newburg.’  A second post office was set up in 1917 — the first in 1896 — and the name of the town reverted back to Fort Dick.

Nearby is the Yontocket Historic District, where a Tolowa village named Hawunkwut was once located. The district is an archeological site added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, commemorating the Yontocket Massacre of Tolowa people by white settlers in 1853.

The dead were unceremoniously thrown into the slough, and the village burned, after which it was known as ‘Burnt Ranch.’ The Yontocket Slough was once the main drainage channel of the Smith River, but about 900 years ago, the river abandoned the channel.

A 1856 map of the area shows the slough (then named ‘Ottawa Slough’) tidally connected to the Smith River and the upstream Tryon Creek flowing south into Lake Earl but dune migration has cut off this connection.  The slough has silted about 16 inches since the 1850s.

In 1881, Yontocket Slough was described as “literally alive with salmon” even after years of commercial harvest. In December 1861, an early fishery, Woodbury’s cannery and 400 barrels of salmon were washed out by the Noachian Deluge.

Continual harvesting in excess of 50 tons per year however, led to the decline of the fishery which was closed to commercial take during the 1930s. The 1964 Christmas flood added several inches of silt on top of the sediments, further reducing its depth and the fish habitat.

By 1942, the slough began to isolate from tidal influences. Before the 1942 construction of Pala Road, dividing the slough into a lower (near the Smith River at the northern end) and an upper part, salmon used the three-and-a-half mile stretch of water to migrate between the river and their upstream spawning grounds.

A transplanted Italian, Andrew Tomasini arrived in California March 15th, 1911. His Fort Dick Tavern opened in 1930.

At that time, the Volstead Act was law and the establishment was instead ‘an ice cream and sandwich shop.’  When Prohibition lifted in 1933, Tomasini obtained his liquor license, which eventually became the oldest ever held in Del Norte County at the time.

The original bar, now well over a century old, is still in use at ‘Tomasini’s Enoteca,’ on 3rd Street in Crescent City. The restaurant is owned and operated by Sacha Tomasini, Andrew’s granddaughter.

Former long-time resident Victor Shaw writes in his blog, ‘Tells-n-Lies,’ “Fort Dick also claims ownership of Pacific Shores one of the largest failed ocean front subdivisions in all of California. The miles and miles of abandoned paved roads of Pacific Shores provided a place for thousands of us to learn to drive.”

“The main road leading to Pacific Shores Kellogg Road is maintained as access to Kellogg Beach and literally leads right to the sand and beach,” he adds. “Kellogg Road has served as the Crescent City drag strip for the last forty years.”

“On Lake Earl Drive there has always been a sign that says Fort Dick and list a population and elevation just like every other city or town in California,” Shaw concludes. “The population has been 350 or 500 in my time and has swelled with the arrival of the prison and these days’ nearly 1000 people call Fort Dick home.”

Opening in 1989, Pelican Bay State Prison is a supermax California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison. The 275-acre facility is explicitly designed to keep California’s alleged “worst of the worst” prisoners in long-term solitary confinement.

“The biggest problem that we’re facing right now,” Illinois state senator Barack Obama said in 2008, “has to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America.”

But now that he’s the one in the White House, he’s plans to use his executive privilege to deny the gun industry of working capital and credit. It’s dressed up as fraud prevention, but many of the companies targeted have good credit histories and operate good and well-managed companies.

The Obama Administration is using the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to impose a “high risk” label on any business making firearms. Add to this the Justice Department’s ‘Operation Chokepoint,’ and the gun industry, which generates about $37 billion in business each year and is responsible for 250,000 full-time jobs, will fail.

Since 2011, regulators have increased scrutiny on banks’ customers. The FDIC in 2011 urged banks to better manage the risks of their merchant customers who employ payment processors, such as PayPal, for credit card transactions.

“We’re committed to ensuring that our efforts to combat fraud do not discourage or inhibit the lawful conduct of these honest merchants,” the Justice Department said in a May 7th blog post.

Banks are being forced to comply with Washington’s demands out of fear, because conducting business with clients deemed “risky” puts them in jeopardy of audits. This overreach also side-steps the 2nd Amendment.

“It’s pretty clear,” says Texas Congressman Steve Stockman, “that unless Congress uses the power of the purse to stop him, Barack Obama will use his ‘phone and his pen’ to ban guns by cutting off money for gun manufacturers and dealers.”

In 2012, Bank of America dropped the 12-year account of McMillan Group International, a gun manufacturer in Phoenix. Gun parts maker American Spirit Arms in Scottsdale, Arizona, received similar treatment by B of A.

The banking giant blamed a misunderstanding with the Arizona gun manufacturers McMillan Group International and American Spirit Arms.

“We would not deny banking services to an organization solely on the basis of its industry,” the banking giant later claimed.

However, the American Banking Association (ABA,) the industry’s advocacy group in Washington D.C. says there is an ongoing push to shutdown gun manufacturers through banking regulations.

“We’re being threatened with a regulatory regime that attempts to foist on us the obligation to monitor all types of transactions,” senior ABA vice president Richard Riese, said in the April 28 issue of American Banker. “All of this is predicated on a notion that the banks are a choke point for all businesses.”

Just last month, Black Rifle Armory in Henderson, Nevada, had its bank accounts frozen as the bank tried to determine whether any of Black Rifle’s online transactions were suspicious.

Congressmen Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Jim Jordan, chairman of the House’s Economic Growth Subcommittee, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder accusing the administration of abusing it’s authority.

“The (committee) is concerned that both the goal and mechanisms of Operation Choke Point may constitute serious mismanagement and abuse of (your) department’s … authority…” reads the letter in part.

“There is evidence that the true goal of Operation Choke Point is to target online lenders and the payment processors who serve them,” the letter continues. “The extraordinary breadth of the Department’s dragnet prompts concern that the true goal of Operation Choke Point is not to cut off actual fraudsters’ access to the financial system, but rather to eliminate legal financial services to (businesses to) which (your) Department objects…”

“(Your Department) is needlessly punishing good actors with the bad, and threatening legitimate merchants,” it concludes.

Holder has so far refused to release any of the documentation demanded by Issa and Jordan.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is placing the blame for the Veterans Affairs scandal on former President George W. Bush, while arguing Democrats have worked hard for veterans in recent years. Pelosi took a shot at Bush while saying that the scandal is a high priority for Obama.

“He sees the ramifications of some seeds that were sown a long time ago, when you have two wars over a long period of time and many, many more, millions more veterans,” she told reporters during a press briefing. “And so, I know that he is upset about it.”

She never mentioned Bush by name, but she alluded to him.

“Maybe when we go into war, we should be thinking about its consequences and its ramifications,” Pelosi said. “You would think that would be a given, but maybe it wasn’t. And so, we go in a war in Afghanistan, leave Afghanistan for Iraq with unfinished business in Afghanistan. Ten years later, we have all of these additional veterans. In the past five years, two million more veterans needing benefits from the VA. That’s a huge, huge increase.”

Of course she overlooked President Obama’s 2008 campaign promise press release title, “Fulfilling A Sacred Trust With Our Veterans,” to reduce the VA’s claims backlog:

“As president, Obama will hire additional claims workers and convene our nation’s leading veterans groups, employees and managers to develop an updated training and management model that will ensure that VA benefit decisions are rated fairly and consistently, and stem from adequate training and accountability for each claims adjudicator.”

She also suggests Obamacare might hold the key to solving the problem.

“We have the Affordable Care Act that is out there that is providing resources for more federally-qualified health clinics around the country,” Pelosi said. “Maybe we should take a look at how we deal with our veterans’ needs in a way that says let’s help them closer to home, whether that’s a federally qualified health clinic or in some other institution that provides health care closer to home. (It’s) especially important for our veterans who live in rural areas.”

In the end, getting the VA Medical System to collapse and then replacing it with Obamacare is really what this whole scandal is about.

The Washington Redskins are telling Senate Democrats to pound sand when it comes to the team’s name. The 49 Democratic Senators claim the name ‘Redskins’ is a racial slur and must be changed.

In a letter to Senator Harry Reid, team President Bruce Allen wrote: “Our use of ‘Redskins’ as the name of our football team for more than 80 years has always been respectful of and shown reverence toward the proud legacy and traditions of Native Americans.”

It also notes that the team’s logo was designed by Native American leaders and cites surveys that Native Americans and Americans as a whole support the name, including a 2014 Associated Press poll that showed 83 percent of Americans favored keeping the name.

After taking to the Senate floor to complain that the name ‘Redskins’ is ‘racist,’ Reid and Senator Maria Cantwell, of Washington, led a letter-writing effort.  In it, the senators mentioned the NBA’s quick action recently to ban Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life after he was heard on an audio recording making offensive comments about blacks.

They said Roger Goodell should formally push to rename the ‘Redskins.’

“We urge you and the National Football League to send the same clear message as the NBA did: that racism and bigotry have no place in professional sports,” read the letter.

The senators noted that tribal organizations representing more than 2 million Native Americans across the U.S. have said they want the ‘Redskins’ name dropped.

Despite federal laws protecting their identity, “Every Sunday during football season, the Washington, D.C., football team mocks their culture,” they wrote. “The NFL can no longer ignore this and perpetuate the use of this name as anything but what it is: a racial slur.”

In the past, Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has resisted pressure to change the name, citing tradition. However there has been a renewed attempt in recent weeks to force Snyder to change the name by President Obama, lawmakers in both parties and civil rights groups.

Why bother to have rules?

From the Detroit Free Press:

U.S. Rep. John Conyers’ on-again, off-again roller-coaster ride for the Aug. 5 ballot took a new twist Friday when U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman put the 85-year-old congressman back on the ballot.

Leitman’s decision, released late Friday, contradicts the Secretary of State’s review of Conyers’ petitions, which found earlier in the day that Conyers had less than half the required signatures of valid registered voters on the petitions he turned in to qualify for the Aug. 5 primary ballot.

But Leitman said the requirement that petition circulators be registered voters — the issue that got Conyers booted off the ballot in the first place — put serious limitations on the free speech rights of the circulators, the people who signed the petitions and Conyers.

“The public interest favors the enjoining of the likely unconstitutional Registration Statute,” for circulators, Leitman said.

As one friend so gently put it, “The rules aren’t made for Progressives — jus’ everyone else.”

“Sports are a microcosm of society,” former World number one professional tennis player and current LGBT rights activist Billie Jean King is reported to have said.

If that is true – both are missing the mark.

Michael Sam, the first openly homosexual player ever to enter the National Football League draft, was taken in the seventh-round by the St. Louis Rams. Because of this certain groups are claiming the late-round pick was because of homophobia.

ESPN claims there, “… were hints of that when Miami Dolphins player Don Jones tweeted “OMG” and “horrible” in reaction to Sam’s on-screen kiss. The tweets were soon deleted.

Jones was then fined an undisclosed amount and must undergo educational training. He has been excused from all team activities until he completes the training.

“We were disappointed to read Don’s tweets,” Coach Joe Philbin said in a statement. “They were inappropriate and unacceptable, and we regret the negative impact these comments had on such an important weekend for the NFL. We met with Don today about respect, discrimination and judgment. These comments are not consistent with the values and standards of our program.”

Jones later apologized for his ‘tweets.’

“I want to apologize to Michael Sam for the inappropriate comments that I made last night on social media. I take full responsibility for them and I regret that these tweets took away from his draft moment,” said Jones in a statement.

ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith took issue with the Dolphins’ decision to punish Jones for his reaction to Sam’s kiss with his boyfriend, Vito Cammisano.  While he repeatedly indicated his support for same-sex marriage and gay rights, Smith called on Sam’s supporters to practice the tolerance they preach.

“It’s a very, very dangerous thing when people see something and they have a problem with what they’re seeing and they express themselves, and ultimately they’re fined,” he said on ESPN2’s First Take. “You can say they’re wrong, you could be the Miami Dolphins and talk to them, but to fine them and prohibit them from team activities — that’s getting a bit dicey now.”

Speaking of ‘a bit dicey’ — in a move which he said will teach companies a lesson for “trampling on Christian values”, Jack Burkman has also aimed his protest against financial giant Visa, who gave Sam his first advertising contract.  He claims several evangelical Christian leaders from around the U.S, as well as grassroots organizations in 27 of the 50 states, have mobilized against the firm.

As part of the protest, Rams fans will be told to stop buying the team’s merchandise and not to attend games, while members of the public will be asked stop using their Visa cards, and to sell any of the company’s stocks they may own.

“Visa and the Rams will learn that when you trample the Christian community and Christian values, there will be a terrible financial price to pay,” said Burkman, head of the Washington DC lobbying firm JM Burkman & Assoc.

As well as the boycott, Burkman’s firm is attempting to push a draft bill through Washington, which will ban all openly gay players from the NFL and other professional sports in the country.  Called “The American Decency Act of 2014,” it mandates a fine for any professional sports team of $8 to $13 million for each openly gay player hired.

But Burkman’s boycott may have backfired as Michael Sam’s jersey is the number two seller according to NFLShop.com. Sam’s jersey have also outsold those of Jadeveon Clowney, the number one pick overall who was drafted by Houston.

The top selling jersey belongs to Johnny Manziel, the quarterback taken in the first round by the Cleveland Browns. Manziel had an advantage in terms of uniform sales since he was taken earlier in the draft.

The league’s online shop did not release the number of jerseys sold, only the rankings. But it did say this was the biggest draft weekend for sales in the site’s history.

When all is said and done, Ram’s coach Jeff Fisher said Sam is just another young player trying to make the team’s 53-man roster.

“He’s a good football player, and we got a good football player right after him,” Fisher said, “so I’m excited about our draft, excited about our production, excited about the possibility of adding him to our defensive front.”

President Barack Obama congratulated Michael Sam for being the first openly gay football player taken in the National Football League draft, the White House said in a statement.

“From the playing field to the corporate boardroom, LGBT Americans prove everyday that you should be judged by what you do and not who you are,” Obama said.

One of eight children, Sam grew up in Hitchcock, Texas, where he was raised primarily by his mother. At one point, he has said, he lived out of his mother’s car and briefly stayed with another family.

Three of Sam’s siblings have died, including an older brother he saw die from a gunshot wound. Two of his brothers are serving prison sentences.