o EPA ALSO TARGETING CONSERVATIVES, IT'S NOT JUST THE IRS By Michael Bastasch - According to EPA records obtained by the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute, since January 2012 the agency has granted fee waivers for 75 out of 82 Freedom of Information Act requests sent by major environmental groups, denying only seven of them — meaning green groups saw their fees waived 92 percent of the time. At the same time, the EPA frequently denied fee waivers to conservative groups. EPA records show that the agency rejected or ignored 21 out of 26 fee waiver requests from such conservative groups as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Institute for Energy Research, and Judicial Watch — an 81 percent rejection rate.

o The bipartisan folly of our Islam delusion By Michael Youssef - Some misguided Republicans and Democrats who think that the ideology of Islam can be rehabilitated and made compatible with Western Christian values.

o Obama's 'Enemies List' -- Tyranny in Action -- IRS Target of Opportunity By Mark Alexander - "Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants." --Alexander Hamilton (1787) ...If you asked me whether I thought card-carrying members of the Socialist Democratic Party would, by way of their bureaucratic surrogates, use the IRS and other government agencies to target groups with the name "Patriot," I would have said, "Of course." If you asked me whether I thought they would get caught at it, I would have said "No," because they're smart enough to use "cutouts" between their office and the bureaucrats committing the offense. Cutouts are bureaucratic managers who act as surrogates to do the political bidding of elected officials. They are blamed and sacrificed for the "good of the cause," in order to protect (read: "provide plausible deniability for") elected officials who feign outrage and indignation at the violation of law in support of their political agenda. When the president of the United States is the elected official behind a culture of corruption and abuse of power, the layers of cutouts make it nearly impossible to find impeachable evidence of executive collusion.

o Obamacare Is About Power By Jim DeMint - Obamacare taxes most people with health insurance, and most people without health insurance. Likewise, the law taxes many employers who provide health insurance, and most employers who don’t provide health insurance. Obamacare’s heavy reliance on the IRS seems somehow fitting, as the entire law relies on a scheme of government controls and regulations to work its will on the health care system. The law imposes price controls on insurance companies and extends a system of price controls for pharmaceutical companies. Obamacare also places a board of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats at the center of its plans to control health care costs. A 2010 Congressional Research Service report found that the number of new bureaucracies “that will ultimately be created” by Obamacare “is currently unknowable.” Little wonder that Vice President Biden boasted shortly before the law was passed, “We’re going to control the insurance companies.” That’s what Obamacare is about. It’s not about health care. It’s about government control and power. And the record of this Administration shows its willingness to use this power in arbitrary and harmful ways.

o THE PULPIT OF AMERICA: A WHISPER OR A ROAR? By Dana Sleger - We live in a culture where celebrities are worshipped, and their destructive behavior is mimicked. We live in a culture where the political system is made up of puppets on strings of compromise controlled by the master of deception. We live in a culture where any form of idolatry, particularly the multi-billion dollar pornography industry, rules in hearts of all ages. We live in a culture where worldviews are shaped by the agenda-setting voice of the media. Sadly, we also live in a culture where the pulpit has become a funnel of watered down messages — a far cry from how the pulpit of the colonial days operated with passionate conviction.
   ... In a recent interview, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William G. “Jerry” Boykin, executive vice president of Family Research Council, discussed the critical importance of pastors firmly addressing social issues in America instead of retreating to a compromised position that ignores frontline matters: "It is my absolute firm belief that America is in the shape that it’s in today because of the Church in America. And that is because the Church has compromised on almost every issue. The Church has not been the salt and light. The Church has not been what the early Church in America was and what the Church today should be according to God’s expectations of the Body of Christ. The Church is in a compromised position.
   ...There are such complex issues in America today. It’s become very clear that government can’t answer those issues, the government can’t solve it, the government can’t fix it. There’s only one answer and that is found in the scripture that’s found in the pulpits. So the pastors who are preaching messages that resonate as being truthful, whether they want to preach them or not, when they get up and preach these hard sermons and they talk about social issues and they talk about the direction of the nation, and more importantly, they talk about the obligation of Christians to get involved in what’s going on, what they are finding is they lose a few, but then they gain more in the aftermath because people are migrating to where the truth is being spoken."
   ...Charles G. Finney, a revivalist, reformer and one of the leaders in the Second Great Awakening, was well aware the condition of the pulpit would determine the condition of the nation: "Brethren, our preaching will bear its legitimate fruits. If immorality prevails in the land, the fault is ours in a great degree. If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discrimination, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in religion, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it. Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart, and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation." 

o Obamacare Tax Dollars Pouring Into ACORN, MoveOn, LaRaza…  By Sara Noble - Your Obamacare tax money is being poured into community organizations so they can enroll the uninsured in Obamacare. The obvious end-result is that they will enroll people into the Democratic Party as well. The Senate immigration bill does the same thing. It pays community organizations to educate immigrants on their path to citizenship and to the Democratic Party. Sebelius did an end-run around Congress last week and solicited funds from organizations like Enroll America to help publicize Obamacare. Enroll America management is purely political. President Anne Filipic is a White House insider who networks with community organizers. She was a DNC official before she worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign in Iowa. She manages messaging for the very community organizations who are taking our money – ACORN (exposed as corrupt but still functioning), LaRaza (the radical open borders group) and MoveOn (a radical socialist organization) are some of them.
   Filipic also manages the messaging for 39 Democratic members of Congress. Obamacare requires these far-left community organization be hired as “navigators” to enroll the uninsured. Union members are also being hired as navigators and we know where they stand. Please read about this at Investors Business Daily The corruption doesn’t stop there. Community Organizations like ACORN are also involved in taking our money to set up Obamacare CO-OPs. Obamacare allows for the establishment of Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan (CO-OP).  A CO-OP is a federal program created to assist in the development of non-profit, member-run health insurance issuers. The issuers will offer qualified health plans in the individual and small group markets. Organizations participating in CO-OP programs must be non-profit entities. Once formed at great expense to the taxpayer, they can put the co-op into the healthcare exchange to compete even though it is known they can’t compete.

o ObamaCare's Billions In Hidden Pork For Unions By IBD EDITORIALS - (Don't miss the chart at link.)  Health Reform: How do you funnel billions of dollars to your union pals at a time when the government is running record deficits? Easy, you just tuck the money into ObamaCare. According to a new Government Accountability Office report, the federal government has so far handed out $2.7 billion out of a $5 billion program squirreled away in ObamaCare.
   The Early Retiree Reinsurance Program is advertized as a way to "stabilize the availability of employer-sponsored coverage for early retirees," according to a Health and Human Services memo. The argument goes that companies are increasingly dropping retiree health benefits, leaving those who retire before becoming eligible for Medicare in a jam — either they face exorbitant rates for insurance or expose themselves to potentially catastrophic health costs.
The little-noticed ObamaCare program was supposed to encourage companies to continue offering this benefit until 2014 — when ObamaCare fully kicks in and will solve everything — by reimbursing companies for a chunk of their retiree health costs.
   But lift the hood a little and this program looks more like a slush fund for Friends of Democrats. Almost as soon as the program was announced, thousands of well-connected unions and government agencies rushed in to apply for the free money. As a result, the agency running the program had to stop accepting applications in May or risk running out of funds.
   And just look at who made the cut. According to figures obtained by IBD, 10 of the top 12 recipients are either unions or public employee groups. In fact, the biggest single recipient was the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, which alone grabbed more than 8% of all the funds handed out so far. Other union beneficiaries include the United Food and Commercial Workers, the United Mine Workers and the Teamsters.
   Meanwhile, almost half of the money doled out has gone to state and local governments, the GAO found. Other big beneficiaries are giant companies such as AT&T and Verizon that, combined, have received more than a quarter-billion dollars under the program. The problem is that these groups are the least likely to drop their retiree health benefits, calling the lie to the Obama administration's whole "stabilizing" excuse.
   In fact, over the past 10 years, the share of state and local governments offering retiree benefits increased — climbing to 83% from 80% in 2001, according to an annual Kaiser Family Foundation health benefits survey. That's at a time when private companies have been dropping retiree health plans to cut costs, with the share of large firms offering such benefits falling to 26% this year from 37% in 2001, the Kaiser survey shows.
   So this ObamaCare money is really being used mainly to pay off unions and governments that would have provided these benefits anyway.
While the law forbids employers from using the funds for anything other than retiree health costs, money is fungible, freeing up union and government resources for other uses like, say, helping Obama get re-elected. Even if the government weren't running record deficits and drowning in debt, wasting billions of dollars like this would be unacceptable. But with the country on the fiscal edge, it's an outrage. Is anyone on the debt-reduction "supercommittee" paying attention?

o IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office By John Parkinson ABC News - Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.
   ...As the House voted to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act Thursday evening, House Speaker John Boehner expressed “serious concerns” that the IRS is empowered as the law’s chief enforcer. “Fully repealing ObamaCare will help us build a stronger, healthier economy, and will clear the way for patient-centered reforms that lower health care costs and protect jobs,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said. “Obamacare empowers the agency that just violated the public’s trust by secretly targeting conservative groups,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., added. “Even by Washington’s standards, that’s unacceptable.”
   Sen. John Cornyn even introduced a bill, the “Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013,” which would prohibit the Secretary of the Treasury, or any delegate, including the IRS, from enforcing the Affordable Care Act. “Now more than ever, we need to prevent the IRS from having any role in Americans’ health care,” Cornyn, R-Texas, stated. “I do not support Obamacare, and after the events of last week, I cannot support giving the IRS any more responsibility or taxpayer dollars to implement a broken law.”
   ...UPDATED: IRS Tax Exemption/Obamacare Exec Got $103,390 in Bonuses; Did Obama OK them? Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012. More recently, Ingram was promoted to serve as director of the tax agency's Obamacare program office, a position that put her in charge of the vast expansion of the IRS' regulatory power and staffing in connection with federal health care, ABC reported earlier today.
   Ingram received a $7,000 bonus in 2009, according to data obtained by The Washington Examiner from the IRS, then a $34,440 bonus in 2010, $35,400 in 2011 and $26,550 last year, for a total of $103,390. Her annual salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during the same period. The 2010, 2011 and 2012 bonuses were awarded during the period when IRS harassment of the conservative groups was most intense. The newspaper obtained the data via a Freedom of Information Act request. Bonuses as large as those awarded to Ingram typically require presidential approval, according to federal personnel regulations. The largest of such awards, however, require presidential approval, according to the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal civil service workforce.

o Inventor of ADHD: “ADHD is a fictitious disease” by Moritz Nestor - The alarmed critics of the Ritalin disaster are now getting support from an entirely different side. The German weekly Der Spiegel quoted in its cover story on 2 February 2012 the US American psychiatrist Leon Eisenberg, born in 1922 as the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, who was the “scientific father of ADHD” and who said at the age of 87, seven months before his death in his last interview: “ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease” (Blech, Jörg: Schwermut ohne Scham. In: Der Spiegel, Nr. 6/6.2.12, p. 122–131, p. 128.)
   ...It is this issue that the American psychologist Lisa Cosgrove and others investigated in their study Financial Ties between DSM-IV Panel Members and the Pharmaceutical Industry7. They found that “Of the 170 DSM panel members 95 (56%) had one or more financial associations with companies in the pharmaceutical industry. One hundred percent of the members of the panels on ‘Mood Disorders’ and ‘Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders’ had financial ties to drug companies. [...]
   The connections are especially strong in those diagnostic areas where drugs are the first line of treatment for mental disorders.”8 In the next edition of the manual, the situation is unchanged. “Of the 137 DSM-V panel members who have posted disclosure statements, 56% have reported industry ties – no improvement over the percent of DSM-IV members.” (DSM Panel Members Still Getting pharma funds. URL: http://www.cchrint.org/tag/lisa-cosgrove/ [8.2.2012 23:21:29]) 
   “The very vocabulary of psychiatry is now defined at all levels by the pharmaceutical industry,” said Dr Irwin Savodnik, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles.10 This is well paid. Just one example: The Assistant Director of the Pediatric Psychopharmacology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School received “$1 million in earnings from drug companies between 2000 and 2007”. (Cf. http://www.cchrint.org/tag/lisa-cosgrove/)
   In any case, no one can easily get around the testimony of the father of ADHD: “ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease.” The task of psychologists, educators and doctors is not to put children on the “chemical lead” because the entire society cannot handle the products of its misguided theories of man and raising children, and instead hands over our children to the free pharmaceutical market. Let us return to the basic matter of personal psychology and education: The child is to acquire personal responsibility and emphatic behavior under expert guidance – and that takes the family and the school: In these fields, the child should be able to lead off mentally. This constitutes the core of the human person.