General Reported He Was Pressured on Testimony About White House-Backed Project, Sources Say

Gen. William Shelton, head of the Air Force Space Command, told House members in a classified briefing earlier this month that he was pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in a way that would favor a large company funded by Philip Falcone, a major Democratic donor, congressional sources told Fox News.

Republicans have raised questions about whether project pursued by the company, LightSquared, is being unduly expedited by the Obama administration, which has pushed for national wireless network upgrades.

The Virginia-based satellite and broadband communications company has plans to build a nationwide, next-generation, 4G phone network that many, including Shelton, think would seriously hinder the effectiveness of high-precision GPS receiver systems, a product used most commonly by the United States military.

A source familiar with the technology told Fox News that the LightSquared spectrum would be 5 billion times stronger than the military's GPS system, rendering the military's system almost useless.

“Imagine trying to have a telephone conversation while your neighbors are hosting a rock concert,” the source told Fox News. “That’s the situation the military is facing.”

Shelton, in testimony Thursday before a House Armed Services subcommittee, refused to suggest that interference problems could be mitigated, as he allegedly was being pressured to say.

Military training that relies on precision GPS, such as dropping ordnance, potentially could cease to exist in the United States. Many farmers who also rely on the systems would also be affected. It's estimated this system is used by as many as 1 million people.

A House Armed Services Committee staff member confirmed to Fox News that when asked whether he was pressured to change public testimony he had prepared to for the hearing Thursday, Gen. Shelton said he was "being asked to say things he didn't agree with." 

It's unclear who exactly pressured Shelton, but it's possible the culprits are in White House, Department of Defense or the Office of Management and Budget, which each approve military testimony prepared for Congress. The House staff member also told Fox News a copy of Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked to LightSquared.

The Pentagon did not respond to Fox News' requests Thursday evening to comment for this story, though a spokeswoman for Shelton told the Washington Post that there was no improper influence on the general's testimony. The Post also reported that the White House denied trying to influence Shelton's testimony.

The company also defended its work.

“We understand that some in the telecom sector fear the challenges for their business model that LightSquared presents. It’s also ludicrous to suggest LightSquared’s success depends on political connections. This is a private company that has never taken one dollar in taxpayer money,” chief executive Sanjiv Ahuja said in a statement quoted by the Post.

At the House subcommittee hearing Thursday, which focused on strategic forces and sustaining GPS for national security, Republican Chairman Michael Turner lashed out at the Obama administration for its acceptance of LightSquared proposals. He took aim at FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a longtime basketball buddy of President Obama, for not showing up at the hearing and for granting a waiver to LightSquared on Jan. 26.

"I trust Chairman Genachowski is doing something very important this morning if he couldn't be here to discuss the significant harm to national security that may result from the FCC's action,” Turner said.

AttackWatch.com is the Administration's Latest Propaganda Arm

President Obama's official re-election campaign has set up a website ostensibly to defend him against false attacks, but its obvious purpose is to smear Republicans and propagandize. What could be more shameless??      
Jim Messina, Obama's re-election campaign manager, in a fundraising email announcing the website, said: "Forming the first line of defense against a barrage of misinformation won't be easy. Our success will depend on a team of researchers and writers to stay on the lookout for false claims about the President and his record, bring you the facts, and hold our opposition accountable."?      
Does any rational person believe these people anymore? They trade in lies and misinformation, and the only chance they have to re-elect Obama -- and it's still slim -- is to grossly distort Obama's record and fabricate fantasies about his opposition.?      
That's what this new website is all about. It's called "AttackWatch.com," but it should be called "AttackDog.com." It has already proved that in its first few days of existence. When I opened the website for the first time, I saw revolving pictures of Obama's currently front-running GOP rivals, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, with the accompanying captions "Rick Perry's massive jobs lie" and "Romney's job chart shows flawed understanding of the facts." Glenn Beck's photo also rotates into view with the line "Glenn Beck twists the facts on Israel."?      
Do you ever remember a White House -- and make no mistake about who's behind this ruse -- soliciting hordes of followers to do opposition research for it? Then again, we've never before had a community organizer in the Oval Office.?      
The pseudo-indignation of Obama's supporters rings hollow when measured against Obama's very mode of operation throughout his term of office. On every major issue, Obama's practice has been to select, isolate and demonize a target, from fat cat bankers to insurance companies making obscene profits to the greedy rich who didn't want to pay their fair share of taxes to Chrysler's secured creditors who were slandered because they resisted his scandalous debt restructuring scheme.?      
The concept of this website is perversely amusing when you consider the administration's history of manipulating the Internet for political gain. I reported in my book "Crimes Against Liberty" that the Obama-Holder Justice Department had formed a secret in-house blogging group to participate on websites to influence public opinion. Dubbed the "Blog Squad," this political operation was operating out of the very halls of the institution dedicated to administering justice in the United States. On the taxpayers' dime, it was paying partisan political operatives to scour the Internet for news stories, commentaries and blog posts critical of the administration's agenda and then post comments supporting the administration -- all without identifying who was behind the posts.?      
Some of the administration's advisers didn't even disguise their intent to use the Internet deceitfully for political purposes. One of Obama's "closest confidants," Cass Sunstein, as head of the administration's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has openly advocated the government's use of fake websites and outside 501(c)(3) interest groups to front as independent supporters of government policy and to -- get this -- "cognitively infiltrate" opposing websites.?      
What, you ask, is "cognitive infiltration"? That's easy. Salon's Glenn Greenwald -- no right-wing extremist -- wrote that while at Harvard Law School in 2008, Sunstein co-wrote "a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-'independent' advocates to 'cognitively infiltrate' online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems 'false conspiracy theories.'"?      
In other words, one of Obama's right-hand men suggested that government employees masquerade as private citizens to "infiltrate" websites and try to influence public opinion as if they were just random citizens. Before you pooh-pooh this because it purports to be in opposition only to "conspiracy theories," remember that this administration's Justice Department used government publications to defame tea party protesters and returning veterans as conspiracy theorists, racists, religious nuts and domestic terrorists. If you think Sunstein's proposed surreptitious activities are limited to the innocuous exposure of crazies, you have another think coming.?      
If Obama were to run on his actual record in office -- the worst of any president in modern history -- he would receive a smaller percentage of votes than any president in history. The poverty rate is at a 50-year high, and we have catastrophic unemployment, especially black unemployment, an economy near depression, a doubling of the national debt and a trail of corruption involving untold billions from Stimulus Sr., of which Solyndra is just one example.?      
The recent New York and Nevada elections and Obama's ever-cratering approval ratings show how desperately he is hemorrhaging support. He has no choice but to divert our attention from the record and onto red herrings he can generate through false characterizations of his opponents. That's what AttackWatch.com is about. That's what the entire re-election effort is about.

The Cash-for-Visas Program

As part of his warmed-over jobs plan, President Obama is repackaging "Buy American" stimulus subsidies to help hard-hit homegrown businesses. At the same time, however, Congress is pushing to expand a fraud-riddled investor program that puts U.S. citizenship for sale to the highest foreign business bidders.?      

Call it the Buy America Cash-for-Visas plan.?      
As I first reported 10 years ago, the EB-5 immigrant investor program was created under an obscure section of the 1990 Immigration Act. The law allows 10,000 wealthy foreigners a year to purchase green cards by investing between $500,000 and $1 million in new commercial enterprises or troubled businesses. After two years, foreign investors, their spouses and their children all receive permanent resident status -- which allows them to contribute to U.S. political campaigns and provides a speedy gateway to citizenship. The program is set to expire in 2012.?      
On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee's Immigration subpanel entertained calls to save the EB-5 law. Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren is sponsoring a bill to salvage the immigrant investor visas. The legislation (sponsored by open-borders Democrat John Kerry and Republican Richard Lugar in the Senate) also creates a second program with lower barriers to entry that would provide "start-up visas" for foreign entrepreneurs. They would be granted unconditional permanent-resident status if they create a government-determined number of jobs.?      
And there's the rub. Obama's make-believe math on stimulus jobs saved or created -- coupled with the snowballing $535 million, stimulus-funded Solyndra solar company bankruptcy scandal -- tells you all you need to know about Washington's credibility in picking economic winners and losers.?      
If the feds can't be trusted to invest government subsidies wisely in American companies, how can they possibly determine which overseas investors will be successful here? And if top U.S. loan officials have demonstrated such sloppy, politically driven disregard for financial due diligence on risky half-billion-dollar enterprises, how can immigration officials be trusted to better protect the national interest??      
Answer: They can't. In fact, the benefits of the EB-5 economic development plan have gone to former Immigration and Naturalization Service officials who formed lucrative limited partnerships to cash in on their access, and to shady foreign fraudsters.?      
Whistleblowers told me how immigrant investors paid token fees to these partnerships. The partnerships secured promissory notes for the remainder of the foreign investments, which were forgiven after investors received their permanent green cards. Former INS employees, working for these partnerships, aggressively lobbied their old colleagues to accept such bogus financial arrangements. As a result, according to an internal U.S. Justice Department investigative report, "aliens were paying $125K" instead of the required $500,000 to $1 million minimum, and "almost all of the monies went to the General Partners and the companies who set up the limited partners."?      
In 2007, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that the "program between 1995 and 1998 was frequently abused when would-be immigrants were allowed to pay a small amount in cash for a green card, signing a promissory note for the balance. The note didn't come due for several years -- long after the two-year conditional period built into the EB-5 visa had ended and permanent residency had been granted."?      
An earlier Baltimore Sun investigation found "only a tiny fraction of the money ever made it to the companies seeking assistance." Many of the distressed U.S. firms that the program intended to help have closed because they never received promised funding.?      
Instead of allowing the troubled program to sunset, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has "streamlined" the EB-5 immigrant investor green card process -- guaranteeing processing within 15 calendar days for foreign business "projects that are fully developed and ready to be implemented." The same expedited rush for government-directed investments gave us Solyndra. What's worse in this case is the sordid peddling of the privileges of citizenship.?      
Twenty years ago, when the program's failures were first exposed, Rep. John W. Bryant, a Texas Democrat, protested on the House floor: "This provision is an unbelievable departure from our tradition of cherishing our most precious birthright as Americans. Have we no self-respect as a nation? Are we so broke we have to sell our birthright?"?      
Apparently so.

Gunwalker Linked to Three More Murders

CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson has revealed a recent document submitted by the Department of Justice to congressional investigators. The document shows that guns linked to Operation Fast and Furious are responsible for at least three more murders in addition to the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry:

Weapons linked to ATF’s controversial “Fast and Furious” operation have been tied to at least eight violent crimes in Mexico including three murders, four kidnappings and an attempted homicide.
According to a letter from U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the disclosed incidents may be only a partial list of violent crimes linked to Fast and Furious weapons because “ATF has not conducted a comprehensive independent investigation.”

The letter is specifically worded, tailored to  answer congressional questions about a narrow range of “walked” firearms using a very specific definition of what constitutes an Operation Fast and Furious gun:

For the purposes of responding to this question, we consider a firearm to be associated with Operation Fast and Furious if it was purchased by an individual who is a target of that investigation. It is important to note that many of the purchases described below took place before ATF opened the case that became know as Operation Fast and Furious on November 16, 2009; before the purchaser had been identified as a target of the investigation; or without the ATF’s knowledge at the time that a firearm was purchased.

Some amazing caveats that the Department of Justice has chosen to ignore and not count:

• Weapons that were purchased by both targeted and untargeted straw purchasers if the ATF was not aware of the purchase in real-time as the buy occurred;
• If the straw purchaser was not on a pre-approved and narrow (roughly 20 suspects) list of acceptable targets (some of whom were FBI informants who bought weapons and armed the cartels using taxpayer dollars);
• Any suspect or weapon that was not officially part of Operation Fast and Furious before its “official” Nov. 16, 2009, launch date;
• Any suspect or weapon from other suspected gunwalking programs alleged to originate from Houston, Dallas, Tampa, or the Midwest;
• Related scandals involving some of the same co-conspirators, such as the grenade-walking debacle.

This extremely narrow — and self-serving — definition provided by the Department of Justice notably excludes the third rifle (and possible murder weapon) recovered at the scene of Agent Brian Terry’s death. That gun, while “walked” and used by the cartels in a violent crime, was purchased in an unnamed Texas gun-walking operation. Further, the DOJ — and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in particular — tried to make that SKS carbine  “disappear.”
The weapons used to ambush ICE agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila were also not included in the DOJ’s figure, as these guns were also “walked” from Texas.
For the first time, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano officially denied having any knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious as it was being run. She testified under oath before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Napolitano made her statement while being grilled by Senator John McCain (R-AZ).
While plausible, Napolitano’s claimed ignorance of the operation is highly suspect. She served as both Arizona attorney general and governor before she joined the Obama administration, and her long-time chief of staff, Dennis Burke, ran Operation Fast and Furious as the U.S attorney for Arizona — a post she helped him acquire. She had a personal stake in operations in her home state, and a professional obligation as the executive in charge of Homeland Security, one of the agencies involved in the operation.
Another senator, John Cornyn (R-TX), asked the Department of Justice weeks ago if there were any gun-walking operations like Operation Fast and Furious running in his home state of Texas. To date, the Department of Justice has not answered. Rep. Gus Bilirakis and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida have similarly asked DOJ about the 1,000 guns allegedly run to drug gangs out of Operation Castaway in Tampa, and have also met a stonewall of silence.
The Obama administration has launched a series of smears against Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chair of the committee investigating the gunwalking scandal.
Issa was first attacked in an article published by the Washington Post after it had been shopped by the White House to several other news outlets and at least one liberal blog. Those outlets turned the story down because it was not credible.
Later, the New York Times published a front-page hit piece of its own on Issa that was factually wrong on almost every point and may have been plagiarized as well. Issa pushed back forcefully against the White House-orchestrated smears and forced the Times to issue corrections, but the editors refuse to issue a full retraction nor discipline an author.
It now appears the Obama administration is using front groups and radical leftist bloggers to parrot the debunked Times article, their further actions possibly the reason the Times will not issue a full retraction.
Both attempted character assassinations in the media have failed in tarring Issa or derailing this and other congressional oversight investigations — indeed, the revelations of more murders and DOJ semantic games show an investigation that remains on track.

Obama’s ‘Jobs Bill’ Makes ACORN Eligible for $15 Billion in Taxpayer Money

ACORN and other radical left-wing groups would be eligible for up to $15 billion in federal funding if President Obama’s new economic stimulus package becomes law.
Now that public polling shows Americans are realizing that economic stimulus programs don’t work, the Obama administration is calling the latest round of futile stimulus a “jobs bill.” In a sense it really is a jobs bill: a jobs bill for Saul Alinsky-inspired community organizers.
The draft legislation, which had not yet been introduced in Congress at press time, makes ACORN, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), and a phalanx of leftist groups that regularly feed at the public trough eligible for funding.

Section 261 of the bill provides $15 billion for “Project Rebuild.” Grants would be given to “qualified nonprofit organizations, businesses or consortia of eligible entities for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed-upon properties and for the stabilization of affected neighborhoods.” Radical groups like ACORN won’t get the whole $15 billion, though, because they will have to compete with state and local governments for the money.
ACORN would have to get creative to extract grant money from the $5 billion allotted in the legislative package for two other competitive grant programs covered in sections 214 and 215. At first glance ACORN wouldn’t seem to be eligible for funding under the Community Oriented Policing Stabilization Fund and First Responder Stabilization Fund, but oddly enough the group has managed over the years to receive funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, so anything’s possible.
But there is every reason to believe ACORN, which has long been in the real estate development business, will get a chunk of the $15 billion. President Obama, who used to work for ACORN, wants to give his allies taxpayer dollars regardless of whether it is lawful to do so.
In March of this year, Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave a $79,819 grant to the Miami branch of the massive conglomerate known as ACORN Housing Corp. (AHC). AHC filed papers in 2010 legally changing its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). The nonprofit corporation owed $162,813 in back taxes to the IRS, states, and cities as of this past July.
Despite the new name, AHCOA is the same old corrupt organization. It even uses AHC’s federal Employer Identification Number (72-1048321). AHCOA operates out of the same office address (209 W. Jackson Blvd., 3rd Floor, Chicago, IL 60606) and uses the same telephone number (312-939-1611).
AHCOA is run by the same people who ran the ACORN network. Michael Shea, AHC’s longtime executive director, remains in the same post at AHCOA. AHCOA president Alton Bennett and board member Dorothy Amadi were involved with AHC and are longtime ACORN activists. (There are more examples of overlap between AHC and AHCOA, but I’ll spare you them for now.)

Like the T-1000 in "Terminator 2" ACORN can be slowed down but it will just continue to regroup under different names, and operate out of the same offices.

The $79,819 grant to the former ACORN Housing comes out of HUD’s Education and Outreach Initiative (EOI) program, a political indoctrination program that gives nonprofit groups money to rail against lenders and the supposed unfairness of the capitalist system.
The circumstances of the grant are particularly striking. HUD was so eager to start funding ACORN again that it apparently

broke the law, taking the cash out of fiscal 2010 appropriations. This is a problem because Congress banned federal funding of ACORN through the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010. But two months earlier HUD cited the congressional ban when it withheld a $461,086 grant to AHCOA. Something happened between January and March. In March HUD relied on a government lawyer’s dubious legal opinion from 2010 that ACORN Housing was no longer part of the ACORN network — and the new $79,819 grant went through.
And now there are dozens of new ACORN offshoot groups ready to devour taxpayers’ money, as I write in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.
Many of the new ACORN groups — with names like New York Communities for Change and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment — are eligible for federal funding. They have obtained Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) numbers which nonprofits are required to have in order to seek federal grants.
If the proposed Jobs for Community Organizers bill becomes law it’s a safe bet the rebranded ACORN groups will be first in line with grant applications.

Congress Likely to Cram Down Solyndra Billionaire

Sources close to the Congressional investigation into the loans that the Obama administration made to bankrupt solar company Solyndra, say that Congress is likely to attempt to scuttle an agreement that the administration reached last February that allowed major investors to take precedent over US taxpayers in the liquidation of the company.

In February 2011, Solyndra renegotiated with creditors, including the United States Government, in order to try to avoid bankruptcy. In that deal, an investment group funded by Obama donor George Kaiser, gave Solyndra $75 million in additional money in the form of debt on the condition that the US Government took a subordinated position in any bankruptcy after the first $150 million was returned to the government.

What that means is that in a liquidation of Solyndra, the administration will allow that the first $150 million goes to the government, the next $75 million  goes to Kaiser's fund. That would leave the government with a balance of $377 million outstanding unless a liquidation fetches more than $225 million.

In that case, the Kaiser investor group would likely control the amount of money that is eventually paid out to the government and other creditors and shareholders. This is a technique, known as a "cram down," that is often used by investors looking to gain control of a troubled company at the expense of other investors.

Democrat Senator Michael Bennet from Colorado used the same tactics to take control and combine three ailing movie theater groups in 2002. Bennet bought the senior debt of the companies while they were going down the tubes. This in turn allowed him to cut out other investors as the companies liquidated. Teachers' pension funds and other investors were forced to take pennies on the dollar for their investment because the Bennet group owned the senior position.

Within two years Bennet's group paid themselves back every penny they spent on the investment, gave Bennet $11 million, took on another billion dollars in debt, while public investors saw the price of the stock tank from $24 to $12 currently.

This is what the Louisiana Teachers' Pension Fund said at the time:

“…(T)he real explanation for draining the Company of its cash is that the Board is looting Regal and its subsidiaries to pay the individual Board members hundreds of millions of dollars in dividends, which have no legitimate business purpose and provide absolutely no benefit to the company.”

“(O)utrageous transfer of cash, which is leaving Regal in a clearly weakened and precarious condition… Anschutz and the Board are using Regal’s funds for their own personal purposes, leaving shareholders at risk of another trip through bankruptcy. There is simply no reasonable business objective for the Dividend.”

Yes, these are the guys who we send to the US Senate. In 2010, Bennet circulated a letter demanding that the country pass Obamacare with a public option. These are the guys we let design our healthcare system. Any questions?

The same "cramdown" technique could potentially allow the Kaiser group to force other investors in Solyndra into taking smaller amounts than the full value that they either invested or loaned to the company.   

Sources familar with the law that governs the loan made under the Solyndra program however say that a plain reading of the law prevents the administration from allowing investors to jump ahead of government guaranteed loans under any circumstances. 

Instead, members of Congress are likely to try to "cram down" the investment the Kaiser group made in February in an attempt to recover taxpayers' money.    

SAVE OUR CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC

In the sweltering heat of Philadelphia from May 25th to September 17th, 1787, 53 delegates from 12 of the original 13 colonies (Rhode Island refused to send any representatives) struggled mightily to come to an agreement to adopt a Constitution for the United States of America. When it was over, an exhausted Benjamin Franklin walked down the steps of the Pennsylvania State House and was asked, “What kind of government did you create, Mr. Franklin?” To which he replied, “A republic, if we can keep it.” Are today’s leaders respecting and protecting the Constitution that Franklin and his heroic and patriotic colleagues gave us in 1787?

Can we keep it?

I do not see how we can keep it, if we do not understand what “it” is. I know that sounds uncomfortably close to a Bill Clinton quote that we might all like to forget. However, the history teacher part of me cringes every time I hear the media, columnists and most of our elected leaders refer to America as a democracy. New England town meetings are democracies. The majority determines the issue at hand. The government of the United States is a REPUBLIC. We ELECT representatives who vote in our absence and on our behalf. We trust them to lead us. These representatives take only one oath, when they are elected. That oath is to uphold the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution contains an oath of office only for the President. However, in 1789 the first Congress added a requirement to include members of Congress and other government officials, because they knew that adherence to the spirit and intent of our Constitution was critical to the survival of our republic.

As we glide into another election season of debates, press reports, news shows and interviews we must remember that elected officials do not take an oath to any political party. They do not swear allegiance to NAFTA or GATT or monolithic international organizations, like the United Nations or the World Court. They do not solemnly swear allegiance to support and defend large international corporations and certainly not to large special interests, lobbyists and political donors.

The term “political party” cannot be found anywhere in the Constitution. Not in the body and not in the amendments. Yet, political parties write the rules of participation in the ballot process. Party debates sponsored by media outlets that are for the most part hostile, delight in asking confrontational or embarrassing questions. CNN is basking in the glory of the intraparty squabble from the recent Florida Republican Party debate. Presidential candidates must “win” a majority of delegates at party nominating conventions to be the nominee. Certain states, such as Iowa, select delegates by holding caucuses that requires people to attend meetings and publicly state for whom they are voting. This process excludes people, such as the disabled and our military men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, from even voting at all!

The primary states, which do conduct secret ballot voting, concentrate on “leapfrogging” one another to see who can be first, rather than working together to make the process fairer for the voters as well as the candidates. The media and pollsters tell us who we are going to vote for before the election, and candidates “put their fingers to the wind” to decide how to take a stand on an issue. We suffer from electile dysfunction! This is hardly what our Founders had in mind when they wrote the Constitution.

So, if we do “want to keep it,” why do we continue to elect members of Congress and presidents who place these entities above the document that they swore to uphold? Why do we not insist on making changes in the electoral process? This precious document, so carefully crafted, is being trampled routinely every day! We cannot blame this on those we elect. We must accept the blame for continuing to elect them. We need bold, fresh, strong and courageous patriots to buck the system and “rock the boat.” Brave men and women put it on the line to create our republic. Surely, we can find some today with the courage to save it.

Make no mistake about it, however, this will be a long and arduous journey.

John Adams said that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” Ben Franklin added, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need for masters.” Yet, no religious leaders were “allowed” to participate in the recent ceremonies commemorating the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York City. We often see stories in the news about someone trying to remove a cross, or other references to religion in some public place in America.

Our Republic is in very grave danger!

Things have gone seriously wrong and they are getting worse by the day.

The sovereignty of the U.S. is constantly subjugated to trade agreements, international ventures, alliances and treaties not approved by Congress. Our worshipping at the altar of the “world economy” has contributed to the loss of our manufacturing base and the collapse of the value of the dollar.

We are currently fighting two wars that have never been declared by Congress, even though it is a requirement of the Constitution that Congress vote such a declaration, before we send our troops into war!

Part of the oath taken by our elected officials is to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Yet, they refuse to seal our borders from terrorists and those who come here illegally, at a terrible cost to our taxpayers in crime and undeserved benefits. Our porous and uncontrolled borders threaten the very survival of America.

Unscrupulous defense contractors sell our weapons systems and secrets to our enemies, forcing us to chase our own technology around the world to stay ahead, and Congress does nothing to stop it. Indeed at times they support this treasonous action.

Even our own ports, where dirty bombs could easily be imported, have been “offered up” to the control of other nations!

Congress and the President continue to raise our national debt year after year. All the fanfare about the recent “debt ceiling” extension/budget agreement notwithstanding, there is no serious effort to rein in so-called “entitlements” and other programs, while mortgaging the future of our children. The growth and size of the federal government is amplified by programs, bureaus and departments that have no connection to the Constitution whatsoever.

Activist justices on the Supreme Court and judges on the lower courts have shredded much of the Bill of Rights and imposed their personal views on the citizenry. These judges impose gun control on honest citizens and routinely put violent criminals back on the streets to kill and rape again.

The liberal and activist judges who voted for Roe vs. Wade have sanctioned and indeed promoted the slaughter of over 50 million of our unborn children since 1973. Is it possible that one or more of those children could have become a president or a researcher who found a cure for cancer? We will never know because those children never had a chance to live their dream. God bless these children for they had no voice. Their blood is on our hands. Where do we find “abortion rights” in the U.S. Constitution?

Judges take our property without fair compensation or respect for the rights of private property provided under our Constitution. As if this were not bad enough, they have taken God from our schools and public buildings and are determined to remove all mention of Him anywhere. Guess who placed these judges in their positions? When Ruth Bader Ginsburg came before the United States Senate for confirmation several years ago, “conservative” senators voted “aye” to please Bill Clinton, leaving Jesse Helms, Don Nickles and me, alone, as the three votes against one of the most activist justices ever to be appointed to the bench.

Is it possible to save this glorious constitutional republic that Franklin first informed us about in 1787? George Washington warned us in 1796 when he said, “…It is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. In a republic, what species of knowledge…and what duty more pressing…than…communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of our country?” Yet, most of the “communicators in the majority of the large news outlets appear to work against the very constitutional values our Founders so eloquently espoused.

Our elected officials have let us down. We must elect strong advocates for our constitutional republic at every level of government, from school board to president of the United States. We must change America from the bottom up.

Millions of Americans are beginning to figure this out. The Tea Party surge gives us hope. In spite of a constant lambasting by the left-wing media, they have made a difference in the electoral process. They have influenced the discussion and even gotten CNN to acknowledge them with a debate sponsorship! There are millions and millions of Americans who support the traditional values of the sanctity of life, religious freedom and family who are not affiliated with any party. They are rich and poor, young and old. They work in factories and offices, they live on farms and in suburbs, they attend churches by the millions and they are patriotic! They are sick of what is happening.

When the patriots needed to communicate with one another before and during the Revolutionary War they formed “Committees of Correspondence” to keep each other informed. They wrote the Federalist Papers to garner support for the Constitution. They were prepared to sacrifice their lives, fortunes and sacred honor. They communicated by horseback and word of mouth. We have the Internet, talk radio and media watchdog organizations such as Accuracy in Media. The news media no longer controls the debate.

The Constitution of the United States is our battle plan. We all must be “teachers” of the Constitution and we must insist that it is thoroughly taught in our schools. We all need to be the purveyors of the “Constitution Papers.” We must be uncompromising leaders and experts on this document and teach our friends, relatives, co-workers and neighbors about it. Learn and teach what is constitutional and you will in turn get constitutionalists as leaders.

It is time for conservatives to step back from whining about media bias and take a positive approach to challenging the press. As sure as the sun comes up each morning, the left-wing media are going to attack our values. We need to get up before the sun and promote our own.

Media bias is constitutional, but it does not have to be successful in undermining our value system.