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Monday, January 14, 2013

25 Signs That America Is Rapidly Becoming More Like Nazi Germany

The United States of America is becoming more like Nazi Germany every single day.  In fact, the Nazification of America is almost complete.  The parallels between Nazi Germany and the United States of today are going to absolutely shock many of you.  Most Americans simply have never learned what life was really like back in Nazi Germany.  Under Adolf Hitler, Germany was a Big Brother totalitarian police state that ruthlessly repressed freedom and individual liberty.  Under Adolf Hitler, Germany adopted socialism, dramatically increased government spending and raised taxes to astronomical levels.  Under Adolf Hitler, abortion became legal in Germany, the government took over health care and Christianity was pushed out of the public schools and out of public life.  To prove all of these points, I am going to use extensive quotes from two sources.  Kitty Werthmann was a child living a peaceful life in Austria when Hitler took over her nation.  Her eyewitness accounts about what life was like under Nazi Germany are invaluable.  In addition, I will also be quoting extensively from author Bruce Walker.  He is the author of a book entitled “The Swastika Against The Cross: The Nazi War On Christianity”, and during his years of research he has uncovered some absolutely jaw dropping stuff.  After reading the information in the rest of this article, there should be no doubt that the United States is becoming just like Nazi Germany.

 Nazi Germany shows us what happens when the state becomes god.  Adolf Hitler was certainly more racist than the leaders of America are today, but other than that there are very few differences between the road that Adolf Hitler led Germany down and the path that the United States is being led down.

 The following are 25 signs that America is rapidly becoming more like Nazi Germany….


#1 Nazi Germany was a totalitarian Big Brother police state that constantly monitored everything that German citizens did.
Today, the bureaucrats that run things in the United States are also absolutely obsessed with constantly trying to monitor us.  For example, there are now control freaks that inspect the lunches of preschool students in certain areas of the country in order to make sure that they contain the “right” foods….
A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs – including in-home day care centers – to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.
#2 Nazi officials often used their positions of power to force others to do dehumanizing things.
This is exactly what the TSA is doing today.  It would be really easy to imagine some Nazi military officers forcing a young woman to walk back and forth in front of them several times so that they could admire her form.  Well, that is what TSA agents are doing to American women today.  The following comes from a recent Wired article….
TSA agents in Dallas singled out female passengers to undergo screening in a body scanner, according to complaints filed by several women who said they felt the screeners intentionally targeted them to view their bodies.
One woman who flew out of Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport several months ago said a female agent sent her through a body scanner three times after the agent commented on her “cute” body.
#3 In Nazi Germany, even women and children were treated like dehumanized cattle.
Well, today schoolchildren are being strip-searched all over the United States.  Down in Georgia, one student was recently strip-searched by public school officials after another student falsely accused him of having marijuana.

Another student down in Albuquerque was recently forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket.  The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.

#4 In Nazi Germany, authorities could stop you and search you at any time and for any reason.
In America that is not supposed to happen, but it is happening.  Last year, TSA “VIPR teams” conducted approximately 8,000 “unannounced security screenings” at subway stations, bus terminals, seaports and highway rest stops.

If you are not able to produce “your papers”, there is a good chance that you will get thrown into prison in America.  For example, a 21-year-old college student named Samantha Zucker was recently arrested and put in a New York City jail for 36 hours just because she could not produce any identification for police.

#5 Under Adolf Hitler, there were massive increases in government spending.
According to eyewitness Kitty Werthmann, just about everyone was getting some sort of a handout from the German government….
Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.
Of course, as I have written about so many times before, this is the exact same thing that we are seeing in the United States today.

#6 Under Hitler, taxes were raised dramatically in order to pay for all of these social programs.
Kitty Werthmann says that “our tax rates went up to 80% of our income.
In the United States our tax rates have not gotten that bad yet, but when you total up all federal taxes, all state taxes, all local taxes, all property taxes and all sales taxes, there are a significant number of Americans that do pay more than 50% of their incomes in taxes.

#7 The economy of Nazi Germany was very highly socialized. 
As Ludwig Von Mises once correctly observed, the German economy under Hitler was not capitalist at all….
What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.
The United States has not gotten to the level of Nazi Germany yet, but we do have a socialist president and back in 2009 the cover of Newsweek boldly proclaimed that “We Are All Socialists Now“.

#8 In Nazi Germany, if you conducted business outside of the socialist paradigm you were heavily punished.
Well, the same thing is happening in the United States today.  For example, the FDA has been running elaborate entrapment schemes that are designed to entrap producers of raw milk.  Any “unauthorized commerce” is dealt with very strictly by the U.S. government these days.

#9 In Nazi Germany, government regulation of business got wildly out of control.
The following is eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann….
My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business.
If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.
We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.
Of course we all know about all of the ridiculous regulations that the U.S. government is burdening businesses with today.  In every day and age control freaks love to stick it to business people that are just trying to make a living.

#10 Under Hitler, free market capitalism was absolutely hated. 
National Socialist theologian Gregor Strasser once stated the following….
We National Socialists are enemies, deadly enemies, of the present capitalist system with its exploitation of the economically weak … and we are resolved under all circumstances to destroy this system.
And as I have written about previously, a lot of Barack Obama’s strongest supporters are socialists and communists, and an increasing number of Americans are showing disdain for capitalism.  In fact, some recent polls show that young adults in America actually have a more favorable view of socialism than they do of capitalism.

#11 In Nazi Germany, the health care system was taken over by the government.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann….
Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna . After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.
Of course we all know what is going on in America today.  The government spends nearly half of all health care dollars and Obamacare is going to mean more government control over the health care system than ever before.

#12 Under Adolf Hitler, abortion was made “safe and legal” in Germany.
It turns out that Hitler was a huge fan of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger.  And as I wrote about recently, it was Sanger that once said the following….
“The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
Hitler echoed this sentiment when he wrote the following in Mein Kampf….
“The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring. . . represents the most humane act of mankind.”
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, abortion was very quickly legalized.  By 1935 there were approximately 500,000 abortions being performed in Germany every single year.

Yes, Hitler very much encouraged Aryan women to have as many children as possible.  But he also very much viewed abortion as a way to reduce “undesirable” populations.

Unfortunately, something very similar is happening today.  Abortion clinics are often located in the “poor” part of town, and a staggering 72 percent of Planned Parenthood’s “customers” have incomes that are either equal to or beneath 150 percent of the federal poverty level.

#13 In Nazi Germany, killing the “defective”, the “weak” and the “disabled” was considered to be a good thing because it made the German people “stronger”.
Unfortunately, many in America today have fully embraced the eugenics principles which were so dominant in Nazi Germany.

A 3 year old girl named Amelia was recently denied a kidney transplant because she is considered to be “mentally retarded”, and we all remember what happened to Terri Schiavo.

Not only that, the editorial page editor of the Detroit News recently proposed putting contraceptives into the drinking water in Michigan because the state has become a “breeding ground for poverty“.

This kind of sick thinking is rapidly spreading in America, and that is a very frightening thing.

#14 In Nazi Germany, education was nationalized and God was kicked out of the schools.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann….
Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles, and had physical education.
Unfortunately, the exact same thing is happening to U.S. public schools.

#15 Under Adolf Hitler, God was mocked and religion was pushed out of every corner of public life.
Just check out the following information uncovered by author Bruce Walker….
The Nazi tract Gott und Volk was distributed in 1941, and it describes the life cycle of German youth in the future, who would:  “With parties and gifts the youth will be led painlessly from one faith to the other and will grow up without ever having heard of the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule, to say nothing of the Ten Commandments… The education of the youth is to be confined primarily by the teacher, the officer, and the leaders of the party.  The priests will die out.  They have estranged the youth from the Volk.  Into their places will step the leaders.  Not deputies of God.  But anyway the best Germans.  And how shall we train our children?  Thus, as though they had never heard of Christianity!”
Once again, this parallels what we are seeing happen in America today.  Last year, a high school student in Southern California was suspended for two days because he had private conversations with his classmates during which he discussed Christianity.  He was also banned from bringing his Bible to school ever again.
For many more examples of this phenomenon, please see this article: “18 Examples Of How Christians Are Being Specifically Targeted By Big Brother“.

#16 Adolf Hitler fully embraced the theory of evolution, and Darwinism provided the intellectual foundation for much of Nazism.
At a Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg in 1933, Hitler declared that “higher race subjects to itself a lower race . . .a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right“.
Hitler was obsessed with the “survival of the fittest” and he took this theory to its logical extremes.  The following is how one author put it….
“Hitler was influenced above all by the theories of the nineteenth-century social Darwinist school, whose conception of man as biological material was bound up with impulses towards a planned society. He was convinced that the race was disintegrating, deteriorating through faulty breeding as a result of a liberally tinged promiscuity that was vitiating the nation’s blood. And this led to the establishment of a catalogue of ‘positive’ curative measures: racial hygiene, eugenic choice of marriage partners, the breeding of human beings by the methods of selection on the one hand and extirpation on the other”
But of course we have no problem with teaching this flawed theory to our children in the public schools of America today.

Haven’t we learned anything from history?

#17 Under Adolf Hitler, the state started taking over the job of child care.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann….
When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology.
Of course this is exactly what is happening in America today.  Children are raised by day care centers and public schools, and most parents spend very little time with their own children.

#18 In Nazi Germany, it became fashionable to mock Christians and the Christian faith.
The following is more from author Bruce Walker….
By 1935, the virulently anti-Christian leader of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Shirach issued a regulation that prohibited any child from belonging simultaneously to a church youth group and the Hitler Youth, and gradually membership in the Hitler Youth became almost obligatory – parents were told that their children would not get jobs in the civil service unless they belonged to the Hitler Youth and employers were told not to hire children who did not belong to the Hitler Youth.  Christian schoolchildren who did not belong to the Hitler Youth or its female counterpart were routinely beaten up by young Nazi thugs.
Boys inducted into the Hitler Youth were required to explicitly reject Christianity by oaths like this:  “German blood and Christian baptismal water are completely incompatible.”  At Hitler Youth center at Halle, was the following prominent statement: “The Faith fanatics, who still to-day slide down on their knees with faces uplifted to heaven, waste their time in churchgoing and prayers, and have not yet understood that they are living on the earth and that therefore their task is of a thoroughly earthly kind.  All we Hitler people can still only look with the greatest contempt on those young people who still run to their silly Evangelical or Catholic Churches in order to vent their quite superstitious religious feelings.” 
Those that believe that the Nazis embraced Christianity are delusional.  The following are direct quotes out of Hitler Youth training manuals….

  • “Christianity is a religion of slaves and fools.”
  • “How did Christ die?  Whining at the Cross!”
  • “The Ten Commandments represent the lowest instincts of man.”
  • “Christianity is merely a cloak for Judaism.”

This is definitely where things are going in America today.  Our television shows and our movies regularly mock Christians and they are always portrayed as the “bad guys”.

In addition, the name of Jesus is rapidly becoming a forbidden word.  Some U.S. courts have even ruled that it is unconstitutional to use the name of “Jesus Christ” during any official government meeting.  The following comes from a recent WorldNetDaily article….
But the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are standing by their victory in a U.S. circuit court decision that states even “a solitary reference to Jesus Christ” in invocations before the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners’ meetings could do “violence to the pluralistic and inclusive values that are a defining feature of American public life.”
#19 Under Adolf Hitler, sexual promiscuity was actually encouraged.
The following is more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann….
My mother was very unhappy. When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun no sports, and no political indoctrination. I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing. Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler. It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.
Of course the exact same thing is happening in America today.  If you doubt that your tax dollars are going to promote sexual promiscuity, then I have a video for you to watch.  It is a video from the American Life League, and you can view it right hereDO NOT let any children watch this video.  It is done by a pro-life organization but it is very graphic.  I have posted a link to it because it is imperative that parents understand what is really going on out there.  But please be warned that it is very, very graphic.

#20 Once the Nazis took power, they rapidly implemented gun control legislation and later on they took all of the guns away from the populace.
Kitty Werthmann remembers very well what happened in Austria under the Nazis….
Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.
Last year, more than 10 million guns were sold in the United States, but gun control legislation continues to become even more strict, and it is only a matter of time before the federal government tries to disarm the U.S. population completely.

#21 Under the Nazis, large numbers of children were taken away from good families.
The following is more from author Bruce Walker….
Parents who resisted Nazi anti-Christian indoctrination too strongly simply had their children taken away from them.  The Nazis even forbade parents to give their children Christian names and ordered babies instead to be given names like Dietrich, Otto or Siegfried.  The home teaching of Christianity by parents in the home was forbidden.  Not content with simply driving Christianity out of public schools, Himmler banned all Confessing Church seminaries and instruction in 1937 and he closed all private religious schools two years later.
Doesn’t this sound exactly like where America is headed?

In many states, CPS (“child protective services”) has become one of the most feared government agencies.  All over the nation, thousands upon thousands of children have been removed from good homes because the parents were not raising them “correctly”.

You can read about one particularly bad CPS horror story right here.

#22 Under Adolf Hitler, society became very highly militarized.
Of course we are seeing the same thing in the U.S. right now.

Sadly, this is even happening to our public schools.  According to blogger Alexander Higgins, students in kindergarten and the 1st grade in the state of New Jersey are now required by law to participate “in monthly anti-terrorism drills”.  The following is an excerpt from a letter that he recently received from the school where his child attends….
Each month a school must conduct one fire drill and one security drill which may be a lockdown, bomb threat, evacuation, active shooter, or shelter-in place drill. All schools are now required by law to implement this procedure.
This is the kind of thing that a sicko like Adolf Hitler would try to do, and it is not good for our children.

#23 In Nazi Germany, the prisons were absolutely packed.
Right now, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world by far and the largest total prison population on the entire globe by far.

Even children are being arrested in alarming numbers.  In a previous article, I described how one 12-year-old girl down in Texas was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume and how police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl in Massachusetts.

#24 Under Adolf Hitler, there was basically no freedom of speech.
In the United States today we are told that we still have freedom of speech, but that freedom is being “chilled” in thousands of different ways.

For example, the FBI is now admittedly recording Internet talk radio programs all over the United States.  The following comes from a recent article by Mark Weaver of WMAL.com….
If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.
The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.
The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.
So please speak freely on talk radio.  Just realize that the feds will be recording every single word.

#25 Under Adolf Hitler, paranoia was standard operating procedure.
In Nazi Germany, every citizen was a potential threat and everyone had to be constantly watched for suspicious activity.

Of course the exact same thing is happening in America today.  Just about anything you do can get you labeled as a “potential terrorist” by the government.

According to a new DHS report, the following are some of the beliefs and ideologies of potential terrorists….

  • -”fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)”
  • -”anti-global”
  • -”suspicious of centralized federal authority”
  • -”reverent of individual liberty”
  • -”believe in conspiracy theories”
  • -”a belief that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack”
  • -”a belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism”
  • -”impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists)”
  • -”insert religion into the political sphere”
  • -”those who seek to politicize religion”
  • -”supported political movements for autonomy”
  • -”anti-abortion”
  • -”anti-Catholic”
  • -”anti-nuclear”
And the definition of “suspicious activity” has become so broad in America that it pretty much covers 100% of us.  In 2012, the following activities are considered to be “suspicious” by the FBI….

  • -shielding your computer screen from others
  • -paying with cash
  • -acting “nervous”
  • -using multiple cell phones
  • -requesting a specific room at a hotel
  • -traveling with a large amount of luggage
  • -refusing maid service at a hotel
  • -staying in your room for too long
  • -changing your appearance

In addition, the U.S. government has decided that it would be a really good idea for all of us to spy on one another.  The “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign looks like it could have been pulled right out of a Gestapo security handbook.

But America is not supposed to be about spying on one another and reporting each other to the secret police.

America is supposed to be about liberty and freedom.

Recently, Fox News made a really bad decision by cancelling Freedom Watch.  Judge Andrew Napolitano was one of the few voices on television that was still standing up for individual liberty.

As we think about how the Nazification of America has progressed, let the things that Judge Napolitano said on his last show echo in our minds.  Video from that show is posted below….


source

URGENT!!! Gun Control and the Actors of the Sandy Hook STAGED School Shooting! This is Grounds for Civil War, and the Abolishment of Our Government - ALL OF THEM!!!

I had put up a news story on the discrepancies of the Sandy Hook school shooting just a few days after the "ALLEGED" shooting, but then after hearing an official state that ANY freelance reporters that wrote or stated ANYTHING that disagreed with the story from mainstream media would be traced and convicted, I took the story down...

I cannot, any longer, be quiet about this atrocity that has and IS being committed upon all of us!  EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW THE TRUTH!  This goes VERY Deep; including the Gabrielle Gifford shooting, and the Batman Movie theater shooting, and even more...  PLEASE Read ALL, and watch ALL the Videos!

This news is now beginning to hit public, music radio stations, and is spreading like wildfire, but I have to say it is not spreading fast enough

Please watch this video, below, then read further, and for HEAVEN'S SAKE, SHARE THIS WITH EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND EVEN THOSE YOU DON'T KNOW; THE MORE THAT REALIZE WHAT IS BEING DONE TO US, THE SOONER WE WILL BE ABLE TO OVERTHROW THE CORRUPTION THAT IS LITERALLY RUINING OUR LIVES.

This affects ALL of us!  WE ARE IN GRAVE DANGER!!!!!

More Crisis Actors:




More about this crisis actor shown "acting" as James Holmes's Attorney, and "acting" as a Sandy Hook grieving parent below, in the videos.




If you still doubt ANY of this, then you are part of our problem!  It's time for EVERYONE to be alerted so action can begin to overthrow those in leadership, and rebuild what is left of America, as well as the rest of the world. THERE ARE MORE OF US THAN THERE ARE OF THEM; THE CORRUPT ELITE THAT ARE PLANNING OUR COMPLETE DEMISE!   GOD HELP US ALL!

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Weapon Background Checks Hit Record High in US

Jason Zielinski shows a customer a selection of AR-15 style rifles being offered for sale at Freddie Bear Sports sporting goods store on December 17, 2012 in Tinley Park, Illinois. (Scott Olson/Getty Images/AFP)
Last month, the FBI ran a record 2.8 million background checks on those wishing to purchase firearms in the US, with most of those checks occurring after the Dec. 14 massacre in Newtown, Conn.

Background check applications for firearm purchases have been on the rise for years, but spiked dramatically after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School last month. Data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shows that the agency performed 2.78 million background checks in December, which is up from the 2.01 million conducted during the previous month, which was the first to exceed two million.

The states that saw the largest background check increases from the previous month were Georgia (66.3 percent), Oregon (63. 1 percent), New Hampshire (60.7 percent), Texas (60.2 percent), and Montana (58.3 percent).

While the figures do not indicate the number of new guns sold, they give an approximation of the number of Americans wishing to purchase firearms. Depending on state law, buyers are often allowed to purchase multiple guns under one background check.

December’s 2.8 million background checks are up 50 percent from December 2011, when the FBI performed 1.86 million checks. In total, 19.6 million background checks were performed in 2012, which is not an annual record but is an increase of 19 percent from 2011.

Even though the background checks cannot predict the firearms sold, gun sales also increased in December. Every US state saw a greater number of gun sales last month than in November, with 48 of 50 states also seeing an increase in total firearm sales in 2012. Washington, DC saw the largest year-to-year increase in gun sales, rising by 49.7 percent.

“Handgun sales are up substantially and modern sporting rifles are up astronomically,” Karl Durkheimer, owner of the gun shop Northwest Armory, told The Guardian.  “The people you see are twofold. There are first-time buyers who are in fear of what the future will bring. But most of what you saw is people hedging their bets that there might be a political policy put forward by the liberal side of the government.”

The FBI did not suggest reasons behind the rise in gun sales and background checks, but some attribute the change to fear of tighter gun control regulations in light of the Dec. 14 shooting in Newtown, Conn. Gun sales and background checks typically also increase during the holiday season.

Past data indicates that mass shootings frequently prompt Americans to stock up on weapons in fear of gun control laws. After 24-year-old James Holmes killed 12 and injured 58 in a shooting in Aurora, Colo., applications to buy guns rose by more than 40 percent in a week. After Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot, there was a 60 percent increase in gun sales in a single day in Arizona.

While Americans mourned the death of the 20 children and six adults killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School last month, many more headed to their local firearms’ dealer to stock up on handguns and hunting rifles, in the case that Congress passes legislation restricting or limiting eligibility for such purchases.

The FBI background investigations are required under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, which was signed into law by former President Bill Clinton and went into effect on November 30, 1998. During the program’s first month of operation, 871,644 background checks were performed by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which is about a third of the number performed this year.

Source

White House Wins Fight to Keep Drone Killings of Americans Secret

Reuters / Pascal Lauener
A federal judge issued a 75-page ruling on Wednesday that declares that the US Justice Department does not have a legal obligation to explain the rationale behind killing Americans with targeted drone strikes.

United States District Court Judge Colleen McMahon wrote in her finding this week that the Obama administration was largely in the right by rejecting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times for materials pertaining to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to execute three US citizens abroad in late 2011 [pdf].

Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both US nationals with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, were killed on September 30 of that year using drone aircraft; days later, al-Awlaki’s teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was executed in the same manner. Although the Obama administration has remained largely quiet about the killings in the year since, a handful of statements made from senior White House officials, including Pres. Barack Obama himself, have provided some but little insight into the Executive Branch’s insistence that the killings were all justified and constitutionally-sound. Attempts from the ACLU and the Times via FOIA requests to find out more have been unfruitful, though, which spawned a federal lawsuit that has only now been decided in court.

Siding with the defendants in what can easily be considered as cloaked in skepticism, Judge McMahon writes that the Obama White House has been correct in refusing the FOIA requests filed by the plaintiffs.

"There are indeed legitimate reasons, historical and legal, to question the legality of killings unilaterally authorized by the Executive that take place otherwise than on a 'hot' field of battle," McMahon writes in her ruling. Because her decision must only weigh whether or not the Obama administration has been right in rejecting the FOIA requests, though, her ruling cannot take into consideration what sort of questions — be it historical, legal, ethical or moral — are raised by the ongoing practice of using remote-controlled drones to kill insurgents and, in these instances, US citizens.

"The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules — a veritable Catch-22,” she writes. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reason for their conclusion a secret.”

Throughout her ruling, Judge McMahon cites speeches from both Pres. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder in which the al-Awlaki killings are vaguely discussed, but appear to do little more than excuse the administration’s behavior with their own secretive explanations.

“The Constitution’s guarantee of due process is ironclad, and it is essential — but, as a recent court decision makes clear, it does not require judicial approval before the President may use force abroad against a senior operational leader of a foreign terrorist organization with which the United States is at war — even if that individual happens to be a US citizen,” McMahon quotes Mr. Holder as saying during a March 2012 address at Chicago’s Northwestern University. “Holder did not identify which recent court decisions so held,” the judge replies, “Nor did he explain exactly what process was given to the victims of targeted killings at locations far from ‘hot’ battlefields…”

And while both Mr. Holder and Pres. Obama have discussed the killings in public, including one appearance by the president on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Justice Department insists that going further by releasing any legal evidence that supports the executions would be detrimental to national security.

While Judge McMahon ends up agreeing with the White House, she does so by making known her own weariness over how the Obama administration has forced the court to rely on their own insistence that information about the attacks simply cannot be discussed.

“As they gathered to draft a Constitution for their newly liberated country, the Founders — fresh from a war of independence from the rule of a King they styled a tyrant — were fearful of concentrating power in the hands of any single person or institution, and most particular in the executive,” McMahon writes.

Responding to the decision on Wednesday, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer issued a statement condemning the White House’s just-won ability to relieve itself from any fair and honest explanation as to the justification of Americans.

“This ruling denies the public access to crucial information about the government’s extrajudicial killing of US citizens and also effectively green-lights its practice of making selective and self-serving disclosures,” Jameel writes. “As the judge acknowledges, the targeted killing program raises profound questions about the appropriate limits on government power in our constitutional democracy. The public has a right to know more about the circumstances in which the government believes it can lawfully kill people, including US citizens, who are far from any battlefield and have never been charged with a crime.”

The ACLU says they plan to appeal Judge McMahon’s decision and are currently awaiting news regarding a separate lawsuit filed alongside the Center for Constitutional Rights that directly challenges the constitutionality of the targeted kills.

“The government has argued that case should also be dismissed,” the ACLU notes.

In a Wednesday afternoon statement from the Times, assistant general counsel David McCraw says the paper will appeal the ruling as well.

"We began this litigation because we believed our readers deserved to know more about the US government's legal position on the use of targeted killings against persons having ties to terrorism, including US citizens," McCraw says.

Although she ruled against the plaintiffs, Judge McMahon, says McCraw, explained "eloquently … why in a democracy the government should be addressing those questions openly and fully."


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This is How the Food Industry Makes Americans Fat and Hungry

Reuters / Rick Wilking
Inundated with foods and drinks that contain high-fructose corn syrup, the US food industry is largely at fault for driving up obesity rates, since the cheap sweetener inhibits the brain from regulating the body’s appetite.

From soda to ketchup, many processed foods and beverages contain fructose, which affects the region of the brain that regulates appetite, according to a study by the Scientific American, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers measured the hypothalamus, which regulates hunger-related signals, of 20 healthy adult volunteers to study their responses to consuming sweetened beverages.

Upon receiving a 300-calorie drink sweetened with 75 grams of fructose, the volunteers had a more active hypothalamus and showed greater signs of hunger. When the volunteers received a similar drink that was instead sweetened using glucose, their hypothalamus was less active and the participants showed signs of fullness.

Drinking glucose “turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food,” Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin, who was involved with the study, told the Associated Press.

With fructose, “we don’t see those changes,” he added. “As a result, the desire to eat continues – it isn’t turned off.”

Glucose and fructose are metabolized differently, and the excessive use of fructose in American food staples is taking its toll. Even table sugar, which some incorrectly believe is made up solely of glucose, is half fructose. And the US uses lots of it. Researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford found that out of 42 countries studied, the US has the highest per-capita consumption of high-fructose corn syrup.

The US also has the highest obesity rate in the world, with more than one-third of adults (35.7 percent) being classified as ‘obese’ by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This increased intake of added sugar containing fructose over the past several decades has coincided with the rise in obesity in the population, and there is strong evidence from animal studies that this increased intake of fructose is playing a role in this phenomenon,” said Dr. Jonathan Purnell of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, who co-authored an editorial that accompanied the study. Purnell said that while the findings show a link between fructose consumption and obesity, there are a number of other environmental and genetic factors that also contribute.

Nutritionists recommend that Americans keep away from food and beverages that contain high-fructose corn syrup, and instead look for those that contain glucose. Foods and drinks particularly high in fructose include sodas, condiments, frozen foods, boxed breakfast cereals, canned foods, boxed dinners, breads and crackers, commercially-prepared baked goods, salad dressings and ready-made drinks.

“Things as subtle as a change in sweetener can have an impact on how full somebody feels, and could lead to an increase in calorie intake and an increasing pattern in obesity seen in this country,” Dr. Louis Aronne, founder and director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, told HealthDay.

A high-fructose diet makes it more difficult to control ones appetite, leading to obesity, type two diabetes, high blood pressure, and other consequences that result from being overweight.

“It’s clear that being obese is not healthy – it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements,” said CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden.

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