Pew Study: 2 Million Dead Americans On Active Voter Rolls

 Every 8 registrations in U.S. either invalid or has major inaccuracies

From The Hill

By Josh Lederman

Nearly 2 million dead Americans are still on active voter registries, and 1 in every 8 registrations in the United States is invalid or has major inaccuracies, according to a new study.

Research released Tuesday by the Pew Center on the States shows that the country is spending more on voter registration while getting worse results than other nations such as Canada. The study points to antiquated systems that don’t reflect modern technology and fail to address the biggest obstacles to maintaining accurate, up-to-date voter-registry databases.

Almost 3 million Americans are actively registered to vote in multiple states, while about 12 million have old or error-ridden addresses listed on their registrations, likely preventing voting-related mail from reaching them. And 1 in 4 eligible citizens — 51 million in total — aren’t registered to vote.

Santorum Moves Ahead in Michigan

This is the best and most astonishing news yet in the GOP presidential primary season.  Our friends who insist that the liberal Massachusetts Governor is "inevitable" and "electable" will get quite a shock when the chameleon candidate is defeated in one of his home states, a state in which his father served as Governor.  This demonstrates once again, that Republicans and Americans as a whole want a "choice, not an echo."  Nominating an Obama-Lite, yet another in the long string of losing "moderates" - Wilkie, Dewey, Ford, Dole and McCain - is not an answer; it is a proven prescription for defeat.

Our country is in grave crisis and the words of Ronald Reagan are as true as when he uttered them in 1975:

"Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors, which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?"

From Public Policy Polling

Rick Santorum's taken a large lead in Michigan's upcoming Republican primary. He's at 39% to 24% for Mitt Romney, 12% for Ron Paul, and 11% for Newt Gingrich.

Santorum's rise is attributable to two major factors: his own personal popularity (a stellar 67/23 favorability) and GOP voters increasingly souring on Gingrich. Santorum's becoming something closer and closer to a consensus conservative candidate as Gingrich bleeds support.

Divide and Conquer

From The New York Times, The Opinion Pages

By Ross Douthat

Catholic Quisling Carol Keehan and Obama

So far as I can tell, the White House’s proposed “compromise” in the contraception-sterilization-plan B-ella controversy asks the parties involved to compromise their reasoning faculties and play a game of “let’s pretend” instead. The revised regulation allows religious institutions to pretend that they aren’t actually purchasing an insurance plan that covers services they find morally objectionable, because their insurance companies will be required to pretend that they’re supplying these services free of charge. But fond illusions about “free” services aside, it’s hard to see how a system in which Catholic hospitals and colleges are required to purchase health insurance for their employees from insurers that are required to cover birth control, sterilizations and the morning- and days-after pills is meaningfully different from the original Health and Human Services mandate. As Yuval Levin writes, ”the choice for religious employers is still between paying an insurer to provide their workers with access to a product that violates their convictions or paying a fine to the government.” The rule has been changed, but the reality remains the same.
 

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto draws a useful analogy:

 

Happy Valentine's Day to the "Three Little Wives of Newt"

Andrew C. McCarthy: "The Global Threat of the Muslim Brotherhood"

Obama Pledges Billions of Taxpayer Dollars for the Muslim Brotherhood and "Arab Spring"

Egypt may be holding nineteen young Americans hostage and the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood is poised to take over the country, but Muslim brother, Barack Hussein Obama, has proposed $1.3 billion in economic aid to Egypt and an additional $800 million to help fan the flames of Islamic revolution in the Arab world.

Hey, where is anything written about separation of mosque and state?

From Reuters

By Susan Cornwell

The White House announced plans on Monday to help "Arab Spring" countries swept by revolutions with more than $800 million in economic aid, while maintaining U.S. military aid to Egypt.

In his annual budget message to Congress, President Barack Obama asked that military aid to Egypt be kept at the level of recent years -- $1.3 billion -- despite a crisis triggered by an Egyptian probe targeting American democracy activists.

The proposals are part of Obama's budget request for fiscal year 2013, which begins October 1. His requests need the approval of Congress, where some lawmakers want to cut overseas spending to address U.S. budget shortfalls and are particularly angry at Egypt.

Obama proposed $51.6 billion in funding for the U.S. State Department and foreign aid overall, when $8.2 billion in assistance to war zones is included. The "core budget" for the category would increase by 1.6 percent, officials said.

Most of the economic aid for the Arab Spring countries -- $770 million -- would go to establish a new "Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund," the president said in his budget plan.

Analysts said it was difficult to tell how much of the proposal was actually new money.

"As presented it's very difficult to determine if the Arab spring fund is new wine in new bottles or old wine in new bottles," said John Norris, a former U.S. foreign aid worker now at the Center for American Progress.

The Middle East and North Africa Incentive fund "will provide incentives for long-term economic, political, and trade reforms to countries in transition -- and to countries prepared to make reforms proactively," the White House budget document said.

The proposal said this approach "expands our bilateral economic support in countries such as Tunisia and Yemen, where transitions are already underway."

It would also build on other programs for the area, including up to $2 billion in regional Overseas Private Investment Corporation financing, up to $1 billion in debt swaps for Egypt, and approximately $500 million in existing funds re-allocated to respond to the region last year, the budget document said.

It did not say how the Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund would be divided between countries, or give any other details of the plan.

Egypt has long been among the top recipients of U.S. aid, getting about $1.6 billion annually, mostly in military assistance. In fiscal 2012, $250 million of aid approved for Egypt was economic; $1.3 billion was military and there was a $60 million "enterprise fund" approved by Congress.

No U.S. assistance is moving to Egypt at the moment, U.S. lawmakers and their aides said last week. Some legislators favor cutting off aid to Egypt entirely if it does not drop accusations against American democracy activists and lift a travel ban on them.

Obama continued the practice of putting proposed foreign assistance for war zones in a separate account. This account, known as the "Overseas Contingency Operations," includes $8.2 billion for the State Department and foreign aid.

It includes $3.3 billion for Afghanistan, $1 billion for Pakistan, and $4 billion for Iraq, where U.S. troops have left the country but the State Department has picked up some of their functions such as police training.

The Obama War on Religion: It's the Amish, Too

Everyone knows that Marxists can't abide any expression of faith, but Obama's war on religion goes beyond Catholics and Evangelicals, it now includes Amish farmers.  As The Washington Times reports today, federal harassment of the Amish is causing some of them to give up farming.

Do you think the FDA has sent any inspectors to Moochelle's vegetable patch?