President Barack Obama used a visit to Iowa on Earth Day to announce that his administration is establishing a program to authorize for the first time the leasing of federal waters for projects to generate electricity from wind as well as from ocean currents and other renewable sources.

"This will open the door to major investments in offshore clean energy," Obama said. "For example, there is enormous interest in wind projects off the coasts of New Jersey and Delaware, and today's announcement will enable these projects to move forward."

The program being established through the U.S. Department of Interior will develop the renewable-energy projects on the waters of the Outer Continental Shelf that produce electricity from wind, wave, and ocean currents. These regulations will enable the nation to tap into the ocean's sustainable resources to generate clean energy.

In a three-hour visit Wednesday, Obama toured and then spoke to an invitation-only crowd of about 200 at Trinity Structural Towers in Newton, the former Maytag appliance factory that now houses a green manufacturing facility producing towers for wind-energy production and employing dozens of former Maytag employees.

The First Amendment Center has since 1997 annually surveyed Americans' attitudes toward and knowledge of the First Amendment. Last September, on Constitution Day, the Center released its 2008 results, sadly demonstrating the worst level of awareness amongst those surveyed ever.

  • 39 percent would extend to subscription cable and satellite television the government's current authority to regulate content on over-the-air broadcast television.
  • 54 percent would continue IRS regulations that bar religious leaders from openly endorsing political candidates from the pulpit without endangering the tax-exempt status of their organizations.
  • 66 percent say the government should be able to require television broadcasters to offer an equal allotment of time to conservative and liberal broadcasters; 62 percent would apply that same requirement to newspapers, which never have had content regulated by the government.
  • 31 percent would not permit musicians to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive.
  • 68 percent favor government restrictions on campaign contributions by private companies, and 55 percent favor such limits on amounts individuals can contribute to someone else's campaign.

The survey found that just 3 percent of those questioned could name "petition" as one of the five freedoms in the First Amendment. Only "speech" was named by a majority of respondents, 56 percent. Less than 20 percent named religion, press, or assembly.

The State of the First Amendment 2008 survey, including questions and responses, as well as survey methodology, is available online at FirstAmendmentCenter.org/sofa_reports/.

It is boiling down to this: How meaningful is the United States Constitution to Americans, and are the founding principles still relevant, let alone worth fighting for? It is that simple. The U.S. Constitution is the single most revolutionary document in the history of governance, bar none, and through its establishment created the most innovative and prosperous nation on Earth.

Put Down the Remote, Pick Up the Mouse Videos from April 29 Commentary
http://www.rcreader.com/commentary/put-down-the-remote/

Over 500 people gathered from Noon to 2pm in downtown Davenport, IA as part of the nationwide
protests against excessive government spending and what many perceive as threats to citizens'
rights as guaranteed by the US Constitution. This video includes seven interviews with protest attendees
including an 11 year old whose sign read, "Even an 11 year old knows Obama is wrong." When asked
what Obama was wrong about, the young person replied that taking money from those that work
and giving it to those that do not work.

One protester carrying a sign that read "Democrats are spending our grandchildren's future."
He is asked what he would say to critics that point out the Republicans spend just as wildly when
they were the majority. One protester claims that Obama is a puppet of the Bildeberg Group,
Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations, and that Americans who
voted for him have been "bamboozled."

 

 

Put Down the Remote, Pick Up the Mouse Videos from April 29 Commentary
http://www.rcreader.com/commentary/put-down-the-remote/

 

Rich MillerPat Quinn is the most popular Illinois governor in more than a decade.

A new statewide poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports found that Governor Quinn has a 61-percent job approval rating. The poll of 500 likely Illinois voters conducted on April 14 claims that Quinn's job-approval rating is five points higher than U.S. Senator Dick Durbin's 56-percent "favorable" rating, and six points lower than President Barack Obama's home state 67-percent job-approval rating. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points.

Iowa lawmakers are focusing on budget, bonding, federal deductibility and sex offender legislation as the Legislature works to adjourn the 2009 session next week, but other bills such as one that would increase Iowa's compulsory school attendance age from 16 to 17 is a "long shot" at this point, Democratic legislative leaders said Thursday.

John W. WhiteheadTwo years ago, I alerted people to the fact that the groundwork was being laid for a new kind of government in which virtually everyone is a suspect and it will no longer matter if you're innocent or guilty, whether you're a threat to the nation or even if you're a citizen. What will matter is what the president -- or whoever happens to be occupying the Oval Office at the time -- thinks.

At the time, I was voicing concerns about the liberties the Bush administration was taking in its application of the term "enemy combatant." Today, under the Obama administration, the perceived threat is coming from an altogether different direction: "right-wing extremists."

It is more apparent every day that the "change" Obama was elected to bring will not be forthcoming when it comes to the financial sector and foreign policy. Like Bush's former henchman Paulson, Obama Treasury Secretary Geithner advocates the elite global banking interests and is a puppet of the Federal Reserve Bank (which is neither federal nor reserve - remember? RiverCitiesReader.com/commentary/neither-federal-nor-reserve). It is just that simple.

Lisa MadiganBack in 2005, I asked House Speaker Michael Madigan why he didn't just run somebody against Governor Rod Blagojevich in the '06 Democratic primary if he was so upset at the way Blagojevich was running things.

"I did that once, and it led to 26 years of uninterrupted Republican rule," Madigan cracked.

In the early 1970s, a very young Representative Madigan was Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's point man in the House against Daley's arch-nemesis, Democratic Governor Dan Walker. That legislative opposition led directly to Daley's forces beating Walker in the 1976 primary. Their candidate went on to lose to Republican Jim Thompson, and the GOP held onto the governor's job until Blagojevich won the 2002 campaign.

I told you that story to give you an idea how Madigan may be sizing up next year.

Kraig PaulsenHundreds of opponents and supporters of the Iowa Supreme Court's Varnum v. Brien decision legalizing same-sex marriage descended Thursday on the Iowa Capitol and watched as House Speaker Pat Murphy declined twice to call up a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman.

"Let us vote! Let us vote! Let us vote!" supporters of the Iowa Marriage Amendment shouted after the first attempt to bring the issue to the House floor was ruled out of order.

Advocates on both sides of the issue watched at about 9:30 a.m. as House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen made an attempt to bring House Joint Resolution 6 to the House floor.

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