New Lawsuit Seeks to Stop Illegal Censorship of Maricopa County Voters

Goldwater Institute asks for emergency court order so voters can speak freely with “tea party” clothing on Election Day

The Goldwater Institute has asked a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order against Maricopa County officials who have pledged to stop voters from wearing clothing that mentions the phrase “tea party” on Election Day, even when such clothing does not attempt to influence other voters.

The motion seeks to protect the free speech of voters such as Mark Reed of Scottsdale, who wants to wear a tea party T-shirt when he votes Tuesday, Nov. 2.

“Maricopa County plans to go far beyond protecting the right to vote freely and will completely suspend the First Amendment at more than 1,100 polling places on Election Day,” said Clint Bolick, the Goldwater Institute’s litigation director. “Election officials have a legal and moral duty to defend our fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of speech.”

On Oct. 20, 2010, U.S. District Judge James A. Teilborg issued a temporary injunction against Coconino County in a lawsuit filed by the Goldwater Institute to protect the right of members of the Flagstaff Tea Party to wear their T-shirts while voting on Tuesday.

However, Maricopa County Elections Director Karen Osborne has said poll workers in her county will instruct voters to not wear or to hide any clothing that mentions a tea party group. “The tea party shirts would be seen as campaigning and would be inappropriate to be worn inside the polling place,” Ms. Osborne told the East Valley Tribune. The Goldwater Institute has an affidavit from a poll worker who confirms her training included instructions to not allow voters to wear clothing that refers to any tea party group.

On Wednesday, Oct. 27, the Arizona Republic reported Maricopa County had adopted a new instruction for poll workers related to anyone who insists on wearing this type of clothing while voting. They will be allowed to vote, the Arizona Republic reported, but poll workers will record their identities on a separate form for later investigation.

“State law classifies electioneering at polling places as a misdemeanor crime. Maricopa County is using the threat of a possible investigation after the election to intimidate voters into giving away their constitutional rights,” said Diane Cohen, the Goldwater Institute’s lead attorney in this case.

The Goldwater Institute Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation represents Mark Reed, who intends to vote Tuesday while wearing a T-shirt that says “Tea Party: Principles Not Politicians” and includes a “Don’t Tread on Me” logo.

Read more about this and other Goldwater lawsuits to protect individual rights and keep government within its constitutional limits at www.goldwaterinstitute.org/litigation. The Goldwater Institute is an independent government watchdog supported by people who are committed to expanding free enterprise and liberty.
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ATR Releases 2010 List of State Pledge Signers in Georgia

State candidates join incumbents in making no-new taxes promise in upcoming election
Today, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) released an updated list of incumbents and challengers in Georgia who have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge . These candidates have made a written commitment to their constituents to never raise their taxes. ATR strongly encourages taxpayers to consider those who have made this commitment. The list of incumbents and challengers who have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge is as follows

Incumbents

Ronnie Chance (S-16)

Jeff Chapman (S-3)

John Douglas (S-17)

Greg Goggans (S-7)

Johnny Grant (S-25)

Bill Heath (S-31)

Judson Hill (S-32)

Ralph T. Hudgens (S-47)

Bill Jackson (S-24)

Jack Murphy (S-27)

Chip Rogers (S-21)

Mitch Seabaugh (S-28)

Preston W. Smith (S-52)

Cecil Staton (S-18)

Renee S. Unterman (S-45)

John J. Wiles (S-37)

Tommie Williams (S-19)

Amos Amerson (H-9)

Timothy Bearden (H-68)

John Mark Butler (H-18)

Charlice Byrd (H-20)

David Casas (H-103)

Jill Chambers (H-81)

Brooks Coleman (H-97)

Sharon Cooper (H-41)

Clay Cox (H-102)

Steve Davis (H-109)

Katie Dempsey (H-13)

Matt Dollar (H-45)

Melvin Everson (H-106)

Bobby Franklin (H-43)

Mark Hamilton (H-23)

Ben Harbin (H-118)

Michael Harden (H-28)

John Mark Hatfield (H-177)

Bill Hembree (H-67)

Calvin Hill (H-21)

Billy Horne (H-71)

Penny Houston (H-170)

Sheila Jones (H-44)

Sean Jerguson (H-22)

Jerry Keen (H-179)

Barry Loudermilk (H-14)

John Lunsford (H-110)

Eugene T. Maddox (H-172)

Judith Manning (H-32)

Jeff May (H-111)

Fran Millar (H-79)

James Mills (H-25)

Billy Mitchell (H-88)

Larry O’Neal (H-146)

Allan Peake (H-137)

Alan Powell (H-29)

David Ralston (H-7)

Bobby Reese (H-98)

Tom Rice (H-51)

Carl Rogers (H-26)

Ed Rynders (H-152)

Martin Scott (H-2)

Donna Sheldon (H-105)

Barbara Sims (H-119)

Bob Smith (H-113)

Len Walker (H-107)

Mark Williams (H-178)

John P. Yates (H-73)


Challengers

Nathan Deal (Gov)

John Albers (S-56)

Tracy G. Bennett (S-31)

David Casas (S-9)

Barry Loudermilk (S-52)

Rashid Malik (S-9)

Diana Williams (S-43)

Charles Ashfield (H-124)

James Brown (H-77)

Chad Cobb (H-26)

Hayden Collins (H-15)

Kevin Cooke (H-18)

Christian A. Coomer (H-14)

Allen Freeman (H-140)

Tommy Patterson (H-6)

Jason Shepherd (H-37)

Jason Spencer (H-180)

Bruce Williamson (H-111)

Joseph Woods (H-160)

*List does not denote incumbents who are not running for reelection, who are termed out, or do not have an election this year.

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is a non-partisan coalition of taxpayers and taxpayer groups who oppose all tax increases. For more information or to arrange an interview please contact John Kartch at (202) 785-0266 or by email at jkartch@atr.org.

New Documents: Conservative Leader Disinvited from Speaking at Andrews Air Force Base Prayer Luncheon for Opposing Obama 'Issues'

/Standard Newswire/ -- Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained new documents from the United States Air Force detailing the decision to retract an invitation to Family Research Council (FRC) President and Marine Corps veteran Tony Perkins to serve as a guest speaker for a prayer breakfast held in February at Andrews Air Force Base. According to the documents, obtained pursuant to Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Air Force officials were concerned about FRC statements opposing President Obama's policies.

The following is an excerpt from a January 29, 2010, Air Force email included among the documents:

"General [REDACTED] came by a few moments ago and asked me to go to www.frc.org. That is the website for Mr. Tony Perkins who is to speak at the National Prayer Luncheon on 25 February 2010. The webpage has numerous Obama issues to which the organization is opposed. The organization can oppose initiatives, but the Command-in-Chief is named."

"CONCERN: Suppose the media gets a hold of this story."

On October 2, 2009, a Chaplain for the Air Force extended an invitation to Mr. Perkins to serve as the keynote speaker at the 2010 National Prayer Luncheon scheduled for February 25, 2010, at Andrews Air Force Base: "Sir, it would be a great honor for our community if you would accept our humble invitation and share with us some of the basic principles that have guided you along the way," the Chaplain wrote.

However, in a letter dated January 29, 2010, the Air Force rescinded the invitation. The letter cited Family Research Council website statements calling them "incompatible in our role as military members who serve our elected officials and our commander in chief."

"It seems like this administration's enemies list just gets longer and longer. Mr. Perkins is not only a respected national leader who has held public office but he is also a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces. I find it unconscionable that the Air Force would ban Mr. Perkins from speaking to a prayer luncheon on a military base due to his organization's opposition to some of President Obama's 'issues,'" stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

"This new scandal is bound to outrage many Americans and it raises additional questions about the Obama administration's commitment to the First Amendment."

Visit www.JudicialWatch.org to access the Air Force records obtained by Judicial Watch.

President Obama Is Playing Politics With Domestic Violence Issue, Groups Warn

/PRNewswire/ -- Domestic Violence experts are criticizing President Obama's pre-election unveiling of a new domestic violence initiative, saying the effort represents a concoction of unproven strategies that betray the needs of women.

The Obama plan will promote wider use of restraining orders -- but research shows such orders are flatly ineffective in preventing future violence: http://www.saveservices.org/downloads/Why-DV-Programs-Fail-to-Stop-Abuse

The Independent Women's Forum has said such orders "lull women into a false sense of security," since a piece of paper is unlikely to deter a batterer intent on maiming a victim. Former Judge Milton Raphaelson of Massachusetts notes, "Few lives, if any, have been saved, but much harm, and possibly loss of lives, has come from the issuance of restraining orders and the arrests and conflicts ensuing therefrom."

According to a report issued Tuesday by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, lesbian and gay persons are nearly twice as likely to experience domestic violence as persons in heterosexual relationships. The report also documents cases of discriminatory practices and "verbal and sexual harassment of shelter staff towards lesbian clients:" http://www.avp.org/documents/2009DV-IPVREPORTFINAL2.pdf

"American women and men who face the grim reality of domestic violence in their daily lives are unlikely to be impressed by President Obama's plan," according to SAVE spokesperson Teri Stoddard. "Domestic violence programs should be based on solid evidence and research, and not consist of a series of disjointed efforts cobbled together on Election Eve."

An increase in female-initiated abuse has been documented in government surveys, but Obama's initiative is insensitive to a woman's request for counseling and treatment, or the needs of male victims. According to a 2007 Centers for Disease Control study, women commit 7 out of 10 acts of one-way partner violence.

Last week, former Playboy Playmate Angela Dorian took a handgun and shot her boyfriend in their Hollywood apartment. The 66-year-old Dorian was arrested Saturday night. Bail was set at $1,000,000.

Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE) has developed a Domestic Violence Fact Sheet: http://saveservices.org/pdf/Seven-Facts-Every-American-Should-Know-About-DV.pdf

Stop Abusive and Violent Environments -- SAVE -- is a national 501c3 organization dedicated to ending intimate partner violence through public awareness, training, and evidence-based policy: www.saveservices.org

Why People Embrace God Before Elections

/PRNewswire/ -- As Americans consider which candidate to vote for in the upcoming elections, they are reminded of the government's vulnerability and wonder how their decisions will affect a fragile financial landscape.

This sense of instability can have wide implications, not just for government but also for faith in religion and God, according to new research from Northwestern University and Duke University.

The study examines how people cope with events that shake their fundamental need to believe in an orderly, structured world and suggests that when a government weakens, people's faith in a higher power becomes stronger. Surprisingly, the research also finds that when faith in the stability of God or the government is shaken, people turn to the other entity to restore a sense of control.

Professors Aaron Kay, Adam Galinsky and their colleagues examined whether changing political climates can drive religious belief, especially faith in a controlling or interventionist deity. They found that beliefs toward God and the government can help satiate the same psychological need for structure and order and are interchangeable with one another.

"This research holds important implications for our understanding of the formation and strengthening of religious belief," said Galinsky, the Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management at the Kellogg School.

Lead author Kay, an associate professor at Duke University, added, "Although there are undoubtedly multiple causes of religious belief, one cause may be that when people perceive their government as unstable, they turn to God or other religious deities to fulfill a need for order and control in their lives."

To test their theory, the authors conducted a diverse set of experimental designs, laboratory, field settings, and independent and dependent measures. The experiments were designed to demonstrate that external systems of control can also compensate for one another. The researchers gathered results from college campuses in Malaysia and Canada which found that perceptions of decreased government stability, such as immediately before an election, led to increased beliefs in a controlling God. Conversely, increased perceptions of political stability led to weaker beliefs in an interventionist God.

In a longitudinal field study conducted in Malaysia, the researchers tested people's sense of governmental stability and faith in a controlling God both before and after an election. Before the election, government instability was perceived to be high and people were more likely to believe in a controlling God, compared with immediately after an election, when a sense of government stability had been restored. In another study, when participants were led to believe that scientists have concluded that God is unlikely to intervene in the world's affairs (e.g., is not an effective source of control), they showed higher levels of government support compared with participants who were led to believe that God may play an interventionist role.

According to Kay, one implication of this research is that higher levels of religious belief, commitment, and possibly extremism might be more likely in those countries that have the least stable governments and other secular institutions.

Galinsky noted the timely relevance of their research: "Particularly in today's landscape and with upcoming elections, we find uncertainty swirling around government. It is in these cases when people are likely to turn to other sources of control like putting faith in an intervening God."

The new study, entitled "For God (or) Country: The Hydraulic Relation Between Government Instability and Belief in Religious Sources of Control," will be published in the November issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (published by the American Psychological Association). Kay and Galinsky co-authored the study with Stephen Shephard of the University of Waterloo, Craig Blatz of Grant MacEwan University and Sook Ning Chua of McGill University.

Libertarian Chair: Time to Re-Legalize Immigration

Amid controversy over U.S. immigration policy, Libertarian Party Chair Mark Hinkle says the proper way to end illegal immigration is to re-legalize immigration. Hinkle released the following statement today:

"In debate after debate, Democratic and Republican politicians have decried the problem of illegal immigration, called for more border security and employer sanctions, and eagerly searched for evidence that their rivals employed undocumented help. The Obama administration proudly touts the fact that it is deporting more undocumented aliens than George W. Bush, while many of the families they support remain stranded in the United States, and most of whom were guilty of nothing more than the inability to satisfy a nightmarish bureaucracy.

"Our government has made it practically impossible for most would-be immigrants to work legally in America, a fact illustrated by this flowchart from Reason Magazine.

"For most of American history, immigrants streamed into this country, found jobs, and either stayed to build a life or returned to their native country if they couldn't. America was admired by the world and proudly displayed an ode to immigration on the Statue of Liberty, within sight of the major processing center at Ellis Island. We can and should return to that tradition.

"Every significant problem blamed on immigration in this country is either imaginary or caused by government. In Arizona, where illegal immigrants are being blamed for an increase in violent crime, violent crime has actually been declining for a decade, and declining much faster than the national average. Immigrants (both legal and illegal) commit crimes at lower rates than natives. If you're worried about gangs, then end the War on Drugs which funds them, just as it did the gangsters under alcohol prohibition.

"Immigrants are often accused of overloading the welfare system. This is again the fault of a government program. But the idea that welfare is a magnet for immigrants is a myth. In an ingeniously designed study by University of Hawaii Professor Ken Schoolland, patterns of migration within the 50 states, which have no travel restrictions between them, were studied. Schoolland found that were was, in fact, a very strong correlation between welfare and immigration: it was strongly negative. All of the states with the highest levels of government welfare benefits experienced net emigration to other states, and all of the states with the lowest levels of welfare experienced net immigration. Arizona, the current focus of anti-immigrant fears, ranks 46th in welfare benefits.

"Immigrants come here to work. Anyone who works and produces makes others better off. And unemployment and immigration actually are another two factors with a negative correlation. There has only been one decade in American history in which we did not have net immigration: the 1930s. If that is your idea of a great decade, you can have it.

"One unintended side effect of border crackdowns is to increase the number of undocumented aliens who remain because of the difficulty and cost of leaving and returning. Another is to create an 'underground railroad' that makes it easier for terrorists to enter without detection. The overwhelming majority of immigrants would love to come in through the front door. It is our bad immigration policy that has constructed the back door.

"It is time we stopped scapegoating the people who represent what is most admired about America. When the Libertarian Party was formed in 1971, we selected the Statue of Liberty as our symbol. We're the only political party that deserves it."

The Libertarian Party platform includes the following:

"3.4 Free Trade and Migration
"We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a credible threat to security, health or property."

The Libertarian Party platform is available in Spanish.

The Libertarian Party has 21 candidates for U.S. Senate and 169 candidates for U.S. House in the upcoming November 2010 elections.

We Can Pay Off Our National Debt Within a Decade with Freed Money Technology and the Denver Plan, Claims Congressional Candidate J. Moromisato

/PRNewswire/ -- The Following is the fourth of a six-part statement by J. Moromisato.

4. A Zero National Debt Within a Decade Can Be Achieved with Freed Money Technology and the Denver Plan

With a growing national debt, now about 100% of our GDP, saddling our country with near $400 billion in interest payments every year, shouldn't we worry about reaching a breaking point?

There is the Denver Plan solution, which the mainstream media continues to ignore. It may be up to you to spread my message until the powers-that-be pay attention and do something about our dysfunctional financial system.

The Denver Plan explains how all the money government overspends, namely the annual fiscal deficit, goes one way or another into the pockets of the super-rich, which they in turn lend to the government in exchange for tradable securities that increases their wealth.

The Denver Plan proposes the establishment of Freed Money, which would decouple, or disconnect, the savings of the rich to the all-important flow of credit; this would enable the government to gradually raise taxes on the super-rich to the levels prevailing in the 1950s and 1960s -- when our country enjoyed the longest period of sustained economic growth.

Freed money would allow the Fed to replace all the privately held debt with bank-debt to the Fed, and the interest paid by the banks would thus constitute a new revenue stream for the government. How big would this be? The total outstanding debt in the U.S. is about $50 trillion, of which about $35 trillion are owed by private entities; at some point, perhaps a decade or so in the future, all that debt would become assets to the Fed; at a 4% interest rate, the interest to be earned by government would be $1.4 Trillion, that is larger than the total income tax -- from individuals and from corporations -- collected last year.

The combination of new interest and higher taxes revenues would enable the government to gradually pay the national debt -- now around $15 trillion. Furthermore, since the Fed would own that debt, and would return the interest it accrues to the Treasury, the government would save that $400 billion from its budget every year.

A Gift to the Drug Cartels

/PRNewswire/ -- A new Center for Immigration Studies Memorandum explores how seemingly innocuous legislation before the Senate could turn 25 miles of southeast New Mexico's Dona Ana County into a staging ground for drug cartels and illegal alien smugglers.

S. 1689, the "Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act," changes the currently designated "public use" of certain Department of Interior lands to a "wilderness" designation. The end result would be to severely curtail the Border Patrol's ability to operate due to the stringent nature of wilderness laws. New Mexico could suffer the same results as Arizona, as documented by the Center in its mini-documentary series (http://cis.org/HiddenCamerasSeries) showing the waste, destruction, and unsafe circumstances that borderlands suffer when wilderness laws (and poor federal government policy) create a law enforcement vacuum.

The new Center for Immigration Studies Memorandum, "A Gift to the Drug Cartels: Will New Mexico Become the Next Arizona?" (http://cis.org/new-mexico-cartel-gift), authored by Janice Kephart, Director of National Security Policy at the Center and producer of the "Hidden Cameras" mini-documentary series, leaves no doubt that bill's goal is to support legitimate environmental conservation. However, through an in-depth examination of current law and policy, Kephart concludes that the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act would leave the Border Patrol with little ability, and little incentive, to do its job. The measure would effectively hand drug cartels 25 more borderland miles for operations; an alternative would be to assure conservation with adequate law enforcement in the area, thus keeping the cartels under control while protecting our public safety and national security.

The measure, co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy &Natural Resources, and Tom Udall (D-NM), was passed out of Chairman Bingaman's committee in July 2010 and is awaiting consideration on the Senate floor.

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent non-partisan research institution that examines the impact of immigration on the United States and neither endorses nor opposes legislation.

Health Insurers Push Last-Minute Loopholes to Gut Rules Requiring Premiums Be Spent on Health Care, Not Overhead -- Watchdogs Ask President for Rate Freeze

/PRNewswire -- As the insurance industry lobbies state insurance commissioners in Orlando to weaken modest regulations on health insurance premiums, Consumer Watchdog's leaders reiterated their call for President Obama to place a moratorium on premium increases, articulated this week in a Los Angeles Times op-ed.

"Health insurance companies have declared war on President Obama's healthcare plan," argues Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court, author of "The Progressive's Guide To Raising Hell." "The struggling middle class cannot afford more double-digit premium hikes, and federal law says we are owed an explanation before having to pay them. Obama should forbid premium hikes until the companies comply with pricing provisions of the new federal law."

Read the Los Angeles Times op-ed calling for an executive order freezing rates: http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/patients/articles/?storyId=36580

On Thursday, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners is expected to take a final vote on new health reform rules requiring insurers to spend at least 80-85% of consumers' premiums on health care. State regulators continue to discuss how much information health insurance companies must disclose about unreasonable premium increases.

The insurance industry is pushing a series of last-minute amendments at the meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners this week that would weaken regulation under the health reform law, including measures that would allow them to:

- Maintain low spending on health care in some states if they spend a higher percentage in other states. This "aggregation" of medical spending across states will nullify the new medical spending rules for the very consumers they are meant to help - those whose insurance plans spend too much on administration and profits.

- Artificially boost the amount that insurers report spending on medical care. "Credibility" adjustments are meant to account for fluctuations in health care spending for plans with fewer customers by increasing the reported medical loss ratio. Insurance companies' proposal could allow insurers to get away with intentionally low medical spending, said Consumer Watchdog.

- Falsely identify administrative costs – including broker commissions, fraud prevention, claims handling and denials – as medical spending.

Public scrutiny of unreasonable premiums is the health reform law's only check on rate increases. However, because regulations are still being written, insurance companies are not currently justifying unreasonable increases. President Obama has the obligation to issue an Executive Order freezing premiums until insurers begin complying with the law, said Consumer Watchdog.

"Insurance commissioners have a choice. Send the current modest version of medical spending regulations to HHS, or give insurers free rein to continue spending too much money on bloated profits and paper-pushers and not enough on actual health care," said Carmen Balber, Washington DC director for Consumer Watchdog. "In the meantime, insurers rush to raise premiums now just in case they have to rein in spending tomorrow. President Obama has the power to protect consumers from arbitrary price hikes by freezing premiums until insurers explain how they're spent in the full light of day."

Insurance companies have lobbied to limit the information made public in the rate justification considered by state regulators today. Consumer Watchdog argued for more disclosure to explain how insurers spend customer premiums, including:

- Lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions;

- Advertising and marketing expenditures; and

- Transactions and transfers of funds to affiliates.

DHS Misleads Public with Partial Truth of Increased Enforcement, Says FAIR

/PRNewswire/ -- Yesterday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano released the FY 2010 immigration deportation numbers claiming that "it's been another record-breaking year of record criminal alien removals." Yet, Secretary Napolitano neglects to mention that while deportation of criminal aliens has risen, the total removals are roughly the same, and the number of non-criminal aliens removed has dropped substantially.

Responding to the new report, Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR,) noted, "It is nice to hear that Secretary Janet Napolitano believes that the removal of people in the country illegally – especially those who have committed violent crimes – is an important function for DHS. However, policy directives from the highest levels of DHS clearly demonstrate that the administration is refusing to enforce laws against noncriminal aliens."

Removing violent and criminal aliens from American society must obviously be DHS's highest immigration enforcement priority. However, while DHS has acted to remove criminal aliens already in custody, they have adopted policies to assure all non-criminal aliens in the country face no threat of removal.

"Secretary Napolitano is giving herself and DHS a big pat on the back for stepping up enforcement without mentioning that the department is merely completing cases initiated under the previous administration, under policies that she and President Obama have aggressively dismantled since taking office," observed Stein. Some 58,000 fewer noncriminal aliens were deported in FY 2010 over the previous year.

DHS data show that the current administration has dramatically curtailed all aspects of immigration enforcement against illegal aliens who have not committed violent crimes in this country. In the critical area of worksite enforcement, administrative arrests have fallen by 77 percent, criminal arrests are down 60 percent, indictments are down 64 percent, and convictions have fallen by 68 percent since 2008.

"Once the pipeline opened under the Bush administration has been emptied, removal of illegal aliens who are not violent criminals will be reduced to a trickle," Stein said. "Resources appropriated by Congress intended to carry out worksite and other enforcement in the interior of the country are being used for meaningless paperwork audits, rather than serious enforcement against employers and the removal of illegal aliens from jobs that are desperately needed by American workers.

"It appears that the release of the FY 2010 data, and Secretary Napolitano's media tour, have more to do with addressing what the administration perceives as a political weakness heading into the midterm elections, than a sincere effort to deter and combat illegal immigration," said Stein. "The goal is to convince the American people that immigration enforcement is being dealt with so that the administration can move on to its real policy objective: massive amnesty for every illegal alien who is not a violent felon.

"Getting criminal aliens out of the country is important. But the American people also believe that it is important to enforce laws against other illegal aliens who are filling millions of needed jobs and consuming billions in public resources. The administration is defiantly neglecting those responsibilities, while misleading the public by taking credit for the results of policies they are now dismantling," Stein concluded.

Stop Bonuses For Dead Senators and Repeal the Death Tax!

/PRNewswir/ -- Just as Congress was adjourning to campaign for reelection, the U.S. Senate voted to pay Senator Byrd's family a $193,400 Death Bonus.

"This was a blatant display of Washington cronyism at its worst," said Dr. Lawrence A. Hunter, President of the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity. "I would applaud a charitable act from our elitists in the Senate, but not one Senator took a thin dime out of his/her pocket. They took it out of ours!"

The Alliance for Retirement Prosperity is calling on all outraged citizens to sign a petition to protest this outrage and to call for the repeal of the Federal Estate Tax, commonly known as the Death Tax. The petition is available at http://wethealliance.com/alliance/petition-letter.

"When the Death Tax hurts small businesses, kills jobs and destroys family farms, it punishes precisely the kind of behavior society should want to reward: hard work, good sense, savings; it rewards behavior that should be discouraged: extravagance, overconsumption and leisure.

"The easiest way to avoid all death taxes is to spend your money before you go. But work hard, reinvest your earnings and leave your life's savings to your loved ones and the IRS becomes one of your heirs. Death should not be a taxable event.

"Americans work tirelessly their entire lives to provide for their families to build up a nest egg for their families for when they pass on. However, when Senators die their family receives a death bonus on top of all the other benefits government employees receive. If the Senate feels so strongly about paying the family a death bonus, then perhaps they should pool their own money and pay it out of their pocket instead of burdening the taxpayer."

Election Forecasts Favor Republican Gains in Midterm

/PRNewswire/ -- In the weeks leading up to the 2010 midterm elections, five forecasters or teams of forecasters offer models and predictions for the House in the most recent issue (October 2010) of PS: Political Science and Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association. The models offer a broad consensus that the Republicans will make substantial gains in the House, although there is not a consensus over how large those gains will be. A 30-seat spread between the low and high end of the seat change forecast range exists, with two forecasters giving an edge to Democrats maintaining their control of the House and three forecasters anticipating Republicans retaking the chamber.

James Campbell of the University at Buffalo, SUNY, presents a "seats in trouble" model for his forecast. The model is based on the Cook Political Report's district-by-district assessment of the status of House races. He finds that the more seats a party has that are rated as toss-ups or worse before Labor Day, the more seats they actually lose in November. His model combines Cook's expert handicapping of districts with national variables such as presidential approval and the number of seats a party holds going into the election. Campbell's model combines the in-depth analysis of the Cook Report with the rigorous historical analysis of national statistical models. Based on his model, he forecasts that Democrats will lose 51 or 52 seats, allowing the Republicans to regain a majority.

Models created by Alan Abramowitz (Emory) and Joseph Bafumi (Dartmouth), Robert S. Erikson (Columbia), and Christopher Wlezien (Temple) corroborate the prediction of steep Democratic losses. Abramowitz uses the generic ballot and presidential approval to measure the national political climate, estimating that Republicans will gain 43 seats in the House. He further offers a forecast for the Senate, predicting a Republican gain of four seats. Bafumi, Erikson, and Wlezien give the Republicans a 79% chance of retaking the House, forecasting a 229 Republican to 206 Democratic split of seats, but they note that there is a wide dispersion of possible outcomes, and that seemingly minor variation in the national vote can have major consequences for the distribution of seats.

In contrast, the forecast by Michael Lewis-Beck (University of Iowa) and Charles Tien (Hunter College and CUNY) and the forecast by Alfred Cuzan (West Florida University) both predict that the Democrats are likely to maintain their control of the House. Lewis-Beck and Tien rely on established voting behavior theory in the formulation of their model and estimate a Democratic loss of only 22 seats, allowing the party to retain their majority. Cuzan uses a structural model relying on national-level variables and election outcomes as far back as 1914 to forecast Democratic losses of 27 to 30 seats, staving off Republican attempts to retake control. However, this model leaves a one in three or four chance that the Democrats will lose at least 40 seats, reducing them to a minority status.

Stepping beyond the collection of congressional predictions is Carl Klarner's (Indiana State University) forecast of state legislative elections. He calls attention to the 43 state legislative elections that will be held this November, noting that many of the winners will have the responsibility for drawing new district lines based on the 2010 census. According to his model, Republicans will gain control of 11 legislative chambers, leaving them with a total of 46 of 98 partisan chambers, and the Midwest is shaping up to be a battleground of note.

Primaries held in a number of states in mid-September offer a taste of how hotly contested the midterm elections in November are likely to be. Whether Democrats or Republicans ultimately assume control of the House, Campbell notes that this majority is likely to be much narrower than the current Democratic majority, which may present a roadblock to the Obama administration's legislative agenda and will quite probably make control of the House a real question again in 2012.

Anti-war liberals can vote Libertarian

In the violent wake of President Obama's military surge in Afghanistan, and his failure to withdraw the U.S. military from Iraq, the Libertarian Party (LP) says anti-war liberals can vote Libertarian with a clear conscience.

Sadly, President Obama is spending an even larger percentage of America's money on the military than George W. Bush did. According to the tracking website usgovernmentspending.com, during the first two budget years of the Obama administration (FY 2010 and 2011), military spending is expected to be over 6 percent of GDP: a larger percentage of GDP than during any year of the Bush administration.

LP Chair Mark Hinkle commented, "Anti-war liberals who thought President Obama and the Democrats would reduce military spending and American interventionism have been betrayed.

"Liberals have also been betrayed by Obama's unwillingness to reverse the serious civil liberties violations of the Bush administration. Obama has claimed the authority to kill American citizens overseas without indictment or trial. Even worse, he has claimed that 'state secrets' prevent his targets or their families from challenging him in court. Obama's expansion of the 'state secrets' claim is a page taken right out of the neoconservative playbook."

LP Executive Director Wes Benedict added, "In many ways, the Obama administration is looking like four more years of George W. Bush. A vote for Libertarians sends a message for peace and respect for the Constitution."

Benedict continued, "It's important to remember that many congressional Democrats voted for the PATRIOT Act, and many also voted for the War in Iraq. They tried to blame Bush later, even though they deserved just as much blame as Republicans."

The Libertarian National Committee has passed resolutions calling for U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

On September 12, 2001, the day after the major terrorist attacks, two-time Libertarian Party presidential nominee Harry Browne courageously spoke out against American interventionism. In his article he wrote, "When will we learn that we can't allow our politicians to bully the world without someone bullying back eventually?"

Benedict said, "The Libertarian Party doesn't have the resources to take the lead in organizing mass protests, but we like to join anti-war protests when we can find them. When George W. Bush was president, Democrats helped organize many anti-war protests. Now that Democrats are doing the war-making, protests are hard to find.

"I made an effort to express the Libertarian position at the One Nation March on October 2.

"The terrorists have tricked our government into massive overreaction, spending trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives to fight a small number of America-hating fanatics. Many thousands of innocent Muslims have been killed in the process. We have gotten bogged down trying to rebuild entire governments. Democrats and Republicans have both given in to this terrorist trickery. Libertarians, on the other hand, see through this trickery, and we would stop wasting lives and money on the disastrous policies of foreign interventionism."

Liberal vs. conservative support

There is a myth frequently repeated in the media that Libertarian candidates take votes from conservatives. In reality, the situation is mixed: many polls show that Libertarian candidates actually receive greater support from liberals.

In this Kansas poll, the Libertarian candidates received more support from liberals than conservatives.

This poll showed North Carolina Libertarian candidate Michael Beitler with more support from liberals than conservatives.

Hinkle said, "Libertarians have a lot in common with liberals. In fact, people with a libertarian philosophy often call themselves 'classical liberals,' in the sense of the word as it was used historically. Libertarians sometimes describe themselves as 'fiscally conservative and socially liberal.'

"We Libertarians have a saying that we're 'pro-choice on everything.' We are uncompromising supporters of free speech. We completely oppose corporate welfare, and we hate the way big corporations often manipulate the government to get subsidies and protection from competition. And we are more immigration-friendly than either Republicans or Democrats."

The Libertarian Party has 21 candidates for U.S. Senate and 169 candidates for U.S. House in the upcoming November 2010 elections.

Voters Overwhelmingly Support Super-Majority Requirement for New Entitlement Programs

/PRNewswire/ -- PreserveOurFuture.org today released polling data that shows Americans overwhelmingly want to make it harder for Congress to create new entitlement programs. Seventy percent support requiring a two-thirds super-majority vote in Congress to create new entitlement programs. And nearly sixty percent believe Congress should pass a Constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds super-majority to create new entitlement programs.

David Manns, founder of PreserveOurFuture.org, said "The American people understand the fiscal calamity our nation is heading towards, and desperately want to make it harder for Congress to saddle us with ever more costly programs. It is stunning that a majority of Americans are already willing to amend the Constitution to make it harder to create new entitlements, even before our nationwide campaign kicks in. America wants action, and office holders who fail to deliver do so at their own peril."

The survey also found that 67 percent of Independents and 62 percent of Democrats favor requiring a two-thirds vote to create new entitlement programs. In addition, 75 percent of African American voters support requiring a two-thirds super-majority to create new entitlements, followed by 71 percent of Hispanics and 70 percent of white voters. This broad support spanning political parties and different demographic groups demonstrates the widespread concern that Americans have about the reckless spending behavior of elected officials who are out of touch with concerns of their constituents.

PreserveOurFuture.org is a non-partisan, non-profit advocacy group based in Russellville, Arkansas, and funded by individuals across the political spectrum. In launching the new non-profit, Manns said, "PreserveOurFuture.org has one simple goal – to make it more difficult to create permanent entitlement programs that cost trillions of dollars we don't have and can't afford. In short, enacting super programs should require a super-majority."

The nationwide poll was conducted by the Tarrance Group from September 12-14, 2010. The margin of error is 3.5% and the sample size was 800 likely voters.