From the Jan. 28, 2010 edition of the Rush Limbaugh Show….

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Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad: Anti-Abortion Commercial to Air

He was the first sophomore in history to win a Heisman trophy. He was the first college football player both to rush and pass for 20 touchdowns in a season. Last year, he led his college team, the Florida Gators, to their second national championship in three years. At 6 feet 3 inches and 245 pounds, Tim Tebow may go down in history as the greatest college football player who ever lived.

And to think none of that would have happened if not for a decision his mother made nearly 23 years ago.

That is the message of a controversial new ad starring Tebow and his mother, Pam. Paid for by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, the ad tells the story of Bob and Pam Tebow, who was pregnant with their fifth child when the couple travelled to the Philippines on a missionary trip.

While there, Pam contracted amoebic dysentery and the medicines used for her recovery threatened her unborn fetus. Doctors advised her to abort the fetus. Pam ignored their advice and gave birth on Aug. 14, 1987, to a baby boy. That boy was Tim Tebow.

Now arguably the highest profile player in college football for the past several years, Tebow cites his mother’s decision as a key reason he chose to participate in the Focus on the Family ad, which created a mild uproar after CBS agreed to air it on Super Bowl Sunday.

“I know some people won’t agree with it,” said Tebow of the 30-second ad at a press conference in Mobile, Ala., on Sunday, in preparation for next weekend’s Senior Bowl. “But I think they can at least respect that I stand up for what I believe. I’ve always been very convicted of [his views on abortion] because that’s the reason I’m here, because my mom was a very courageous woman.”

Tebow has long been open about his strong Christian beliefs and family values. Focus on the Family says the ad will highlight the theme “Celebrate family, celebrate life.”

The spot will mark a departure for the Super Bowl, which draws the largest TV audience every year and usually has commercials featuring dancing lizards or fortune-telling snow globes.

Continued….

Related: American Thinker, “What’s Wrong with Celebrating Life?”

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U.S. Cancels No-Bid Contract for Afghan Work to Democratic Donor

The U.S. has canceled a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan awarded to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids.

The cancellation comes after Fox News first reported on the details of the contract last week, prompting lawmakers to make inquiries into the deal. State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley told Fox News that USAID [United States Agency for International Development] terminated the award and is now working on an appropriate resolution.

The contract had been awarded on Jan. 4 to Checchi & Company Consulting, a Washington-based firm owned by economist and Democratic donor Vincent V. Checchi that was hired to provide “rule of law stabilization services” in war-torn Afghanistan.

A synopsis of the contract published on the USAID Web site said Checchi & Company would “train the next generation of legal professionals” throughout the Afghan provinces and thereby “develop the capacity of Afghanistan’s justice system to be accessible, reliable, and fair.”

The legality of the arrangement as a “sole source,” or no-bid, contract was made possible by virtue of a waiver signed by the USAID administrator.

Continued….

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Climategate: time for the tumbrils — A mighty outpouring of rage today from Philip Stott, foaming with righteous indignation, on the life and imminent death of the AGW scam. Continued….

‘AGW is real!’ insists Al Gore’s new soul mate Osama Bin Laden — Just when you thought the Warmists had lost the argument completely, an unlikely new champion has ridden to their cause. Continued….

The case against Dr Phil ‘Climategate’ Jones — Dr Phil Jones – the (suspended) head of the Prince of Wales’s favourite AGW-promotion institution the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia – had a narrow squeak the other day. Though the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found his department in breach of Freedom of Information laws (Jones and his team had deliberately withheld or conspired to destroy data), Jones was able to escape prosecution on a technicality. Continued….

Monbiot: an apology — George Monbiot is cwoss. Weally, WEALLY cwoss. And I don’t blame him one bit. God it must be an awful thing when you’ve squandered half your career acting as cheerleader for a cause which, on closer examination, turns out to have been a complete load of cobblers. Hugh Trevor-Roper’s humiliation after the Hitler Diaries is surely as nothing to what poor George – Britain’s second-most-famous Old Stoic after Perry Worsthorne – must be experiencing now. Continued….

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A sad commentary for solitaire…

According to the AP:

About 48 million viewers watched President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address on 11 networks, with Fox TV drawing the biggest share.

The Nielsen Co. said viewership for Wednesday’s speech was 7 percent lower than for President George W. Bush’s first such address in 2002 but 5 percent higher than for President Bill Clinton’s inaugural State of the Union speech in 1994.

From 9-10 p.m. EST, more than 9.7 million people watched the hour-plus speech on Fox, with ABC drawing 7.6 million viewers, NBC 7.2 million and CBS 6.2 million, according to preliminary Nielsen figures Thursday. Those early numbers don’t reflect West Coast viewership of the speech that aired at 5 p.m. PST.

Among the cable news networks, Fox News was the leader with 5.7 million, followed by CNN with 3.3 million and MSNBC with 2.4 million. The speech also was carried live on Telemundo, Univision, BET and CNBC.

I was not among the 48 million.

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The university at the center of a climate change dispute over stolen e-mails broke freedom of information laws by refusing to handle public requests for climate data, Britain’s data-protection watchdog said Thursday.

A cache of e-mail exchanges between leading climate scientists that were stolen from the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit and recently made public show that the institution ignored at least one request from the public for data, the Information Commissioner’s Office said.

The watchdog said it received complaints about the university from David Holland, a retired engineer, in 2007 to 2008, but it has only recently come to light that his requests for data were ignored.

“The e-mails which are now public reveal that Mr. Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation,” it said in a statement.

The thousands of leaked e-mails — made public on the Internet just before the U.N. summit on global warming in Copenhagen in December — sparked an international debate over whether scientists had exaggerated the case for man-made climate change.

Continued….

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Thirty-seven words. In this week’s State of the Union address — which was more than 7,000 words long and lasted longer than an hour — all President Obama devoted to the issue of immigration reform was 37 measly words.

Here they are: “And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system — to secure our borders, enforce our laws and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation.”

It’s disappointing that Obama didn’t spend more time on this pressing issue — but not surprising. Even though, elsewhere in the speech, Obama reminded Democrats in Congress that “the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills,” this White House spent the first year in office running for the hills on immigration reform.

In fact, Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, once referred to the issue as the real “third rail” of American politics. You touch it, you die.

[...] Continued….

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Uppity Woman:

“If you would like a USA green job, you might want to move to China”

The good news is the USA has created Green Jobs. The bad news is the jobs are overseas. Just saying.

“….a Chinese- U.S. consortium announced it was building a 600 megawatt wind farm in Texas costing $1.5 billion.” …

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But that’s not all.

Nick Gillespie @ Big Government offers this:

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I know you’ve heard about Justice Samuel Alito’s reaction to one of Obama’s lies during the SOTU Wednesday night, but if you got your info from the MSM, it’s wrong.

It’s wrong because all wire services and national TV outlets have given some credence to Obama’s offensive accusation by turning the debate into a question of whether a loophole exists in current campaign finance law instead of the real question raised by Obama: did the SCOTUS ruling create a loophole?

Even Fox News Channel aided and abetted the bogus claim. Thursday, Fox used every opportunity to explain in great detail what Obama meant by “a century of law” even though the Supreme Court ruling that the liar-in-chief referred to had nothing whatsoever to do with “a century of law.” The SCOTUS ruling dealt ONLY with a portion of recent law that restricted U.S. corporations (including unions) from running broadcast ads that name a federal candidate within 30 days of a primary or caucus or 60 days of a general election.

Alito’s obvious objection was caught on camera when Obama said:

“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) … And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.”

Alito was absolutely correct to object. Obama lied. SCOTUS did NOT overturn “a century of law” nor will the ruling “open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.”

Obama and his staff lied and are perpetuating the lie as revealed in a statement from a senior administration official Thursday morning to Politico:

“There is a loophole that we need to address and are working with Congress to address. There are U.S. subsidiaries of foreign-controlled corporations that could influence our elections because of this ruling.”

No! Not because of the ruling. If a loophole exists, it has existed for a century. Obama and his minions say a loophole exits that allows foreign corporations to invest in American political campaigns through a U.S. based parent or U.S. based subsidiary. If a loophole is there, it’s not new and such a loophole was not created through recent legislation or by the ruling of SCOTUS.

The Court simply ruled that restrictions on free speech is a violation of the 1st Amendment. The ruling let stand a ban on corporations making direct financial contributions to individual candidates.

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Let me make it perfectly clear: I don’t think much of Tony Blankley as a center-right politician because he more often than not supports RINOs like John McCain or Olympia Snowe, but he’s finally onto something that I fully agree with.

I’ve been criticizing the onerous 17th Amendment for most of my adult life and now Blankley agrees.

So you don’t have to look it up, the 17th Amendment was approved in 1913 and the change caused a complete makeover of politics in America. Before 1913, states had clout. When Washington wanted to steal more of our freedoms, the President and Congress had to deal with state legislators and the people before Senators would go along. Now, the typical response to our objections to Washington chicanery is a resounding, screw you.

Here’s part of what Blankley says about repealing the 17th:

At first blush, this might seem counterintuitive, as the 17th Amendment was brought about by a populist movement supercharged by muckraking articles in the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst. Those articles exposed corporate bribery of state legislators to control senatorial votes. As the direct election of senators by the people was a reaction to the corrupt lobbying of state legislatures that so aggrieved late-19th-century Americans, it might seem odd to recommend its repeal now — when again, corrupt lobbying and the aggrandizing of excessive government power over the people is part of the fuel that is driving the tea parties. It certainly seems particularly odd for me to suggest this just a week after the election of Scott Brown to the Senate by an aggrieved public that has just overwhelmed with their individual votes the Boston Democratic machine.

But in my defense, let me initially note that the 17th amendment has not yet ended the legal but appalling bribery of U.S. senators — it has merely moved it to Washington. …

Here’s what I wrote on Apr 08, 2006:

On this day in 1913 the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, destroying the last vestige of political leverage in Washington for states’ rights.

The Amendment changed the method of selecting U.S. Senators from appointment by state legislatures to direct election by the voters. The change eliminated Senator’s allegiance to [their states] and gave voters three representatives, two of which are entirely superfluous.

The most onerous part of the dastardly deed was that the Amendment was selfishly drafted to retain six-year terms for Senators so they can now go to Washington and completely ignore voters and [their states] for four years, or actually work against the interest of the people back home, and then use the last two years of their terms to rehabilitate their image for re-election.

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