Christmas-Season Exhibit Features Ant-Covered Jesus

Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit Features

Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia,
and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts

                                                      by Penny Starr

The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitals, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show's catalog as "homoerotic."

The exhibit, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” opened on Oct. 30 and will run throughout the Christmas Season, closing on Feb. 13.

“This is an exhibition that displays masterpieces of American portraiture and we wanted to illustrate how questions of biography and identity went into the making of images that are canonical,” David C. Ward, a National Portrait Gallery (NGP) historian who is also co-curator of the exhibit.

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Mark Levin blasts ant-covered Jesus exhibit

Update: GOP Tells Smithsonian to Pull ‘Homoerotic’ Exhibit

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, is still weeks away from taking over the Speaker’s gavel, but is already throwing around the weight of a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

On Tuesday, the Speaker-to-be warned the Smithsonian Institution that if it did not pull its controversial exhibit — “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” — which featured images of an ant-covered crucifix and “homoerotic” art, its federal funding will come under serious scrutiny when Congress considers the next budget.

In a follow-up to yesterday’s story on the Christmastime exhibit, CNSNews.com asked a number of congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle whether the exhibit should continue or be canceled. Both Minority Leader Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor indicated it should be canceled.

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"This is why the People have Thrown You Out"

GOP Rep. Buyer Blasts Acting Dem Speaker

Somali-born teen arrested in car bomb sting

by Teresa Carson

A Somali-born teenager was arrested on Friday for attempting to detonate what he thought was a car bomb at a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony in Oregon, officials said.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in connection with an alleged plot to bomb the annual event in downtown Portland, the Justice Department said late on Friday.

The bomb was a fake and had been provided to Mohamud as part of a long-term sting by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, federal officials said in a statement.

Officials said Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen and student at Oregon State University, had been in contact with an unnamed individual believed to be in northwest Pakistan and involved in terrorist activities.

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The Climate Cash Cow

 by IBD Editorials

Hoaxes: A high-ranking member of the U.N.'s Panel on Climate Change admits the group's primary goal is the redistribution of wealth and not environmental protection or saving the Earth.

Money, they say, is the root of all evil. It's also the motivating force behind what is left of the climate change movement after the devastating Climate-gate and IPCC scandals that saw the deliberate manipulation of scientific data to spur the world into taking draconian regulatory action.

Left for dead, global warm-mongers are busy planning their next move, which should occur at a climate conference in relatively balmy Cancun at month's end. Certainly it should provide a more appropriate venue for discussing global warming than the site of the last failed climate conference — chilly Copenhagen.

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Hezbollah in Mexico

Credit Crisis For Dummies

Disarmament In America's Energy Security Battles

Development of abundant power and fuel sources

is being restrained by regulatory headlocks

in favor of much higher-cost green alternatives

with relatively scant capacity prospects.

by Larry Bell

Current Obama administration battle strategies directed toward futile wars to control climate change and free America from fossil dependence are hindering, not advancing, progress toward lasting energy security. Development of abundant power and fuel sources--which we will continue to rely on--is being restrained by regulatory headlocks in favor of much higher-cost "renewable" and "green" alternatives with relatively scant capacity prospects.

Proponents of such policies would have us imagine an autonomous nation powered and fueled by limitless sunbeams, friendly breezes and amber waves of grain-producing-alcohol that sever reliance upon dirty coal mines, oil rigs and smokestacks (those ugly industries that presently heat our homes, fuel our cars and power our computers). How can we possibly resist such a vision? Well maybe it's a bit easier to do so after we observe European experiences.

The E.U., which like the U.S. relies heavily upon coal and oil, has found little salvation through enormous investments in renewable alternatives. This realization is now causing large measures of buyer's remorse and pain. Members are witnessing their already shaky economies further destabilized by rampant fuel hikes, menacing power shortages and costly, yet unsuccessful, CO2 emission reduction efforts.

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Black Friday, the Federal Reserve, & the Global House of Cards

Higher Taxes Won't Reduce the Deficit

by Stephen Moore
and Richard Vedder

The draft recommendations of the president's commission on deficit reduction call for closing popular tax deductions, higher gas taxes and other revenue raisers to drive tax collections up to 21% of GDP from the historical norm of about 18.5%. Another plan, proposed last week by commission member and former Congressional Budget Office director Alice Rivlin, would impose a 6.5% national sales tax on consumers.

The claim here, echoed by endless purveyors of conventional wisdom in Washington, is that these added revenues—potentially a half-trillion dollars a year—will be used to reduce the $8 trillion to $10 trillion deficits in the coming decade. If history is any guide, however, that won't happen. Instead, Congress will simply spend the money.

In the late 1980s, one of us, Richard Vedder, and Lowell Gallaway of Ohio University co-authored a often-cited research paper for the congressional Joint Economic Committee (known as the $1.58 study) that found that every new dollar of new taxes led to more than one dollar of new spending by Congress. Subsequent revisions of the study over the next decade found similar results.

We've updated the research. Using standard statistical analyses that introduce variables to control for business-cycle fluctuations, wars and inflation, we found that over the entire post World War II era through 2009 each dollar of new tax revenue was associated with $1.17 of new spending. Politicians spend the money as fast as it comes in—and a little bit more.

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Value Added Tax (VAT) - Unfair and Insane

by Herman Cain

There’s one message from the 2010 elections that many so-called policy makers, political elites and analysts did not hear. Namely, the American people are not as uninformed and stupid as they think we are.

President Obama’s Debt Commission and the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force have both floated their ideas for reducing our nation’s runaway national debt. As CNNMoney.com reports, both sets of ideas echo each other in broad strokes. And both sets of ideas could confuse and confound the leaves off a tree.

These ideas are a long way from becoming law, but they are generating, as intended, much discussion about the merits of each idea.

The worst idea is a proposed national sales tax, which is a disguised VAT (value added tax) on top of everything we already pay in federal taxes.

A national retail sales tax on top of all the confusing and unfair taxes we have today is insane! It gives the out-of-control bureaucrats and politicians in denial one more tool to lie, deceive, manipulate and destroy this country.

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Ground Zero Mosque Applies for $5 Million Federal Grant

by John Hayward

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was created by Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki in the aftermath of 9/11, to “ensure Lower Manhattan recovers from the attacks and emerges even better than it was before,” as their mission statement has it.

Guess who applied for a $5 million grant under the LMDC Community and Cultural Enhancement Program? That’s right: Park51, the group that wants to build its Cordoba House mosque and cultural center near Ground Zero. If the grant request is honored, Americans in all fifty states will get to become investors in Cordoba House, right alongside people who donate money to Hamas “charities.”

This move has sparked considerable outrage from opponents of the mosque. Fox News quotes Representative Peter King (R-NY) as saying, “It is entirely wrong for any taxpayer money to be used to fund the Ground Zero mosque. This is particularly true when it is being done in such a secretive way. This just further offends the memory of all those who were murdered on September 11th.”

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Click here for your free copy of Sharia Law For The Non Muslim...

'The Euro Game Is Up! Who the hell do you think you are?'

President feels your pain over TSA feeling your crotch

Unfortunately, he isn’t prepared to do anything about it.

by The Associated Press

President Barack Obama has asked security officials whether there's a less intrusive way to screen U.S. airline passengers than the pat-downs and body scans causing a holiday-season uproar.

For now, they've told him there isn't one, the president said Saturday in response to a question at the NATO summit in Lisbon.

"I understand people's frustrations," Obama said, while acknowledging that he's never had to undergo the stepped-up screening methods.

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Gov Jindal: ‘Make Congressmen Part-time’

Where are those 50 million environmental refugees?

50 million refugees fleeing impact of global warming.

What’s that? They’re not? Then just forget the UN said it.

by Andrew Bolt
The United Nations University’s warning in 2005:

Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of ‘refugee’.

Anyone seen those 50 million environmental refugees? Or was this just one more outrageous scare by alarmists who should be held to account?

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Upcoming NFL star, Glen Coffee, left football for Jesus

The Good Life is Found Only in Jesus Christ

by Ken Connor

"...I have learned to be content, whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength." (Philippians 4:11-13)

Americans spend a lot of time and energy pursuing "the good life," and thanks to the "Mad Men" of the advertising world, we have a pretty good idea of what the good life looks like: A state-of-the-art home with all the amenities, a garage full of luxury automobiles, a closet full of designer clothes, all the latest technological gadgets, a well-diversified investment portfolio, an upwardly mobile career with cushy benefits... the list goes on and on. In a nutshell, we are told that the good life consists of feeling good, looking good, and having lots of stuff.

There's only one problem with this portrayal of the good life: It's not enough. It's never enough. It's like drinking salt water – the more you drink, the thirstier you get. And let's get real: the very purpose of advertising is to foster perpetual discontentment with the status quo. Remember that shiny new iPhone you waited hours in line for last year? It's now obsolete. Still in love with your LCD flat screen TV, or are you feeling behind the curve because you haven't joined the 3D technology bandwagon? Is the trusty family minivan a beloved symbol of family togetherness, or an embarrassing reminder that you haven't yet upgraded to an SUV replete with all the trimmings?

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Four year old met his mother’s miscarried child in Heaven

Stimulus: Still Not Working!

Unbelievably, the administration and its allies

keep insisting that a failed policy was a success.

by Veronique de Rugy

Imagine that I break my arm, but instead of getting a cast I take a big shot of morphine. The drug will make me feel better, but it won’t fix my arm. When the effect wears off, the pain will come back. And instead of being restored to their proper position, my bones will remain out of place, perhaps solidifying there, which will surely mean chronic pain in the long run.

Stimulus spending is like morphine. It might feel good in the short term for the beneficiaries of the money, but it doesn’t help repair the economy. And it causes more damage if it gets in the way of a proper recovery.

The stimulus isn’t working because it is based on faulty economics. Using historical spending data, the Harvard economist Robert Barro and recent Harvard graduate Charles Redlick have shown that in the best case scenario, a dollar of government spending produces much less than a dollar in economic growth—between 40 and 70 cents. They also found that if the government spends $1 and raises taxes to pay for it, the economy will shrink by $1.10. In other words, greater spending financed by tax increases hurts the economy. Even if the tax is applied in the future, taxpayers today adjust their consumption and business owners refrain from hiring based on the expectation of future tax increases, which worsen the economy today.

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10 Reasons to Protest…Against the Protesters

by The American TFP

1. Socialism and Communism Are the Same Ideology

2. Socialism Violates Personal Freedom

3. Socialism Violates Human Nature

4. Socialism Violates Private Property

5. Socialism Opposes Traditional Marriage

6. Socialism Opposes Parental Rights in Education

7. Socialism Promotes Class Struggle

8. Socialism Promotes Atheism

9. Socialism Promotes Relativism

10. Socialism Scorns Honor

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Is Illegal Immigration Moral?

by Victor Davis Hanson

We know illegal immigration is no longer really unlawful, but is it moral?

Usually Americans debate the fiscal costs of illegal immigration. Supporters of open borders rightly remind us that illegal immigrants pay sales taxes. Often their payroll-tax contributions are not later tapped by Social Security payouts.

Opponents counter that illegal immigrants are more likely to end up on state assistance, are less likely to report cash income, and cost the state more through the duplicate issuing of services and documents in both English and Spanish. Such to-and-fro talking points are endless.

So is the debate over beneficiaries of illegal immigration. Are profit-minded employers villains who want cheap labor in lieu of hiring more expensive Americans? Or is the culprit a cynical Mexican government that counts on billions of dollars in remittances from its expatriate poor that it otherwise ignored?

Or is the engine that drives illegal immigration the American middle class? Why should millions of suburbanites assume that, like 18th-century French aristocrats, they should have imported labor to clean their homes, manicure their lawns and watch over their kids?

Or is the catalyst the self-interested professional Latino lobby in politics and academia that sees a steady stream of impoverished Latin American nationals as a permanent victimized constituency, empowering and showcasing elite self-appointed spokesmen such as themselves?

Or is the real advocate the Democratic Party that wishes to remake the electoral map of the American Southwest by ensuring larger future pools of natural supporters? Again, the debate over who benefits and why is never-ending.

But what is often left out of the equation is the moral dimension of illegal immigration....

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States Raise Payroll Taxes to Repay Loans

by Sara Murray

State governments are borrowing heavily from the federal government to keep paying unemployment-insurance benefits and, even with the weak job market, most states are raising payroll taxes to pay off the loans.

Thirty one states, their unemployment-insurance funds empty, have borrowed nearly $41 billion from the federal government. California alone has borrowed nearly $8.8 billion as of mid-November, according to the Labor Department.

As states try to replenish the funds and begin to repay the loans, employers are facing increases in both state and federal payroll taxes, a potential barrier to new hiring.

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Patients Should Pay Their Own Bills

by IBD Editorials

Big Spenders: Increases in health care costs rival the rising of the sun for inevitably. Should we blame greedy doctors and drugmakers? No, blame should be placed on the system the government has promoted.

The tax code encourages employers to buy health care insurance plans with pretax dollars. Because these plans are exempt from federal income and payroll taxes, employers salaries. Nearly 60% of American adults are covered by an employer-based plan.

For most, these plans work well. But the arrangement that so many have become accustomed to has driven health care spending ever higher. The cost of medicine increased 98% between 1992 and 2008, a period when the consumer price index rose 53%. Health care spending now makes up 17% of the economy, a far bigger slice than it did before the 1965 creation of Medicare and Medicaid, when it never went beyond 6%.

Why has this happened? Devon Herrick from the National Center for Policy Analysis has the simple answer: We have become big spenders on health care because our motivation to be thrifty has been legislated away.

"A primary reason why health care costs are soaring is that most of the time when people enter the medical marketplace, they are spending someone else's money."

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Some Companies Shift Health Costs to Better-Paid

by Reed Abelson

With health care costs climbing even higher during this enrollment season, more employers are adopting a tiered system to pass on the bulk of those costs to their employees by assigning bigger contributions to workers in top salary brackets and offering some relief to workers who make less money.

For years, employees have seen what they pay toward health care go up as companies ask them to contribute more to premiums and deductibles. But now, as people enroll in health plans for the coming year, the sticker shock is more jolting than ever because so many companies are passing on to their workers most, if not all, of the higher costs.

A worker’s share of a family policy is approaching $4,000 a year on average, and is most certainly going to keep rising through the next few years. For lower-salaried workers, those costs have only compounded their struggle in a brutal economy.

More and more companies in the last year or so have begun signaling their recognition of the added burden shouldered by workers in low- and middle-income jobs by varying the premiums they pay based on salary. Consultants say the trend is likely to continue, as employers devise various ways of spreading increased health care costs among their staff and balancing that side of the ledger against fewer raises and other compensation.

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Joan Baez injured falling out of her treehouse

by Bruce Newman

1960s songbird Joan Baez had a treehouse built -- without walls -- 20 feet high in an oak tree behind her Woodside home because she wanted to sleep with birds.

The folksinging legend, who once performed the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" before a half-million people at Woodstock, fell from that treehouse Wednesday as she climbed down from the platform.

Paramedics drove the singer to Stanford Hospital, where she was treated and released after it was determined she had suffered only minor injuries.

"I sleep in a tree all summer long," Baez told an English blogger in 2008. "I climb up on a ladder, with ropes and things. The birds are right there in the morning. Sometimes they're flying so close to my head I can feel the wind.

"Those things are heaven to me."

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