Pres. Bush rejects pardon request for Lynn Moses

The Idaho Affiliate of the American Family Association

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Bryan Fischer, Executive Director

LYNN MOSES PARDON REQUEST REJECTED BY PRESIDENT BUSH

While Pres. Bush did the right thing in commuting the sentences of Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos (although they deserved an outright pardon), he chose not to grant a pardon to Idaho soldier Sgt. Evan Vela, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for following the orders of superior officer, orders which resulted in the death of an Iraqi civilian. Both Sen. Mike Crapo and Rep. Mike Simpson sent letters to the president requesting a pardon for Sgt. Vela.

And unfortunately, the president also chose not to pardon or commute the sentence of Lynn Moses (right), the Driggs developer who was sent to federal prison for 18 months for doing nothing more than fulfilling his contractual obligation to Teton County to maintain an intermittent stream bed as a flood control channel, in order to protect the city of Driggs from flooding.

Overzealous prosecution by the EPA – which has no jurisdiction over intermittent stream beds – combined with an activist judge – Lynn Winmill – resulted in this miscarriage of justice. As a result, Mr. Moses will miss his youngest daughter’s entire senior year of high school, including her graduation.

Sen. Crapo, believing it to be the right and decent thing to do, urged Pres. Bush to consider either a commutation or outright pardon for Mr. Moses. All to no avail, as the president proved unfortunately parsimonious with the power of the pardon in his last days in office.

Sen. Crapo believes the EPA had no jurisdictional authority to prosecute Mr. Moses, since the Clean Water Act, according the Supreme Court's 2006 Rapanos decision, gives the EPA no jurisdiction whatsoever over intermittent streams.

Please take a moment to call Sen. Crapo’s Boise office at (208) 334-1776 and thank him for intervening on Lynn Moses’ behalf.

If you’d like to review the Lynn Moses case, you can do so at the following link:

Feds send man to prison for protecting homes

WE TOLD YOU SO: MILITARY HAS TO BULK UP EFFORTS TO COMBAT SEXUAL ASSAULT

Our prime argument against the University of Idaho’s plan – since happily abandoned – to put opposite sex students in co-ed dorm suites and dorm rooms is that such a move would create environments which foster unhealthy and dangerous sexual activity, including date rape.

As I have pointed out, you cannot put two rabbits in the same hutch and not expect at some point to get little bunnies, and it doesn’t matter how many abstinence pledges the rabbits have taken.

Similar concerns underlie our opposition to the pell-mell rush of the military to

place women in combat and in close proximity to male soldiers.

Predictably, such bone-headed public policies, which turn the military into a giant social engineering laboratory instead of a machine to protect the American people, have blown up in the face of the Pentagon.

Now we find that the Army has to hire 30 new special investigators, 15 new prosecutors and a dozen new trainers just to deal with an exploding number of sexual assault cases.

Fifteen percent of the 9,000 crimes investigated by the Army last year were sexual assaults, and all told, 1,800 soldiers have been punished for sex crimes since 9/11.

Whether U of I officials ever recognize it, the IVA has done them and their students a favor by persuading the school to adopt a more socially responsible housing policy.

DefenseLink News Article: Army Adding Legal Experts to Combat Sexual Assault, Harassment

NASA SCIENTIST NOW A GLOBAL WARMING SKEPTIC

As Al Gore braves the freezing cold of our nation’s capitol to holler that the global warming sky is falling, and as BSU gears up to host an entire day of global warming alarmism, word comes that a leading NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John Theon, now retired, is publicly declaring himself a global warming skeptic.

Tellingly, he was higher up the NASA food chain than noted alarmist James Hansen, who claimed that the Bush administration was trying to muzzle him, hilariously making this claim in each one of his 1,400 on-the-job media interviews.

In fact, not only was Hansen never muzzled, he himself called for trials for global warming dissenters on grounds that they were committing “high crimes against humanity.” Welcome to McCarthyism, environmental style.

His efforts, according to Theon, Hansen’s former supervisor at NASA, “embarrassed” NASA since NASA’s official position is that it does not know enough to forecast either climate change or man’s impact on it.

Theon declares that “climate models are useless” since they do not take “very important sub-grid scale processes” into account. He adds, “Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.”

Theon joins a notable list of current and former NASA scientists who dissent from man-made climate fears.

Unfortunately for Mr. Gore, things have worsened since his hyperventilating “documentary” “An Inconvenient Truth” was released in 2006. The earth has cooled noticeably since then, Antarctic sea ice has grown to record levels, sea level rise has slowed, ocean temperatures have failed to warm, and over 650 international scientists rejected the U.N.’s global warming dogma in December. That list of dissenting scientists is growing by the day.

At the International Geological Congress in August of 2008, more than 2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to the U.N.’s position, and a 2008 survey of more than 1,500 Canadian scientists revealed that 68% of them disagree with global warming alarmism.

A November 25, 2008 article in Politico summed things up nicely by saying that the “science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.”

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works: James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic

IVA IN THE BLOGOSPHERE

Spokesman.com | Huckleberries Online | IVA: Set Minimum Sentences For Pervs

The tie that binds — a guessing game – the unequivocal notion

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BONUS BYTES

We’re finally getting a look at the 647-page pork-bloated monstrosity that is the Democrat’s stimulus bill. It has $1 billion for Amtrak, $2 billion for babysitting, $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, $400 million for global-warming research, billions for sprucing up federal agencies, and devotes less than 5% to the infrastructure projects we hear about ad nauseum. According to the Wall Street Journal, only about 12% of this porker could even plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. Over $265 billion is straight welfare – that is, cash or benefits to individuals for doing nothing - including $82.7 billion in tax “refunds” for people who pay no taxes in the first place. Even ACORN is eligible for up to $750 million. Worse, all these “emergency” outlays are likely to become a part of the baseline federal budget in coming years. Michelle Malkin points out that it will cost the average American family more than $10,000, as much as it pays for living expenses and almost as much as they pay for shelter in a year. No wonder the president is trying to get the GOP on board – it’s the Titanic, it’s going down, and he wants as many Republicans in the deck chairs when it slips beneath the waves of the sea. But as Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “We won the election. We wrote the bill.” I say to the GOP: let them own it. (A 40-Year Wish List - WSJ.com; The American Spectator : Good Morning, Suckers; Michelle Malkin » “Stimulus” you can’t afford)
Turns out the trick to getting your snout in the bailout trough is to spend millions on lobbyists. No less than 18 of the top 20 recipients of the TARP bailout money spent a combined total of $12.2 million lobbying federal officials during the last quarter of 2008 alone. Citigroup spent $1.3 million lobbying and got $45 billion in taxpayer loot in return. American Express spent $1 million and got $3.4 billion back. GM spent $3.3 million and got a $10.4 billion bang for their bucks. But have no fear that the program lacks accountability. Says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, “At present, we don’t know whether these companies are using these funds to fly on private jets, attend lavish conferences or lobby Congress.” (Top bailout recipients also major lobbyists)
The National Science Foundation (NSF), whose ostensible purpose is to “promote the progress of science,” is in line to receive a cool $2.6 billion in “stimulus” funding (on top of its annual budget of $6.6 billion). But it turns out to have been indulging in stimulation of a different kind. The agency is now under investigation because of evidence that NSF employees have been spending significant amounts of taxpayer time cruising the internet for pornography and engaging in sexually explicit email chats. One senior official was found to have spent as much as 20 percent of his working hours over a two-year period involved in such pursuits. One employee learned of a co-worker’s adventures in porn via sounds emanating from his colleague’s computer speakers. Sure, let’s throw another $3 billion at ‘em. An NSF spokeswoman “had no comment.” (Grassley launches porn inquiry)
Sen. Nicole LeFavour continues to press for special protections on the basis not only of sexual orientation but “gender identity” as well. We insist that what this means in practice is that employers will be required to let males use the girls’ room if they insist they’re trapped inside a female body. Gay activists keep telling us this is exaggerated nonsense. Well, tell that to a nightclub owner in Appleton, Wisconsin, who is being sued by a biological male who dresses as a woman and was refused permission to use the restroom of his choice at the nightspot. Since he has not had surgery, all of his parts remain 100% male. If we want a bunch of lawsuits just like this in Idaho, let’s pass gender identity legislation. (Transgender person sues Appleton nightclub | Postcrescent.com | Appleton Post-Crescent)
A Canadian man, who described himself as a pastor, was rightly sent to prison Monday for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl he claims was his wife. The girl, now 19, testified that she was too young to grasp the concept of marriage but was able to remember the sexual abuse in vivid detail. An important thing to remember here is that taking a child bride is considered normative in Islam, since Mohammed himself married a six-year old girl and began in engaging in sexual intimacy with her when she was nine. According to Islam, Mohammed is the ultimate example for Muslim males to imitate in all ways, at all times, and in all things, including in the matter of what Judeo-Christian morality correctly labels as the sexual molestation of a child. Not all cultures and not all religions are morally equivalent. (FOXNews.com - Canadian Pastor Gets 5 Years in Prison for Sex With 10-Year-Old 'Wife')