In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: Republicans, Democrats, Jobless Americans, Texas Governor Rick Perry, Fidel Castro, President Obama Poster, Al Gore, Current TV, Sammy Sosa, Lamar Odom, and Khloe Kardashian.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness…” Sounds familiar. That would be one of the Ten Commandments liberal judges say cannot be posted in public schools, or on government monuments because that would be an establishment of religion by the US Government.

Here’s the President of this pluralist, secular, democracy paraphrasing Cain and Abel found in the book of Genesis: “…what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation that we look out for one another, that I am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper.”

We have a moral obligation? So now we can legislate morality. Check.

I’m not even sure what Obama means by this, “We are God’s partners in matters of life and death,” I was kind of hoping he still thought it was above his pay grade.

“Should” is a moral word —a philosophical one. You can’t weigh it in a lab, it cannot be found in the materials. So to tell America’s (liberal) religious leaders to spread the word that we should pass the President’s health care plan, he’s pushing a value from his office as the president.

I love it.

He’s actually living out what the left has railed against when a Republican refuses to divorce their religion from their political decisions. I just wanted to mark this day that the POTUS used his state position to disperse a religious, philosophical point of view…and all I can hear from the ACLU are crickets chirping. NAMBLA-defending crickets.

I smell a rat. It’s implied that when Republicans call up religious support that we are just doing it to manipulate the Gods-n-guns folks. When Bush reaches out to faith leaders it’s duplicitous and inherently manipulative. But when the left does it, it’s genuine — they have somehow divined the true spirit of Christ in our political discourse. The right is pandering to faith communities while the left is reaching out to faith communities.

Obama even comports himself like a charismatic preacher. That’s his rhetorical style. Hillary channeled black preachers when speaking in the South. John Kerry took many a photo op in front of huge robed choirs when touting his own religion while running against Bush. Bill Clinton and the Baptist Al Gore did the same. So why is it that when Obama quotes the book of Matthew he’s not a threat but a journalist has a heart attack because he heard from a source who heard from a source who heard from a source that Bush had an active prayer life with Jesus?

The answer is simple, the true religion of the left is pragmatism, and even the Christianity they hate will be embraced so long as it gets them to their leftist, Utopian goals. That’s why a Republican can be gay, a woman, a black man, a poor fellow, and they are still demonized. The left doesn’t hate blacks. It’s that they love their own ends more than any standard, value or government. If turning a blind eye to the horrors of Islamists is useful, then so be it. But don’t think that they actually embrace Christianity. Because as soon as a Republican Christian is in office it will be back to “Jesusland” and “God-n-guns” rhetoric.

Cindy Sheehan told Byron York, “The ‘anti-war’ ‘left’ was used by the Democratic Party. I like to call it the “anti-Republican War’ movement.” But Cindy didn’t go far enough. Because they won’t just use the anti-war left, but the Democratic Party will use Christians, gays, Mormons, terrorists, body-counts, Republicans (Specter), southerners, high unemployment, low unemployment to achieve their means. And as soon as they’re done using any of these in the back seat of the Donkey Van the same groups are discarded. Cindy Sheehan who?

It’s not the practice of religion that the left hates about conservatives any more than it was the practice of war for why they hated Bush. It’s that they hate conservatives so much that their practice of religion, war or tiddlywinks will be cast in the darkest shade possible.

But as for me and my house, we welcome religion into our politics. I just want the left to remember this day where with this posting I supported the President’s reaching out to lefty religious people.

Religious politicians acting on their faith is not an establishment of a government church, nor was it when Bush did it.

We all pretty much know that most Democrats can’t be trusted and that’s reflected in this marriage poll. It’s not that Democrat women are ugly, because we’ve seen too many cute ones out there. The men aren’t hideous either, unless you think a soft, effeminate man hen-pecked his whole life by his domineering mother is hideous. The main reason people don’t get married is out of a fear of divorce– a fear of a breaking of vows. And Democrats talk with their feet when it comes to making commitments with those who philosophically have no grounding to keep any commitment. Did Obama shut down Gitmo? Will he get health reform finished before August recess? Is he going to cut taxes for most Americans?

I go to dinner with a bunch of Hollywood Republicans every month or so and I’ll tell you one thing, the women are easy on the eyes, none more conservative or good looking than my Beloved. Republican women are happy, they don’t mope around like victims or screech about how terrible men are for being men. The men at these get-togethers are happier and generally sport less hair product. Married men are polled to have more sex and more satisfying sex than singles so Republican men have another great quality over their unmarried Democrat counterparts.

Marriage works better for Republicans because how long can a relationship last when victimhood and class struggle are the stock and trade of the household? Every married couple will champion the virtues of personal responsibility which is alien to the donkey platform.

Finally, what Democrat needs a spouse when the government is the head of the house? The federal open wallet makes for a provider of food, housing, education and PBS without all that pesky back hair.

In its obvious zeal to create a one-party state, the Democrat-Media Complex (the natural coalition of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media) last week seized upon the horrific murder of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington as an opportunity to ascribe blame to the American conservative movement and to further marginalize the Republican Party.

In record time, the media’s blind partisans and their feral friends in the left-wing blogosphere used the alleged “lone wolf” act of James W. von Brunn – an 88-year old self-avowed racist and anti-Semite – to try to affirm the controversial Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report that posited ” right-wing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president” and are a becoming a growing domestic terror threat.

The networks, CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times – the usual obnoxious suspects – toed this specious ideological slander, even though it smacks of the kind of profiling that the left rejects. Even Shepard Smith of Fox News jumped to the same conclusion by offering a surge of nasty notes in his in-box as proof. (You should check my e-mail, Shep!) If a newsreader on Fox News thinks it’s true, triumphal lefties crowed, then it must be!

While Mr. von Brunn is afforded the descriptor of “alleged” perpetrator before a court of law convicts him, the conservative movement is granted no such due process. In a country where the individual is “innocent until proven guilty,” conservatives have been forced to actively disassociate themselves from an ideological lineage to white supremacists, anti-Semites and other racist miscreants. And these days there’s less and less media space for them to fight this unfair accusation.

Rush Limbaugh, the bete noire of the Democrat-Media Complex, came under fire last week for disclaiming von Brunn from the mainstream political right. Mr. Limbaugh, no stranger to such high-level orchestrated slanders, righteously challenged President Clinton and his media abettors for connecting nonexistent dots between right-leaning AM talk radio and Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1994.

Fifteen years later, the glaring media double standard of putting only “right-wing” groups on public “guilt by association” trial is still on display for all who care to see.

You can read the column in full here.

A 10-year-old California law makes parents of children desiring to work in the entertainment field gather information from one part of government to present to another part of government to obtain a permission slip to work.  Now, this paper shuffle adds little to nothing of value – no added safety for children or oversight of employers.  But, rather than terminate this self-perpetuating paperwork drill, Democrats what to charge for it – taxing minors who want to work before they even work an hour. 

This Kafkaesque scenario is almost reality in the form of Assembly Bill 402 (AB 402) in Sacramento.  As summarized by the Assembly Republican Caucus bill analysis, AB 402, “Requires a fee of $50 to be submitted at the time a minor applies for an Entertainment Work Permit in order to offset the costs of administering the Entertainment Work Permit program.”  In other words, AB 402 is the ultimate in self-sustaining bureaucracy.  You need government permission to work and the government will only give you permission if you pay for it. 

The stated purpose of the bill, curiously supported by the Screen Actors Guild, is to increase protections for children working in the entertainment industry.  The main intended protection is to ensure compliance with the Coogan Act, a 1999 law designed to set aside a portion of a minor’s earnings until age 18.  

The problem with existing practice is that the California State Industrial Relations Division of Labor Standards and Enforcement (DLSE) doesn’t perform any follow up for the Entertainment Work Permits they issue to children.  In fact, until last year, Entertainment Work Permits didn’t even have a tracking number on them.  This meant they could easily be spoofed by parents not wanting to go through the effort of coordinating with their child’s school to obtain a proof of school attendance, adequate grades, and health records then schlepping down to the local Division of Labor Standards and Enforcement office to get an Entertainment Work Permit.  Now that Entertainment Work Permits have serial numbers, it is not at all clear that the numbers really mean anything as there is no way to tie into a database anyway (and why should they when about 12 percent of all the Social Security numbers reported by employers to California tax agencies are false or stolen).  

AB 402 might make sense if the government was spending a lot of money to actually follow up “for the children,” but the whole Entertainment Work Permit program only costs $1.1 million a year while the proposed fee would raise $3 million a year.  

Fortunately, the studios and talent managers appear to have matters well in hand.  My own daughters have worked as extras for the past year.  Our family’s experience shows the industry to be highly conscientious.  Further, the studios hire and have credentialed teachers on site to ensure that minors doing “background work” are diligently doing school work between shooting scenes.  

Lisa Santillan runs STUDIO KIDS Management and specializes in advising and guiding talent for studios who need it.  Ms. Santillan observes, “The Labor Board rarely verifies grades, proper schools, (or) date of birth” while, she notes, it often takes eight weeks to receive a response from the bureaucracy.  

Ms. Santillan opposes AB 402 for a number of reasons.  She says the proposed fee for an Entertainment Work Permit would imply that the Labor Board was guaranteeing work as if they were an employment agency, when, in fact, the fee guarantees nothing of the sort. She also notes that many families applying for work permits are lower income and single parent households.  Ms. Santillan’s commonsense suggestion for the California Legislature, “…the work permit should be abolished completely” as it has “…never proven to be a positive enforced document.”  She concludes by saying, “I do not believe charging a fee is the answer to our economy’s financial crisis through attacking the workingman or, in this case, minor child.” Ms. Santillan also points out that a typical background extra works only a couple times in a six month period, if that, and makes only $130.00 day.  Take away Social Security, disability, FICA, Agent fee, 15% into the Coogan account, gas, clothing, and now the proposed $50.00 fee for work permit and there won’t be much leftover.

Short of abolishing the Entertainment Work Permit, Republicans have suggested an alternative solution would be to obtain the permits through the studio teachers who already maintain the paperwork. The minor could still be required to bring their school verification form to the prospective employer, with the studio teacher verifying their grades, attendance and health, to comply with existing law. Ms. Santillan would rather see the permits processed through the minor’s own public or private schools as is the case for other types of employment.

AB 402 passed out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee on May 28 on a 12-5 vote, with all Democrats voting for the tax on child actors and all Republicans voting against it.   It comes up for a vote in the full Assembly in the first week of June.

[Ed. note: This piece was updated late Monday morning with additional information.]

Anyone who has read Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cucullu’s fascinating and meticulously documented book “Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind The Myths Of Guantanamo Bay” easily understands the merits of keeping Gitmo open.   In fact, Lieutenant Colonel Cucullu makes a compelling case for expanding Gitmo so as to house convicted terrorists like Jose Padilla and Zacharias Moussaoui, (currently in maximum security prisons here in the US) since they are privy to a vast trove of vital intelligence information, presently unavailable because convicts in American prisons cannot be interrogated.

Be that as it may, the lopsided Senate vote against President Obama’s request for $80 million to fund his wish-upon-a-star fantasy that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay simply vanish, gives me hope that in the end cooler heads than those at MoveOn.org will prevail in this debate. 

Of course, the problem now arises of where future funding will come from to keep Gitmo in operation while Democrats spin their wheels debating what to do with it.  If they refuse to allocate the necessary funds to keep it up and running, it seems they will have painted themselves into a rather embarrassing corner: no money to fund its operation, no money to close it down, and no place to put the terrorists. 

Certainly, in these troubled economic times, intelligent people should all agree that fiscal responsibility mandates some sort of well-thought-out financial husbandry.  In light of that, there seems to be only one alternative left to the Democrats hell-bent on closing Gitmo.  Once all the money runs out, the obvious thing will be to simply shut it down.  Lock all the gates, turn out the lights, pack up, and leave.  No muss.  No fuss.  Let the terrorists fend for themselves and in a few days or weeks, nature will take its course and solve the problem of what to do with them.  Awhile later, Nancy Pelosi can declare Gitmo a National Treasure (like Alcatraz) and, now that travel restrictions to Cuba are being relaxed, MoveOn.org can begin organizing “Bash Bush” tourist excursions.  In the end, it will result in millions of dollars saved and possibly even a net financial gain. 

I think this approach to Gitmo is what Vice President Biden must have been referring to in his commencement address at Wake Forest last week when he so astutely stated, “There’s not a single issue on this President’s plate that will not yield a change.  Just merely by ignoring it, it will change.”   Ignoring the detention center at Guantanamo Bay may be the only option left.  It is heartening that a coherent policy is finally beginning to emerge from this Administration

Tom Hanks, the star of “Angels & Demons”, endorsed Barack Obama, claiming he represents a “seismic shift” in our political and social fabric. He said an Obama victory will “redefine our republic” (see his YouTube video here).

He backed this endorsement with $29,800 in contributions (see here). He also gave to the campaigns of Al Franken ($14,600), one of the most deceitful public figures in the United States; Henry Waxman ($500); Barbara Boxer ($500); Patrick Kennedy ($250); and, Ethan Berkowitz ($250), all Democrats. He also contributed $12,300 to the Franken Recount Fund! In addition to his political contributions, Tom gave $50,000 (the maximum) to President Obama’s Inauguration Fund.

Ron Howard, the famous director of “Angels & Demons,” was equally smitten by Barack Obama.

He even recorded a video endorsement during the 2008 presidential election in costume as Opie with Andy Griffith and then as Richie Cunningham with Henry Winkler (see it here). In it, he says, “I know a lot of you are thinking I’m just following some liberal Hollywood trend. That’s not me.” He said it is crucial that we vote for change adding, “I mean real change - the kind of change that will allow us to trust our government again – which is why I’ve chosen to vote for Barack Obama. And, I say that not as a Democrat or a Republican because I have voted for candidates from both parties in the past, and I probably will again.”

Ron’s political contributions are less non-partisan than his video. In fact, he gave to Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign before being smitten by Barack Obama. His largest contributions went to the Democratic National Committee and Committee for Change (see full list here). Like Tom, Ron also contributed $50,000 (the maximum) to President Obama’s inauguration.

Sony, the company releasing “Angels & Demons,” was smitten enough with Barack Obama to buy the international rights to the documentary “By The People: The Election of Barack Obama.”

According to the Center for Responsive Politics the TV, Hollywood and the music industry contributed $8.6 million to the 2008 Barack Obama Campaign and only $1.1 million to John McCain. Overall, the industry contributed $36.5 million to Democrats (78%) and $10.4 million to Republicans (22%) in 2008. This is a big increase from the Clinton/Dole days of 1996, when the industry only spent $12.3 million on Democrats (62%) and $7.5 million on Republicans (38%).

Hollywood’s favorite Senate candidates were Democrat Al Franken ($639,838), followed by Barbara Boxer, D-California ($318,518), and Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut (285,520), who was able to land a questionably sweetheart deal with Countrywide during the housing bubble.

It’s not just celebrities that favor Democrats. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that Hollywood corporations favor Democrats by wide margins:  DreamWorks SKG (100% Democrat), Creative Artists Agency (99% Democrat), Time Warner (81% Democrat), News Corp and Fox (77% Democrat), Walt Disney Co. (74% Democrat), and Sony Corp. (67% Democrat).

Tom, Ron and everyone else in the country have the right to endorse, support and vote for whomever they please. Likewise, however, the American people have the right to buy tickets and DVDs of the movies they please. When an actor or director uses their celebrity for political purposes, they should not be upset if people apply their political convictions when making choices to purchase movie tickets.

Many Americans are not excited about the current seismic shift toward big government. Some of them may not be anxious this summer to help Tom and Ron buy tickets to a 2012 inauguration for President Obama.

For instance, in Afghanistan, the farmers recently called for a meeting with U.S. Marines in order to alert them to the fact that they will be in their fields at night harvesting opium poppies.  They wanted to make sure that the Marines didn’t take them for members of the Taliban and shoot them by mistake.  Like the farmers, I also don’t want our Marines to shoot them by mistake.

In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, the Soviet-loving president of the country, who came to power as the leader of the left-wing Sandinistas, insists it’s America’s obligation to bail his country out of the current financial crisis.  I might have voted to award him the Chutzpah Prize for 2009 if Brazil’s President Luiz Incio Lula de Silva hadn’t already copped the Prize by announcing that the world’s financial collapse was entirely the fault of “white people with blue eyes.”  Even though that left people such as myself, white people with brown eyes, off the hook, I took it as a personal swipe at my blue-eyed wife.

That brings us to the United States, a country that under Obama is rapidly becoming a place that would be unrecognizable to the freedom-loving architects who framed our Constitution and pledged their very lives and fortunes to creating a nation of, by and for the people.  It was a nation dedicated to the rights of the individual and based on Judeo-Christian principles, and not one that views Castro’s Cuba through red-colored glasses.

A recent poll found that 80% of so-called independents favor Democrats over Republicans when it comes to national security.  That, in a nutshell, tells us all we need to know about most people who identify themselves as independents or moderates.  For if there is any one issue on which sane people would give Republicans the edge, it would be national security.

As I have always contended, anyone who doesn’t regard himself as a conservative or at least a Republican is nearly always a liberal in sheep’s clothing who simply doesn’t wish to be pigeonholed.  I have an acquaintance who kept insisting for years that he was an independent.  When I finally pinned him to the wall and demanded he name the last Republican he had voted for, he admitted it was Richard Nixon in 1972!  Which makes him just about as independent as Howard Dean or James Carville.

It is my belief that by a huge margin independents and moderates go along with Obama’s plan to eliminate charitable deductions from the tax code.  It isn’t that these people are necessarily opposed to charities, they are merely opposed to individuals, particularly those of a religious bent, deciding for themselves which ones to support.  They prefer that the decisions be made by left-wing politicians.  So, while they would be happy to see hundreds of millions of dollars going to ACORN, abortion clinics, the National Endowment of the Arts, National Public Radio and AmeriCorps, they hate to see a dime go to churches, the Boy Scouts or the Salvation Army.

Speaking of abortions, I saw that a Kansas jury found Dr. George Tiller not guilty of any crime for performing a large number of late-term abortions for $5,000-a-pop.  That reminded me that years ago, I bought a female hamster for my 10-year-old stepdaughter, not knowing that she — the hamster, not my stepdaughter — was pregnant.  By the time I woke up one morning, my wife reported that the animal had given birth to four or five babies, and promptly had them for breakfast.  And that, in turn, reminds me that I recently read that a rare clouded leopardess had given birth in a Virginia zoo to a pair of cubs.  The zookeeper had to immediately rescue the newborns because these animals apparently have all the maternal instincts of an axe-murderer or a mother hamster and will often kill their offspring.  Which certainly helps to explain why clouded leopards are as rare as they are.

The reason I am sharing these particular, seemingly unrelated, stories is because it occurred to me that, if only she had been able to garner some publicity, my hamster could easily have been as great a heroine to the pro-choice movement as Jane Roe (aka Norma McCorvey) and how shocked I was that the ladies of NOW didn’t hold a candlelight vigil on behalf of the feline whose inalienable right to commit infanticide was denied by a paternalistic society. 

This brings us, inevitably to Washington, D.C., one of the few insane asylums on earth where the walls are made of marble and so are the noggins of the inmates.  First of all, in the spirit of fair play, I need to make a public apology to Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner.  Like most misinformed people, I leapt to the conclusion that he was a tax cheat.  But after watching him spend several weeks bumbling around the Capitol, babbling about spending trillions of Monopoly dollars in order to restore America’s financial stability, I have come to realize he isn’t a cheat, after all; he simply has no more grasp of financial matters than Curly, Moe or Larry.

–burtprelutsky@aol.com