Thread: Rick Santorum (R-PA) Named 'Most Corrupt' Congressman List In 2006!

Does Rick Santorum Want a ‘Theocracy’?

The following is from Scott Whitlock who writes for News Busters:

An angry Chris Matthews on Thursday denounced Rick Santorum, smearing the Republican as wanting a “theocracy” to “trump” the Constitution. The MSNBC anchor ranted about birth control after playing a clip of Santorum on “The Bill O’Reilly Show.”

Any time a conservative brings morality into politics, he’s a theocrat who wants his brand of theocracy to “trump” the Constitution. Liberals have been imposing their brand of religion on the Constitution since its inception. Everybody knows it, including Matthews.

Theocracy is an inescapable concept. The rejection of one theocratic government leads to the choice of another theocratic government. There is no escape from theocracy. Matthews is a theocrat. He just worships a different god. Politicians have been “trumping the Constitution” for two centuries, Democrats and Republicans alike.

The rejection of one god leads inescapably to the choice of another god. If any person, group, court, etc. establishes himself/themselves as the final arbiter of right and wrong, then he/they have assumed the attributes of a god. Thus, he/they are theocratic. Matthews and his ilk have limited the word to a strictly theological/political sense. This is not how Josephus (the person who coined the term) used the word.

Democracy can become theocratic if absolute power is given to the voice of the people. You’ve heard the phrase: “Vox populi, vox dei.” Those who promote a particular worldview and want to see it implemented socially, educationally, politically, and judicially, have elevated the majority to the status of gods. Their intentions are theocratic. Only their choice of god has changed.

“Messianic” is used in a similar way. While it’s generally attributed to a religious figure, it is often used to describe people or institutions that have salvation in mind. For example, education[1] and politics and often said to be messianic. Theocracy is no different. Horace Mann and John Dewey are venerated as educational messiahs by the educational elite. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have been anointed as political messiahs. Conservatives have followed a similar path with Ronald Reagan. There are no messiahs in Washington.

Liberals like Matthews want to give to the State nearly total power of life, death, and control of property, domains that properly belong to God alone and are delegated to individuals in a limited capacity. The civil magistrate is given very specific but limited authority and power by God.

The Bible teaches a jurisdictional separation between church and state but not a separation between God and the state. There’s a difference, and our Founders understood it.

One becomes a god when he sets himself up as the ultimate authority. It’s the attributes of deity that makes someone god-like, not by nature but practically and administratively. The Caesars declared themselves to be gods. Domitian declared himself to be dominus et deus, “Lord and God,” but he wasn’t, no matter how many coins were stamped with the claim.

John Adams wrote: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” At the Constitutional Convention, the elder statesman Benjamin Franklin quoted Psalm 127:1: “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it.” In the same speech, Franklin continued: “I firmly believe this and I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. . . .”

Chris Matthews and his fellow-leftist theocrats are Babel builders while claiming to be “like God.”
Notes:

see R. J. Rushdoony’s The Messianic Character of American Education [↩]


Read more: Does Rick Santorum Want a ‘Theocracy’? | Godfather Politics http://godfatherpolitics.com/3011/do...#ixzz1ihmCKCNf

Despite Rick Santorum’s surprise surge in Iowa, a number of his critics contend that he is not the small government conservative he touts himself to be.

Judge Napolitano of Fox Business Network’s Freedom Watch aired a video (see below) on his television program which revealed Rick Santorum making the following statement: “One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a Libertarianish right. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. That is not how traditional conservatives view the world. There is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.”




But what Santorum defines as Libertarian is the traditional definition of constitutional conservatism, at least in its original form, before it was usurped by William Buckley and friends and redefined by the neoconservative movement. Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said, “There is nothing wrong with describing Conservatism as protecting the Constitution, protecting all things that limit government. Government is the enemy of liberty. Government should be very restrained … To be a conservative means to conserve the good parts of American and to conserve our Constitution.”

After all, small and limited government is the very talking point which has enabled a number of Republican and conservative candidates to be elected to political positions. And yet most of them have disappointed when they arrived in office. Even Ronald Reagan, who has become virtually the emblem for the Republican Party and conservatives, expanded the federal government by approximately 90 percent.

David Boaz of the Cato Institute took issue with Santorum’s words, asserting that there is in fact such a society that has radical individualism and has succeeded as a culture: the United States. Boaz said, “It really is stunning that here is a candidate … who has directly attacked the idea of the pursuit of happiness. It’s in the Declaration of Independence. It’s the fundamental idea of America.”

Boaz contends that Santorum’s statement proves that Santorum’s intent, if he were to be elected President, is to regulate society, and control multiple facets of American life.

Likewise, it is not just Santorum’s statement which undermines his assertion that he is a conservative. His record in the Senate is equally revealing.

Santorum voted in favor of the failed No Child Left Behind, introduced by President George W. Bush. Like all other education reform laws, NCLB not only failed to improve achievement overall, but failed to narrow achievement gaps, or improve preexisting trends in student achievement. A true conservative recognizes that education should be returned to the authority of the states, and that it is an unconstitutional usurpation of power by the federal government to attempt to regulate education.

Santorum also voted in favor of steel tariffs, which the World Trade Organization ruled were illegal and cleared the way for the European Union to impose $2 billion in sanctions on imports from the United States. Steel tariffs virtually forced smaller companies to either declare bankruptcy or to allow themselves to be bought out by larger companies. The imposition of the tariffs resulted in the loss of countless manufacturing jobs in the United States.

Similarly, he supported subsidies for Pennsylvania’s dairy farmers in 2005, which paid money to farmers when milk prices dropped. The power to grant such subsidies is found nowhere in the Constitution.

In addition to these, Santorum voted in favor of the prescription drug entitlement, even as conservatives criticized the plan as a massive expansion which would increase the federal budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars. Santorum now contends that he regrets that vote.

Santorum opposed cuts to food stamps in 2005, and fought hard to secure more federal money for Amtrak, though a true conservative would recognize that Amtrak is a major failure. It is government-owned and -controlled, union-operated and employs more than 20,000 workers. It runs trains which serve political purposes rather than meeting the needs of the marketplace, and has operated at a deficit for most of its existence. Santorum also voted in favor of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which critics contend is another example of bloated government bureaucracy.

Santorum has been accused of doublespeak because a number of the items he supported as a Pennsylvania Senator are now the same items he speaks out against as a Republican presidential candidate.

For example, while serving as Senator, Santorum was criticized for his favor toward earmarks. According to the conservative group Club for Growth, Santorum is a prominent “earmarker” who sought billions of dollars in wasteful federal disbursements.

“On spending, Santorum has a mixed record and showed clear signs of varying his votes based on the election calendar,” wrote the group in a review of Santorum’s time in Congress. “His record is plagued by the big-spending habits that Republicans adopted during the Bush years of 2001-2006.”

Santorum now has asserted he supports an earmark ban because Congress has abused the process.

Perhaps the biggest indication that Santorum is no more than a neoconservative and not the true conservative he touts himself to be is his view on foreign policy. He asserts that the United States should be a powerful force of morality in the world and should be leading the fight toward freedom. He has criticized President Obama for what he views as a leniency toward nations that deserve aggression, and has been particularly critical of Obama’s actions toward Iran. He alleges that by permitting Iran to build a nuclear weapon, Obama has risked turning the United States into a “paper tiger,” and overall claims that the President’s attitude toward radical Islam is “nothing but appeasement.”

In other words, Santorum supports preemptive wars. But as noted by constitutional conservative Ron Paul, “Another term for preventative war is aggressive war — starting wars because someday somebody might do something to us. That is not part of the American tradition.”

It is hard to refute the notion that Santorum is a social conservative, however, as he is strongly anti-abortion and stands firmly against gay rights; however, his notion that it is the federal government’s role to impose a certain brand of morality is directly antithetical to constitutional principles.

The British publication The Telegraph went so far as to write, "The truth is Rick Santorum is so left on the issues that matter he makes even Mitt Romney look like a red meat conservative. Be very afraid, Republican America. This is how bad things are."

Ironically, one person who came to Santorum’s defense is Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, who claims that he is just conservative enough without being characterized by “bomb-throwing rhetoric and contempt for government.” She cites as examples that unlike some of the other candidates, Santorum does not resent the Federal Reserve Chairman, nor does he advocate what Rubin dubs a “goofy scheme to devolve Social Security to the states,” and he did not urge Congress to refuse to raise the debt limit.

But for conservatives, those very items Rubin uses to defend Santorum are problematic.

Judge Napolitano contends that the only true conservatives in the presidential race are Ron Paul and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson.

Boaz concurred, asserting, “People who are looking for smaller government don’t have many choices besides Ron Paul and Gary Johnson.”




http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews...s-conservatism


It boils down to one thing for me it is either between Control of your Freedom or Freedom from their Control...

CREW is not a credible organization it is left leaning and funded by George Soros.


Rep. Michael Grimm rips left-leaning watchdog; calls inclusion on their 'Most Corrupt Members of Congress' list 'baseless' and 'pathetic'



STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- High-profile Rep. Michael Grimm (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) is the target
of a left-leaning watchdog group that put him on their list of the 14 "Most Corrupt Members of Congress."The list includes 10 Republicans and just four Democrats.Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) slammed Grimm for a promotional video he shot for a friend's security firm, and for using the Marine Corps and the FBI logos in his 2010 campaign.
"When given the choice of following the law or illegally advancing his career and that of a friend, Rep. Grimm chose the latter," said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan.
But Grimm hit the group as a bastion of liberal leanings.
"This is just another underhanded and pathetic attempt by George Soros' liberal hack shop to make a baseless attack and attempted character assassination of a Republican official," he said.
Billionaire liberal Soros' Open Society Institute is a donor to CREW, and Soros champions left-leaning causes.
An analysis of CREW's official complaints, lawsuits and other actions by Roll Call, the non-partisan newspaper of Capitol Hill, showed that the group targeted Republican politicians and right-of-center nonprofit organizations by a ratio of more than 8-to-1 compared with Democrats and liberal groups.
The paper said that CREW requested 67 investigations by the Department of Justice and other law-enforcing agencies. Of these, two-thirds targeted Republicans. Only 10 percent targeted Democrats.
Grimm taped a nearly two-minute video on behalf of MG Security, a firm run by Manny Gomez, a former FBI colleague and fellow Marine of Grimm's.
The company provides everything from bodyguards to protection against cybertheft and fraud.
In the video, Grimm calls Gomez an "asset to any company or individual that needs his services."
Ms. Sloan said that the endorsement, which no longer appears on the company website but can be found on YouTube, broke House ethics rules.
The House Ethics Manual warns members to refrain from any interaction with a business that might make it look like they are dispensing "special favors" or favoring one firm over another.
The manual also cautions members from "becoming too closely affiliated with a particular enterprise."
"It's a pretty clear violation," said Ms. Sloan.
And Grimm issued a mea culpa last year when his campaign used the Marine and FBI logos in a fundraiser mailing. The logos cannot be used in ways that could lead people to believe that the organizations endorse a particular candidate or cause.
While Grimm said it wouldn't happen again, CREW said that Grimm later appeared in an ad in his Marine fatigues and aired a commercial in which he displayed his FBI badge.
"As someone who has risked my life to fight corruption, this is an especially egregious act," Grimm said of the criticism, "one that should shed ample light on just how illegitimate and deceitful this organization is."
Kevin Elkins of the Gaeta Democratic Club said the CREW report sparked reminders of other concerns about Grimm, including his friendship with a former felon; questions about Grimm's energy business, and his dustup in a city nightclub.
"He is embarrassing Staten Island with his conduct both past and present," Elkins said.
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Queens), who is being investigated by federal law enforcement and the House Ethics Committee, is the only other New York lawmaker on the list.
Others on the list have been accused of breaking the law or disregarding House ethics rules.
When it was pointed out that the most of the lawmakers on CREW's list are Republicans, Ms. Sloan said, "Who do you think is missing?"
Among those not on the list is former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who left Congress after posting a raunchy photo of himself on the Internet and admitting to dalliances with a number of women online.
The House Ethics Committee investigation of Weiner was sought before he resigned. Among the questions was whether Weiner had used House resources in his carryings-on.
Ms. Sloan said the corruption list is limited to current members, and had Weiner still been in office, "he'd have made the list."
She said Weiner would certainly make CREW's 2011 "scandals of the year" list.
The House Ethics Committee did not return an e-mail and phone call seeking comment on Grimm.

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf...s_left-le.html

Ron Paul Using Soros-Funded Opposition Research Against Rick Santorum in New Attack Ad
BY Lisa Grass

Ron I-might-put-Dennis-Kucinich-in-my-Cabinet Paul has joined with his friends on the Left to launch anattack ad against Rick Santorum. The ad quotes opposition research from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Here’s background on them from Discover the Networks.

• Public interest organization that litigates against corrupt political leaders
• Targets almost exclusively Republicans
• Heavily funded by George Soros’s Open Society Institute and by Democracy Alliance

Established in 2001, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) describes itself as a “nonpartisan” public interest group that litigates and brings ethics charges against “government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests” and “betray the public trust.”
CREW’s ultimate purpose is to use “the rule of law to bring about constructive social change” in a manner the organization likens to the 1960s civil rights movement. The “social change” sought by CREW is the transformation of America into a nation that more fully embraces leftist values and policies. Toward this end, CREW strives to discredit conservatives and Republicans it deems vulnerable to attack, with the objective of decreasing their numbers in political offices nationwide. Thus the overwhelming majority of the public officials targeted by CREW are Republicans. In September 2006, the organization issued a 241-page report – titled “Beyond [Tom] Delay: The 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress” — which named 17 Republicans and 3 Democrats. The report further listed 5 “Dishonorable Mentions” — 4 Republicans and 1 Democrat. A similar disproportion has marked the political contributions made by CREW’s Board members and staffers in recent years. Between 1995 and 2004, those individuals contributed$125,245 to Democrats and $16,013 to Republicans.
Citing the existence of conservative legal advocacy groups like Judicial Watch, the Rutherford Institute, and the National Legal and Policy Center, CREW says: “Conservative groups such as these have no real parallel in the progressive arena.” While acknowledging that there are numerous leftist groups that focus on research and legislation, CREW states that such organizations “do not use litigation to target outrageous conduct.” This is the niche that CREW has carved out for itself.
CREW was founded by Democrat activists Norm Eisen (an attorney) and Louis Mayberg (a prominent Democrat donor, and co-founder of the Maryland-based mutual fund management firm ProFund Advisors LLC). CREW’s “Form 990″ IRS filing for 2001 lists Mayberg as one of its three Founding Directors; the other two are Daniel Berger (a high-profile Democrat donor who in 2004 made a $100,000 contribution to America Coming Together) and Mark Penn (a fellow at the New Politics Institute, and a top Democrat strategist and pollster who not only played a key role in Bill Clinton‘s 1996 presidential campaign, but also served as head of ”message and strategy” for Hillary Clinton‘s 2000 Senate campaign).
CREW has received financial backing from George Soros‘s Open Society Institute, Democracy Alliance, the Tides Foundation, theStreisand Foundation, the Arca Foundation, the David Geffen Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, the Mayberg Family Charitable Foundation, the Woodbury Fund, and the Sheller Family Foundation — all institutions distinguished by their support for far-left causes.

http://lisagraas.com/blog/2012/01/06...new-attack-ad/

Thanks for pointing this out April..

Originally Posted by airdale

Thanks for pointing this out April..

You are welcome, Soros has his dirty fingers in everything. If he is after Santorum you know Santorum has to be a conservative. Santorum is not perfect but he is much better than the RINOs.

Santorum charity for the poor spent most of its money on management, political friends



By Carol D. Leonnig and Dan Eggen, Published: January 13

As Republicans gathered for their national convention in Philadelphia a decade ago, Rick Santorum, who was then an up-and-coming senator from Pennsylvania, launched a charity he said would improve the lives of low-income residents in his home state.



Video
Though Santorum's old-fashioned, shoe-leather approach to campaigning paid off in Iowa, the question for him now is how far he can go from here, given his lack of resources and the need to ramp up a national organization.

Though Santorum's old-fashioned, shoe-leather approach to campaigning paid off in Iowa, the question for him now is how far he can go from here, given his lack of resources and the need to ramp up a national organization.


“Wouldn’t it be a great thing to leave something positive behind other than a bunch of parties and a bunch of garbage?” Santorum told a local reporter.

But homeless families and troubled children were not the biggest beneficiaries of “Operation Good Neighbor.” Instead, the foundation spent most of its money to run itself, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for fundraising, administration and office rental paid to Santorum’s political allies.

The charity also had significant overlap with the senator’s campaigns and his work on Capitol Hill. Among the leading donors to the foundation were Pennsylvania development and finance firms that had donated to his election efforts and had interests that Santorum had supported in the Senate.

Santorum, whose last-minute surge in the Iowa caucuses has brought new attention to his presidential bid, portrays himself as a common man concerned about the gap between the nation’s rich and poor. But in the case of his charity, his efforts ended up mostly helping his cadre of political friends.

Before it folded in 2007, the foundation raised $2.58 million, with 39 percent of that donated directly to groups helping the needy. By industry standards, such philanthropic groups should be donating nearly twice that, from 75 to 85 percent of their funds.

“That’s exceptionally poor,” Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, a national organization that rates charitable groups, said of the group’s giving. “We would tell donors to run with fear from this organization.”

Santorum campaign adviser John Brabender said the former senator remains proud of the cause he championed.

“Senator Santorum was very committed to helping raise funds for Operation Good Neighbor and did so with the understanding that those funds would be used to help many organizations and families located in urban areas of Pennsylvania,” Brabender said.

Robert Pratter, who had served on the charity’s board, defended its management, saying its fundraising costs and payments to staff and consultants were reasonable.

“We were raising money for these very small mom and pop groups — the most effective way to raise money was the way we raised it,” said Pratter, who was formerly with Philadelphia risk management firm PMA Capital, a donor to the charity and to Santorum campaigns. “If you have a golf outing , it costs money to have a golf outing.”

Recipients, including an AIDS group, a local YMCA and others, received checks of roughly $6,000 to $15,000. Pratter said they were much-needed resources for tiny nonprofits struggling raise money on their own.

Robert Bickhart, a Republican political strategist who was Santorum’s campaign finance director, became the charity’s executive director.

He served without pay in 2001, and received payments for renting the charity office space in his Conshohocken consulting firm, Capitol Resource Group. Tax records do not specify the amount paid for rent.

Beginning in 2002, he was paid for his part-time job as director, and from 2002 to 2006 he received a total of $97,000 in compensation, plus unspecified amounts in office rent.

Bickhart, who became finance chair of the Republican National Committee in 2009, had resigned three years earlier from the Santorum charity. The group had been the subject of a piece in the magazine American Prospect that reported some of his early fees and noted the charity’s low level of giving to nonprofits.

i

Video
Though Santorum's old-fashioned, shoe-leather approach to campaigning paid off in Iowa, the question for him now is how far he can go from here, given his lack of resources and the need to ramp up a national organization.

Though Santorum's old-fashioned, shoe-leather approach to campaigning paid off in Iowa, the question for him now is how far he can go from here, given his lack of resources and the need to ramp up a national organization.



When Bickhart left, Santorum’s former spokesperson, Laura Lebaudy, took over briefly as the charity’s director, records show.

In its six years, the charity also paid $347,088 for the fundraising services of Maria Diesel, a Chester County events coordinator who has also helped raise money for Santorum’s political efforts.

Diesel did not return messages left at her home. And Bickhart, who later became mired in controversy over his stewardship of the finances at the Republican National Committee under former chairman Michael Steele, referred questions to the Santorum campaign.

Pratter said Bickhart and others were properly compensated, and their political ties to Santorum were irrelevant.

“I don’t believe they got a tremendous amount of money, and I know whatever they got was for services provided,” Pratter said. “It wasn’t as if this was some kind of front. They did their work.”

Bickhart also benefitted from another Santorum organization, a political action committee known as America’s Foundation PAC, which the senator formed while he was in office. Lawmakers often use such committees, known as “leadership PACs,” to dole out money to political allies.

Santorum kept the committee going, even after losing his seat in 2006, and has raised $5.5 million over the past five years.

When he was in office and running for re-election, he gave 20 percent of the funds to other GOP candidates in federal races. But after Santorum left the Senate, that figure dropped to about 3 percent, although he also gave a small amount to local Republicans in key primary states.

The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group, found in a 2011 study that leadership PACs run by lawmakers commonly give away from 80 to 90 percent of their money to other candidates or political committees.

After he left the Senate, Santorum spent most of his PAC money — more than $3 million — on campaign-style expenses criticizing Democrats, including direct mail, polling and political consultants, disclosure records show. Another $1.4 million went for travel, salaries and other administrative costs.

As with the charity, hundreds of thousands of dollars of the PAC money went to loyal aides with close ties to Santorum. Bickhart and his firm, for example, have received nearly $780,000 from America’s Foundation since 2001, records show.

In a January 2010 letter seeking donations, Santorum said he needed money to “reinforce our conservative allies” in Congress and retake control of the House. Though Santorum had not then registered as a presidential candidate, he also wrote he was “actively considering” a presidential run and hoped to “kick the Obama administration to the curb,” according to the Philadelphia Daily News.

Santorum centered much of his fundraising and political organizing in recent years on opposition to the policies of President Obama and other Democrats. In one “thank you” mailing sent to supporters in 2010, Santorum said he was “fighting to preserve the very soul of America” and “to stop President Obama and his radical agenda.” The document is preserved on a vendor’s Web site as an example of award-winning fundraising work.

By 2011, much of the spending by America’s Foundation was centered on key primary states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina as Santorum laid preparations for a presidential run.

Brabender said the expenses in primary states were proper.

“The senator spent a great deal of time on party building activities and helping other candidates, and he was entitled to have these expenses paid for,” he said.

Federal campaign-finance laws provide few limits on how a politician can spend money from a leadership PAC, and candidates are not required to form a presidential campaign committee until they explicitly declare an interest in running for the White House.

Santorum formally announced his bid in June 2011, after spending about $585,000 in the first six months of 2011 through America’s Foundation .

“Leadership PACs have become a very common vehicle to be treated as a kind of slush fund for former officeholders,” said Paul S. Ryan, associate counsel at the Campaign Legal Center. “It’s perfectly legal for a senator to amass millions of dollars in a leadership PAC, and then once they leave office or are kicked out office, they can do whatever they want with that money.”

Staff writer T.W. Farnum and Research Editors Alice Crites and Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.


Santorum charity for the poor spent most of its money on management, political friends - The Washington Post


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