By all signs, Americans are preparing to send Washington a clear message in the 2014 elections. The question is, will Washington listen? Republicans - poised to take control of Congress - should set our sights on three big goals to make Americans feel confident in their futures once again: jumpstart the economy, safeguard constitutional liberties, and strengthen our national security. Here are ten critical priorities for the 2015 Congress: First, embrace a big pro-jobs, growth agenda. For six years, the Obama economy has been trapped in stagnation, hurting millions. A Republican Congress should immediately help Americans get more jobs by embracing America's energy renaissance. This means passing legislation to make it easier to build energy infrastructure, such as the Keystone pipeline. But, we need an energy policy that's bigger than Keystone. An effective energy plan would also protect innovative energy technology, such as hydraulic fracturing, from being handcuffed by the federal government. We can also open up land for exploration and ensure that American companies can export liquefied natural gas around the world. And, lastly, stop the EPA from implementing rules that will destroy coal jobs and drive up our electricity bills. Second,

Americans are living in Panic City over Ebola thanks to the now-lethal incompetence of Obola Obama. He has allowed his fascist political ideology to become homicidally criminal.  He refuses to close our southern border from illegal invasion causing epidemics and to bar entry to anyone from Ebola-stricken countries as that would be the failure of his Amnesty goal of millions of new Democrat voters. Hundreds of children in 46 states have been infected with Enterovirus D-68, with seven deaths reported by the CDC as of 10/15.  As Jack Kelly notes today (10/16):  "There are more than 100 enteroviruses, ranging from the common cold to polio. EV D-68 has been very rare here. (But) EV D-68 is common in Central America, from whence came the flood of illegal immigrant children. The outbreak was first reported in communities to which they were sent.  CDC refuses to connect the dots.  Why won't it?" Now add the Ebola Panic to this.  Ebola is being called Obama's Katrina for good reason.  The frightening incompetence of Obama's CDC should terrify anyone actually sentient regarding Obamacare's government seizure of America's entire health care system. Let's take a break from Ebola politics and talk about how to actually protect yourself from it - from Ebola specifically and from any other viral contagion.

Amid the current maelstrom of war, disease and politics, you might have not been paying much attention to bitcoin, the electronic form of money favored by radical libertarians and drug dealers. Yet it is possible that when the history of these days comes to be written, bitcoin's story will loom large. Unnoticed except by the tech-obsessed, the technology behind bitcoin may be slowly giving birth to a brave new world, with eventual implications well beyond money. So argues Bitcoin: The Future of Money?, a new book by Dominic Frisby, a columnist for MoneyWeek magazine published in Britain. Frisby makes the case that it is just possible that bitcoin and its rivals - known as altcoins - and the "blockchain" technology that lies behind them have the potential to spark a radical decentralization of society itself. They could change the way governments finance themselves, make banks redundant and transform the ways companies are run. If he is right, then the founder of bitcoin will take his place alongside the great inventors. So who is he?

The Supreme Court's decision on Monday (10/06) to let rulings by lower court judges stand that redefine marriage is both tragic and indefensible. By refusing to rule if the States can define marriage, the Supreme Court is abdicating its duty to uphold the Constitution. The fact that the Supreme Court Justices, without providing any explanation whatsoever, have permitted lower courts to strike down so many state marriage laws is astonishing.   This is judicial activism at its worst. The Constitution entrusts state legislatures, elected by the People, to define marriage consistent with the values and mores of their citizens.  Unelected judges should not be imposing their policy preferences to subvert the considered judgments of democratically elected legislatures.   The Supreme Court is, de facto, applying an extremely broad interpretation to the 14th Amendment without saying a word - an action that is likely to have far-reaching consequences. It is beyond dispute that when the 14th Amendment was adopted 146 years ago, as a necessary post-Civil War era reform, it was not imagined to also mandate same-sex marriage -- but that is what the Supreme Court is implying. The Court is making the preposterous assumption that the People of the United States somehow silently redefined marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment.

It's too soon to answer the question the IBD is asking this morning:  "Is Ebola Obama's Katrina?"  Yet the Zero Administration's malfeasance makes the question already worth asking. Thomas Eric Duncan is a Liberian citizen with a Liberian passport, living in the capital city of Monrovia.  On Monday, Sept. 15, he helped carry (was in physical contact with) a family friend sick with Ebola to her home, who died early the next morning.  With him at the time was the lady's brother, who then died of Ebola the day after his sister, Wednesday the 17th.  On Friday the  19th, knowing that he had been doubly exposed to Ebola, he left for the United States.  It is hard not to conclude that he came here for the medical treatment that he would die without if he remained in Monrovia, and could care less who he infected along the way. Thanks to this, people are freaking out everywhere, especially in Dallas with parents pulling their kids out of schools, as five of their schoolmates were exposed to Duncan after he reached Dallas. The London Daily Mail reports that over 100 people were in contact in Dallas with Duncan, many of whom are now quarantined. So - how does all of this make Zero "Obola Obama"? Try this on.  Yesterday (10/01), Josh Earnest, the pathetic dweeb who recently replaced the pathetic dweeb who's name I can't bother to remember as White House Spokesman, announced that the Zero Government has no intention of preventing Ebola carriers from entering the United States.  Obola Obama.

[TTP has long maintained that voter fraud is a primary means by which Democrats win elections - which accounts for their fanatical opposition to Voter ID laws.  Here, Ronald Reagan's Attorney General, together with the former Ohio Secretary of State, explain the fraud of Eric Holder's opposition. ---JW] Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced his resignation last Thursday (9/25), leaves a dismal legacy at the Justice Department.  Of all his legal innovations, one was especially pernicious: the demonizing of state attempts to ensure honest elections. As a former U.S. attorney general under President Reagan, and a former Ohio secretary of state, we would like to say something that might strike some as obvious: Those who oppose photo voter-ID laws and other election-integrity reforms are intent on making it easier to commit vote fraud. That conclusion is inescapable, given the well-established evidence that voter-ID laws don't disenfranchise minorities or reduce minority voting, and in many instances enhance it, despite claims to the contrary by Mr. Holder and his allies. As more states adopt such laws, the left has railed against them with increasing fury, ascribing racial animus to people who are trying to safeguard democratic integrity. But there's something even worse than name-calling:

[This speech was delivered by Australian Senator David Leyonhjelm on the floor of the Australian Senate Chamber in Canberra on Tuesday, September 23] My name is David and I am an OPM addict. Actually, that is not true; I am not addicted. I might be one of the very few people in this house who is not, because addiction to OPM is a national crisis and I am surrounded by addicts. I am not talking about the drug opium but something far more terrible. I am talking about an addiction to other people's money. Spending other people's money on other people is what we do here. It is the worst kind of expenditure and it explains why so much public money is wasted. An inevitable characteristic of OPM is that so many grand government plans are destined for failure. Before we can do something about our addiction to OPM, we must first acknowledge our problem. What we need is an OPM Addicts Anonymous. Many government programs are not created because people demand them or because the market was unable to provide the services but because politicians have bought favor with OPM. Politicians are addicted to OPM because they use it to expand their influence, reward political cronies and keep their constituencies dependent on them. The time has come to admit:  Politicians pretending to be compassionate, when all they are doing is handing out other people's money, are just thieves masquerading as angels.

Recent news stories underscore the tremendous benefits brought by America's fracking revolution. * The global economy saves $4.9 billion per day in oil spending because of the shale oil boom. Without it there would be a 3 million barrel per day shortfall and prices would likely be 55% higher: $150/barrel. * Rust Belt cities and industries - from manufacturing, real estate and law to hotels, restaurants and many others - are rebounding because of drilling, fracking and production in nearby shale areas. In Ohio unemployment fell to 5.7% in July from 10.6% four years ago; oil output increased 26% just from the previous quarter, while gas production rose 31% - generating billions in state and local revenues. * The US oil and natural gas boom means jobs and business for almost 30,000 companies within the industry's vast and complex supply chain. Indeed, the petroleum industry accounts for nearly 10 million jobs and almost 8% of all domestic economic activity, including states far from actual drilling activities. * The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers launched a new website to help veterans and other men and women find high-paying jobs in the booming oilfield, fuel and petrochemical industries. The benefits of fracking are in the trillions, while the alleged risks are exaggerated or even fabricated. So what drives anti-fracking zealots who seem to materialize en masse whenever a new project is announced?

When it comes to Iraq, Obama lectures the Sunnis and the Shiites on getting along and forming a government that won't exist for the sole benefit of a single group at the expense of the other. But in America he runs exactly that sort of government. Al Sharpton, Obama's close political ally, and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his mentor, are familiar types in Iraq. You can find a thousand Jeremiah Wrights on any given Friday screaming about killing the Shiites or the Sunnis. You can find a million Al Sharptons community organizing local hatreds until they explode. Those are the ugly tribal politics that Obama has brought to America. Instead of repairing the economy, he focused on wealth redistribution. Instead of bringing Americans together as one nation, he calculatedly tore them apart around manufactured crises of race, gender, class and religion. He pitted blacks against whites, liberal Protestants against Catholics, the poor against the middle class and the cities against the suburbs. Obama promised us a united America and gave us a divided America. He has shown that he is a slicker and more polished version of Al Sharpton. After coming to prominence with a vision of "There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America," he shrugged off helping Americans as a whole and instead championed narrow tribal interests. Just-ousted Nouri al-Maliki wasn't the Prime Minister of Iraq. He was the Prime Minister of a Shiite Iraq. Obama isn't the President of the United States. He's trying to be the President of Black America, Gay America, Latino America, Asian America, Transgender America and a thousand other Micro-Americas. At no point in time has he been the President of the United States of America.

Any adult in America knows where they were 13 years ago today.  In the days following the Moslem Atrocity of 9/11, if someone had predicted 13 years hence that instead of having wiped Islamic Terrorism from the face of the earth, we'd still be cowering in fear of its threat, they would have been thought deranged.  Yet we are. How is this possible?  Let's ask another question.  In his TTP column this week, Richard Rahn contrasted "aspirational societies" where productive work and success are not punished, with societies consumed by envy.  He sums up America's crisis with one devastating observation:

"The United States used to be an aspirational society, but has increasingly become an envious society."  

How did this happen? It turns out that these two questions - among the most critical questions we can ask of our country today - have the same answer. The answer starts with our society's failure to follow the 10th Commandment of Exodus 20:17 -

The war with Hamas is not over. What we are experiencing today is a temporary cease-fire. The most basic reason the war is not over is because Hamas has no existence outside its war against the Jewish state. Hamas exists to obliterate Israel. The goal of each round of fighting is to soften Israel up for the next round.  Hamas will only stop fighting when it is defeated. And Israel did not defeat Hamas. Not only did Israel not defeat Hamas, but incredibly, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, senior IDF commanders are now lobbying the government to in effect surrender to Hamas.. The General Staff's behavior isn't the only reason that Hamas thinks aggression is the way to go. The US and Europe have gone out of their way, both during the fighting and today, to show Hamas that they are right to attack Israel.  Mr. Obama in particular.

The Islamic State's video-dissemination of one of its goons beheading an American is an existential challenge from which we cannot afford to shrink. Until the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) did that, it made sense for the U.S. government to help contain it because the Islamic world, which the IS threatens most directly, must destroy it sooner or later. But internetting that beheading was a gory declaration of America's impotence - a dare-by-deed that is sure to move countless young persons around the globe to get in on killing us, anywhere they can. The longer the Islamic State survives, the more will take up its dare. Either we kill the IS, or we will deserve the wave of terrorism that will engulf us. Killing the IS requires neither more nor less than waging war - not as the former Bush administration waged its "war on terror," nor by the current Obama administration's pinpricks, nor according to the too-clever-by-half stratagems taught in today's politically correct military war colleges, but rather by war in the dictionary meaning of the word. To make war is to kill the spirit as well as the body of the enemy, so terribly as to make sure that it will not rise again, and that nobody will want to imitate it. That requires first isolating the Islamic State politically and physically to deprive all within it of the capacity to make war, and even to eat. Then it requires killing all who bear arms and all who are near them.