Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stockman threatened Monday afternoon that he would file articles of impeachment against President Barack Obama if he institutes gun control measures with an executive order.
Stockman warned that such executive orders would be “unconstitutional” and “infringe on our constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms.”
“I will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary, including but not limited to eliminating funding for implementation, defunding the White House, and even filing articles of impeachment,” Stockman said in a statement.
At his press conference Monday, Obama floated the possibility of using executive action to enact policies aimed at reducing gun violence.
The freshman congressman, who served one term in Congress in the mid-1990s, further labeled the possibility “an existential threat to this nation” because, he said, the purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow the people to protect themselves from tyranny.
“Any proposal to abuse executive power and infringe upon gun rights must be repelled with the stiffest legislative force possible,” he added. “Under no circumstances whatsoever may the government take any action that disarms any peaceable person — much less without due process through an executive declaration without a vote of Congress or a ruling of a court.”
U.S. President, Barack Obama, announced Monday that he will use Executive Power to strengthen his war against the Second Amendment. While talking to a group of White House’s press members, Obama said he would decide which of the recommendations issued by Vice-president Joe Biden he will enact as laws through an imaginary power he intends to use to destroy the rest of the U.S. Constitution.
“My understanding is the vice president’s going to provide a range of steps that we can take to reduce gun violence,” he said. “Some of them will require legislation, some of them I can accomplish through executive action.
Note:Hospitals and other healthcare facilities use vaccination “policies”, not laws, to force workers to take the shots. That is because forcing someone to take a vaccine is illegal, therefore no law exists to truly mandate vaccinations.
By LINDSEY TANNER | AP | JANUARY 14, 2013
Patients can refuse a flu shot. Should doctors and nurses have that right, too? That is the thorny question surfacing as U.S. hospitals increasingly crack down on employees who won’t get flu shots, with some workers losing their jobs over their refusal.
“Where does it say that I am no longer a patient if I’m a nurse,” wondered Carrie Calhoun, a longtime critical care nurse in suburban Chicago who was fired last month after she refused a flu shot.
Hospitals’ get-tougher measures coincide with an earlier-than-usual flu season hitting harder than in recent mild seasons. Flu is widespread in most states, and at least 20 children have died.
Most doctors and nurses do get flu shots. But in the past two months, at least 15 nurses and other hospital staffers in four states have been fired for refusing, and several others have resigned, according to affected workers, hospital authorities and published reports.
In Rhode Island, one of three states with tough penalties behind a mandatory vaccine policy for health care workers, more than 1,000 workers recently signed a petition opposing the policy, according to a labor union that has filed suit to end the regulation.
Why would people whose job is to protect sick patients refuse a flu shot? The reasons vary: allergies to flu vaccine, which are rare; religious objections; and skepticism about whether vaccinating health workers will prevent flu in patients.
Dr. Carolyn Bridges, associate director for adult immunization at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says the strongest evidence is from studies in nursing homes, linking flu vaccination among health care workers with fewer patient deaths from all causes.
“We would all like to see stronger data,” she said. But other evidence shows flu vaccination “significantly decreases” flu cases, she said. “It should work the same in a health care worker versus somebody out in the community.”
Cancer nurse Joyce Gingerich is among the skeptics and says her decision to avoid the shot is mostly “a personal thing.” She’s among seven employees at IU Health Goshen Hospital in northern Indiana who were recently fired for refusing flu shots. Gingerich said she gets other vaccinations but thinks it should be a choice. She opposes “the injustice of being forced to put something in my body.”
Medical ethicist Art Caplan says health care workers’ ethical obligation to protect patients trumps their individual rights.
“If you don’t want to do it, you shouldn’t work in that environment,” said Caplan, medical ethics chief at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. “Patients should demand that their health care provider gets flu shots — and they should ask them.”
For some people, flu causes only mild symptoms. But it can also lead to pneumonia, and there are thousands of hospitalizations and deaths each year. The number of deaths has varied in recent decades from about 3,000 to 49,000.
A survey by CDC researchers found that in 2011, more than 400 U.S. hospitals required flu vaccinations for their employees and 29 hospitals fired unvaccinated employees.
At Calhoun’s hospital, Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, Ill., unvaccinated workers granted exemptions must wear masks and tell patients, “I’m wearing the mask for your safety,” Calhoun says. She says that’s discriminatory and may make patients want to avoid “the dirty nurse” with the mask.
The hospital justified its vaccination policy in an email, citing the CDC’s warning that this year’s flu outbreak was “expected to be among the worst in a decade” and noted that Illinois has already been hit especially hard. The mandatory vaccine policy “is consistent with our health system’s mission to provide the safest environment possible.”
The government recommends flu shots for nearly everyone, starting at age 6 months. Vaccination rates among the general public are generally lower than among health care workers.
According to the most recent federal data, about 63 percent of U.S. health care workers had flu shots as of November. That’s up from previous years, but the government wants 90 percent coverage of health care workers by 2020.
The highest rate, about 88 percent, was among pharmacists, followed by doctors at 84 percent, and nurses, 82 percent. Fewer than half of nursing assistants and aides are vaccinated, Bridges said.
Some hospitals have achieved 90 percent but many fall short. A government health advisory panel has urged those below 90 percent to consider a mandatory program.
Also, the accreditation body over hospitals requires them to offer flu vaccines to workers, and those failing to do that and improve vaccination rates could lose accreditation.
Starting this year, the government’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is requiring hospitals to report employees’ flu vaccination rates as a means to boost the rates, the CDC’s Bridges said. Eventually the data will be posted on the agency’s “Hospital Compare” website.
Several leading doctor groups support mandatory flu shots for workers. And the American Medical Association in November endorsed mandatory shots for those with direct patient contact in nursing homes; elderly patients are particularly vulnerable to flu-related complications. The American Nurses Association supports mandates if they’re adopted at the state level and affect all hospitals, but also says exceptions should be allowed for medical or religious reasons.
Mandates for vaccinating health care workers against other diseases, including measles, mumps and hepatitis, are widely accepted. But some workers have less faith that flu shots work — partly because there are several types of flu virus that often differ each season and manufacturers must reformulate vaccines to try and match the circulating strains.
While not 100 percent effective, this year’s vaccine is a good match, the CDC’s Bridges said.
Several states have laws or regulations requiring flu vaccination for health care workers but only three — Arkansas, Maine and Rhode Island — spell out penalties for those who refuse, according to Alexandra Stewart, a George Washington University expert in immunization policy and co-author of a study appearing this month in the journal Vaccine.
Rhode Island’s regulation, enacted in December, may be the toughest and is being challenged in court by a health workers union. The rule allows exemptions for religious or medical reasons, but requires unvaccinated workers in contact with patients to wear face masks during flu season. Employees who refuse the masks can be fined $100 and may face a complaint or reprimand for unprofessional conduct that could result in losing their professional license.
Some Rhode Island hospitals post signs announcing that workers wearing masks have not received flu shots. Opponents say the masks violate their health privacy.
“We really strongly support the goal of increasing vaccination rates among health care workers and among the population as a whole,” but it should be voluntary, said SEIU Healthcare Employees Union spokesman Chas Walker.
Supporters of health care worker mandates note that to protect public health, courts have endorsed forced vaccination laws affecting the general population during disease outbreaks, and have upheld vaccination requirements for schoolchildren.
Cases involving flu vaccine mandates for health workers have had less success. A 2009 New York state regulation mandating health care worker vaccinations for swine flu and seasonal flu was challenged in court but was later rescinded because of a vaccine shortage. And labor unions have challenged individual hospital mandates enacted without collective bargaining; an appeals court upheld that argument in 2007 in a widely cited case involving Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle.
Calhoun, the Illinois nurse, says she is unsure of her options.
“Most of the hospitals in my area are all implementing these policies,” she said. “This conflict could end the career I have dedicated myself to.”
The case of the Colorado shooter is one more example of how prescription medications, not guns, are responsible for the lunacy epidemic observed in the United States
By J.D. HEYES | NATURAL NEWS | JANUARY 11, 2013
What was the most deadly element involved in the mass murder of 12 people and the wounding of 58 others at the packed Aurora, Colo., theater premier of the newest “Batman” movie last summer?
Was it the AR-15-type weapon used by James Holmes? The shotgun he had with him? The handgun he used?
No.
As it turns out it was probably a psychotropic medication he was most likely taking, a point raised by Natural News’ Jon Rappoport in August, just weeks after the massacre. [http://www.naturalnews.com].
Holmes had been treated by a psychiatrist
The Denver Post reported Jan. 7 that, according to newly released court papers, police removed a number of prescription medication bottles – four, to be exact – from Holmes’ apartment shortly after clearing it of explosives in the days following the July 20 shootings. They also seized immunization records.
“The disclosures come in a back-and-forth between prosecutors and defense attorneys over whether those items should be subject to doctor-patient confidentiality. The judge ultimately ruled in October that prosecutors could keep the items,” the paper said, adding that the names of the medications had been redacted from court documents.
This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to anyone who’s been following the correlation between these dangerous psychotropic drugs and mass murder. After all, earlier reports confirmed that Holmes was indeed being seen by a psychiatrist [http://www.nytimes.com], so there’s a better-than-average chance he, too, was on one of these dangerous medications.
The same is true in the most recent shooting tragedy. We know that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, had psychological problems. We know, from what Louise Tambascio, a family friend of the shooter and his mother, told the CBS News program, “60 Minutes,” that Lanza “was on medication and everything….I knew he was on medication, but that’s all I know.”
But what was he taking? What was Holmes taking? That we don’t know – yet.
Like us David Kupelian, the managing editor for WorldNetDaily, is asking the right questions.
“It has been more than three weeks since the shooting. We know all about the guns he used, but what ‘medication’ may he have used?” he wrote shortly after the Lanza murders. “So, what is the truth? Where is the journalistic curiosity? Where is the follow-up? Where is the police report, the medical examiner’s report, the interviews with his doctor and others?” writes David Kupelian at WorldNetDaily [http://www.wnd.com]
And yet the national debate, if you can call it that, is focused strictly on the gun control and the Second Amendment, as evidenced by Vice President Joe Biden’s declaration that President Obama plans to use executive power to implement new gun control regulations via the federal agencies that fall under the Executive Branch, and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s promise to enact in his state the country’s toughest gun control laws.
As usual, though, the corporate media has failed in its role as watchdog and truth-seeker. It has been left to alternative news outlets like ours and a few others to ask those probing, important questions: What kind of drugs were Holmes and Lanza taking? Who prescribed them? And these questions: What are some of the side effects of those medications? Can such medications cause patients to become violent?
The medications-equals-violence link is well-established
Here’s why it is vitally important for Americans to know what kind of medications Lanza and Holmes were taking – because of earlier, high-profile cases involving guns and psychotropic medications:
– Columbine killer Eric Harris was taking Luvox which, like similar drugs Prozac and Zoloft are widely prescribed antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. Luvox manufacturer Solvay Pharmaceuticals admitted that every 1 in 25 patients taking the drug developed mania, a dangerous condition leaving the patient violence-prone.
– Patrick Purdy went on a shooting rampage in a schoolyard in Stockton, Calif., in 1989, an incident that triggered the initial push to ban “assault weapons.” Purdy, who killed five and wounded 30, had been taking the antidepressant Amitriptyline and the anti-psychotic drug Thorzine.
– Fifteen-year-old Kip Kinkel killed his parents in 1998 then went to his school, Thurston High in Springfield, Ore., the next day and fired on his classmates, killing two and wounding 22 more. He was on Prozac and Ritalin.
There are many, many more examples, but you get the point: There exists a distinct link between psychotropic drugs and violence, yet virtually no one in the public policy realm or the media (both of which depend on Big Pharma for donations or advertising dollars) wants to talk about it.
The U.S. Vice President, Joe Biden, met Wednesday at the White House in Washington with victims and groups demanding more restrictive legislation on weapons. While in New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo, took advantage of the discourse on state of the State to announce an agenda to ban assault weapons almost a month after the Newtown, Connecticut incident, where a mentally ill teenager shot 27 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary school.
Biden’s meeting was the first of several that he will have with different groups in response to the shooting of Newtown. The vice president will not limit his contact to individuals and organizations that align themselves with the vision that the White House has on gun control, but is unlikely that the result of the meetings will include a recommendation to allow people to freely exercise their second amendment right.
On Thursday, Biden met with members of the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), as well as with executives of the largest chain stores in the country, Wal-Mart, that declined the offer of the White House to hold conversations at first, but that reconsidered and accepted the invitation yesterday. Wal-Mart sells weapons at over 1,800 of its 4,000 stores, including semiautomatic assault rifles like the one that has been making the news on the main stream corporate media as the example of the type of firearms that people should not possess.
“We are here to deal with a problem that requires immediate action, urgent action,” Biden told reporters, as trying to emphasize the kind of measures that will be taken. “The president is going to act,” Biden progressed. “There are executive orders, executive actions that can be performed,” the vice president said. His statement clears the notion about whether the president will continue acting as a dictator, making up laws and regulations that he has no power to enact.
As things stand today, the Obama administration will simply use executive privilege to pass any rules he and his minions in government want. Obama and those who support erasing the second amendment have said that if Congress does not pass legislation to ban the possession of firearms, the U.S. president will have to act unilaterally in order to ‘save us all’ from ourselves. Amazingly, neither Obama nor the main stream media attempt to pitch a ban on deadly pharmaceutical drugs which are the real triggers of most of the shootings seen in the last year or so.
In Albany, Cuomo sketched an outline of his legislative agenda this year and called for a ban on assault weapons. New York is one of seven states that already has some sort of ban on these weapons but believes current legislation is inefficient, so more of the same is needed.
Cuomo seeks to expand the number of models and chargers that are now covered by the law to make it harder for companies to circumvent regulations, Cuomo added. As all lousy power grabbers, Cuomo does not publicly recognize that criminals do not respect laws and that they will always find a way to get the best firearms.
As a Democrat on Capitol Hill in New York since 2010, Cuomo raised the ire and fear of gun owners by a statement made after the slaughter of Newtown in which he said that the confiscation of such weapons was an option in future legislation.
The regulations in force in New York against assault weapons were enacted after another mass shooting, the one in Columbine in 1999, where two students took the lives of 12 students and a teacher. More violent shootings have happened after Columbine; a fact which demonstrates two things: bans on firearms do not end shootings anywhere, and government cannot protect a disarmed population.
In the quest for higher gun control that does not allow the indiscriminate sale of, for example, semi-automatic weapons that can shoot 20 to 100 rounds per second former congressman from Arizona, Democrat Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, joined astronaut Mark Kelly in the push to end the second amendment.
Gun control pushers used the second anniversary of the attack in Tucson, which killed six people, to begin a new campaign that calls for the ban of the second amendment. Giffords and the six people who were killed that day were surrounded by a tight ring of security, which was not able to prevent the shooting, but for some reason anti-Second Amendment people believe that an even more disarmed population will be able to cope better gun violence. Giffords and his pals announced the formation of a political group to fight the powerful NRA.
People like Giffords and the rest of the pro disarmament movement call themselves defenders of the Second Amendment and are said to be firearms owners, but in practice they belong to a larger, more powerful lobby led by Democrats and so called liberals, who seek to disarm the population so that the State continues to hold the monopoly of violence.
“We can not keep making statements,” said Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, after hearing about the shooting of Connecticut. “We have to try and help change things.” The group founded by former Congressman and her husband called Americans for Responsible Solutions and will be based in Washington.
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