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At Marion Park on Capitol Hill, two fence gates were chained closed, but one was not, and a group of children played inside. At the Korean War Veterans Memorial, on the Mall, the entrance was blocked with barricades, but visitors just walked around the barriers and entered. At the closed-off National World War II Memorial, two days of assaults by veterans prompted the National Park Service to announce that they had the legal right to be there and would not be barred in the future. Across federal Washington on Wednesday, the government shutdown was leaking badly — partly as a...

Armed private security guards are on the job to keep the public away from Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, and one even threatened to arrest a political activist if he stepped on the sidewalk beside the iconic building where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated and adopted. “You will be arrested,” said one of the hired guards to activist Craig Bergman as a video team filmed his stop at the downtown historical center. In the video, Bergman asks a National Park Service ranger who was paying for the rented cops, and was told, “You are.” The badge on the private...

What is this horrid government shutdown I keep reading about? It isn’t for Federal employees, since the House passed legislation paying all non-essential Federal employees that were furloughed for their missed time. Stated differently. Non-essential Federal employees received a taxpayer-funded vacation. The government shutdown is a way for the Administration and Senate to punish Americans for Republicans not rubber-stamping the funding of Obamacare. John Nolte has created a list of unnecessary shutdowns. 1. Treatments for Children Suffering From Cancer – The GOP have agreed to a compromise by funding part of the government, including the National Institutes of Health, which...

What is this horrid government shutdown I keep reading about? It isn’t for Federal employees, since the House passed legislation paying all non-essential Federal employees that were furloughed for their missed time. (I President Obama signs it, that is). Stated differently. Non-essential Federal employees received a taxpayer-funded vacation. The government shutdown is a way for the Administration and Senate to punish Americans for Republicans not rubber-stamping the funding of Obamacare. John Nolte has created a list of unnecessary shutdowns. 1. Treatments for Children Suffering From Cancer – The GOP have agreed to a compromise by funding part of the government,...

What is this horrid government shutdown I keep reading about? It isn’t for Federal employees, since the House passed legislation paying all non-essential Federal employees that were furloughed for their missed time. (If President Obama signs it, that is). Stated differently. Non-essential Federal employees received a taxpayer-funded vacation. The government shutdown is a way for the Administration and Senate to punish Americans for Republicans not rubber-stamping the funding of Obamacare. At least the Administration should exempt everyone or no one. John Nolte has created a list of unnecessary shutdowns. 1. Treatments for Children Suffering From Cancer – The GOP have...

Signs like this are being posted by union thugs. Government workers are instructed to "make life as difficult for people as we can" and these signs are used to assign the blame. What is the correct message that should be on the sign? If you are going to one of these Unnecessary Shutdown sites, please consider posting the corrected signage. The "official" signs appear to be durable materials and have official logos and department letterhead. If there is not a thug around, you might tape your message onto the sign under their letterhead. Remember, almost everything you do in life...

700,000 people a day would have been visiting the parks and that the surrounding areas are losing $76 million in visitor spending per day. The park service said it is losing $450,000 per day in revenue from entrance fees and other in-park expenditures, such as campground fees and boat rentals.

As of writing this article, Americans have endured more than a week of government “shutdown,” with no end in sight. Despite House Republicans sending several budget proposals to the Senate, President Barack Obama and his Senate Water Carrier, Harry Reid, continue to dig in their heels; refusing to even consider negotiating an end to the slowdown. The contrasts with the last government “shutdown,” nearly a generation ago, are dramatic. I was a member of Congress during the winter of 1995/1996, the most recent government prior “shutdown.” That historic budget battle was no less tense or divided than the current one....

National Park Service officials cited the government shutdown as the reason for ordering an elderly Nevada couple out of their home, which sits on federal land. "Unfortunately overnight stays are not permitted until a budget is passed and the park can reopen," an NPS spokesman explained to KTNV. Ralph and Joyce Spencer, aged 80 and 77, respectively, own their home, but the government owns the land on which it sits. "I had to be sure and get his walker and his scooter that he has to go in," Joyce Spencer told the local news outlet. "We're not hurt in any...

There will be some that may take exception to the tone this post will strike, but this is something that needs to be said. Have you ever witnessed a single politician with the ingrained pettiness we are seeing displayed from the White House. I have always felt whomever held the Office of President of the United States deserved respect. If for nothing else, for simply holding the highest office in our country. Even with Barack Obama, I have tried to show a modicum of respect for the office. That is no longer the case and my feeling has been brought...

Aggressive actions and double standards used by the National Park Service are vindictive and designed to inflict maximum inconvenience and fear among visitors, say Republican lawmakers whose efforts to reopen the parks are gridlocked by Senate Democrats. World War II veterans were blocked by barricades and armed guards from paying tribute at their memorial last week. However, the national mall where the memorial is located was opened Tuesday to allow hundreds of illegal immigrants to stage a protest demanding amnesty. ... the administration has closed the Mall and memorials to some groups and not others, giving preferential treatment under the...

  Why would the president of the United States try to purposely hurt the American people? Well, in 2013 this is done in order to score political points and force the opposition in to doing what you want them to do. A few days ago, an angry Park Service ranger publicly admitted that he and his fellow rangers have been ordered to “make life as difficult for people as we can” during this government shutdown. That Park Service ranger would never have received such an order unless it came from the very top. Apparently the Obama administration plans to cause as...

“We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around.”—Ronald Reagan The conduct of the National Park Service over the last week might be the biggest scandal of the Obama administration. This is an expansive claim, of course. Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS, the NSA, the HHS mandate​—​this is an administration that has not lacked for appalling abuses of power. And we still have three years to go.Even so, consider the actions of the National Park Service since the government shutdown began. People first noticed what the NPS was up to when the World War II...

The National Park Service’s closure of the World War II and other memorials violates rules requiring them to stay open, 93 House members charge in a letter to the agency. Led by Michigan Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga, they claim that Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis is simply making up closure rules to punish the public during the government shut down and they question the costs of the random closures in Washington where not all memorials are being closed. "The National Park Service continues to act in an arbitrary and punitive manner to exclude veterans from memorials built in their honor...

When and how did the National Park Service become “the shock troops of the punitive bureaucracy”? The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a...

National Park Service rangers are being ordered to “make life difficult” during the government shutdown, according to the Washington Times. After the shutdown began, park police have been barring tourists from a number of popular attractions nationwide, including the WWII memorial. Even privately-owned landmarks, such as Mount Vernon, are being told by the National Park Service to close their doors. The Times reported: The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was...

Last week I wrote a column accusing the president of having a vindictive streak — of deliberately trying to make the lives of average Americans worse just so he could score ideological and political points. We already knew from how he handled the budget sequester that Obama liked this approach. He ordered Cabinet secretaries not to do their jobs — i.e., to manage as best they could under spending restraints — but instead to find ways to make the cuts needlessly painful for innocents caught in the Beltway crossfire. They dusted off the same playbook for the shutdown. As one...

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), who has been rumored as being considered to replace Janet Napolitano to head the Department of Homeland Security, used some very strange language earlier this week to characterize a sentiment for a clean resolution to end the government shutdown. She labeled it a form of “martial law.” Yes, we have heard Ms. Lee say some whimsical and ridiculous things in her time in office, which I’m sure embarrass her fellow Texans, but this has to be one of the most ridiculous ones to date. She pushed that the measure was bi-partisan, including Democrats and...

In simply Southern terms, Allen West defined President Obama as a “spoiled brat child.” The former Florida Representative said America has given Obama everything he wanted, during an interview on the "The Steve Malzberg Show” show Thursday: “We gave him a state senator position in Chicago, we gave him a U.S. Senate position out of the state of Illinois, unproven, untested, no resume, we gave him the presidency — twice. So if you continue to reward bad behavior, you're going to get more of that bad behavior." The majority of Americans continue to accuse Republicans for the nearly-two-week-long government shutdown....

Judge Jeanine delivered another fantastic monologue, blasting the administration for denying death benefits to military families. But not only that, she went after Congress as well over this entire debacle and said that every one of them needs to be thrown out for letting it come to this. Watch: