Both Maryland and Virginia are trying to lure the Northrop Grumman headquarters to its state.  Who will win this selection?  It will be based on taxes, safe neighborhoods, quality of life, transportation, office space, a business-friendly approach, and other perks that are normally offered by the state's business development office. 

I predict Virginia will offer Northrop Grumman the best option as I will discuss below.

Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. says it's moving its corporate office from Los Angeles to the Washington area to be closer to key government customers and will move by 2011. Northrop said it was looking for a location in the Washington area, including the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. It plans to pick a site by this spring and open the office in summer 2011.

The corporate office will house only 300 of Northrop's 120,000 employees worldwide but give it a symbolic and physical tie to the nation's capital. Other defense contractors are located near Washington, including Lockheed Martin Corp., which is based in the suburb of Bethesda, Md.

Northrop said about 30,000 employees would remain in California to perform research, development and manufacturing. The company's aerospace systems sector is based in Redondo Beach, Calif.

Jack Northrop founded Northrop Aircraft Inc. in California in 1939. The company built jet fighters for the United States and other militaries, then expanded to make guided missiles, the B-2 stealth bomber and other defense systems. Northrop also provides electronics, shipbuilding and technical services to government customers and other companies.

Virginia has lower taxes, a business-friendly Governor and legislature, more affordable housing, a better quality of life that includes safer streets, better road and mass transit ssytems, and better office space choices.

Maryland offers a union mentality, a spend-thrift Governor and legislature, higher taxes, and a lower quality of life.  This includes the fact that Maryland welcomes illegal immigrants so there is more crime, more MS-13 gangs, and higher taxes to pay for the illegals.  Also, the state has pushed the fact that they are gay and homosexual-friendly and are pushing this unpopular liberal agenda.

Maryland is losing more and more citizens because they are getting fed up with a Democrat controlled state that taxes too much, spends too much, does not protect their citizens, and pushs  ultra-liberal social agendas.

Virginia just elected Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and he is making history by challenging the authority of the federal government.  All states should challenge the federal government when the Congress or Executive Branch imposes unfunded mandates, job-killing policies, or outlandish taxes. Examples of this are the Cap and Trade legislation, health care legislation, mandated unemployment payments, raising the debt ceiling that imposes more taxes, and environmental policies that affect jobs.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took a gutsy and intelligent step Feb. 17 when he petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its ill-advised "finding" that carbon dioxide creates an endangerment for human health. The endangerment finding would let the EPA battle alleged global warming by regulating emissions of CO2, which of course is the gas that every animal and person exhales with every breath. The finding was ludicrous from the start, and now Mr. Cuccinelli makes a reasonable case that it also was unlawful.

"Attorney General Cuccinelli believes that the EPA acted in an arbitrary and capricious fashion and failed to properly exercise its judgment by relying almost exclusively on reports from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an arm of the United Nations] in attributing climate change to [human-caused] greenhouse gas emissions," the AG's office explains. "The IPCC is an international body that is not subject to U.S. data quality and transparency standards and the IPCC prepared their reports in total disregard to U.S. Standards."

Since the EPA finding was issued, the IPPC's reports have become subject to scandal on multiple fronts. Those scandals reached a crescendo when a British newspaper, the Daily Mail, reported Feb. 14 that "The academic at the center of the 'Climategate' affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble 'keeping track' of the information. ... And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no 'statistically significant' warming."

Obviously, if the EPA were relying on bad data like all of the other climate-change fanatics, it ought to reconsider its plans to further strangle our struggling economy with more unnecessary red tape.  Mr. Cuccinelli argues that the EPA failed to meet its responsibility to conduct appropriate cost-benefit analysis, and that the economic harm to American citizens - including Virginians - would outweigh any purported benefits of the new regulations. As the AG put it, "We cannot allow unelected bureaucrats with political agendas to use falsified data to regulate American industry and drive our economy into the ground."

We agree with this challenge to the EPA.  States must challenge the federal government in order to restore fiscal responsibility and policies that are good for the nation since Congress is self-centered on their political careers.

Balance of Power---Democrat Style....

Chris Van Hollen and other Democrats do not belief in the balance of power between the three branches of government.  They also believe that voters do not have the right to run ads against career politicans.  They try to rig elections any way they can--from legislation, using ACORN, CASA de Maryland, unions or the Black Panthers, to redistricting, or any other means to stay in power.  They do not believe in individual rights or the power of the people to voice their opinion.

Top Democrats said Thursday they will try to undercut last month's Supreme Court campaign-finance ruling by forcing corporations and unions that want to run political ads to register separate spending accounts, make them disclose how they got money for the ads and guarantee politicians low rates to respond with their own broadcast ads.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, and Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, also said they're working on a tight deadline and want a bill passed in time to prevent free-wheeling spending from swamping this year's congressional elections.

"Unlike most bills that are introduced in Congress, this one has a deadline for action," said Mr. Schumer, who party leaders tasked to write a bill with Mr. Van Hollen. "If we don't act quickly, the court's ruling will have an immediate and disastrous impact on the 2010 elections."

What does this statement mean?  By disastrous impact, does Van Hollen mean that Democrats will lose elections because the American citizens can publish ads telling the truth?

The two lawmakers said corporations, unions and nonprofit groups that want to pay for broadcast political ads should have to register a separate account with the Federal Election Commission to receive funds and pay for ads. All contributions and expenditures to and from the funds would have to be reported.

Some corporations would be banned outright from running ads, including ones in which foreigners have 20 percent ownership or are otherwise demonstrably in control, and any corporations that are taking Wall Street bailout money or receive government contracts. That ban would cover many major technology, defense, communications and scientific research firms.

Is Van Hollen and other Democrats resorting to Soviet and Iranian style politics?

Cleta Mitchell, a campaign-finance lawyer active in conservative causes, said there are problems with the direction the Democrats are headed. She said the Supreme Court has already struck down campaign-finance laws that granted politicians lower ad rates, and she said a blanket ban on federal contractors could run afoul of free-speech protections. "I don't think they could keep somebody from using their own separate money," she said.

In last month's 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court held that corporations and unions were entitled to First Amendment protections for political speech. The court held that corporations and unions should not have to form political action committees subject to strict rules, but instead should be free to run political ads paid for from their own general funds. They are still banned from contributing directly to political campaigns.

We need free speech and transparency--not career and corrupt politicians telling us what to do.

We in the DC and Mid-Atlantic region are looking for Al Gore and his global warming.  We have so much snow that the snow equipment in our area is not able to keep up with demand.  There are snow drifts three to six feet in height and everyone is stranded, either at home or work.

Politicians should realize that they do not control the weather, but nature and God control the weather.  We are on this earth a small fraction of time and need to do our part as to conservation of our natural resources.  Higher taxes and golbal policies do not work.  We need government to be smaller and focus on its responsibilities such as snow removal from the streets and providing essential services for the public.

I am ready for Spring and Summer and saying good bye to Winter.

The US Supreme Court just corrected the "freedom of speech" for all Americans during political campaigns.  The US Congress wrongfully passed legislation that limited our freedom of speech that protected incumbant elected officials.  We need a campaign contribution system that is transparent and immediately records contributions.  The below article is from the Washington Times.

In a decision with profound implications for the role of money in American campaigns, the Supreme Court on Thursday gave interest groups, unions and corporations the right to pour money into issue advertising in political races - reigniting the passionate battle over the influence of cash on the electoral process.

The 5-4 decision punched a hole in the complex web of federal campaign-finance laws and rules in finding that those groups should have the same rights to spend money on political ads as any person. Direct contributions by corporations and unions to individual candidates are still forbidden.

Supporters cheered the ruling, which they said returns the country to the core free-speech precept that political speech should be protected, no matter who or what is speaking.

Critics warned that the foundations of American democracy are at stake and that big businesses will be able to spend enough money to influence elections.

In stark language, the court acknowledged that it was overturning its own precedents, but Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing the majority opinion, said the justices were now returning to "ancient First Amendment principles."

"The government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether," Justice Kennedy wrote in an opinion overturning a 1990 case and part of a separate 2003 case that upheld most of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance laws, enacted in 2002.

Justice Kennedy was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas.

Sounding dire in his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens called the decision an unprecedented assault on the court's principle of "stare decisis," or reliance on precedent.

"The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution," Justice Stevens said.

He said the ruling turns over power to corporations and unions at the expense of political parties, who will have a tough time fighting back because of the restrictions on their own fundraising and spending.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Alan Grayson, Florida Democrat, called the ruling "the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case." The 1857 Dred Scott decision held that slaves could never be citizens, nor were they entitled to constitutional protections.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, immediately vowed to try to pass a bill to overturn the ruling. They acknowledged that it would be difficult, but said there could be room to attach new rules to corporate political ad spending.

"This threatens the viability of our democracy. This threatens the viability of what we're all about here," Mr. Van Hollen said.

The case stemmed from "Hillary: The Movie," released by conservative nonprofit group Citizens United. The group wanted to be able to run television ads promoting the 90-minute documentary, a critique of presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But the Federal Election Commission said that amounted to political communication financed by corporate funds, which was banned by federal law. Under campaign-finance laws, corporations are forced to create separate political action committees, which were bound by myriad fundraising, spending and reporting rules.

Citizens United sued, and the decision has been steadily moving up the federal courts for the past two years.  President Obama also promised to try to curb the decision.

"With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special-interest money in our politics," the president said in a statement. "It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans."

Richard Briffault, a law professor at Columbia Law School, said it will be difficult for Congress to craft legislation to limit business spending, since most corporate law is written at the state level.

He also said it's not immediately clear how much will change in campaign finance, but expressed doubt about the dire predictions. He noted that about half of states had banned corporations from making independent political expenditures and half had allowed it.

"I don't think you could see one was demonstrably more politically free," he said.

Thursday's ruling does strike down state laws that banned independent corporate political spending.

Those who fought for more campaign freedom cheered the ruling.

"The Supreme Court has restored a part of the First Amendment that had been unfortunately stolen by Congress and a previously wrongly decided ruling of the court," said Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former Republican member of the Federal Election Commission and current senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

The Supreme Court first heard the case, Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, in its 2008-09 term, but instead of issuing a ruling, the court asked that the case be reheard to address the fundamental questions of restrictions on corporations.

The case was reheard in September and was the first in which Justice Sonia Sotomayor heard oral arguments. She sided with the court's minority in Thursday's decision.

In the wake of the ruling, a number of groups erroneously accused the court of lifting the limits on corporate contributions to political candidates. The decision does not end those limits, which require any contribution to be made by a corporation's political action committee, which must abide by strict rules.

"The opinion very specifically talks about and upholds the limits on contributions," Mr. von Spakovsky said.

The decision also doesn't overturn the ban on so-called "soft money," the uncapped donations to political parties that had swamped the political process in the 1990s.

The court, ruling 8-1, also upheld the law's requirements that any group running political ads must disclose the names of its contributors. Justice Thomas dissented from that part of the decision, arguing that there is a right to anonymous speech that is being circumscribed by the disclosure and reporting requirements.

The United States, other countries and private companies and citizens are providing relief efforts to Haiti.  This country needs all the help it can get due to the earthquake.  People in Haiti are suffering and need medical assistance and food to survive.

The Haitian President, Rene Preval, and his government officials must step up and help control the situation.  Earthquake relief efforts must be closely coordinated with local officials and all of the relief workers on the island.

Secretary Clinton must focus on the US relief efforts for this humanitarian mission.  The Department of State must ensure that programs are set up after the relief efforts are finished so the island can recover.

"We are here at the invitation of your government to help you," said Secretary Clinton. "As President Obama has said, we will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead. And speaking personally, I know of the great resilience and strength of the Haitian people. You have been severely tested. But I believe that Haiti can come back even stronger and better in the future."

The U.S. Agency for International Development must coordinate medical, construction, democracy, and other programs with NGO's and other relief organizations.  The Haitian government's priorities must be restoring security, communications, electricity, transportation, and other government functions.

We thank former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for their efforts to lead a joint plea for international assistance to Haiti.  The US can help the people of Haiti in their own country by helping them manage the government functions and recovery projects.

Once again, political correctness gets in the way of protecting American citizens.  When will our elected leaders stop illegals coming across our borders, stop terrorists from getting on airplanes, stop giving terrorists American legal rights, and start profiling radical Muslims?  The White House cannot even get its own "guest lists" correct without allowing uninvited guests into secure environments.

The Obama administration has repeatedly said the failure to connect intelligence reports that might have prevented the Christmas Day panty-bombing attempt was not because spy agencies failed to share information.  Instead, John Brennan, assistant to the president for counterterrorism and homeland security, said top intel officials simply didn't understand all the intelligence pointing to a possible terrorist attack, which came true when a Nigerian national tried to blow up a U.S. airliner with a bomb in his underwear.  If they did not understand the information, should they still have a job?

There are many intelligence agencies, offices, and people working around the world to protect the United States.  Are these agencies asleep, not doing their jobs, or have the wrong leadership and priorities?   Intelligence intercepts captured a steady stream of chatter before the bombing attempt, including one that said a Nigerian with connections to al Qaeda was planning an attack.  Other major red flags -- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab bought his ticket to Detroit with cash and was traveling with no luggage, his father warned the embassy, and he had communications with known terrorists.

President Obama said that his administration had a "systemic failure" of our security services, so what will he do to correct the situation?  Why were the signs missed and why were senior officials on vacation when there was a failure to prevent Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (UFA) from flying into the country on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with a bomb in his underpants that could have killed 300 people.  Only by the grace of God and the actions by passengers that the bomb did not explode.

Has the reforms of our intelligence agencies in recent years merely added bureaucracies and damaged the efficient collation and analysis of intelligence?  American citizens will be punished by new rules while flying while the TSA, FBI, and other agencies do not pay any price for not do their jobs.  Start profiling radical Muslims since no other individuals or groups are targeting the US.  Again, Iran is a major force behind all of these attacks.

Security must be Job One.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all in the US and around the world. 

We have much to be thankful for in the US.  We want to bless our troops and others that protect us from terrorists and criminals around the world. 

Below is a Wish List for 2010:

*Defeat terrorists
*US economy recovers
*US has lower taxes
*US health care system is not fixed with the current recommendations
*Our military can start coming back home
*Congress stops spending borrowed money
*Congress stops earmarks and unfunded mandates
*Many members of Congress are replaced (need term limits)
*Stop socialism and restart the free market system
*Stop the growth of the federal government
*Protect our borders and enforce our laws

What does Copenhagen and Washington DC have in common?  Both are very cold and there is no global warming.  Again, this administration is trying to bankrupt America with another program that is not necessary.  Cap and Trade, health care, TARP, and the list gets longer every day Congress is in session.  This administration is trying to take total power from the people and the states and raise taxes so the free-market system cannot work.

Copenhagen was a cold town last week for the global-warming crowd. The expected reorganization of the world economy to fit the green template vanished amid blizzard conditions in a country that has had just seven white Christmases in the past century.  God certainly has a sense of humor.

President Obama showed up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference having been assured he would be able to make history, only to find that the proceedings were a flop.  The promised treaty - billed with the characteristic understatement of the alarmist community as "the single most important piece of paper in the world today" - was an anticlimax.  Earlier drafts conjured images of world government, command economies and a future free of the evils of greenhouse gasses. It promised a green utopia.

However, as the conference neared, huge gaps in the treaty language persisted. The final three-page version was tossed together in the closing hours with little deliberation and wound up saying little. The much-ballyhooed treaty promises next to nothing, other than a $100 billion slush fund for Third World dictators to "adapt to climate change," which probably involves buying mansions in southern France.  Why do we in the United States have to protect the world from terrorists, fund global warming programs, and tax our citizens more for liberal causes?

Mr. Obama's speech reflected the general frustration of the hour and was uncharacteristically flat and angry.  The president fumed that it was "not a time to talk but to act," but we wonder why he's in such a hurry.  There is no particular crisis.  The inflated gravitas of the event was punctured by the ongoing collapse of the scientific basis for global-warming theory in the wake of the scandal about fudged scientific research.

The latest hit to climate-change credibility comes via an embarrassing revelation from Ben Santer, one of the lead authors of the 1995 U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I report, which is one of the holy documents of global-warming theology. Mr. Santer admitted that he deleted sections of the document that stated that humans were not responsible for climate change.

Also on Tuesday, the Institute of Economic Analysis in Moscow claimed that the influential Hadley Centre for Climate Change at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter, England, apparently had tampered with Russian climate data.  According to the Russians, the Hadley Centre used numbers that showed temperatures rising and omitted data that did not support global-warming conclusions.  We are witnessing the rolling collapse of one of history's great intellectual frauds.  Global warming is turning out to be a lot of hot air.

The Chinese seem to have been on the right side of this debate all along.  China was viewed as the major stumbling block at the conference, and Mr. Obama met privately with Premier Wen Jiabao to try to iron out the wrinkles. It's ironic that dictatorial goons like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe blamed capitalism for the world's global-warming ills while China puts the brakes on monitoring emissions. Having weighed all the factors, Beijing would rather be an economic powerhouse.

The only reason China gives lip service to the global-warming alarmist agenda is to hamper the competition - and our Democratic president is falling for the trap. Mr. Obama pledged that the United States would move forward with strict emissions limits whether or not the international community did the same. From Beijing's perspective, if the foolish Americans want to wreck their economy based on the misguided belief that they are saving polar bears, who is China to say no?

Does this administration know how to create jobs?  Does this administration care about our American way of life and our free-market system?  Is this administration creating more government control?  It is time for all American to stand up and stop this massive federal government take-over.

How does Congress think that our economy works?

Our Congress does not know how a market economy works since they keep printigng money, getting all of us deeper into debt, and push through more and more regulations.  Congress does not know how to create jobs if it thinks more government is the answer.  Below is a simple example of how the current Congress creates jobs and pays off debt.

It's a slow day in a small Vermont town and streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit. A rich tourist drives through town, stops at the motel, and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night.

As soon as he walks upstairs, the owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.  The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Farmer's Co-op. 
The guy at the Farmer's Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her "services" on credit.

The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.  The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves town.

 No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism.

 And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is conducting business today.