Because I have spent the last two posts going after Newt Gingrich to an extent, in fairness I am providing a link to Gingrich's website, where he answers recent charges made against him. I report, you decide (hmmm. Where have I heard that phrase before ? Sounds familiar).
===
Larry Elder Treats Chris Matthews Like Chris Matthews And Every Other MSNBC Host Treats Conservative Guests…And Matthews Doesn't Like It One Bit:

Payback is a you-know-what, Mr. Matthews.
===
House Rejects Balanced Budget Amendment (link):

The U.S. House of Representatives rejected a proposal Friday to amend the Constitution to require a balanced budget, seen by many as the only way to force lawmakers to hold the fiscal line and reverse the flow of federal red ink.

The 261-165 vote, though a clear majority, was 23 votes short of the two-thirds required to advance a constitutional amendment. Democrats voted overwhelmingly against it, apparently swayed by the arguments of their leaders that a balanced budget requirement would force Congress to make devastating cuts to social programs.

Four Republicans joined the Democrats in opposing the measure: House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.), Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas.).

$15 trillion in national debt, annual trillion dollar deficits, and Congress doesn't have the votes for a balanced budget amendment. Yet another sign of our destruction.

I expect Democrats to vote against fiscal sanity, but….did I see that right ? Rep. Ryan voted AGAINST the balanced budget amendment ? What's up with that ? Here's Ryan's explanation:

Ryan said he was worried the version of the amendment could pave the way for more taxes, instead of reducing spending, to balance the budget, The Hill reported.

“Spending is the problem, yet this version of the BBA makes it more likely taxes will be raised, government will grow, and economic freedom will be diminished,” Ryan said. “Without a limit on government spending, I cannot support this amendment.”

Can't say I agree with Ryan's logic there. Tax increases may be bad, but this out-of-control debt bomb is far worse.

This is the first balanced budget amendment vote in 16 years. In 1995, a balanced budget amendment passed the House, when Republicans and 72 Democrats voted for it. That effort failed to pass the Senate by one vote, thanks to Democrat obstruction. Think of how much better off this country would be today if we had passed that amendment in 1995, and had not accumulated $10 trillion in new debt since. Thanks for nothing, Dumb-o-crats. This time around, only 25 Democrats in the House voted for a balanced budget amendment. I guess the Democratic party prefers national bankruptcy. In fact, I think that should be Obama's 2012 campaign slogan. DEBT FOREVER ! VOTE OBAMA.
===
White House Shooter Made Videos:
I've been wondering why Oscar Ortega-Hernandez, the man suspected of shooting at the White House in an assassination attempt (his bullet was stopped by bulletproof glass), hated Obama so much. Ortega-Hernandez has referred to himself as a modern day Jesus, and called Obama the anti-Christ. As it turns out, Ortega-Hernandez made a video in hopes of being on Oprah's show:

VIDEO: Alleged White House Shooter Oscar Ortega-Hernandez: MyFoxDC.com

I wonder where our modern day Jesus/assassin got that "war for oil" stuff ??? Any liberals out there wish to hazard a guess ? I know how concerned y'all are about political rhetoric leading to violence.

In related news, the Occupy San Diego dumbsh*ts held a moment of silence to express "solidarity" with the shooter, because authorities thought Ortega-Hernandez may have been hanging out with the Occupy D.C. crowd (which seems now not to be the case).

Real brainiacs, those Occupiers. The Occupier arrest count now tops 3,600.
===
My, How That Hope Did Change:

Here's candidate Obama in 2008, castigating Bush (justifiably) for Bush's debt accumulation:

"The problem is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents, [and] number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt."

Obama called Bush's spending and debt runup "unpatriotic" then, but now he calls Republicans unpatriotic because they won't spend and runup even more debt. Go figure. Obama has added $4.5 trillion to the debt in less than three years. It took Bush nearly eight years to do the same. If the debt trajectory continues and Obama is elected to a second term, he will add more to the national debt than every other President in U.S. history COMBINED. That is called epic fail, my friends.

Not-So-Super Committee: The congressional Super Committee is tasked with cutting $1.2 trillion from future deficits over the next decade. They can accomplish this by cutting spending or raising taxes. They have 9 days left to complete their mission before automatic cuts to defense and entitlements go into effect. Thus far, the Super Committee has been unable to reach an agreement.

If anything illustrates the ineffectiveness of Congress (and a failure of leadership by the President), this it it. Think about it. Over the last ten years, the federal government has spent about $28 trillion. Over the next ten years, federal spending is projected to be $45-50 trillion. All the Super Committee has to do is cut $1.2 trillion out of the next $45-50 trillion in spending, a miniscule percentage. The Super Committee's job isn't even about cutting spending. They are only talking about cutting the rate of future spending INCREASE. I could cut that much out of the budget in a day, if it took me that long. In fact, I'll do it right now, in about ten seconds. We could cut $1.2 trillion out of the military budget over ten years. That would come to $120 billion per year, out of a defense budget that is already larger than the defense budgets of all the other countries in the world COMBINED, a defense budget that costs almost $1 trillion per year when all associated costs are tallied. There. We're done. That wasn't so hard, was it ?

If the Super Committee can't even agree on these small cuts ($120 billion per year out of future $4-5 trillion budgets), what hope is there that Congress can close our annual trillion dollar deficits ? There is no hope, not with our current Congress, and not with our current President. Ron Paul sounds better all the time.

CBS Sucks: Speaking of Ron Paul, CBS held a 90-minute GOP presidential debate on foreign policy. CBS aired 60 minutes of that debate, and candidate Paul got a grand total of 89 seconds to speak on air. Paul advocates a non-interventionist foreign policy (see – defense spending cuts). Apparently, CBS didn't want to hear it. Paul wasn't the only GOP contender complaining, and CBS's excuse was that they gave the most air time to the candidates highest in the polls. It is not the job of CBS to decide which candidates are legitimate and which are not. That's the job of the voters, and the voters can't make a sound choice if certain candidates are cut out of the debate process. It's the job of CBS to give each candidate an equal chance, and CBS failed miserably.

Cain-wreck: I thought Rick Perry forgetting which government deparments he wanted to eliminate was about as bad as it gets for political flubs. I was wrong. Watch Herman Cain trying to answer a question about whether he agreed with Obama's policy in Libya:

Ouch. That was actually painful to watch. 'Let's see…Libya…that's a country, isn't it ? Golly, there are so many countries that it's hard to keep track [even though we've been at war in Libya for months and it was all over the news]. Libya's trying to develop nuclear weapons, right ? No, that's China…or is it Iran ? Wait, no, Libya is where Qaddafi was at, correct ? Whatever it is, I'm disagreeing with Obama's policy on it, because…I have to…even if I have no idea what I'm talking about'.

Give me a break already. Cain sounded like a college student who didn't study for the entire semester and then stayed up all night cramming for the final. So much information "twirling around" inside his head. Thanks for playing Presidential Jeopardy, Mr. Cain, and please accept this wonderful parting gift, dinner for two at Olive Garden. But please spare us any more of your "views" on foreign policy. Cain would have been better off if he just said, 'hell if I know. I'm a businessman. I don't even know where Libya is'.

Given Cain and Perry's recent responses, I'm starting to think maybe I could run for President. There don't seem to be any qualifications for the job.

Supreme Test For ObamaCare: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the lawsuit challenging ObamaCare. This is huge. We should find out next year whether we have a constitutional government or a totalitarian government. If the ObamaCare insurance mandate is upheld by the Supremes, the government would be granted almost unlimited power over the citizenry. The government could then tell us what products we have to buy from private companies, what we have to eat and drink, what we have to wear, you name it. There would be no limits to governmental authority. The ObamaCare mandate to purchase health insurance or be fined is an assault on our basic rights and freedom, and possibly the most unconstitutional law passed since the 1930's, when several unconstitutional FDR laws were struck down by the courts.

There have been calls for Justices Thomas and Kagan to recuse themselves from the proceedings. Justice Thomas' wife has been involved in campaigns to repeal ObamaCare, and Justice Kagan worked for Obama and is on record cheering the passage of ObamaCare. It doesn't really matter if they recuse themselves, unless only one of them does, which would swing the balance of the court. We pretty much already know the entire liberal wing of the court will vote for a totalitarian government and approve the unconstitutional ObamaCare mandate. The conservative wing of the court will vote to uphold the Constitution and liberty, and that leaves…Justice Kennedy, the swing vote who will decide the future of freedom in this country. The eventual ruling is almost certainly going to be 5-4 one way or the other. My view is that any Justice who votes to uphold the ObamaCare mandate should be immediately kicked off the Supreme Court for violating his/her oath of office.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. – Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution

This is the infamous passage in the original Constitution that counts slaves as three-fifths of a person. Because yesterday was Martin Luther King day, it seems like a good time to bring this topic up. Almost every time I hear a reference made to this part of the original Constitution, it is offered up as proof that the Founding Fathers were racists. It is offered up as proof that they considered blacks to be subhuman. A caller to the Glen Beck radio program made this typical assertion:

"I noticed you reference the founding fathers a lot," said the caller. "And to me it's kind of offensive because most of those guys were slave-owners. The Constitution that they wrote up — they didn't even recognize my people as even human."

"Where'd you learn that, Josh?" Beck soon responded, after asking him to explain his question. The caller said he "learned that in school."

I don't know what they are teaching in school these days, and it's true some of the Founders were slaveowners, but the three-fifths clause in the Constitution did not mean blacks were subhuman. It was actually designed to reduce the power of the slave-owning states in the U.S. Congress. Counting slaves as three-fifths of a person in the Census was actually a compromise position reached between northern and southern states at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention. Delegates opposed to slavery didn't want to count slaves in the Census at all, because it would inflate the representation of the slave owning states in Congress. The number of representatives in Congress was determined by the number of people being represented. Counting slaves a full persons, as the slave owning states wished to do, would only increase the political power of the slave owners. Thus, the three-fifths compromise was reached. It would have been better if the wishes of the anti-slavery people had won out, and slaves were not counted at all, and only free persons were counted. (note – free black people were counted as full persons). After all, it's not like the interests of the slaves were being represented in Congress by the slave owners. Only the slave owners interests were being represented. Counting black slaves as full persons at that time would have only increased the power of their masters. Not a desirable outcome.

Even counting slaves as three-fifths of a person instead of non-persons, as odd as it sounds, had profound political repercussions. It increased the power of the slave states. From Wikipedia:

The three-fifths ratio, or "Federal ratio" had a major effect on pre-Civil War political affairs due to the disproportionate representation of slaveholding states relative to voters. For example, in 1793 slave states would have been apportioned 33 seats in the House of Representatives had the seats been assigned based on the free population; instead they were apportioned 47. In 1812, slaveholding states had 76 instead of the 59 they would have had; in 1833, 98 instead of 73. As a result, southerners dominated the Presidency, the Speakership of the House, and the Supreme Court in the period prior to the Civil War.

After the Civil War and abolition, the three-fifths compromise was superseded by the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which reads, ""Representatives shall be apportioned …counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed..." There was no longer a need to reduce the power of slave owning states after slavery was thankfully ended. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, gave black men the right to vote. That left women as societal outcasts. Women didn't get the right to vote for another fifty years, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920.

In summary, the next time you hear someone say the "three fifths of a person" clause means the Founders thought blacks were subhuman, know they are ignorant of history. The ones who thought blacks were subhuman were the SLAVE OWNERS, who wanted black slaves to be counted as full persons to serve their own nefarious ends.

When Senate Majority Leader Harry "the war is lost" Reid (D-Las Vegas) realized the war was lost regarding passage of the Dems $1.2 trillion pork-filled omnibus spending bill (the Party Of No said 'NO!'), he had to pull the bill.

When Senate Majority Leader Harry "the war is lost" Reid (D-AQI) got the Food Safety Bill passed by a wide margin two weeks ago, he hailed it as a grand achievement, and Senate Democrats sent out press releases trumpeting their glorious achievement (was our food previously UNSAFE ? Who knew ?)….until members of the House Of Representatives reminded loser Reid that Article I Section 7 of the Constitution requires tax increase measures to be initiated by the House. Section 107 of the Food Safety bill raises taxes in the form of fees. Oops. The Food Safety bill might now be dead in the lame duck water. Democrats sure have problems with that Constitution thingy, don't they ? Rather odd for Senators who swear to uphold the Constitution when they are sworn into office. You'd think they might give the Constitution a peek. It's only 17 pages long.

Senator Harry "the war is lost" Reid (D-MX) and his lame ducks also lost on the DREAM Act, but loser Reid's losing streak ended yesterday, when the Democrats passed repeal of Democrat President Clinton's silly Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy, with the help of a few Republicans. Hollywood celebrities are absolutely thrilled, though I don't see it as such a big deal. After all, gays were already allowed in the military, they just had to keep quiet about their sexual predilection. I always thought it was rather dumb to kick someone out of the army because he told someone else he was gay, but on my list of political priorities, DADT was so far down the list that it barely registers a shoulder shrug. Now the gays that are already in the military won't be kicked out of the military for telling someone else they are gay. Big whoop. Gay marriage is a lot bigger civil rights issue to me.

But that's just me. As I said, Hollywood celebs are ecstatic. Here are a few examples:

Lady Gaga: "Can't hold back the tears+pride. We did it!i Our voice was heard + today the Senate REPEALED DADT. A triumph for equality after 17 YEARS."

Ellen DeGeneres: "Thank you Senators for pushing us one step closer towards full equality."

Ricky Martin: "One step closer to #equality!! #DADT is gone!Historical! #lgbt."

Cyndi Lauper: "Historic day. 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' repealed. It's about time. Step by step we're headed towards full equality."

No word on when Lady Gaga, Ellen Degeneres, Ricky Martin, and Cyndi Lauper will join up and fight for their country. Because the celebs are all liberals, it definitely won't be until the imperialist criminal American war machine stops slaughtering innocents all over the world in pursuit of hegemonic world domination and abandons all wars for oil and other capitalist wars of choice, wars that kill children and other living things for no reason whatsoever. Peace out.

Makes one wonder why these celebs wanted gays in the military in the first place. Shouldn't they have wanted gays OUT of the military, the way it used to be before the celebs got involved ? Oh well. I guess the liberal Hollywood celebs wanted equal rights for ALL baby killers, including the gay ones….or something like that. I can't keep up.

You're probably starting to wonder when I'm going to get around to the world ending on tuesday, so here it is – after the omnibus bill was scuttled, the House Of Representative put forth another resolution that would continue to fund the federal government, but it will only fund the government until tuesday. I'm not kidding. They voted on friday to extend government funding until tuesday, four days later. That was curious, though by itself it doesn't mean the world will end on tuesday. Here's the kicker….on tuesday, the same day government funding runs out, we will have both the winter solstice AND a lunar eclipse, the first time this has happened in 456 YEARS. Coincidence ? I don't think so !!!

Yeah, baby ! How do you like me now ? This also explains why Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts – because the world is going to end in some cataclysmic event and it won't matter !!!

When I found out about this, the first thing I did was to check and see if the world ended the last time the solstice and a lunar eclipse coincided, 456 years ago in 1554. I can't be sure, but it appears the world did NOT end in 1554, though the Tudors were going through some turbulent times under King Henry VIII back in the day. So many dead wives. Perhaps something wicked this way comes.

In order to find out more, I checked with an established spiritual source, the Wiccans:

The celestial eccentricity holds special significance for spiritualities that tap into the energy of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and a time that is associated with the rebirth of the sun.

"It's a ritual of transformation from darkness into light," says Nicole Cooper, a high priestess at Toronto's Wiccan Church of Canada. "It's the idea that when things seem really bleak, (it) is often our biggest opportunity for personal transformation.

"The idea that the sun and the moon are almost at their darkest at this point in time really only further goes to hammer that home."

Cooper said Wiccans also see great significance in the unique coupling of the masculine energy of the sun and the feminine energy of the moon — transformative energies that she plans to incorporate into the church's winter-solstice rituals.

Since the last time an eclipse and the winter solstice happened simultaneously was just under five centuries years ago, Cooper said she wasn't familiar with any superstitions or mythologies associated with it.

Aha ! The ritual transformation of darkness into light ! That sounds pretty ominous, though on second thought, it does happen every morning.

I'm also totally onboard with the Wiccans idea of coupling masculine and feminine energies, if you know what I mean…wink, wink. I only hope I get to do it more than once every 456 years. What am I, a monk ?

In conclusion, the world might end on tuesday…or it might not. Maybe it will snow. I can't be certain. What I wonder is, if the world does end tuesday on Obama's watch….how will he blame it on Bush, and what will be the implications for 2012 ? You better get your talking points ready, liberals. Just in case.

Civil rights questions: How can a President who passed a law mandating that all Americans have valid health insurance cards or be fined also believe the Arizona immigration law asking suspected illegal immigrants for their papers is "misguided" ? Do illegals now have more rights than American citizens in the President's eyes ?

Gentlemen, start your engines: Evolutionists believe life on earth started with the spontaneous conversion of inanimate matter to animate matter (they call it the "primordial soup." I call it the movie Frankenstein, which was never been duplicated in any laboratory). How do these folks have the nerve to dismiss a higher power that many call God ? Is the higher power argument somehow less believable than the evolutionists Shazaam! belief ?

Subjugation as the new feminism: The United Nations has selected Iran to a commission on women's rights. The commission is “dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women," according to it's website. Women in Iran have been struggling for basic human rights, and have made some progress, but Iran is a country where stoning is still the law, where lashings are given to women for "improper dress," and where female civil rights protesters are arrested, beaten, raped, and tortured. Assigning Iran to a women's rights commission is like assigning the Ku Klux Klan to a commission on racism. Of course, this is the crazy UN, which also put China and Saudi Arabia on it's Human Rights Commission. Here's my question – in light of this move, shouldn't the UN also find some Neo-Nazi group to resolve the Israel-Palestine issue ? This does partially explain why so many think Jon Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central is the real political news. It's hard to distinguish political reality from comedy these days, even though there's not much funny about the reality.

Speaking of comedy: President Obama did his brand of standup at the recent White House Correspondent's Dinner. Never one to miss a chance at gaining a partisan edge of any kind, the President took direct aim at one of his presumed presidential contenders in 2012. Here's Barack "Shecky" Obama:

“Speaking of undeserved honors, a few weeks ago, I was able to throw out the first pitch at the Nationals game….It was high and wide. FOX News reported it as the president pandering to the left wing, while MSNBC declared: “President pitches a no-hitter.”…

Of course, that’s not the only thing we’ve been accused of socialiizing this year. You might have heard we passed a healthcare bill… Some Republicans have claimed the bill includes a few secret provisions. That’s ridiculous. There aren’t a few secret provisions in the healthcare bill, there are like hundreds….such as The Bay State denial: This bill shall cover short-term memory loss with regard to healthcare reform. So good news Mitt, your condition is covered."

Pretty funny, but it does lead to an important question. How is Mitt Romney going to overcome the mandated health care reform he instituted in Massachusetts to secure the 2012 GOP nomination ? Romney has repeatedly said he is against ObamaCare, but his own record flies in the face of that. Romney won't be the first politician to run on an 'I was for it before I was against it' platform, of course. John Kerry got the 2004 Democratic nomination with that schlock, but remember, Kerry LOST the general election. The next question is, if Romney isn't going to be the 2012 nominee, who will be ? Huckabee ? Gingrich ? Pawlenty ? Palin ?…..I just can't see it.

After listening to President Obama whine about the Supreme Court's ruling on the Citizens United v. FEC case, where the Supremes struck down an unconstituional McCain-Feingold prohibition on campaign ads, I wondered, exactly how big of a hypocrite is Obama ? Apparently, his hypocrisy knows no bounds. Remember, Obama is the one who broke his word on taking public campaign financing so he could raise $600 million to defeat John McCain, who did take public campaign financing. LOTS of that money came from special interests, running the gamut from Wall Street to the unions. Obama also spouted quite a lot of anti-lobbyist rhetoric on the campaign trail in 2008, and then turned around and had several lobbyists on his White House team (another broken Obama campaign promise), including John Podesta, who headed Obama's transition team.

As it turns out, 2009 was a very, very good year for lobbyists, and guess which lobbying firm increased it's revenue the most ? If you said, 'John Podesta's lobbying group,' you win the grand prize. The revenue of the Podesta Group jumped 60 percent in 2009. Some grand coincidence, eh ?

Next, consider Obama's health care bill, which catered to practically every medical special interest in sight – the health insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, AARP, AMA, the unions, etc. Then consider the bribes to Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) to get their health care votes. ObamaCare has been a special interest bonanza, and partly responsible for the lobbying boom in 2009, a boom that happened in the midst of a recession, no less.

Lobbying, in and of itself, is perfectly legal and constitutional, just as is running political ads on television. Those activities are part and parcel of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Here's the text of that Amendment, which I'll repeat here because many liberals seem unaware of it, judging by their recent reactions to events:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Lobbying IS petitioning the government. The massive increases in the number of lobbyists over the past decade (they've doubled in number) isn't really the problem. It's only a symptom of the real problem, which is – the massive expansion in the size, scope, and power of the federal government itself. This has gone on regardless of which party was running things. The lobbyists grew during the Bush administration's huge expansion of government, and the lobbyists are growing during Obama's all-time record expansion of government. Btw, I heard Obama say the other day that he wasn't for big government, he was for smart government. That's another of Obama's titanic lies. He is for BIG GOVERNMENT, period. And that leads inexorably to more lobbyists, more special interest catering, and more corruption, just as it has this year. When the government is trying to remake the entire health care system, is granting subsidies to everyone and everything the government deems wise and appropriate, is disseminating $800 billion in stimulus money to whomever it deems wise and appropriate, is bailing out every industry it deems wise and appropriate, is contemplating how to raise taxes to pay for it all, what else COULD happen, other than every special interest in the country flocking to Washington D.C. to get their share of the taxpayer-funded bounty ??? There is no other possible reality.

The problem certainly is not McCain-Feingold. The problem is every big government advocate everywhere. The answer to the problem is contained in the very U.S. Constitution the left wants to blissfully ignore. The Constitution was designed with the intent of the government being limited. The founding fathers designed it that way on purpose. The founders didn't want the state to be all-powerful. They'd seen enough of that in the monarchies and dictators of their own time. The Constitution is a description of the powers and limitations on the government, and the political power brokers in Washington D.C. are shredding it article by article, page by page. Thus, the solution to all the corruption and favor-buying in Washington D.C. is the same as it's always been – limited government. This is best expressed by the Libertarian/Conservative key phrase – limited government, lower taxes, liberty. It is the ONLY way.

Obama is hardly the solution to the problem. He and those like him ARE THE PROBLEM. The only reason Obama dislikes the Citizens United v. FEC ruling is because he fears much of that corporate advertising won't be in his favor. He fears that money might favor his pro-business opponents, the very ones Obama would like to keep quiet. Obama is perfectly fine with special interests, as long as those special interests are in his corner, as long as he can use them to advance his agenda, and as long as he can use them to consolidate his power.

The bottom line is, if government weren't so all-powerful, if it wasn't handing out favors to everyone in sight, then there wouldn't be so many standing in line jostling for those favors. And if we start cutting government spending, there'd be a nice little side benefit – we could move off the path to bankruptcy that we're on now. We might start righting our financial ship.

But I'm sure our President would consider all this crazy talk. It makes too much sense, and in addition, it doesn't leave the President free to redistribute everyone's wealth (aka, thievery).

If you want to know why the White House wishes to discredit Fox News, look no further than this post. Today, I'm going to post something I first heard from Glenn Beck (cue the liberal wailing and gnashing of teeth). This is from a 2008 speech by Ron Bloom, President Obama's Manufacturing Czar:

Here's are Ron Bloom's relevant words from that video again:

"Generally speaking we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market, or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money because they're convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this is largely about power, that it's an adults only, no limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it that if you want a friend, you should get a dog."

Here we have Obama's Manufacturing Czar saying the free market is nonsense. This is the guy who's in charge of creating jobs in the manufacturing sector (yikes. Maybe the Associated Press is right when they say higher unemployment is "the new normal" for America). Bloom has a heavy union background, which is fine, but I'm left to wonder where Bloom thinks those union manufactured products are going to be sold, if not on that nonsensical free market. What is Bloom's alternative ? Is his alternative some type of government-controlled market ? When Bloom says in his next breath that he agrees with Mao that political power comes from the end of a gun, it does sound like government control is what he's talking about. If so, that's pretty frightening stuff, and about as unamerican as you can get.

I actually don't want to believe this. I hope there's some other explanation for Ron Bloom's words, and there could be. I hope this video is taken out of context, and he meant something else altogether, but I couldn't find anything on the internet to counter or provide more context to his statements. I really hope we don't have people in positions of authority in this country who believe such things.

Several conservatives are now running around saying, 'oh, look. Here's another Obama official endorsing Chairman Mao.' I have to take some issue with that, based upon my current knowledge. This isn't the same thing as Van Jones, Obama's former Green Jobs Czar, being an avowed communist. This isn't the same thing as Anita Dunn, Obama's communications director, saying Mao is one of her two favorite political philosophers. This is just Ron Bloom agreeing with one thing Mao said, and I actually agree with Bloom and Mao about that one thing. Political power often DOES come from the end of a gun. That's why our founding fathers designed a Constitution to limit government power. That's why I believe in that Constitution, and believe in limiting government power as much as humanly possible. The more power we cede to the government, the more powerful that government gun becomes. That's also why the free market is NOT nonsense, as Bloom would have us believe. The free market is essential to a free country. There is no acceptable alternative. As our founding documents state, our rights do not come from men, they come from a higher power. Our government exists to secure those rights, not to trample all over them.

"For those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." - President Barack Hussein Obama, narcissist, addressing the United Nations, September, 2009.

I'm sure glad Barry came along and fixed the character and cause of this nation after 232 years of American villainy, aren't you ? On the bright side, at least he didn't call pre-Obama America "The Great Satan." And our President spoke these words in front of an audience that included the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Moammar Gadhafi, and a slew of other human rights violators (many of whom are on the Orwellian UN Human Rights Council).
===
"Since Americans can only be prodded into doing something with money, we need to tax crappy foods that make us sick like we do with cigarettes, and alcohol." - pot-smoking comedian Bill Maher, September, 2009.

Unbelievably, Maher calls himself a Libertarian. In reality, he's just another authoritarian left-winger. Someone should familiarize Maher with the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It's none of Bill Maher's business who smokes, drinks, or eats what, which Maher would quickly realize if someone took his weed away. Maher's "libertarianism" extends only to his desire to get high. What a hypocrite.
===
"Is capitalism a sin ?" - Leni Riefenstahl Award-winning, Castro-loving filmmaker Michael Moore, in a trailer from his forthcoming movie, Capitalism, A Love Story.

The answer from Moore's questionee is "yes," by the way, capitalism IS a sin. Hugo Chavez couldn't have said it better.
===
"President Obama didn't make much news on his round of five Sunday talk shows … with one notable exception. The President revealed a great deal about his philosophy of government and how he defines a tax increase. It turns out the President thinks a health-care tax is not a tax if he thinks the tax is for your own good. … Mr. Obama was asked by [ABC] host George Stephanopoulos about the 'individual mandate.' Under Max Baucus's Senate bill that Mr. Obama supports, everyone would be required to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty as high as $3,800 a year. Mr. Stephanopoulos posed the obvious question about this kind of coercion when 'the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't [buy insurance]. … How is that not a tax?' 'Well, hold on a second, George,' Mr. Obama replied. 'Here's what's happening. You and I are both paying $900, on average — our families — in higher premiums because of uncompensated care. Now what I've said is that if you can't afford health insurance, you certainly shouldn't be punished for that. That's just piling on. If, on the other hand, we're giving tax credits, we've set up an exchange, you are now part of a big pool, we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's…' 'That may be,' Mr. Stephanopoulos responded, 'but it's still a tax increase.' (In fact, uncompensated care accounts for about only 2.2% of national health spending today, but that's another subject.) Mr. Obama: 'No. That's not true, George. The — for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore…' In other words, like parents talking to their children, this levy — don't call it a tax — is for your own good. … Mr. Obama complains that 'My critics say everything is a tax increase,' as if that is his political problem. His real problem is that the individual mandate really is a tax, but the President doesn't want voters to think of it that way, because taxes are unpopular." –The Wall Street Journal, September, 2009.

Yes, of course, Obama's penalty for not having health insurance is a tax, no matter what he wants to call it. Obama probably wouldn't consider his cap-and-trade proposal a tax either, but that's exactly what it is. The creative subterfuge being engaged in by Democrats these days is to pass tax increases without calling them tax increases. Instead, they are called penalties, mandates, fees, carbon allowances, etc. Does this stuff actually fool anyone ? (except for liberals, that is). I hope not. Obama isn't "helping the little guy" one bit, in case anyone hasn't noticed (and the media sure hasn't). He's only raising the little guy's expenses, through both direct and indirect means. This brings to mind Ronald Reagan's quote about the most terrifying words in the english language – "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
===
"We understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act. And we will meet our responsibility to future generations." - Barack Obama, speaking at the UN climate change conference, September, 2009.

"Responsibility to future generations," eh ? More than a tad ironic, coming from the President who is running up the debt faster than every other administration in history combined, thereby irresponsibly ruining the prospects of future generations.
===
"It doesn't smell of sulfur here anymore. It smells of something else. It smells of hope." - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, addressing the UN, September, 2009.

The "sulfur" smell was Bush, whom Chavez called "the devil" at last year's UN meeting. The "hope" smell is Obama. It's sure nice that we've won over Chavez, don't you think ? Yes, he may be a tyrannical nut who nationalizes industries, shuts down opposition media, and puts opposition political figures in jail, but that's the socialist way. Because Chavez's version of "hope" would be hope of a worldwide socialist revolution, I wonder what it is he likes so much about Obama ??? I can agree with Chavez on this much – something smells alright.

I've pretty much had my fill of liberals condemning free speech, and then using the specters of racism and/or violent right-wing boogeymen as the excuse. In my last three posts, I have outlined examples of the left calling the right racist. It's the number one argument they use to discount the Tea Party protests. That argument was shot down by President Obama himself on Meet The Press on sunday:

DAVID GREGORY: …this week you had former President Jimmy Carter saying most, not just a little, but most of this Republican opposition against you is motivated by racism. Do you agree with that?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: No. Look, I said, during the campaign, are there some people who still think through the prism of race when it comes to evaluating me and my candidacy? Absolutely. Sometimes they vote for me for that reason, sometimes they vote against me for that reason. I'm sure that was true during the campaign, I'm sure that's true now. But I think you actually put your finger on what this argument's really about. And it's an argument that's gone on for the history of this republic. And that is what's the right role of government? How do we balance freedom with our need to look after one another?

The President is absolutely correct. The argument here is about the role of government, not race. The President pointed out that the argument about the government's role goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson versus Alexander Hamilton, and that it always evokes passionate debate. Nothing has changed. Our President is apparently much more intelligent than many of his clueless supporters, who play the race card at the drop of a hat. Kudos to President Obama for saying this.

After the racism charge, the number two free speech stopper used by the left is the politics of fear (which I seem to remember the left condemning not too long ago, ironically enough), in the form of those right-wing boogeymen I mentioned earlier. Apparently, liberals think there are cadres of right-wing nutjobs sitting in front of tv sets and radios all across the country, with their helmets on, armed with hand guns, hand grenades, and Billy Beer, just waiting for Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, or Glenn Beck to give them their marching orders about who or what to go blow up. We saw Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) playing the politics of fear card recently, when she weepily worried about potential violence in front of the cameras. The latest version of this inanity I've read came from the blissfully ignorant Media Matters (aka, George Soros Media Inc.), who had a profound enough lack of self-awareness to write a piece called 'A President was killed the last time right-wing hatred ran wild like this'. That President was John F. Kennedy, of course, and, as much as I hate to pierce Media Matters' bubble of historical revisionism, JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a self-avowed communist. The last I heard, communism was a left-wing ideology. It wasn't "right-wing hatred" that killed JFK. It was left-wing hatred. Not that Media Matters let's the truth get in the way of a good old phony political diatribe.

I can point out ten acts of left-wing violence for every act of right-wing violence over the last several decades, and left-wing governments killed approximately 100 million people in the 20th century alone, (yet somehow liberals NEVER profess a fear of left-wing violence), but liberals do have a real right-wing boogeyman to whom they can point. That is Timothy McVeigh, the man who blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in the 1990's, killing 168 people. Heinous. He received the death penalty, which he richly deserved.

McVeigh was an anti-tax, anti-big government Libertarian who voted for Libertarian candidate Harry Browne in the 1996 Presidential election. That makes McVeigh sound a lot like……ME. I voted for Harry Browne, and I agree with many Libertarian ideas. In light of McVeigh's violence, the question is, does that make the ideas themselves dangerous ??? Should I stop writing what I do because some nut might misinterpret it ? Should I self-censor my political rhetoric ? Liberals have been answering "YES" to that question for months now. They see a bunch of peaceful Tea Party protests (zero examples of right-wing violence) as some kind of powder keg, ready to explode. Liberal accuse the Tea Partiers of fear-mongering even as liberals fear-monger themselves. It's absurd, and we should all be able to see right through it.

Here are a couple things Timothy McVeigh said that I agree with (horrors ! You better arrest me NOW):

"Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight"

"The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful."

Dangerous ideas ? I think not. The Founding Fathers held those ideas, and they are ideas about liberty. I think the dangerous people are the ones who don't object to the ever-growing government, which has the inevitable crushing effect of taking away ever more property and choice (freedom) from the citizenry. McVeigh's gigantic mistake was moving into calls for civil war and violence. Naturally, I don't agree with that. I'm all for using peaceful means, as Martin Luther King advocated. You don't defeat tyranny by becoming a tyrant yourself. In America, we can defeat tyranny at the ballot box.

What McVeigh does represent is what I'll call The Lunatic Factor. We have a country of over 300 million people. Because human nature is fallible, some of those people are bound to be unhinged (I should name names here, but I'll resist). These people might listen to political speech and be motivated to do stupid and destructive things, as McVeigh did. What liberals seem not to understand is, this can manifest itself across the political spectrum. Liberals quake in their boots over largely imaginary right-wing violence, but then they turn around and call right-wingers racists, which is about as inflammatory as political rhetoric can get. If so-called "dangerous" speech is to be controlled, as liberals are advocating, then we can start with the liberals themselves. By labeling all the Tea Party protesters as racists, are not liberals, by their own standards, inciting violence against those alleged "racists" ? After all, racists are dangeous people who must be stopped. If Limbaugh and Beck are inciting violence, so are Olbermann, Garofalo, Maxine Waters, Jimmy Carter, etc.

It's one more liberal example of "do as I say, not as I do." The lack of self-awareness is nothing short of astounding. Are liberals incapable of remembering all the way back to LAST YEAR, when they were calling former President Bush all manners of inflammatory names ? For that matter, they still are calling Bush those names.

The bottom line here is, free speech is allowed in this country. We can't ever allow that to be lost. The people we should always cast a skeptical eye upon are the ones who are attempting to stifle it with their scare tactics. At this moment in history, the stiflers in this country are coming from the left. That also happens to be where the stiflers most often come from – from the big, all-powerful totalitarian governments the left is constantly advocating for (knowingly or not). The belief in freedom is not just an ideological exercise. The real world consequences are immense.

Upon taking office, President Obama vowed to "restore science to it's rightful place."

Enter John Holdren, whom Barack Obama recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Holdren's informal title is Science Czar (and as you shall see shortly, "Czar" is definitely the correct description for Holdren).

The following ideas come from the 1977 book Ecoscience, co-authored by Holdren, and illustrate what our radical new Science Czar thinks is the "rightful place" of science. Passages from this book read like the fiction from Huxley's Brave New World, or the ravings of a tyrranical lunatic. According to this book, Holdren is a totalitarian, a eugenicist, and an environmental extremist. What he proposes is simply beyond belief. Here are some direct quotes from Holdren's book:

Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

Hmmm. I don't remember reading anything in the Constitution that would allow the government to mandate forced birth control or forced abortions. I wonder who "concluded" that ?

One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.

Forced marriage, forced adoption. Holdren isn't quite up to speed on the ideas of liberty or freedom of expression, is he ? I'm pretty sure the Constitution DOES say something about those concepts.

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.

Sterilize the population via drinking water, as long as it doesn't harm the livestock. Sure, Mr. Holdren. Was it Thomas Jefferson who first spoke those inspiring words, or was it Abraham Lincoln during his Gettysburg Address ? I can never remember.

a program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.
…
The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.

Maybe they can combine the sterilization implant with the National ID implant chip. The totalitarian two-fer. I'm glad Holdren left open the possibility that some of us peons MIGHT be able to have children with the permission of the government. Of thee I sing.

If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.

I wonder how the government will determine which people are causing "social deterioration" ???? Eugenics, anyone ? Btw, the government is already trying to require us to "exercise responsibility" in our "resource-consumption patterns," in case anyone was wondering if this type of stuff could ever really happen.

Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.

The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.

One worlders unite !!! I don't know why Holdren mentioned the Constitution in that previous passage from his book, because he clearly could care less about it. He wants to throw it out the window in favor of a planetary governing body. Holdren doesn't recognize any limitations on the power of the state. At least we won't have to worry about maintaining the integrity of sovereign nations any longer, because there won't be any sovereign nations. It's Big Brother gone global. What could possibly go wrong ?

If such things are science's "rightful place," well, I'd rather go back to where it was before. What kind of lunacy are we ushering into being here ? Where is America going ? The former fringe radicals are taking the seats of power, and that is truly frightening. What's next, Bill Ayers as the Education Czar ? It wouldn't be much different. We have to stop these people.

The Senate formally apologized for slavery yesterday, one hundred and forty four years too late, one hundred and forty four years after slavery was abolished.

Do we all feel better now ? A bunch of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery have apologized for it. Now we know that America doesn't condone slavery (and here I thought the Civil War settled that issue). Thank goodness. All those American pro-slavery groups can go pound salt. If there are any, that is, which there aren't (I hope).

But even the Senate's unaminous and meaningless kumbayah vote to apologize for slavery isn't without controversy here in grievance-based America, where it seems everyone feels slighted over something. The Senate's slavery apology contained a disclaimer which stated the apology didn't authorize any reparations claim for the descendants of slaves.

Cue the outrage. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus objected to the reparations disclaimer.

Sigh.

To be clear, I believe reparations for slavery were in order, but they were in order 144 YEARS AGO, not now. They were in order for people who actually WERE slaves. There are no reparations in order for people who are six or seven generations removed from slavery, for people who have the same civil rights as everyone else, for people who even have MORE civil rights than everyone else (affirmative action). I agree with President Obama, who said the best reparations are "good schools in the inner city." Obama embodies the lunacy of the reparations argument. Should we pay reparations to Barack Obama, the most powerful man in the world, just because his skin contains the required amount of melanin ? I don't think so.

As I'm writing this, there are some teevee talking heads arguing about whether or not the coverage of Michael Jackson's death is motivated by race. One talking head is saying it is, that the media is talking about all Jackson's drug use because he is black.

Sigh.

That talking head must not remember the teevee coverage of the deaths of Heath Ledger, Kurt Cobain, Anna Nicole Smith, or Elvis Presley. The media wallowed in all the minutiae of each one's drug use, ad nauseum. It's about celebrity, not race.

Speaking of race-based issues, the Supreme Court reversed the appellate court ruling in the Ricci case, and ruled that New Haven discriminated against 19 firefighters (18 white and 1 hispanic) when they threw out the results of a promotion test because no blacks scored high enough to be promoted. New Haven officials were afraid of protests by civil rights groups if no blacks were promoted, so they discriminated against the 19 firefighters and denied them the promotions they earned. As with so many of these types of cases, the Supreme Court vote was split. The 5-4 majority decision was resisted by the Court's four liberal members (who think discrimination is fine and dandy as long as it's done against white people). Of note is the fact that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, was one of those overturned by the Supremes. As one of the appellate court judges, Sotomayor thought discrimination against white people was hunky-dory in the Ricci case too.

Your going to hears lots of grievance-mongering and spin about the Ricci case, but there is no reason for any of it. This country was founded on the notion that all men are created equal, and equal protection under the law is mandated in our Constitution. We have a Civil Rights Act that says you may not discriminate against people based upon race. That goes for ALL races. That's why slavery and Jim Crow laws were wrong. All we should do in this country is give everyone the same opportunity (as in, all the New Haven firefighters had the SAME opportunity for promotion, regardless of race. They all took the same test. That's equality). When we go beyond that to dictate outcomes based solely upon race, we violate our own principles and make a mockery of them.

It's time to get beyond race, as well as all the other false constructs that divide us. I've watched the civil rights movement go from one of righteousness in the 60's to the "gimme" entitlement mindset of today. No. You aren't entitled to anything in this country, except the equal opportunity to achieve or fail. After that, it's up to you, no matter who you are.

There's something about the notion of liberal judges versus conservative judges that has always bothered me. I was taught that justice is blind, which means justice should be neither liberal nor conservative. Justice should be neutral on political matters. Justice should apply the law. When politicians like President Obama start saying they want judges with empathy for certain groups of people, we are being led astray. I know I wouldn't want to stand in front of a judge with empathy for groups A and B if I was a member of group C. In such a scenario, I'm pretty sure that justice is not what I would get. In such a scenario, a kangaroo court is much more likely. I don't want a judge who is a liberal activist or a conservative activist. I don't want a judge who is trying to fix all the problems of society. That is not the role of a judge.

I don't want a judge who says things like the following, which were said by Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

"Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."

"All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people out there with court of appeals experience, because court of appeals is where policy is made."

Judges should not make policy, and the law doesn't change based upon your gender, race, or cultural background. The law exists outside those things, and should be equally applied. Judge Sotomayor says she has great respect for the Constitution, as all Supreme Court justices should, but there is one recent decision she made where she didn't apply any Constitutional principles at all. In fact, she completely ignored them. That case was Ricci v. DeStefano, where Sotomayor upheld a lower court ruling dismissing a racial discrimination claim. Here are the facts:

U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee, voted to deny a racial discrimination claim in a 2008 decision. She dismissed the case in a one-paragraph statement that, in the opinion of one dissenting judge, ignored the evidence and did not even address the constitutional issues raised by the case.

The case, Ricci v. DeStefano, involved a group of 19 white firefighters and one Hispanic firefighter who filed suit in 2003 claiming that the city of New Haven, Conn., engaged in racial discrimination when it threw out the results of two promotion tests because none of the city’s black applicants had passed the tests.

Each of the plaintiffs had passed the exam. The case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The city threw out the results because it feared potential lawsuits from activist groups if few or no minority candidates were promoted. The city also claimed that in addition to potential lawsuits, promotions based on the test results would undermine their goal of diversity in the Fire Department.

The firefighters sued, arguing that New Haven was discriminating against them by deciding that the tests would promote too many white candidates and too few minorities.

U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sotomayor issued an order that affirmed Arterton’s decision, issuing a one-paragraph judgment that called Arterton’s ruling “thorough, thoughtful, and well reasoned.”

But according to dissenting Judge Jose Cabranes, the single-paragraph order issued by Sotomayor and her colleagues ignored over 1,800 pages of testimony and more than an hour of argument–ignoring the facts of the case.

“(T)he parties submitted briefs of 86 pages each and a six-volume joint appendix of over 1,800 pages; plaintiffs’ reply brief was over thirty pages long," Cabranes wrote.

"(O)ral argument, on December 10, 2007, lasted over an hour,” Cabranes explained, adding that more than two months after oral arguments, Sotomayor and the majority panel upheld the lower court in a summary order “containing a single substantive paragraph.”

Cabranes criticized Sotomayor and the majority for not explaining why they had sided with the city in their new opinion.

“This per curiam opinion adopted in toto the reasoning of the District Court, without further elaboration or substantive comment, and thereby converted a lengthy, unpublished district court opinion, grappling with significant constitutional and statutory claims of first impression, into the law of this Circuit,” Cabranes wrote in his dissent.

Judge Cabranes also said that Sotomayor’s opinion failed to address the constitutional issues of the case, saying the majority had ignored the facts of the case as well.

“It did so, moreover, in an opinion that lacks a clear statement of either the claims raised by the plaintiffs or the issues on appeal. Indeed, the opinion contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case,” the judge criticized.

“This Court has failed to grapple with the questions of exceptional importance raised in this appeal,” Judge Cabranes concluded. “If the Ricci plaintiffs are to receive such an opinion from a reviewing court they must now look to the Supreme Court. Their claims are worthy of that review.”

To me, this looks like Sotomayor had empathy for one group, but no empathy at all for another group, the plaintiffs. It looks like Sotomayor's brand of "justice" takes off the blindfold and evaluates the worth of one person relative to another. It looks like Sotomayor wasn't even thinking about the merits of the case at all, only with the implications it might have for Sotomayor's preferred groups of people in the future. I wonder if those 19 New Haven firefighters are impressed by Sotomayor's brand of empathy.

The Supreme Court is expected to overturn Sotomayor on this case.

"Every one of us can imagine the following scenario: We get lucky; we get the No. 3 guy in al-Qaida, and we know there's a big bomb going off in America in three days and this guy knows where it is. We have the right and the responsibility to beat it out of him." – former President Bill Clinton, September 2006.

We now know that such a statement makes Bill Clinton an international criminal, worse than Hitler. There's no room in new American "soft power" for people like Bill Clinton these days. Bubba was all about hard power, with an emphasis on the word "hard," to which a certain White House intern (and many others) can attest. But that's a different story.

We no longer allow President's like Bill Clinton to get their hard on. Now we're for limp power, because it's nicer and less threatening. When it comes to interrogating top-level Al Qaeda operatives like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, it's now a national imperative that we salt peter our aggressiveness into submission, regardless of the circumstances or consequences. As our new President has told us, there are other ways to get terrorists to talk. Our new President has banned all harsh interrogation techniques. For your edification, I thought I'd reveal some of the new "soft" interrogation techniques, which will undoubtedly be very effective. Here are the new "effective" techniques, according to a reliable unnamed source who knows someone who's cousin lived next door to Barack Obama's half-sister:

- After a terrorist refuses to divulge an imminent terrorist plot, the interrogator may threaten to "give the terrorist such a pinch." The interrogator may not under any circumstances follow through on the threat, because that would be torture.

- The interrogator may threaten to withhold the terrorist's milk and cookie nighttime snack, though deprivation of an entire meal is disallowed as cruel and unusual.

- The terrorist may be forced to stand on one leg for up to 20 seconds, unless the terrorist doesn't really want to. He may not be physically forced to do it. We're not barbarians, you know.

- The terrorist may be made to listen to an entire Barry Manilow album, but only at a moderate volume.

- The interrogator may appeal to the terrorist's moral sense by asking "what would Jesus do ?," as long as the interrogator also asks "what would Allah, Buddha, Shiva, Moses, and Elron Hubbard do ?," so as not to engage in religious discrimination. The name Mohammed must not be uttered ever by the interrogator, because the interrogator is an infidel.

- The interrogator may apologize for America. This can be done in an unqualified manner.

- The terrorist may be sleep deprived for up to 16 hours, after which he must get his required 8 hours of sleep.

- The interrogator may engage the terrorist in a vigorous game of Fish, and may laugh derisively (but not excessively) after telling the terrorist to "go fish."

- The terrorist's cell temperature may be dropped to 64 degrees Fahrenheit until the terrorist complains that he's getting a little chilly.

- Terrorists may be made to wear a funny hat and/or a Groucho Marx mask for up to one hour on "casual friday" at Guantanamo Bay.

- The interrogator may blow cigar smoke in a terrorist's face for 5 seconds, provided the interrogation is taking place in a designated smoking section outdoors, at least 10 feet from the prison building.

- The interrogator may tell the terrorist his coffee came from Starbuck's, but after the terrorist drinks it, the interrogator may reveal, "Ha ! It's really from McDonald's !"

- While the terrorist is asleep, the interrogator may put shaving cream on the terrorist's hand, and then tickle the terrorist's nose with a feather, causing the terrorist embarassment when he smears shaving cream all over his face in an effort to stop the tickling. This method is to be used only on the very top Al Qaeda operatives, due to the irreparable psychological trauma it might inflict.

- Terrorists may be made to do the Chicken Dance for up to 5 minutes, but only during a wedding reception.

- If all else fails, the interrogator may threaten to reinstall George W. Bush as the American president.

Update – The Obama Office of Legal Counsel has informed me that last technique is banned, because though it might actually work, it will cause undue mental stress for terrorists.

P.S. – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows absolutely nothing about these new interrogation techniques, unless they prove to be politically popular, in which case she had significant input into designing them.

"Liberals are always proposing perfectly insane ideas, laws that will make everybody happy, laws that will make everything right, make us live forever, and all be rich. Conservatives are never that stupid." – P. J. O'Rourke

I don't know about the last sentence in the above quote, but the first sentence sounds right. To illustrate Mr. O'Rourke's theory, the Senate is now taking up the perfectly insane issue of hate crime legislation, proposed, it goes without saying, by Democrats. The Dems want to add gay and transgendered people to the current list of hate crime victims. H.R. 1913, which has been named after Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was robbed and murdered in 1998, defines a hate crime as follows:

[A crime of violence that] is motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim, or is a violation of the State, local, or tribal hate crime laws.

The colossally stupid thing about hate crime legislation is that every single hate crime is already a crime without hate crime legislation. The murderers of the aforementioned Mr. Shepard are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. Murder was already illegal. It's not like adding a 'hate crime' tag to their heinous acts changes anything. Hate crime legislation is completely superfluous.

Hate crime legislation doesn't serve as a deterrent to crime either. It's not like the murderers of Matthew Shepard would be willing to commit murder, but then would have said to themselves, 'hey, wait a minute, we don't want to get a murder rap AND a hate crime charge too. We better reconsider.'

Here are a couple perfectly insane quotes from leading Democrats about the current hate crime legislation being debated in Congress:

"I urge members on both sides of the aisle to act on this important civil rights issue by passing this legislation to protect all of our citizens from violent acts of intolerance." – Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA)

"No person should live in fear of violence because of who they are." – Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL)

Needless to say, passing hate crime legislation won't protect anyone from violence, nor will it stop people from living in fear because of who they are. What hate crime legislation is really about is granting special victim status to certain favored groups of people so that Democrats can say 'look what good people we Democrats are. We care about you. You should vote for us.' There is NO other purpose.

To show how inane and political hate crime legislation is, consider the case of James Byrd Jr., a black man from Texas who was brutally murdered in 1998 by three white men. They cut Byrd's throat and then chained him to the back of their truck and dragged him. This act was about as foul as it gets, and was racially motivated. The two men primarily responsible for murdering Byrd were sentenced to death. The third was given a life sentence. The Governor of Texas in 1998 was George W. Bush, who supported the death penalty for the two murderers.

Now we go to the year 2000, when George W. Bush was running for President. Many liberal groups, most notably the NAACP, made an issue of the Byrd case, and accused Bush of being a racist for not supporting hate crime legislation previously. Think about how insane that is. Here's Bush supporting the death penalty for Byrd's murderers, and the NAACP is calling Bush a racist at the same time. I mean, how much more harsh of a sentence could Bush have supported ? None. Maybe the NAACP wanted Byrd's murderers to be waterboarded before being executed, I don't know. As Dubya said at the time, "we don't need tougher laws." Bush was right. In Texas, the highest penalty for premeditated murder is death, with or without any hate crime legislation.

There are also constitutional issues with hate crime legislation, such as equal protection under the law. If I'm walking down the street and someone hits me in the head with a baseball bat, should there be a different sentence for the perpetrator based upon his race ? There shouldn't be. The person should be punished for the criminal act, not for his motivation, but hate crime legislation says yes, it matters whether your attacker is white or black. It matters what his motivation was. It doesn't, not really. I'd take it as a given that anyone who would hit me in the head with a baseball bat has some level of hatred in him, but it's the act that should be punished, and it should be punished equally, without consideration of race, religion, sexual orientation, hair color, sex, gender, how many tattoos he has, or whether or not he's has a health club membership. If the defendant's motivation is important, it can be considered at trial. We don't have to legislate it. When we start down the road of 'this victim deserves more consideration that that victim, and this perp deserves more of a sentence than that perp for the exact same crime,' we are losing our way. We are in fact discriminating against people when we do that, assigning them different levels of worth.

To further illustrate the silliness that starts when hate crime legislation is proposed, Republicans offered two amendments to H.R. 1913. The first was to exclude pedophiles from being protected under the "sexual orientation" part of the legislation. Democrats rejected that amendment UNANIMOUSLY. I guess pedophiles are a protected class now. The second amendment was to include veterans, the elderly, and Church pastors in the legislation. Democrats rejected that one too. That makes it 1) pedophiles protected, and 2) veterans not protected. Let's stop this nutty thought crime nonsense, please.

If Democrats really want to be the party of unity, as President Obama suggested, they could start by not constantly dividing everyone into competing special interest groups. They could start by uniting us all into one group, Americans, and then pass legislation accordingly.

Just in time for the Tax Day Tea Parties that are scheduled across the nation, President Obama's new head of the Department Of Homeland Security (DHS), Janet Napolitano (D-AZ), has released an unclassifed report outlining a terrorist threat against the United States Of America. The threat comes from (drumroll, please) – RIGHT WINGERS. Imagine that. The DHS report is titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." The report's stated purpose is:

…to facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of violent radicalization in the United States. The information is provided to federal, state, local, and tribal counterterrorism and law enforcement officials so they may effectively deter, prevent, preempt, or respond to terrorist attacks against the United States.

And what are the characteristics of this "violent radicalization" taking place in Right America ? Where are these "terrorist attacks" going to come from ? I'm glad you asked. Here's some of what is driving those wingnuts so crazy:

The current economic and political climate has some similarities to the 1990s when rightwing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs, and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers.

Um, wait a minute. Is it only the Right who is concerned about the economic recession ? No, and the Obama admin is milking it for all it's worth ("never let a crisis go to waste.") Is it only the Right who complains about the outsourcing of jobs ? No. During the last election cycle, job losses was a huge election issue for the Left. How many times did you hear "Bush lost four million jobs" coming from Democrat politicians ? And as for threats to U.S. power and sovereignty from foreign powers, who were all those protesters at the recent G20 Summit ? Were they right-wingers ? Nope, not by a mile. Yet, this DHS report isn't about left-wingers at all, only about right-wingers.

Here's another thing to fear, according to the DHS report:

The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.

Okay, now I get it. What we should be fearing are those crazy people who believe in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and we should also fear OUR OWN RETURNING VETERANS. The American Legion has already responded to Janet Napolitano's politically-biased smears.

The DHS also points out the following for your edification:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

Aha ! The right-wing "haters" reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority. There's the mark of an extremist, by golly. I can name several extremists who thought just like that. They were wingnuts with names like George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. The concept those wackos believed in is called federalism, and the notion is wholly supported by our Constitution, which limits federal authority, and a 10th Amendment that cedes remaining matters to the states. It seems the Constitution itself is now some kind of national security threat (and some of y'all thought I was kidding about the Constitution being shredded the other day. I wasn't. I'm introducing you to some of the shredders right now).

I also have a teeny-weenie problem with our federal government calling people who are anti-abortion or anti-illegal immigration "right-wing extremists." Another teeny-weeny problem I have is when racism is equated with the political right. Racism crosses all political boundaries. To say anything different is merely propaganda.

But wait, there's more from the DHS:

the consequences of a prolonged economic downturn—including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit—could create a fertile recruiting environment for rightwing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past.

Scary, eh ? Now, if you substituted the word "leftwing" for "rightwing" in that last statement, it would be just as equally true or untrue, yet somehow we're only supposed to be afraid of the righties.

This same type of bullspit goes on for 9 pages in the DHS report, but when it comes to specific cases of crazy right-wing terrorist plots, the DHS is forced to admit….THERE AREN'T ANY. That's right, NONE:

The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence

So, no violence is being planned by the right, but, you know, you should still be VERY AFRAID of them. Imagine the outcry if the DHS came out with a report like this about ANY other group – "No Jews are planning any violence, but you better watch out for those Jews anyway. You never know when they're going to blow." I also noticed that Obama's DHS freely uses the word "terrorism" when referring to imaginary right-wing plots, but when referring to folks who really are plotting terrorist activities, like Al Qaeda, the word "terrorism" is now politically incorrect. Al Qaeda deals in "man-made disasters." I guess only imaginary violent right-wingers are terrorists now.

In summary, the DHS has issued a report "to facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of [right-wing] violent radicalization in the United States" even though the report acknowledges there is no evidence of right-wing violent radicalization in the United States. Sooooo, why issue the report in the first place ?

It wouldn't have anything to do with politics, would it ? Some might even call it "the politics of fear."

Sure glad we don't do that kind of stuff anymore.

I'll say one thing about the Obama administration. They promised transparency, and they sure delivered. I can see right through them.

Last sunday on Face The Nation, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said [Rush Limbaugh is] “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.” Emanuel also said Limbaugh has been "praying for failure' of the Obama administration. He went on to say "…it’s our desire that the Republicans would work with us and try to be constructive, rather than adopt the philosophy of somebody like Rush Limbaugh.”

Notably, nobody had asked Rahm Emanuel a question about Rush Limbaugh. Emanuel just volunteered the above information. Previously, President Obama said people shouldn't listen to Rush Limbaugh, as if the entire GOP is but a parrot of Rush's daily radio talking points. ABC News' George Stephanopolous and talking head James Carville, both refugees from the Clinton administration, have called Rush Limbaugh the head of the Republican party. You may remember that Stephanopolous was criticized recently for getting HIS talking points directly from the White House. It seems abundantly clear that the strategy to demonize Rush Limbaugh, and by extension to demonize the entire conservative Republican ideology (by casting Limbaugh as it's leader), is coming directly from that same White House.

When Rahm Emanuel says Republicans shouldn't "adopt the philosophy of somebody like Rush Limbaugh," what does that mean ? What is Limbaugh's philosophy ? We can find out by perusing Limbaugh's recent speech at the CPAC conference. Limbaugh literally tells us what his definition of conservatism is:

"I want to tell you who conservatives are…When we look out over the United States of America… we see Americans. We see human beings. We don't see groups. We don't see victims. We don't see people we want to exploit…We do not see that person with contempt. We don't think that person doesn't have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government…We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. [Applause] Those of you watching at home may wonder why this is being applauded. We conservatives think all three are under assault.
We look over the country as it is today, we see so much waste, human potential that's been destroyed by 50 years of a welfare state. By a failed war on poverty…There are no two things or people in this world who are created in a way that they end up with equal outcomes. That's up to them. They are created equal, given the chance…We want everybody to succeed. You know why? We want the country to succeed, and for the country to succeed, its people — its individuals — must succeed. Everyone among us must be pursuing his ambition or her desire, whatever, with excellence. Trying to be the best they can be. Not told, as they are told by the Democrat Party: You really can't do that, you don't have what it takes, besides you're a minority or you're a woman and there are too many people that want to discriminate against you. You can't get anywhere. You need to depend on us… take a look at all the constituency groups that for 50 years have been depending on the Democrat Party to improve their lives. And you tell me if you find any [who's problems have been solved]. They're still complaining, still griping about the same problems. Their problems don't get fixed by government. And those lives have been poisoned. Those lives have been cut short by false promises, from government representatives who said don't worry about it, we'll take care of you. Just vote for us.
…I want any force, any person, any element of an overarching Big Government that would stop your success, I want that organization, that element or that person to fail. I want you to succeed…the people who have achieved great things, most of it is not inherited. Most wealth in this country is the result of entrepreneurial, just plain old hard work. There's no reason to punish it. There's no reason to raise taxes on these people. Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, have one responsibility, and that's to respect the oath they gave to protect, defend and follow the US Constitution. They don't have the right to take money that's not theirs, from the back pockets of producers, and give it to groups like ACORN, which are going to advance the Democrat Party.
"President Obama…he's forgotten it's not his money that he's spending. In fact, the money he's spending is not ours. He's spending wealth that has yet to be created. And that is not sustainable.
President Obama, in six weeks of his administration, has proposed more spending than from the founding of the country to his inauguration? Now, this is not prosperity."

Thus, when Rahm Emanuel says the GOP shouldn't "adopt the philosophy of Rush Limbaugh," he is saying the GOP should stop being the GOP, because individual liberty, equality of opportunity, limited government, low taxes, etc. are supposed to be core Republican principles (I say "supposed to be," because Republicans often haven't followed their own stated conservative principles). Such a philosophy isn't something Rush Limbaugh dreamt up. That philosophy predates Rush by over two hundred years. It's the philosophy espoused by our founding fathers and enshrined in our founding documents. It's the philosophy of freedom that made America great. Obama, Emanuel, and company would have you forget all that, by placing the focus on the "divisive" Rush Limbaugh instead. They are saying, in effect, 'forget about America's founding principles, because Rush Limbaugh is a blowhard." I'd respond, "Rush Limbaugh is not the issue, the abandonment of America's core principles is the issue." The Democrats are using the Limbaugh distraction to mislead Americans into blind submission to the will of the Obamans. That's utter nonsense. You SHOULD listen to Limbaugh or someone similar, just as you SHOULD listen to Obama, and SHOULD listen to everyone else, from the far left to the far right. That's the only way to arrive at an informed decision. When political operatives like Emanuel tell you to STOP listening to the opposition, to stop questioning Obama for the sake of "unity," and when they start characterizing any disagreement as divisive and destructive, well, those are the very people you should be worried about. There should never be a time in America when Big Brother is not questioned, and Obama is certainly no exception, especially with so much at stake. Rush Limbaugh doesn't represent power in this debate. Obama does. And we should pay very close attention. Pre-Obama, liberals said it was imperative to speak truth to power, but now, it's questioning power that troubles them. Yesterday's activist becomes tommorrow's oppressor. No, thanks. All oppressors are the same to me. You can have them.

After being in office for only a couple days, President Obama issued an executive order that would close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year. At the same time, he issued an executive order setting up a task force to review detainee policy, which would consider the options for apprehension, detention, trial, transfer, or release of detainees. The task force was given 180 days to complete the task.

One month later, it seems the decision on detainee rights is in.

According to Obama's Justice Department, detainees don't have rights. They are prisoners of war ('enemy combatants' if you prefer). Obama has kept the Bush policy in place.

President Barack Obama's administration has sided with predecessor George W. Bush on the rights of detainees at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, saying they cannot challenge their detention in US courts.

In a two-sentence court filing Friday, the US Justice Department said "the government adheres to its previously articulated position" of denying habeas corpus rights to Bagram detainees, backing a similar decision by the Bush administration.

This isn't going over well with left wingers who don't understand why enemy combatants aren't granted the full rights of American citizenship, and can't have their cases heard by Judge Judy.

"The decision by the Obama administration to adhere to a position that has contributed to making our country a pariah around the world for its flagrant disregard of people's human rights is deeply disappointing," said Barbara Olshansky, lead counsel for three of four [Bagram] detainees.

Sane people, on the other hand, realize that releasing enemy combatants while the war is ongoing allows those enemy combatants to engage you on the battlefield again. So, if you actually want to win the war, you don't do things that are directly destructive to the war effort, like freeing enemy forces. For those on the left who might be confused by this, further information can be found in the book War Tactics For Dummies.

In related news, the results of Obama's Pentagon review of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay prison are in. The Pentagon reports the treatment of the Gitmo prisoners meets the legal requirements of the Geneva Convention.

Again, the lefties are unhappy with our new Commander In Chief.

"We do think conditions are in violation of U.S. obligations to treat prisoners humanely, and prisoners are at a physical and mental breaking point," said Pardiss Kebriaei, a staff lawyer at the [Center For Constitutional Rights]. "These are not the conclusions we had hoped for under Obama. It's very disappointing."

I guess they were hoping Obama would order the Pentagon to say we treat the Gitmo detainees like dogs, regardless of the facts.

Now that Obama is ramping up the war in Afghanistan by sending 17,000 more troops there, and has continued striking Pakistan with Predator drones, and is denying rights to enemy combatants, I have to ask the left…

Is Obama a fascist war criminal and terrorist yet ? Is it time to impeach him and try him for war crimes along with Bush ? If not, why not ? I can't wait to hear your response.

“This is a mandate to get along, to get something done in a bipartisan way. This is not a mandate for a political party or an ideology.” – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), when asked if tuesday's election results gave his party a mandate.

"…as we unify the American people. And I pledge again, as I did last night, that we will do so in a strong bipartisan way, with civility in our debate" – Speaker Of The House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in a post-election press conference.

Here we have two of the most partisan members in Congress, calling, like Rodney King, for us all to just get along. This is literally the first time I can ever recall Harry Reid speaking in a manner other than the politics of the divisive partisan attack. Pelosi hasn't been much different. In Pelosi's newsconference, she used the words "unity" or "unifying" over and over again.

So what gives ? Why all the calls for unity and bipartisanship ? Have these two former attack dogs suddenly seen the light of brotherhood after all these years ? Not hardly. The answer is much simpler. It's because now, with the incoming Obama presidency, it's the Democratic agenda that Reid and Pelosi will be pushing through, and they want the congressional Republicans to go along with them. The Democrats didn't reach a filibuster-proof majority in tuesday's elections. They also know the Republicans WON'T go along with all the Dem plans, so they are setting the stage to call the GOP obstructionist when any Democratic measures fail to pass.

Reid/Pelosi aren't really calling for unity, they are calling for submission. They want the loyal opposition NOT to oppose them. That is an impossibility. There will be no unity, and there shouldn't be. The GOP can no more check their beliefs at the door than the Democrats did during the Bush presidency. What will exist is the same bitter partisan battles, but with a shift in the balance of power toward the Democrats. Unity is an utter illusion. The only way we could achieve unity is if we only had ONE political party, and I believe the word for that wouldn't be "unity", it would be "totalitarianism."

So spare me the faux Kumbayah stuff.

Here's a definition of "totalitarianism" from Wikipedia.

Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a concept used to describe political systems where a state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private life. Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that controls the state, personality cults, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics. The term was applied to Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. A perfect example of a present-day Totalitarian state is North Korea.

I ask you, which political party most closely resembles the totalitarian model ? Which party thinks the state should regulate so many aspects of public and private life ? Which party is so skeptical of free markets ? Which party advocates more state control of mass media ? Which party desires more control over the economy ? The Democratic party, that's who. Run away from Democratic so-called "unity" as fast as you can, folks. Run toward liberty instead. That's the American way.

Speaking of controlling mass media, regulating private life, and controlling the economy, here's what Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on FoxNews about the Fairness Doctrine (which would shut up all those Conservative talk radio voices), and the Employee Free Choice Act (which would eliminate the secret ballot in union voting):

“The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to limit pornography on the air. I am for that… But you can’t say government hands off in one area to a commercial enterprise but you are allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.”

WTF ? Talk radio is the same as pornography now ? Like hell it is. Far scarier is the notion promoted by Schumer that the government should regulate EVERYTHING, that the government should intervene in ALL COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISES. Like I said, run as fast as you can away from people like Chuck Schumer. Also note that the Fairness Doctrine would be applied only to radio, where the Right has an advantage. It wouldn't be applied to any mass media that favors the Left. What a coincidence, eh ? Totalitarians on the march.

On the Employee Free Choice Act, Schumer says we need it because only 6% of businesses are unionized. Say what ? Here, Schumer is saying we should take away the right of the secret ballot because American workers are choosing not to unionize. More freedom-killing from Schumer, this time because unions are a big-time Democratic special interest. I have nothing against unions, but I have a lot against removing essential rights, such as the secret ballot, in order to promote the paid-for Democratic political agenda.

Message for president-elect Barack Obama: If you really want to show the people you are the president for all Americans, as you said in your acceptance speech, you can start by killing the unamerican Fairness Doctrine and the Employee Free Choice Act. Otherwise, your words of inclusivity will be meaningless.

If any of you read my last post, called A Deficit Disorder, you probably know my feelings regarding our federal government's economic policies range somewhere between cynical and disgusted. Lately, with mob boss Hugo Chavez Hank Paulson running the Treasury like Don Corleone, making the big banks an offer they can't refuse to force a partial nationalization of those institutions, "disgusted" might not be a strong enough term. Paulson even told Wells Fargo Bank, who didn't want to be nationalized, that if they didn't accept his offer, they should (cue Marlon Brando's Don Vito voice) "never seek my favors or protections again." I'm paraphrasing, of course, but Paulson really did say words to that effect. Heaven help us. That's what happens when you give the feds so much power.

So, I almost passed on watching the third presidential debate last night. However, I was interested to see if John McCain would go down fighting or go down easy, so I tuned in. I was glad I did. While the talking heads, with their sound-byte mentalities, were saying things like "McCain didn't score the knockout he needed", or that Barack Obama "didn't make a major gaffe" after the debate, I saw things much differently. I thought John McCain cleaned Obama's clock on almost every issue. As an economic Conservative and an economic Libertarian, I finally heard from McCain some of what I've been hoping to hear. I finally heard McCain outline some fiscal policies to balance the budget and reign in Fedzilla (as Ted Nugent calls it), and I finally heard McCain expose Obama for the wrong-headed, wealth redistributing, big government tax and spend liberal that he is. I only wish McCain had mentioned some of the fascist policies of the other two heads of the liberal triumvirate of terror who would control our government if Obama gets elected and the Democrats increase their control of Congress – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who would attempt to do things like eliminate the secret ballot in union voting (you VILL join ze union, comrade !) with the Orwellian-named Employee Free Choice Act, and squelch free speech on talk radio (which mostly happens to be Conservative free speech) by imposing the equally Orwellian-named Fairness Doctrine. Ah, how I love the smell of our basic democratic principles burning in the morning.

McCain and Obama spent much time talking to Joe the plumber, who, after 15 years of working hard at his job, was finally in a position to own his plumbing business, and was concerned that Obama's tax plans would steal his hard-earned success and limit his ability to expand his business. (you really need to watch the entire video of Obama and Joe talking here). Obama's answer really does amount to stealing Joe's success, squelching Joe's American dream, and Obama taking the fruits of Joe's labor and "spreading the wealth around" to others. It's classic big government liberal-speak. In contrast, McCain showed how his tax cuts for business and low capital gains tax rates would enable Joe to grow his business, allowing Joe to hire people and create jobs. Obama's answer to Joe is the perfect example of how big government high-tax policies work against wealth creation and economic expansion. Instead of penalizing Joe for his success, the government should get the hell out of the way of people like Joe and let them do their thing. That is what would benefit society. McCain also rightly pointed out that Joe the plumber is not rich, though he would be under Obama's entitlement mindset. When Obama talks about tax "fairness", there really is nothing at all fair about it. Joe the plumber mentioned the flat tax during his conversation with Obama. The flat tax would be fair, but to Obama, those "rich" folks like Joe, who pay 35% income tax rates, aren't being taxed enough, whereas the non-rich, who often pay little to no income taxes, deserve even more money from the government. Once again, the word "fairness" takes on an Orwellian meaning in liberaldom (some animals are more equal than others).

McCain also pointed out that the last president wrong-headed enough to increase federal spending and raise taxes during a severe recession like this one was Herbert Hoover. Hoover's policies are widely seen as leading to the 1929 Great Depression. Are we about to allow history to repeat itself by electing Obama ? McCain noted that we shouldn't be raising ANYONE'S taxes during these harsh economic times. Amen, brother. We should be cutting back on government spending and stimulating the economy instead, as McCain said he plans to do, with both a hatchet AND a scalpel, and the veto pen too. Aww, Johnny, you had me at "freeze government spending."

McCain's plans are responsible, at least relative to Obama's. Obama's plans are nuts, unless our desire is to create a socialist country. I know I don't want that. I hope you don't either. Our founders sure didn't, which is why we have that wonderful document called the Constitution. It's too bad that very few are paying any attention to it these days, and that goes for both sides of the political aisle, including both Barack Obama and Hank Paulson. I couldn't find where Paulson is allowed to forcibly nationalize privately owned banks anywhere in the Constitution, but I guess I just don't get the notion of the "living" and "evolving" Constitution (Damn right I don't).

McCain mentioned several times that Obama's answer to absolutely everything is more government spending, more government control, and more government, period. Obama would take our already overblown federal government and put it on even stronger steroids. That is exactly the wrong answer – wrong for liberty, wrong for fairness, and wrong for America. Taxes, while necessary, should always be kept as low as possible. We have an annual time known as Tax Freedom Day, which is when the average American has paid off his government tax burden. It varies from state to state, but now falls around the end of April. After the financial crisis is cleaned up, and counting all our unfunded liabilities and national debt, who knows, it might fall at the end of June, July, or even August. When the average American is working 4-6 months of the year just for the government, what is that, but forced labor ? And what is forced labor, but slavery ? Do we want to keep EXPANDING that ? Hell no. America isn't a government chain gang. That cannot possibly be good for any of us in the long run. Each and every one of us has a civic duty to keep America free, to keep taxes low, and to limit our Fedzilla, to keep the American dream alive. And if the citizenry can't see that now, with all that is currently going on in our country, then we are certainly doomed.

You can find a transcript of the third presidential debate here. McCain took it to Obama, finally, though I wish McCain had been even more forceful in making his case. In boxing parlance, McCain too often jabs and jabs, and then inexplicably backs off from throwing the overhand right that he just set Obama up for. Too bad, because I don't think Obama could hear the rest of us Conservatives delivering those overhand rights by yelling at the tv sets in our living rooms.

The entire liberal media is telling you the FISA bill passed by the House Of Representatives on friday is the end of civil rights, the death of our Constitution, an example of Democrats caving to the lawless Bush administration, etc, etc. They try to drum this stuff into your head constantly, in the hope that you will forget what happened on 9/11, in the hope that you will forget WHY the Bush administration took the national security actions they took following that tragic attack, the worst ever on our homeland. They don't want you to ponder the REAL reasons for Bush's spying, because then it might look like Bush was only attempting to keep America safe from further attack, which is, after all, the job of the President. No, the liberal media wants you to believe Bush just woke up one day and illogically decided it was time to be a dictator and trample on the citizenry, for no reason really, just because Bush is an evil lawless tyrant and that's what evil lawless tyrants do. The liberal media wants you to know evil has a name, and that name is Bush. Also, the liberal media wants you to know that Bush=McCain=Republicans, just so there won't be any mistake. This IS an election year, after all.

But I assume most of you can see through the liberal media's shallow attempts at deception. Most people have the capacity for rational thought. This post is for you. I'll attempt to tell you what the new FISA update is really about.

In spite of the overblown protestations of the liberal media, many Democrats, most terrorist appeasers, and all outright Al Qaeda members, the new FISA bill is not the death of civil rights. There will be oversight of domestic spying with this new bill. It establishes a measure of balance between monitoring suspected terrorists and privacy concerns. It also attempts to establish limits on the president's executive powers. It spells out areas of domestic and international spying that needed to be spelled out.

The biggest sticking point to passage of the bill had been the provision to shield the telecommunications companies from lawsuits following the telcoms post-9/11 cooperation with the government in tracking terrorists. 40 such lawsuits were in the wings. None of the 40 persons or groups that wanted to sue the telecoms had any idea if their phones were monitored or if their rights were infringed. They just wanted to sue on principle. Democrats were hesitant to bargain away those lawsuits. The new FISA bill will shield the telcoms from lawsuits if the telcoms receive certification from the attorney general that the president ordered them to perform wiretaps to detect or prevent a terrorist attack. I like this provision, because it puts the responsibility for wiretaps on the government where it belongs. It is very troublesome to put the responsibility for making decisions about terrorism on private corporations who are torn between helping their country and treading into questionable legal territory that could cost them millions or billions of dollars.

I have some personal experience in this area. Following 9/11, I was a computer programmer/analyst for a bank. The government requested anti-terrorist type information from the bank, which I was tasked with providing them. Some of the requests involved the tracking of certain financial transactions and some involved other information, such as the reporting of all account signers who didn't have Social Security numbers. If any of you think this is improper action by the government, I can also tell you that the government has been tracking your financial information for decades. If you think your banking transactions are private, think again. They aren't. Nowadays, there are even sophisticated methodologies to track any type of unusual financial activity, and even methodolgies to predict financial activity, but that is a discussion for another time.

The point is that I certainly wouldn't have wanted to face a lawsuit for attempting to help my government track terrorist activity a few months after 9/11. The new FISA bill addresses that problem.

Some other provisions in the new FISA bill, according to the linked article, are:

- It requires the inspectors general of the Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies to investigate the wiretapping program, with a report due in a year.

– The government can initiate a wiretap without court permission if "important intelligence" would otherwise be lost. It has a week to file the request for approval with the court, and the court has 30 days to act on it.

– It would allow the government to tap a foreigner's overseas calls without FISA court approval.

– Require FISA court permission to wiretap Americans who are overseas.

– Prohibit targeting a foreigner to secretly eavesdrop, without court approval, on an American's calls or e-mails.

– Require the government to protect American information or conversations that are collected when in communications with targeted foreigners.

– Allow the FISA court 30 days to review existing but expiring surveillance orders before renewing them.

– Allow eavesdropping in emergencies without court approval, provided the government files required papers within a week.

– Prohibits the president from superseding surveillance rules in the future.

Is the new FISA bill perfect ? No.

Did the old FISA and spying procedures need to be updated to reflect the modern technological world and the new type of threat the terrorists present ? Absolutely.

It was a wacky weekend for the party of D, that allegedly stands for Democratic. Many votes were cast that won't count, and many other votes were counted that were not cast. We all should have seen this coming the moment they made Howard Dean the head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). To everybody I've ever spoken with about Howie (who always seems angry for no apparent reason) – Told you so.

In sunday's primary in Puerto Rico, Hillary Clinton trounced Barack Obama, capturing 68% of the vote to Obama's 32%. The win earned Hillary 38 delegates to Obama's 17.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Clinton, those 38 earned delegates in Puerto Rico were trumped by the DNC's awarding of 59 unearned Michigan delegates to Barack Obama on saturday. The party of D operatives were congratulating themselves for their Solomonic wisdom all over the news shows yesterday, but it must be noted for the record, NOBODY IN MICHIGAN VOTED FOR BARACK OBAMA. Sooo, how do you get 59 elected delegates without receiving any votes ? Why, you belong to the party of D, that allegedly stands for Democratic, that's how. John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, and the other party of D nominees should be po'ed, because they deserved those 59 delegates every bit as much as Barack Obama did. Some deserved them more.

In the face of heated criticism, the DNC Outlaws Bylaws Committee made other compromises on saturday as well. They seated Florida's delegates in addition to the imaginary Michigan election they held in their minds, and then they decided the 2.3 million Florida and Michigan votes would count as half votes. This move at least brought those states in line with the DNC's own internal rules, though not in line with any Constitutional principle, except maybe that old revoked one about slaves counting as 3/5's of a person. Keep trying Florida and Michigan. Who knows, maybe one day you'll be real citizens. At least the 3/5ths compromise had the nobler goal of ending slavery behind it. The party of D was on the wrong side of the slavery debate when it counted too. Btw, did you know that Barack Obama is the first black man to EVER become a Senator in the party of D, the oldest political party in the country ? Yes, it is so. The Republican party, founded in 1854 by Abe Lincoln, elected it's first black man to the Senate, Hiram Rhodes Revels, in 1870. Just an interesting historical tidbit.

During the DNC's debate over whether to count millions of votes on saturday, one heckler repeatedly asked what I'll call THE QUESTION OF THE YEAR, before he was escorted out of the building by security. The question was :

HOW CAN YOU CALL YOURSELVES THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IF YOU DON'T COUNT THE VOTES ?

Indeed. How, exactly ?

Speaking of counting the vote and real citizens, let's return to Puerto Rico for a minute. Puerto Rico is a U.S. Territory. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. They fight in our military. Nearly 70 have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. Puerto Ricans can vote in U.S. elections if they live on the mainland, but they can't vote in U.S. elections if they live on the island. They can vote in the primaries, but not the general election. Puerto Ricans live in this bizarre American colonial netherworld. Without getting into whether Puerto Rico should become a state, remain a colony, or become independent, I recommend this: As long as Puerto Ricans are U.S. citiizens, they should receive the full right to vote. I've already had my fill of votes not counting in this election cycle. I remain astonished that all it takes to suppress millions of American votes is some shenanigans from a handful of misguided politicians. We have to be better than that. The party of D can take all their wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Bush/Gore election of 2000 and stick it where the sun don't shine. They have forfeited the right to complain about anything.

Seeing as how the Democratic party is no longer democratic, I propose America has a contest to rename the Democrats into something more appropriate. I suggest the "Oxymoron party", or maybe the "Revisionist party".
===
In other news, Barack Obama quit his church after 20 years, in the wake of more wacked out remarks by that deranged Catholic priest, Pfleger, who said Hillary had a sense of entitlement to the Democratic nomination because she was white. The TUCC congregation ate Pfleger's remarks up. They loved it. Obama has no doubt grown tired of defending every loony racist statement that emanates from TUCC (Trinity Unbelievably Crazy Church), but the question about Obama will not go away. The question is, why did Obama sit there and listen to that nonsense for 20 years ? And Barack, please don't continue to insult our intelligence by saying you never heard that type of language when you were there. You KNOW you did. We KNOW you did. TUCC is based upon Black Liberation Theology, which assumes white oppression. At one time you embraced that church, when it was politically convenient, and now you have removed yourself from it, because it's politically invconvenient. That sounds less like a leader, and more like an opportunist to me, but let's move on. I also want a real discussion of the issues instead of all this stuff about preachers, because it's on the issues that Barack Obama really gets scary.

Parents "do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," wrote California appellate Justice Walter Croskey.

The hell they don't, judge Croskey. Have you read the U.S. Constitution ? Apparently not. Makes me wonder how you got to be a judge in the first place. Or maybe you should stay away from those west coast medical marijuana stores.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

A California court ruled this month that parents cannot "home school" their children without government certification. No teaching credential, no teaching…The 166,000 families in the state that now choose to educate their children at home must be stunned.

No doubt. But look who's HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY about this act of judicial communism !

"We're happy," the California Teachers Association's Lloyd Porter told the San Francisco Chronicle. He says the union believes all students should be taught only by "credentialed" teachers, who will in due course belong to unions.

That's just great, Lloyd ! Think of all those brand new union dues ! Never mind the fact that home schooled kids perform way better than their public school counterparts.

For some parents, the motive for home schooling is religious; others want to protect their kids from gangs and drugs. But the most-cited reason is to ensure a good education. Home-schooled students are routinely high performers on standardized academic tests, beating their public school peers on average by as much as 30 percentile points, regardless of subject. They perform well on tests like the SAT — and colleges actively recruit them both for their high scores and the diversity they bring to campus.

Hmmm. That's an inconvenient fact for Big Brother. Sounds like they'll have to come up with some sort of phony excuse to impose the will of the Politburo here….

The case was initiated by the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services after a home-schooled child reportedly complained of physical abuse by his father. A lawyer assigned to two of the family's eight children invoked the truancy law to get the children enrolled in a public school and away from their parents. So a single case of parental abuse is being used to promote the registration of all parents who crack a book for their kids.

I fail to see the justification for banning home schooling due to one case of child abuse. That's like banning automobiles because of one car crash.

This isn't the first time this was attempted. Congress made the effort back in the 90's.

In 1994, a federal attempt to require certification of parent-teachers went down in flames as hundreds of thousands of calls lit up phone banks on Capitol Hill. The movement has since only grown larger and better organized, now conservatively estimated at well over a million nationwide. But what they can't accomplish legislatively, unions are now trying to achieve by diktat from the courts.

Here we go again. This California judge isn't following the Constitution, he's attempting an end run around it. I'd love to hear the opinions of our three remaining presidential contenders on this issue. Let's see if any of the three still understand what liberty means. California has made all of the home-schooled children truants, and all of their parents criminals. At a time like this, I wish I didn't have an anti-profanity rule on this blog. I'll have to resort to cartoon profanity:

*&!!^$$!!* those *##!!%%%#ers !!!

Here is a definition of the word "liberalism" from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

1: the quality or state of being liberal
2: a movement in modern Protestantism emphasizing intellectual liberty and the spiritual and ethical content of Christianity b: a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard c: a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties dcapitalized

Does modern american liberalism emphasize "intellectual liberty and the spiritual and ethical content of Christianity" ? Is it based upon "free competition, the self-regulating market, or the autonomy of the individual" ?

Regarding Christianity, american liberals not only don't embrace it, they are dedicated to removing it from public life. The ACLU has been on that job for years and years. Often, they disdain it. Tune in any liberal talk show host and listen to the contempt for the Christian rubes oozing from your set.

Liberals can't claim to support the autonomy of the individual at the same time they advocate for high taxation, redistribution of wealth, entitlements, government takeover of the private sector, excessive regulation, globalist government, and anti-capitalist policies. All those statist authoritarian policies diminish the autonomy of the individual. If you start talking to an american liberal about the invisible hand of the self-regulating free market, they look at you like you're some kind of fascist. Liberals even think it's greedy for someone to keep most of their own hard-earned money, favoring instead confiscation and redistribution by the state.

THIS IS NOT LIBERALISM. This is SOCIALISM. This is leftist political thought. It is not grounded in the principles of our founding fathers, nor in the principles of our Constitution.

Here is a somewhat broader definition of "liberalism" from Wikipedia:

Liberalism refers to a broad array of related ideas and theories of government that consider individual liberty to be the most important political goal…liberalism emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity. Different forms of liberalism may propose very different policies, but they are generally united by their support for a number of principles, including extensive freedom of thought and speech, limitations on the power of governments, the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market or mixed economy, and a transparent system of government.

Did you catch that part about the "rule of law" ? Do modern liberals support the rule of law ? Not when it comes to illegal immigration they don't. They call the rest of us racists just for wanting to stop illegal immigration. Are liberals for freedom of speech ? Generally, yes, but not when it comes to talk radio they aren't. There they want to install the Fairness Doctrine, which will shut all those conservative yappers up. Liberals also don't let too many conservatives join the party in the print media, or on college campuses either. Mostly, liberals are for freedom of liberal speech. They'd just as soon shout conservatives down, like they do on those college campuses almost every time a conservative speaks at one.

How about "limitations of the power of governments" ? Are liberals for that ? Have you stopped laughing yet ? They are when the government is run by someone named George Bush and Bush is pursuing terrorists, but if a liberal gets into power, the sky's the limit. The first impulse of the modern american liberal in response to any problem or perceived problem is to increase government. It has become a virtual reflex. Health care problem ? Let government take over. Day care ? Let government take over. John Edwards even said he was going to cure poverty, which sure confused me, because LBJ allegedly did that 42 years ago. Education failures ? Raise taxes, more funding, government control, even though all those things are what has resulted in the very educational system we have today. Liberals have absolute mistrust for the private sector, and the word "profit" is an obscenity, as is the word 'rich'. 'Tax and spend' isn't a liberal axiom for nothing. That is all about taking away from the individual, for the purpose of centralized control by the state.

THIS IS NOT LIBERALISM. It's tilting towards COMMUNISM.

Individual liberty, the centerpiece of traditional liberalism, is NOT the central goal of modern american liberalism (should I call it neo-liberalism, and them 'neolibs' ?). The central goal of the neolibs is the same as the central goal of socialists and communists, the equality of all. Not the equality of opportunity, as would be favored in traditional liberalism, but the equality of OUTCOME. Individual liberty, by definition, has to be sacrificed in order to obtain that utopian goal. Economic liberty must also be sacrificed in order to obtain such a "greater good". Freedom of the individual is sacrificed, traded for the domination of the state. It takes a village.

Now that we've seen that our neolibs don't fit the mold of traditional liberals, consider this definition of "socialism" from Merriam-Webster:

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

Yep, that's them. That's the neolibs alright. That's just where they want to lead this country.

Stop them.

First, a little background.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed in 1978. It prescribed procedures for the collection of physical and electronic surveillance and collection of "foreign intelligence information" between or among "foreign powers" on territory under United States control. Basically, this meant that the government had to go through the FISA court for a court order to monitor such communications.

Fast forward to September 11, 2001. We all know what happened on that day. Okay, MOST of us know what happened on that day. A few are still trying to figure it out, like the 9/11 Truthers, who can't even understand something they saw live with their own eyes. What can I say, there are slow learners in every class. Anyway, following 9/11 our president thought it would make sense to try to protect our country from further terrorist attacks, since it is precisely his job to keep our country safe. Good thinking, Mr. President. In the pursuit of this worthy goal, it appears on some occasions our president didn't require the National Security Agency (NSA) to go through the FISA courts to monitor international communications from suspected Al Qaeda members when one end of the communication was inside the USA and the other end was in a foreign country. Then, an unknown somebody inside our intelligence community leaked this tidbit to the New York Times, who plastered it all over the front page like the patriots they are, exposing what Bush calls the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) to all of america (and the terrorists too !). Though the exact details of the TSP are still classified, and though some members of Congress were briefed on the program, a firestorm ensued. Some people thought Bush was acting to protect the country against terrorists (good idea). Others thought he was (cue the left wing hyperbole machine) – a fascist, unitary executive, civil rights destroying, constitution shredding, super criminal running a totalitarian regime who was prying into the private lives of every american citizen at his whim and he should be impeached and thrown in prison ASAP. Not coincidentally, many of the people in this latter category are also 9/11 Truthers, if you get my drift. They think Bush brought down the World Trade Center towers too, apparently so he could justify his plan to spy on your aunt Martha, and also to invade every Middle Eastern country, so that oil would rise to it's highest price in history be stolen by america. They seem to think Bush is the Dr. Evil character in the Austin Powers movies, or that Bush is the puppet and Dick Cheney is the Dr. Evil character pulling his strings. I'm not kidding either. Just ask them. You'll be absolutely amazed at the abject stupidity of it all.

All this brings us to the year 2007, when the Protect America Act was first passed by the Democratic-led Congress, which granted the Administration a six-month extension of it's expanded FISA powers to fight terrorism. Apparently, most of the Democrats aren't really buying into the Dr. Evil theory, though they pretend they do when they talk to the mainstream media, just to keep up appearances. It's good to know the Democrats aren't really traitors, they just put on the airs for purposes of partisan gain.

It should be noted that the ACLU, who are evidently taking a little time off from their core mission of removing every reference to God from the universe (except the Muslim God, Allah, he is "protected free speech"), HATES the Protect America Act, which they have cleverly renamed the Police America Act. In case you are confused, policing america is a BAD thing to the ACLU. Go figure.

The reason I brought this issue up in the first place is because the Protect America Act is set to expire on February 1, 2008, and Congress is kicking around what to do about it. The Republicans just voted down a one month extension of the law offered by Harry Reid, because they want something more lasting. The Democrats want more information on the program so they can investigate more Republicans be more informed about the correct course of action, so Bush is releasing some classified NSA documents to Congress. Hopefully, the bipartisanship Congress displayed yesterday on the tax rebate diversion (here's a shiny new toy america ! Don't worry your pretty little head) will manifest itself once again on this surveillance issue. Communications have changed quite a bit from 1978. Back then, there weren't cell phones or the internet, for instance. Let's come up with a sensible plan that will enable us to monitor suspected terrorists without totally trashing the Constitution. It can be done. It isn't even that difficult. A key idea here is – foreign terrorist actors are NOT protected under the US Constitution. That's why spying on foreign agents and foreign lands has always been legal, without going through the courts. Terrorism is a new kind of enemy. We need new kinds of powers to effectively fight it.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’… I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character… And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.”

I assume most people in america know the above words by Martin Luther King. I hope they do. They should, because they were some of the most important words spoken by an american in the last half century. We could never be a truly great nation with the stain of racism on our national soul, a stain that mocked our own notion that "all men are created equal." Since MLK can say it far better than I, here are links to two of his most famous writings:

I Have A Dream

Letters From A Birmingham Jail

By breaking the bonds of segregation, Jim Crow, and institutional racism, the King-led civil rights movement freed this entire country. Racism is a mental disorder, brought about by fear and ignorance, which leads to hatred. MLK helped cleanse us of that disorder at the ultimate cost of his own life. When you look back a short 40-50 years to King's time, it is obvious that great progress has been made. Racism has not been completely eliminated, and perhaps it never can be, but by any objective measure, the changes that MLK helped bring about have led us to a far better place.

Martin Luther King's goal was to unite us all in brotherhood, not to split us up into opposing camps in some imaginary racial or class war, as some would have us do today. In King's words, "Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood."

He was a Baptist minister at heart, a hero who maybe reluctantly stepped up to accept the great challenge that was thrown upon him, but step up he did, with tremendous courage. I wonder how many of us could have risen to such a challenge, could have shouldered such a burden. He did, and that is what made him a great man. MLK was a progressive leader with conservative christian moral values. His cause transcended politics. In the Letters From A Birmingham Jail, MLK closed with "Yours In Peace And Brotherhood". That is his legacy, peace and brotherhood.

Let's always look with a suspicious eye on anyone who proposes anything other than that.

(Note – I've had very limited computer time for the last week, so I apologize for not posting much. It won't last much longer. Thanks).