Government

Throughout the nation, people from all walks of life seem to share a general sense of unease about the future direction of our country and of our society’s seeming inability to solve the major challenges facing it. There is something beyond any single legislative debate, something more fundamental than any particular policy issue. Regardless of one’s party affiliation (or lack thereof), all increasingly share this sense that our nation has reached an important turning point.

For too many years, government has been responding to a seemingly endless chain of crises that have created an ad hoc patchwork of short-term fixes and lost opportunities. Once venerated public institutions, like dominos in a line, have repeatedly betrayed the public’s trust.

As the challenges continue to mount, this is a moment that demands a government dedicated to data-driven solutions – where the best ideas are free to prosper and where people of good faith can innovate together. We must enthusiastically engage the public’s creativity, imagination and expertise in increasingly meaningful experiences that directly impact the democratic process.

Let us respond to America’s challenges as Americans – united around a shared commitment to finding the best ideas, working together to build a better future for our country. The sacrifices that have made this nation possible demand nothing less.

Ultimately, greatness is a choice and it is a choice that each of us has to make – what will we do to make the future a better place? A country’s fate is the sum of individual choices, and so does the fate of our country rest with each of us, every day.

Something is happening in America – throughout the country, people are answering this challenge. They are entrepreneurs and oddballs tinkering with new ideas, willing to commit intellectual heresy and demand a better way; they are emblematic of America’s innovative culture that has always been the foundation for our nation’s success.

Let us move together to a new era of solutions, based on answering today’s challenges and not yesterday’s memories.

 Matt Lira currently serves as the Director of New Media for House Republican Whip Eric Cantor.

During the 9/12 march in DC I saw a sign held by an old man wearing an army uniform. It said “I didn’t serve 25 years for Socialism!” For 234 years Americans have fought and died to defend the American way of life. They fought for freedom. They fought for the right to keep what you earn. They fought for the right to make decisions for themselves. They even fought for the right to live with the consequences of their own bad decisions. These are the ideas that made America great. These are the ideals that we fight and die to defend.

On Memorial day we honor those that have given the ultimate sacrifice in defense of America. Most of those heroes died far from home in lonely places. Many left children at home that they never got to see grow up. All gave up precious days on Earth. They gave up the only life God granted to them.

Such sacrifices cannot be forgotten. We must remember their sacrifice, but we must also remember the reason they sacrificed. Their gift to us is freedom. But it isn’t ours to use up and throw away. It belongs to our children, and our children’s children. Our fallen heroes died to preserve the American way of life for all generations that would follow them. They knew that if freedom is lost, it may never be regained. That is why they were willing to give everything they had to defend the ideals that made America. Those of us left behind must defend the way of life that our fallen heroes gave so much to preserve.

The American way of life is about to be lost, not to a foreign invader, but to our own tyrannical Federal Government. We have let our own government ignore the Constitution and because of that, we’re losing our freedom. Government taxation to fund entitlement programs is Socialism. Socialism is not freedom. It’s the opposite of freedom. Governmental control of corporations is not freedom. It is Nazism. These are the evils that our fallen heroes fought against for most of the twentieth century. Yet we’re now electing politicians that ignore our Constitution, and ignore the sacrifice of those that died to protect freedom. We must stop this abomination and return to our founding ideals.

Please remember our fallen heroes. But more importantly, please remember why they were willing to die. They gave us a gift that we must now fight to recover for our children. Please fight to prevent our own government from destroying the American way of life.

Van Irion, Air Force Veteran, Constitutionalist, and Congressional Candidate, TN03

Most of you who are regular readers of this column are aware that my hardworking editor Dee lives in the UK. Living in a socialist environment has given her a unique perspective on the ills of this failed and failing system. The same system (or worse) that the DeMarxists would see instituted here. Unfortunately for them they have run smack dab into the American people. We do not want your socialism. We will not permit you to take our country and freedoms from us.

What follows is Dee’s reply to a critic of the US, excerpted from a chat forum from the island of Guernsey, a British Crown Dependency off of the coast of France. I thought that it would prove instructional. I love the English people, but they have been so inculcated with leftist dogma and institutionalized welfare that all vestiges of independent thinking outside the socialist envelope is lacking along with the spirit of independence. Dee has taken them on and as a Brit she is in a unique position to tell it the way it is.

Forum post in reply to a critic of the USA, 05/19/10, whynotguernsey.com :

Let’s take your points in turn here. First, socialism. Socialism never has and never will work in any country. It’s been tried many times, always with the same result – financial and social disaster. A free economy is the only tried and trusted system. Ok, you get the propaganda a la Michael Moore and Cuba. Have you seen the everyday hospitals that the ordinary folks get treatment in? Socialism means greater state control and big government which swallows up the hard-earned money of the people through taxes.

It would be great to have a university education without the debt to repay….. uh, but who’s going to pay for it? The government I guess – that means us, the taxpayers. I can’t recall anything in the Bill of Rights about further education being a right given by God. If it was, and health care, then surely the three things that all humans need to survive should be free too? Who can survive without air, food and water? Only one of these is free (at the moment, although the left are trying to change this with cap and tax).

No one is refused emergency treatment in the US, insured or not. True, insurance is expensive. That’s the fault of the system which allows huge lawsuits by slip-and-fall lawyers. 60% of a physician’s overheads is legal insurance. The GOP has promised tort reform along with interstate insurance policies to cut these costs. Obama, instead, is dismantling the best medical services in the world in favor of a NHS style one-size-fits-all system. It would be a punishable offense not to purchase health cover from the government. Still sound so good?

Oh, that increasing US debt you mentioned is partly due to the staggering cost of his health reforms, I believe it was one trillion at the last count. Medicare, which provides a wonderful service for seniors, will be cut to help cover the cost of his new scheme. It’ll probably finish up like the UK, where a senior might not be worth the cost of treatment.

While the national debt is rising (naturally, under a socialist), the country can still afford to contribute 25% of the IMF fund, money now being used to bail out EU countries, and possibly Britain (again) soon. To say that the US is one of the poorest countries when it is still the world’s largest economy is a total contradiction.

To quote you: “Teaching something as fact, when it is not proven is wrong. It is ultimately brainwashing, and should be illegal.” Do you agree, then, that global warming should not be taught in schools? It is certainly not proven, in fact the evidence gets flimsier as time goes on.

As for California, as much as I love it, it is a financial and social disaster, thanks to the liberals that have controlled it for so long. Again, it is a victim of socialist policies – unrestrained spending, high state taxes that have forced businesses to other states and too much regulation and bureaucracy in Sacramento. Is it any surprise that there is a backlash from the people?

The difference between the US and Britain is that the US was founded by the people, with government as their servants. This current administration is taking a route towards Euro-socialism, where they believe that rights are granted by government. That won’t wash in the US, as the current mid-term elections are proving. At least they have seen the danger before it sinks into the abyss completely.

When the US economy is rebounding, the UK will still be increasing everyone’s taxes to cover a failed health system, an ineffective police force (now that its teeth have been taken away completely) and development of cleaner, eco-friendly power sources. Well, that’s what the BP ad said, while they screwed up the entire Gulf coast.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

(This was cross posted from the Sunlight Foundation)

More than a million spectators gathered before the Capitol on a frosty January afternoon to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama, who promised in his campaign to change Washington’s mercenary culture of lobbyists, special interest influence and backroom deals. But within a few months of being sworn in, the President and his top aides were sitting down with leaders from the pharmaceutical industry to hash out a deal that they thought would make health care reform possible.

Over the following months, pharmaceutical industry lobbyists and executives met with top White House aides dozens of times to hammer out a deal that would secure industry support for the administration's health care reform agenda in exchange for the White House abandoning key elements of the president's promises to reform the pharmaceutical industry. They flooded Congress with campaign contributions, and hired dozens of former Capitol Hill insiders to push their case. How they did it—pieced together from news accounts, disclosure forms including lobbying reports and Federal Election Commission records, White House visitor logs and the schedule Sen. Max Baucus releases voluntarily—is a testament to how ingrained the grip of special interests remains in Washington.

In the 2008 campaign, Obama declared his intention to include all stakeholders as he sought to reform the nation's health care system, but also supported key Democratic health reform policies. Among these were several that targeted the pharmaceutical industry: Allowing re-importation of drugs from first world countries with lower drug prices and providing Medicare with negotiating authority over prescription drug prices in the recently enacted Part D program. These weren't just promises, Obama had already voted for both of them as a senator in 2007. (Roll Call Vote 132 and Roll Call Vote 150.)

Set to carry out this agenda were two Capitol Hill veterans, schooled in the monied Washington culture, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina. Emanuel was a former fundraiser, Clinton administration official, investment banker and member of the Democratic leadership in Congress. Messina was the former campaign manager and chief of staff to the powerful Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus. Both were known for their unparalleled legislative abilities.

"[A] wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." --Thomas Jefferson

Wade Rathke, former chief organizer of the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), spoke at the University of Memphis yesterday and expressed his dismay at the current predicament ACORN finds itself in:

“Rathke stepped down from ACORN in 2008. Since his departure, ACORN's been accused of voter registration fraud, embezzlement and worker misconduct. Hidden camera video made public earlier this year shows ACORN employees telling a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute how to get around tax laws to make money.

'It's very worrisome to me,' says Rathke, 'having spent 38 years there. The notion that within one and a half years since I left, the organization could almost evaporate is just stunning and startling to me."

According to reports, Rathke is pessimistic about the future of ACORN:

"The organization has become the focal point of the Right," Rathke said during an interview before his speech.

"I don't know if it can survive another year," he said....

'ACORN, Rathke said, serves an important function in a democratic society, in that it 'provides a vehicle for community residents, particularly lower and middle income, to have a voice in affairs.'

'You are going to have some people who cut corners, and do things that are irregular. ACORN made mistakes,' he said.

Rathke said he was glad to be in Canada when the Baltimore video surfaced. “

Unfortunately, Wade Rathke is still peddling the myth that ACORN actually works to help the poor. Grant applications to various foundations describe ACORN as:

“ACORN is one of the nation’s largest and most successful networks of community organizations, with over 230,000 low and moderate-income members organized into 1200+ neighborhood chapters in 104 cities across the country. Since 1970 ACORN has been building solidly rooted and powerful community organizations that are committed to social and economic justice, and have taken action and won victories on thousands of issues of concern to our members, through direct action, negotiation, legislative advocacy, and voter participation. Fundamentally, ACORN’s goal is to ensure that low and moderate income families have the power to act effectively on their own behalf in the struggle to build a more progressive America. ACORN helps those who have historically been locked out become powerful actors in our democratic system.”

Liberals cling to the myth of ACORN so they can claim that the “right” is trying to stop persons of color from getting ahead, or as it in known in an ACORN “rap,” “the man keeping a brotha down.”

Wade Rathke, a former member of the Students for A Democratic Society (SDS) and The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) never intended for ACORN to be an organization that really helped poor people. Rathke, from all indications, wanted to use ACORN as a vehicle for political power. It is very telling that ACORN International - now Community Organizations International (COI) - was started after the embezzlement scandal. It appears as if Rathke wanted to secure his future and keep the money rolling in. Screen shots of his international work illustrate that Rathke intends to use COI to corrupt foreign electoral systems in the same way that ACORN has worked domestically. COI may have been started using tax dollars and non-profit tax exempt funds, but the organization has become a critical addition the the political landscape of quite a few countries.

Not only are Rathke's statements self serving, but he fails to admit that the initial cover-up of the embezzlement by his brother Dale Rathke may have contributed to ACORN's current troubles.

Furthermore, it appears that the Interim Staff Management committee (ISM) - which included members like Maude Hurd, Marcel Reid and Karen Innman - acknowledged  the difficulties associated with dealing with COI and Rathke, but decided to wait until ACORN could “get its paperwork in order."

ACORN may be on the ropes, but its not down for the count. Wade Rathke  is successfully meddling in international affairs and Holder's Justice Department continued reluctance to investigate ACORN may offer them a reprieve. Rathke appears ready to shake things up and start ACORN all over again, one country at a time.

Crossposted from Sunlight Foundation

Reps. Baird and Culberson introduced legislation today that would shine more sunlight on the most fundamental work of Congress. Their bill, H. Res. 554, would require that all non-emergency legislation be posted online, in its final form, 72 hours before consideration. The bill is not a panacea for all that ails Congress, but if enacted, it will stave off many congressionally created debacles before they become law.

Most citizens, for example, would have supported amending the economic stimulus bill to remove the provision allowing AIG executives to receive retroactive bonuses. The average person probably would have preferred to let the judicial system work rather than have Congress give immunity from lawsuits to telecommunications companies that participated in a controversial wiretapping scheme. Workers hoping to retire on their 401(k) investments might have liked to have some serious analysis of whether credit default swaps ought to be regulated. And just about everyone benefit from a check on questionable and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.

Since the founding fathers quotes with respect to their views on our country, and reasons for many of the provisions in our Constitution can be ascertained from historical records which are in the public domain for all to see, publish or expound on at will, below are some of James Madison's comments with respect to Congressional legislation (such as the recent stimulus), war and citizen's property rights.

Mr. Madison is credited with being the father of the Constitution actually, so felt his thoughts in light of the challenges America is now facing might be of interest to those of you who believe still in the America of the founders rather than the America it has become:

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."

"With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."

"The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war."

"The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right."

"The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted."

"War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits."

"Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done."

"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions." 

Even thirty years after this controversial decision, the jury is still out on Roe v. Wade.

Decided in the early 70's, I remember well when the case was decided, as I had just completed high school.

For many, it was one of those days embedded in your brain due to it's reach and "precedent," along the lines of the day Kennedy was assassinated. A monumental moment in history, and now even in the 21st Century, the controversy still reigns.

When the decision was reached, it turned our country quite upside down and polarized.

Interestingly, historians and others who bring Roe to the forefront in political discussions and discourse, and of course at election time, fail to also mention that at the time Roe was decided, the Pill and other rather reliable methods of birth control were becoming more and more available.

Planned Parenthood had just opened it's doors to "free birth control" during this "free love" era, and AIDS was nothing more than someone's assistant. At the time it was decided, there were many states which did allow early abortions, since this also was the time when the "globalists" had started their scares about overpopulation, and the destruction of our planet.

It is now, of course, being resurrected by many of those former hippies, and capitalists types as the new scheme in which to become a millionaire before 35.

Seems out in California there is now a blend of "hippie capitalists." They don't mind being that dirty word "capitalists" so long as they are making their fortunes along environmentally friendly lines, and saving the planet from overpopulation is one of them.

Many of these left wing pro-choice activists believe in unrestricted access to abortion, such as third trimester partial birth abortions, including from all accounts the Democratic nominee. The defense has been with respect to that Illinois bill a fear that in supporting the partial birth ban it might overturn Roe v. Wade, and was worded incorrectly.

My understanding is that was what the Committees in the state legislatures were for, writing and reviewing laws for Constitutionality prior to bringing them to the floor, and Roe actually only addressed and upheld the right to first term abortions since those were already allowed in most of the states, for rape, health of the mother, and had been expanded for teen pregnancies so long as there was parental consent.

Hey, it's for the good of the planet, and expands the "free market" for the abortion clinics in the process.

For all the scare tactics the libs like to throw out every election about the "threat" of Roe being overturned if, horror of horrors, a conservative should get into office and further stack the Supreme Court, I have just one thing to say.......don't you think it's about time that decision was reviewed, and in the 21st Century now?

At this point throughout the country, we now have even the "Morning After" pill, for heaven sakes. Birth control pills now in many areas of the country can be obtained by even teens without their parent's consent, and due to the AIDS and other STDs epidemic, the use of contraceptives between committed or uncommitted couples has never been higher.

Isn't it about time we pulled the plug, at least, on second and third trimester abortions nationwide, except in the event of health risk to the mother or child in continuing the pregnancy?

Just what are you liberals afraid of, that in so doing we will go back to the dark ages, where abortions were performed in dark alleys with unsterilized equipment, when now there is even a pill that can abort during the first trimester?

I believe abortion should be restricted to the first trimester at this point in our history, and not simply for moral reasons but legal ones.

This was never a "right to privacy" issue to begin with, it was always a "right to life" issue, since if the founder's were not concerned with "life" they certainly wouldn't have based an entire document in order to secure "life, liberty and happiness" for "us and our posterity" if they were unconcerned with just what the "Creator" would think.

And it's pretty clear there is 10 Commandment law behind that Constitution, whether the atheists in this country wish to believe it or not. Those rights referred to as unalienable are acknowledged as "endowed by the Creator."  A Creator they clearly acknowledged.

Religious tolerance is actually a Christian doctrine, it is not a Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist doctrine, and the freedom of religion provision was also provided in order to prevent a NATION-WIDE or "State" religion, such as they had experienced in England with the decades long fighting between the Catholics and the Protestants.

 "Loving thy neighbor," and the story of the Good Samaritan are examples of the scriptural basis upon which the "freedom of religion" provisions were meant to flesh out in our "new" government which had been denied them in England under the Church of England's dominance during the 18th Century.

Read Ben Franklin's speech when the Constitution was ratified, and he specifically alludes to the problems they were attempting to avoid by recognizing each individuals right to worship God according to their own understanding, and in their own way, without "nationalizing" a state religion such as in Britain and the Church of England, and in more recent history, Israel.

It does seem the founder's knew what they were doing, since even today those countries with "national" religions do seem to be engaged in much more strife, both internal and external, than others.

The problem that I do have with the far, far right wing evangelical Christians is their rather rigid interpretation of when life begins, since Jesus never truly addressed it.

Most pastors and members of the evangelical churches relate to the biblical passage of God "knowing you in your mother's womb." The problem I have with that is that adultery was a criminal matter in Jesus's time, and the punishment under the 10 Commandment law at the time was death by stoning.

If life truly begins at conception rather than viability, then God allowed innocent fetuses to be killed along with their mothers since I'm sure a great many of those adulteresses were pregnant.

It is also biblically clear that the first life God created, Adam, he did so by "breathing" life into dust, and that in then creating Eve, he clearly then gave them, not he, the gift of procreation by directing them to "go forth and multiply."

And it's also pretty darn clear that he intended children to be raised in two sex households optimally, since he didn't give us the ability to recreate independently of the other sex.

What is truly amazing to me is that for all the bravado of the "pro-choice" movement and those mostly liberals who even today with medical knowledge and technology the way it is, still cling to this decision as a benchmark of a candidates worthiness.

It is interesting that while the radical liberal element protest over global warming and how it is affecting the whales, polar bears, and other Arctic creatures, they were nowhere to be seen when Teri Schiavo was judicially literally starved and dehydrated to death for almost 14 days while she clung to life, breathing on her own, before dehydration of her vital organs caused her body to literally feed upon itself until her execution. 

She was also a practicing Catholic, and nowhere in the court documents does it appear her civil rights, and individual religious beliefs were even given any consideration during that entire multi-year fight over the removal of her feeding and hydration tubes.

The most painful type of death any human can experience ending in progressive organ shutdown, and a judge in this country so ordered it.

Her "right to life" without clearly artificial life support in its termination by fiat was nothing more than judicially sanctioned murder.

Better watch out, liberals, since your definition of "pro-choice" and "freedom" sounds more like Germany, circa World War II.

Yesterday Barack Obama announced his selection for the vacating position of Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Obama as the ultimate "politician" used as his criteria for selection not merit, or published opinions balanced against the Constitutional basis or findings - but instead his views on balancing the Court with a member who was in his mind "politically" correct, and an activist in their interpretation of U.S. law.

In other words, one who would not rock the boat on his political agendas and policies, rather than one as an intended "check" on those policies in order to retain some semblance of our Constitution and intended form of government.

And who did he choose?

An announced "Hispanic" woman, educated at Princeton University (a rather "liberal" teaching institution with respect to the law, which focuses more on judge made or case law than it does our Constitution or history, and questioning some of the U.S. Supreme Court's rather progressively unconstitutional decisions).

Princeton, Yale, Harvard and Stanford are the equivalent of Oxford in England, in teaching that the government is "sovereign," and diametrically opposed to the actual foundation and provisions within America's own Constitution, where it is the people and Constitution which are "sovereign" and the government at all levels beneath and limited by its express provisions and terms.

Look for Obama now to push for an illegal immigrant amnesty ala George Bush, no matter that the border state residents are now involved in an undeclared war of their own down on the border, and losing their homes and lives at an increasing rate due to the federal negligence in getting our southern borders secured now almost eight years post 9/11.

Mr. Obama is more concerned with "looking good," than doing the right thing, or following the law at any level.

And appears the Ivy League schools themselves just may need some political "balancing" in their teaching staff, so that the practice of law in this country returns to the profession it once was, and not the political industry it has become.  And without any oversight other than by a British carryover and political organization, the American Bar Association.

It seems the "dumbing down" of America is nowhere more evident than at the graduate school level, if Mr. Obama and Ms. Sotomayor and their views of "the Law" are any indication.