Republican sheep...

The next time you hear someone defend the idea that President Bush is spreading freedom and liberty around the world, you'll know you're listening to a sheep since President Bush doesn't even have the power to save the life of single American human being from a court ordered starvation.

Big brother...

We're hearing from the left via their words regarding the Schiavo case that most Americans want the government out of personal business. Things like "the right to die" and aborting a "fetus" should remain family decisions, independent of government interference.

If life and death decisions should be kept beyond the reach of government, why shouldn't education and retirement savings also be kept beyond the reach and interference of government?

Privacy or murder...

The pro-abortion people claim that a woman retains the right to "choose" death for her unborn child because the woman's body belongs to her and she should have the right to make decisions about a baby living inside her own property.

Does that mean she can also legally murder a child living in a house that she owns?

SCOTUS out of bounds again...

"The Supreme Court made it easier Wednesday for any worker over 40 to allege age discrimination, ruling that employers can be held liable even if they never intended any harm."
(from Forbes.com)

Where does the Constitution mention federal judicial jurisdiction over labor relations between employers and employees?

Phony logic...

I am tired about hearing how the "War on Terror" is a battle against an ideology. I'm not saying that a war requires armies opposite one another on a battlefield firing point blank musket shots at one another, but I do believe that a clear enemy must be defined and there must be some way to know whether or not we are "winning" as well as determining when the war is "over".

To that end, extending the theory that the War on Terror is a battle between ideologies, I am left with no conclusion other than the supposition that the American Civil War never ended. After all, the ideology of racism and bigotry has not yet been exterminated, which most people mistakenly believe to be the goals of the Civil War, therefore it must not yet have concluded.

Unlike those who are categorically unwilling to speak the naked truth for fear of being flagged by the political correctness police, I will do so.

Christianity is at war against islam, or more precisely the reverse, and sadly the muslims have won many battles because the Europeans and many Americans are reluctant to accept that we are actually at war, let alone the enemy we oppose.

Islam is the religion of death, and until I see the mass demonstrations to the contrary that we have been promised for 4 years by our government, I can only conclude as such.

Now, for those who point to Christianity as equally culpable, citing Timothy McVeigh as evidence, please inform me as to when and where there were mobs of Christians in the streets following the Oklahoma City bombing celebrating the death and destruction.

More Rush hypocrisy...

Just now he said that the Supreme Court ignored the 1st amendment protection of free speech when it declared the CFR bill to be Constitutional.

Why didn't he mention that George Bush did the same thing when he signed the bill?
Why no question as to why George Bush agreed to the bill?
Is there no action that King George can take which would draw criticism by Rush?

It's clear to me that Rush is either a part of the inner circle of elite oligarchs who run the country and who make decisions about what public opinion should be as well as how to shape our minds into believing what they want us to believe, or he is trying desperatly to get into those circles.

The man is a total fraud and a complete sellout to the average conservative American who made his into the success he is today, and anyone who still maintains the title of dittohead is a brain dead sheep following the shephard towards the edge of a cliff.

Of course, most of the sheep don't realize that just before the time comes to go over the cliff, the shephard will get into his GS5 and fly away to his fortified estate where he can relax safely and securely away from the plights of the sheep themselves as we are left to deal with the realities of the policies being implemented by the American oligarchy.

Rush is a hypocrite...

Last week, Rush was going on and on about how the judges are not the final arbiter of their own jurisdiction. He told us over and over that our system of checks and balances certainly includes checks against runaway judges.

However, today Rush relayed with great sadness and regret that there just is nothing within the law that Governor Bush can do about Judge Greer's order to remove Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.

Rush told us that even though Jeb controls the police departments, he is bound by civil law to direct the police officers under his command to carry out the judicial edicts handed down.

Rush went on to say that even though court orders aren't technically law, they must be obeyed by the other 2 branches of government.

Rush disagreed with the premise that the American colonists were left with no choice but to break English law at such times as the Boston Tea Party or the battles of Lexington and Concord, and that in today's America there are options available to the People within the confines of the law. Unfortunately I missed the part when he explained what they are.

Not surprisingly I disagree. If Jeb Bush honestly believed that God's law is Supreme, and that civil law is only valid insofar as it coincides with God's law, he would stand up to the court order and refuse to order his subordinates to carry it out. Further, he could refuse any order or request for a State prosecution of anybody who trespassed into the hospice and violated Judge Greer's court order by giving Mrs. Schiavo food and/or water.

Any chance somebody reached out to Rush over the weekend to tell him that the GOP may need Jeb to run for President and that he is not to be tarnished in this manner by the official GOP spokesmouth himself?

No rhyme or reason...

American civics have really gone far astray from the Federalist republic established by our founding fathers.

Today, we have a party which claims to advocate limited government taking Congressional action at the federal level to overrule a State court decision with which it disagrees.

We have a population which seems to believe that the State and Federal courts are the final arbiters of their own authority and that judges are intellectually superior humans who never make mistakes or issue rulings based on partisan politics instead of written law.

We are witnessing a political party advocating the idea that death row inmates should retain equal or greater rights to life than hospital patients, regardless the medical condition or hope for recovery.

We are living in a society in which a human being is being treated in such a manner which would be criminal if done to a dog or cat. Meanwhile, an adulterous husband retains legal rights over his wife regarding end of life decisions and people want to file lawsuits on behalf of animals in response to cruel behavior by human beings.

And the left tells us this all represents enlightenment? They want us to believe that the ideals of our founding fathers are outdated and antiquated? I am supposed to accept that what once was considered strictly Constitutional and patriotic nationalism is now xenophobic racism and close-minded bigotry?

Read this column by Chuck Baldwin if your head is spinning as much as mine.

Twisted irony...

Where I live in Florida, mere hours from where Terri Schiavo now lays dying from a lack of food and water, what seemed like a foot of rain fell from the heavens today.

The Federal Judiciary...

The next time we elect a President, 20 of the past 28 years will have seen a Republican in the White House.

Keep that in mind the next time Rush or Hannity try to say that our courts are in disarray because of Democrats.

Through her death, Terri Schiavo may finally awaken the die-hard Republicans that their party does not really nominate and elect men who practice what they preach nor are the GOP leaders actually in line with Constitutional federalism.

"In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

-Thomas Jefferson

Against all odds...

Remember during the 2004 campaign season when the Democrats told us how they were going to help people like Christopher Reeve walk again through stem cell research?

Why aren't they now telling us how they can save Terri Schiavo and help her to walk again?

Outsourcing...

Get rid of your kitchen appliances and tell me how you might feel if the grocery stores closed and nobody would deliver food to your home.

The above scenario is precisely the corner our government has painted us into as we continue to ship our production and manufacturing jobs overseas on our quest to become a nation of service industry and consumers of foreign-made products.

Starving to death...

According to this editorial by Thomas Sowell,

• A New York Times headline on March 20th tried to assure us: "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle Death"

Why, then, are many on the left so concerned about hunger and famine to the point of taxing Americans to provide food for the hungry in Africa?

Is it really humane to keep starving people in Africa alive to suffer in their own existence when cutting off their food would lead to a 'gentle death', thereby ending their disease ridden and violence plagued lives?

Freedom of religion...

How in such a land can we permit federal agents of the IRS to monitor speech in churches and punish priests or pastors or rabbis who speak truth to power by telling their congregations that some men and women are standing up for morality, while others are not? What kind of country have we become, when men and women who take vows to God thereby lose their rights?

-Pat Buchanan

Jessica Gonzalez...

Do the police have an obligation to protect citizens from violence in the case of a restraining order having been issued?

Oral arguments will be heard tomorrow by the SCOTUS in which lawyers for Ms. Gonzalez will argue that "by granting Gonzales a restraining order, the state of Colorado essentially gave her a right to police action" (from MSNBC)

If the Supreme Court sides with Ms. Gonzalez, I believe that local officials will be left with no option but to protect themselves by refusing to issue restraining orders for fear that a lawsuit will result should the order not be obeyed and violence ensues.

On the other hand, what good is a restraining order if the police are not obligated to enforce it and to arrest those who violate them?

Don't tell me what to do...

Generally speaking, I don't think most people like being told what to do all the time, or even often for that matter.

For many years, the Democrats told America what to do and how to think. Recently, the majority of us have decided that the Democrats were wrong, and that we'd rather be told what to do and how to think by Republicans. Doubtlessly someday the majority will realize that the Republican party has been wrong and we will go looking to replace them as well.

Unfortunately, the only real solution to many our problems are to have people acting individually in their own best interests according to our own individual thought patterns. Of course if that were to happen, men like Tom Daschle couldn't lose an election and get hired at a 7-figure annual salary telling people how to tell people what to do and how to think.

Terry Schiavo...

How can the same leftists who made such a big deal about Abu Ghraib and "torture" of prisoners be in favor of allowing a woman to starve to death in a hospital bed?

Reasonable doubt...

If there is enough to acquit Robert Blake of murder, isn't there enough to prevent Michael Schiavo from murdering his wife by starvation?

Redefining marriage...

If the left wants to make the definition of marriage inclusive of any two consenting adults, how will they logically and/or legally exclude siblings or cousins from marrying one another?

In Defense of Freedom...

"Given that murder and theft are wrong—views not unique to libertarianism, of course—the libertarian contends that the state, which is to say those individuals who purport to act in the name of the common good, has no more right to seize the property of others, beat them, conscript them, or otherwise harm them than any other institution or individual has."

"Discovering just which functions of government are necessary, or showing how life can be led in the absence of institutional coercion altogether, is no easy task. Any power that the state assumes typically comes to be seen in retrospect as absolutely essential. America long got by well without a Federal Reserve or a Food and Drug Administration, yet today it is almost unthinkable that they could be abolished. "

"Consider the about-face that conservatives in this country have pulled with respect to the Department of Education—one could name other departments as well—which once was targeted for elimination and now is funded more generously than ever."

"Before Social Security, families and churches cared for the elderly. Now it is easier for young people to forget their parents and grandparents in old age; let the government take care of them."

"Social conservatives have long faced an apparent paradox. No matter how Christian the president and members of his party claim to be, no matter how many “solid” conservatives are elected Congress, the fabric of the social order continues to fray. At some point the question must be asked, is this because there still aren’t enough good people in government?—how many would ever be enough? Or is it because the state by nature, far from buttressing the organs of civilization and the way of life dear to conservatives, instead undermines those very things?"

"If there is a market for pornography there is sure to be a constituency for it, too. Moreover, the state produces far worse depravities of its own: Playboy may be bad, but one is not forced to subsidize it, unlike public-school sex ed, Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” (funded by the National Endowment for the Arts), and Lynndie England’s S&M jamboree with Iraqi prisoners of war."

"This is not a matter of imposing on anyone; libertarianism allows different standards to prevail in different places rather than dragging everyone down to the level of the state. The libertarian rests content to let Utah be Utah and San Francisco be San Francisco—and to let Iraq be Iraq. If the property owners of a neighborhood wanted to establish a certain set of common moral standards, they could do so. Other places could do differently. Libertarianism thus responds to the reality of difference, including profound cultural and religious difference, much better than other political philosophies, which are left trying to smash square pegs into round holes."

"Nor is there any need for conscription when people want to defend their homes; conscription is what states need to make people fight for causes in which they don’t believe."

"A libertarian order is not coming any time soon, but it should be plain to anyone who undertakes the investigation that the solution to war, bureaucracy, taxation, personal irresponsibility, and the rot of culture is not more government, it’s less."

-Daniel McCarthy

The General Welfare Clause...

"Discussion of the general welfare clause of the Constitution by the courts relies upon the Federalist Papers. This term simply means: Taxation was to protect the individuals' life, liberty and ownership of private property. One can go to Art. 1, Sec. 8, Clause 1 of the constitution and read the general welfare clause. Then one can do some history research and see what the Anti-Federalists had to say about this clause:

"That this clause conveys absolute power to the central government. Patrick Henry was very vocal in his opposition to putting this kind of language into the constitution. Madison, however, assured Henry and others that all the general welfare clause represented was a preliminary introduction prior to the enumerating the specific powers the delegates were about to grant to this new federal government and that the general welfare clause granted no new power to the government whatsoever. It was simply an introductory statement.

The Anti-Federalists still weren't satisfied. Hamilton and Madison came back to re-state that if the general welfare clause conveyed absolute power to the government, why would they go on to list the specific powers they were going to grant the government? That wouldn't make any sense at all if they were going to give absolute power to this government. It was finally conceded by all at the convention that the general welfare clause conveyed absolutely no power to the government."

-Devvy

Individual Income Taxes...

"The most damaging aspect of the Sixteenth Amendment is the fact that it vitiated the unalienable rights provided in the 4th Amendment. This is the amendment which protects privacy--privacy of the home, business, personal papers and personal affairs of the private citizen. None of these are disturbed by a poll (head or capitation) tax because it is so much per person regardless of the circumstances, but when the tax is based on income, the IRS is assigned the most unpleasant task of making certain that everyone pays his fair share. This task is physically impossible without prying into the private papers, private business and personal affairs of the individual citizens. By any standard, it is a miserable assignment. Furthermore, it is impossible to run audits and surveys of all taxpayers and so the audits seldom check more than 2% of them."

"The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die."

-W. Cleon Skousen

Higher education...

Some kids are not college material, whether the reason is ability, desire, genetics, or something else.

George Bush should immediately abandon his notion that no children should be "left behind" because that only impedes the progress of the gifted students.

Why doesn't he instead teach young people to be proud to learn a trade and to have the desire to excel at their chosen craft?

Wouldn't it be more advantageous to the student if his school prepared him to start a business of his own after learning to master a trade instead of railroading him into college?

The China Two-step

"This isn't like the Y2K crisis, where everyone was afraid of a computer meltdown that never happened," said Cass Johnson, president of the National Council of Textile Organizations, a U.S. trade group that is pressing the Bush administration to impose immediate limits on Chinese imports. "This is happening, and the consequences are frightening."

-International Herald Tribune

"China's Lenovo Group Ltd. (0992.HK) won clearance from a U.S. national security oversight committee to acquire IBM's personal computer business, the companies said on Wednesday, overcoming resistance from some U.S. lawmakers."

-Reuters (via Yahoo)

The US has reacted with dismay to an anti-secession law that would allow China to use force against Taiwan.

The White House described the planned law as "unhelpful", while a military chief warned about what he termed China's "significant" military growth.

US legislation obliges it to resist any use of force by China against Taiwan, and provide a means of defence.

-BBC News

Leftist logic...

How does it actually make sense to many American leftists that the Supreme Court of the United States was created to be the final arbiter of its own authority?

Many try to claim that Marbury v Madison supports their belief, however such a scenario equates to a judicial tyranny.

A few thoughts...

If the US Constitution is a "living, breathing document", then shouldn't the same hold true for the Geneva convention? Therefore, if Anthony Kennedy or Ruth Ginsburg can invent new applications for the Constitution, why can't George Bush or Alberto Gonzales do the same with the Geneva Convention?

Why is it that many of the people (neocons) who think America has some obligation (or legitimate authority) to prevent China from opposing a Taiwanese secession also think that one or more of the United States may not secede from the Union? If Taiwan is only bound to China for so long as the People of Taiwan so choose, why is the same not true of Floridians or Californians?

More Social Security deceit

"What moral principle, consistent with liberty, justifies forcing a person to set aside a certain portion of his weekly earnings for retirement and jailing him if he fails to comply?"

-Walter Williams

Sam Francis

I'd never heard of Sam Francis until minutes ago when I read yesterday's column from Pat Buchanan. He sounds like somebody I want to emulate.

• Sam became a rising star in the conservative firmament and began to write a national column. And that's when Sam got into trouble. For the founding fathers of the conservative movement had passed on, their estate had gone to probate, and squatters and hustlers had swindled the Old Right out of its inheritance. Soon, others began to redefine conservatism, to impose limits on debate, to censor as heretics those who would not mouth the new party line.
  
  
• Sam was one with Flannery O'Connor in believing that "truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
  
  
• Sam was always there when one of his own was caught out in the open. Like his forebears in the Army of the Confederacy, Sam rode to the sound of the guns.
  
  
• Said Milton: "Dr. Francis' defense of the truth led many to admire him, befriend him and, at times, withdraw from him. The work of a prophet is a lonely calling."

Coincidentally, a friend sent me this anonymous quotation nearly at the very moment I was reading the above:

• "What is war about, pain death and destruction. The Question one might ask is what type hardships did this rifle see and undergo...Never glorify war,understand what men are forced to do for their country and their survival. Yours is not to approve, yours is to teach living history to others.Every sword has two edges , every story two sides, you hear what your told to hear, your duty is to hear the truth weather you approve or not ofwhat you find."

Though preaching unpopular truth is often lonely, reading about men like Sam Francis reminds me that others are traveling the same road down which I have chosen to venture, that being the road to truth no matter which way it turns or where it may lead.

Want to understand Social Security?

I suggest you read this piece from the Heritage Foundation.