Archive for the 'Democrats' Category

The weekend has come, and so has the dreary weather, at least in my part of the world, known as central Maryland. But there’s a bright side, in that I won’t have to shovel anything. In other parts of the world, here’s a bit of what’s been going on:

The University of Alabama in Huntsville has fired professor Amy Bishop, accused of shooting 6 colleagues, killing 3 of them.

From the “stoopid criminals” department: Oregon Ducks quarterback Jeremiah Masoli has been suspended for the upcoming 2010 football season, after pleading guilty to a burglary charge. What did he steal? Two laptop computers and a guitar.

The Ninth Circuit has ruled that “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is constitutional.

The National Review interviews pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak. For politicians with views similar to Stupak’s, 2SecondsFaster asks, “What should pro-life Democrats do?”

Members of the Thomas More Society react to the Illinios Attorney General’s claim that state’s constitution contains the right to an abortion.

Some say that defending the enemy is a time-honored tradition, sometimes invoking John Adams’ defense of the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre. A Wall Street Journal editorial begs to differ.

The Weekly Standard celebrates hope and change – in Iraq.

The New England Journal of Medicine reports a survey indicating that Obamacare could result in a decrease in the number of physicians. (H/T Hugh Hewitt)

SayAnythingBlog warns of a double-dip recession.

On the other hand theSpec reports that the world-wide freight recession could be ending.

The Empire State brings forth the nanny state. The New York legislature is considering a bill that would forbid restaurants from using salt in cooking.

And finally, a young protestor gives her opinion of President Obama’s fiscal policies.
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I’ve personally seen some of my progressive friends throw their own temper-tantrum and lament the filibuster rule in the Senate, openly proclaiming that “since when is 41 greater than 59″ and that the European’s parliamentary system doesn’t suffer from the problems our system does. Blah. Blah. Blah.

Well, Arnold Kling has a pretty good article over at the Library of Economics and Liberty entitled “The Progressive Tantrum“.

A quick taste:

Everyone agrees that the Republicans are just throwing sand in the gears of good government and not offering any ideas. What that means is that they are not offering ideas to enlarge government.

(snip)

My point here is not to champion Republicans. It is not to champion democracy. My point is that the ones throwing the temper tantrum right now are the Progressives. They think that the 2008 election gave them the right to operate like China’s autocracy, and they are lashing out hysterically at those they perceive as preventing them from doing so On the one hand, the villains are a small minority in the Senate. Or maybe the villains are the incoherent majority of the people.

The important point is that Progressives are never wrong.

Kling also has some examples of the Progressives lamentations (from a Thomas Friedman column) that we don’t have more of an authoritarian system that would allow us to bypass this troublesome system our Founders set up:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.

Seriously. Expect more of this, especially as the progressives start to see their greatest opportunity evaporate into a dissipating mist….

Representative John Murtha (D), from Pennsylvania’s 12th district, has died from complications after gall bladder surgery, as reported by Yahoo News.

Murtha was born in 1932, joined the Marines in 1952, became a drill instructor at Parris Island, joined the Marine Reserves, volunteered to go to Vietnam where he served as an intelligence officer, received a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, attended the University of Pittsburgh on the GI Bill, served in the Pennsylvania House, and became the first Vietnam combat veteran to serve in the U.S. House. He was 77.

Murtha was also no stranger to controversy, often being criticized for taking a large number of earmarks. In 2006, he accused some Marines of murdering Iraqi civilians “in cold blood” at Haditha, which drew some angry reaction because the Marines had not yet been tried for their alleged actions. Of the eight Marines charged either in the original incident or with failure to investigate, seven have either been acquitted or had their charges dropped.

The Washington Post has more.

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” – Thomas Jefferson

That’s right. After much reading, studying, thought, deliberation and careful consideration, I have decided that it is time for me to become more active in politics. No. I’m not ready to run for office, nor do I consider myself to the consummate politician, as I speak my mind too much and I don’t have enough pragmatic bones in my body.

However, I believe that I can help be part of a movement to retake this country from the progressives, of both major political parties, as they try to institute even more nanny state controls and continue to put the final nails in the coffin of our Constitutional system of government.

Just as our Founders believed that government closet to the people would be the most accountable to the people, we must start taking back our local governments and start breaking our fellow citizens of the “What can government do for me” mentality that has come to dominate our politics.

Just as the quote attributed to Andrew Tytler says: Read the rest of this entry »

Give Jon Stewart credit. He really rips Matthews a new one. Oh sweet heavenly goodness. I can’t believe Matthews actually said that.

Freud was right.

Unless you’ve been under a rock, and you follow politics, then you are aware of the dust up surrounding the recent U.S. Supreme Court CITIZENS UNITED, APPELLANT v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION decision. It comes complete with President Obama chastising the Justices during his State of the Union, and Justice Alito’s equally firm “Not True”.

Anyways, its causing a big stink on the left right now, pretty much being pushed as an example of what happens when you get a conservative majority on the court and why its important to get the true judicial activists back in charge.

But what caught my eye the most in the dissent, written by Justice Stevens, was this bit of “logic”…

“If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions. Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by “Tokyo Rose” during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders. More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans: To do otherwise, after all, could ” ‘enhance the relative voice’ ” of some ( i.e., humans) over others ( i.e. , nonhumans). Ante, at 33 (quoting Buckley, 424 U. S., at 49). Under the majority’s view, I suppose it may be a First Amendment problem that corporations are not permitted to vote, given that voting is, among other things, a form of speech.”

Really? If logic has ever been tortured, it has been now, and therefore I must assume that Justice Stevens supports torture. Or something.

Still, its an interesting argument… on the surface anyways. Dig a little deeper and it is not so analogous.

Tokyo Rose was providing aid to the enemy during a time of war, easily an act of treason by trying to sabotage the war effort by attempting to demoralize soldiers and sailors. While I understand that the counter-argument is that now “foreign” companies can give money to campaigns after the ruling (ChinaGate being a better example), the particular act of Tokyo Rose is more of a non-sequitur in this instance…

I wonder if Justice Stevens is aware that Article 88 of the UCMJ would prevent the general officers in his example from saying anything contemptuous concerning the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense, or the Governor of Texas, just to name a few. (Link to Article 88 of the UCMJ here: CLICK!), even contemptuous political speech. Free speech is not exactly “free” in the military. While I know that it isn’t readily enforced (as I’ve heard many times military members disparage Clinton, Bush and Obama during a heated political debate in the office and no one thinks to turn anyone in), it has been before when such speech was made public and by high profile individuals… such as generals..

Another problem I find with his argument is that of “voting” as a matter of “speech”. Why would we need the 15th and 19th amendments if people, regardless of the race or sex, have the freedom of speech, through voting, in the 1st!

Now, I know I’m not an expert in constitutional jurisprudence, nor do I claim to be an expert in platonic logic. However, I have read a book once or twice (Run Dick Run and a Star Wars : A Phantom Menace [LARGE PRINT EDITION} if you must know) in my life, and the Justice’s argument has a hole in the side of it caused by quite a massive iceberg methinks.

These started to get old, but this one seems to be pretty well done…

Sorry it has been the “Bigfoot Show” the last month or so, but thanks for picking up my slack there guy!

Now that the Senate Democrats (and their fellow-traveler independents) have found their way to pass the current health care bill, we will have seen an historic event presaging the very end of the American experiment in a Constitutional federal republic comparable to the repeal of the 17th Amendment and other events that opened a hole in the Constitution to allow the growth of an all-powerful central government.

Here is what is unprecedented:

1) Both houses of Congress have voted that to annex from states and individuals responsibility for and control of the provision of health care to every American citizen. This is a breathtaking expansion of the Federal government’s claims over the citizens and individuals that will irreversibly alter the balance of power between the Federal government and the states or people, putting a nail into the coffin of limited central government. Having reached a critical mass of power, there will be no limit to future expansions of federal power.

In other words, Congress (in conjunction with the Executive Branch) have now laid claim to health care as its exclusive province.

And as history demonstrates time and time again, once the Federal government accrues and arrogates power unto itself, it does not willingly surrender it back to the people (or states). The flow of power almost always runs towards greater centralization at an accelerating rate.

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Un. Freakin’. Real.

“The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 … so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers,” Obama will say, according to excerpts from his speech at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York.

Obama will say that the additional U.S. forces “will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011,” according to the excerpts released by the White House.

The president has a goal of withdrawing most U.S. forces by the end of his current term, senior administration officials told CNN Tuesday. Obama’s first term ends in a little more than three years.

The President is planning to get those 30,000 troops into theater in six months, which gets his “surge” to full strength around June 2010. The President then plans to begin the withdrawal of American troops in July 2011, with the majority of troops to withdraw by the end of 2012.

They have ONE year to do the job, and the message is loud and clear to the Taliban and Al Qaeda that all they have to do is hold out ONE year, and the U.S. will then declare VICTORY, and then get to enjoy “peace with honor”, much like our experience in Vietnam.

Sigh.

On September 17, 1787 thirty-nine men from the very young United States of America, having gathered in Philadelphia, finished writing a Constitution, a proposed replacement for the country’s governing document, the Articles of Confederation.

In much more recent political news, the Speaker is concerned about the potential for “political violence”. Isn’t it great that the Dems have come to value civility?

I know that Raven and Duncan like their guns. But sometimes, a sword will suffice.

Speaking of sharp objects, a runner from Blacksburg, VA takes time out from the Blue Ridge Relay and dies from stab wounds – inflicted by himself.

It’s sad that too much success can be controversial, even in high school football.

Washington, DC has become a favorite place for wealthy young adults. (Heck, the Kennedys knew that decades ago.)

Parlez-vous français? If so, Aer Lingus might need your help.

Mary Traverse, of Peter, Paul and Mary, has died of leukemia at age 72.

Via The Dumb Ox, ACORN’s been behaving so badly these days, so it seems, that even Aahnold has called for an investigation. More bad (for them) news: The House has voted to cut off their federal money.

From the Alamo City Pundit, an apparent strategy of peace through vulnerability: Barry decides to abandon plans for missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.