On duck hunting and assault weapons

[ The woman testifying in this brief video clip gives you a mighty succinct education on what the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms is really about. Her last statement is gutsy but she has it dead right. -- Kirt ]

Do you stick to the script or do you ad lib?

[T]here are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution -- try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up. No matter how ingenious, imaginative or artfully put, unless interpretive methodologies are tied to the original intent of the framers, they have no more basis in the Constitution than the latest football scores. To be sure, even the most conscientious effort to adhere to the original intent of the framers of our Constitution is flawed, as all methodologies and human institutions are; but at least originalism has the advantage of being legitimate and, I might add, impartial. -- Clarence Thomas, How to Read the Constitution, 10/20/08

More Important than Cell Phones

As I have traveled across the country, I have been astounded just how many of our fellow citizens feel strongly about their constitutional rights but have no idea what they are, or for that matter, what the Constitution says. I am not suggesting that they become Constitutional scholars -- whatever that means. I am suggesting, however, that if one feels strongly about his or her rights, it does make sense to know generally what the Constitution says about them. It is at least as easy to understand as a cell phone contract -- and vastly more important. -- Clarence Thomas, How To Read the Constitution, 10/20/08

Who 'You' Is

[Barack Obama said to Joe the Plumber] 'I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.' In that sentence about you spreading the wealth around, there's [a] typing error: that 'you' should read 'I, Barack.' 'You' will have no say in it." -- Mark Steyn

Equality versus Everything Else

The left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The right subscribes to the American formula, 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.' The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable. The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions... The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality. -- Dennis Prager

Gays, Obama, and the Courts

The aim of the gay rights lobby is to destroy all remnants of biblical values and societal norms. Gay rights advocates will take their agenda to federal courts as soon as sufficient numbers of liberal judges are there to give them what they want. Watch them vote in overwhelming numbers for Barack Obama. He is their future. This election is, among other things, about the future of the majority and whether we want this country to be shaped by the courts, or by 'we the people'. -- Cal Thomas

Sarah, Plain and Tall

Sarah Palin is the one real outsider among the four candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency on the Republican and Democratic tickets. Her whole career has been spent outside the Washington Beltway. More than that, her whole life has been outside the realm familiar to the intelligentsia of the media. She didn't go to the big-name colleges and imbibe the heady atmosphere that leaves so many feeling that they are special folks. She doesn't talk the way they talk or think the way they think. ... Whatever the shortcomings of John McCain and Sarah Palin, they are people whose values are the values of this nation, whose loyalty and dedication to this country's fundamental institutions are beyond question because they have not spent decades working with people who hate America." -- Thomas Sowell

Get the Story Straight

This housing crisis ... was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans. ... One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

... [I]t was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled Do Facts Matter? "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

... This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion. -- Orson Scott Card, ornery.org, 10/5/08

NOT a free market failure!

The enormous risk that Sen. McCain warned of in 2005 has now become a financial crisis of staggering proportions. That crisis can trace its roots to Bill Clinton's signature on legislation making it easier for minority constituents with bad credit to obtain mortgages. In 1995, he had his Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, rewrite the lending rules for the Community Reinvestment Act, opening the flood gates of mortgage lending to unqualified borrowers. This legislation, in effect, applied affirmative action to the lending industry, which is to say that the current crisis is NOT a "free market failure" but the result of socially engineered financial policy by the central government. -- Mark Alexander, PatriotPost.us, 9/26/08

Patriot McCain

I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me... and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God. I'm going to fight for my cause every day as your president. I'm going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight for what's right for our country. Fight for the ideals and character of a free people. Fight for our children's future. Fight for justice and opportunity for all. Stand up to defend our country from its enemies. Stand up for each other, for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America. Stand up and fight. We're Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history. Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America. -- John McCain, concluding his 2008 nomination acceptance speech

And the darkness comprehended it not

[Sarah Palin is]... the object of the cultural disdain of a left that loves the working class in theory, but is mystified or offended by its lifestyle and conservative values in reality. -- Rich Lowry

Faults and Potentials

Poverty is the default human condition... The interesting question isn't 'Why is there poverty?' It's 'Why is there wealth?' Or: 'Why is there prosperity here but not there?' At the end of the day, the first answer is capitalism, rightly understood. That is to say: free markets, private property, the spirit of entrepreneurialism and the conviction that the fruits of your labors are your own... -- Jonah Goldberg

Facts vs Politics

Obama is being hailed as the newest and freshest face on the American political scene. But he is advocating some of the oldest fallacies, just as if it was the 1960s again, or as if he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing since then... But politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe. -- Thomas Sowell

What Krushchev Knew

We can't expect the American people to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism. -- Nikita Khrushchev on Roosevelt's "New Deal" paradigm

Election Day Fowl

A taxpayer voting for Barack Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

Miracle Ma(r)x

As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone. -- Charles Krauthammer

An Illegitimate Function of Government

The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing. Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, ‘What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.’ But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector." —Ronald Reagan

The Do Nothing Solution

[I]ncreasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that it was government intervention which prolonged the Great Depression beyond that of other depressions where the government did nothing. The stock market crash of 1987 was at least as big as the stock market crash in 1929. But, instead of being followed by a Great Depression, the 1987 crash was followed by 20 years of economic growth, with low inflation and low unemployment. The Reagan administration did nothing in 1987, despite outrage in the media at the government’s failure to live up to its responsibility, as seen in liberal quarters. But nothing was apparently what needed to be done, so that markets could adjust. The last thing politicians can do in an election year is nothing. So we can look for all sorts of ‘solutions’ by politicians of both parties. Like most political solutions, these are likely to make matters worse. —Thomas Sowell

Obama, the Politician

One of the most naive notions is that politicians are trying to solve the country’s problems, just because they say so—or say so loudly or inspiringly. Politicians’ top priority is to solve their own problem, which is how to get elected and then re-elected. Barack Obama is a politician through and through, even though pretending that he is not is his special strategy to get elected. —Thomas Sowell

[ This is precisely the conclusion I came to as I finished Obama's book yesterday. He is a superb rhetorician and consummate politician. If that is want you want, he is a great choice to have on your side, but he is clearly far, far away on the other end of the ideological spectrum from my position. His strengths, if elected, will only compound the weakness of his credentials to America's great detriment. Scary. -- Kirt ]

The Roads Both Taken

When he comes to a fork in the road, Barack Obama continues to take it." —Wesley Pruden

Presidents and the Constitution

A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1810

[ George W. Bush, like Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln before him, were not without justification in their unconstitutional exercise of presidential powers in order to honor their higher oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States". Acting decisively to keep the country safe from another 9/11 attack for the remainder of his two terms in office will place him in high esteem, despite his methods and failings, in the eyes of future historians. -- Kirt]

The sacred cow of global warming

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming . . . miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

-- Freeman Dyson, The New York Review of Books, Vol 55, No. 10, 6/3/08

Uncommon Sense

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Yet we continue to elect the same people year after year, thinking things will change or get better. Do yourself and your kids a favor. Read the Declaration of Independence and compare the grievances our forefathers had against the king of Great Britain to the grievances you have now. How do they match up? What does it say our duty is?

The only way I can see to change the way things are is to boot out every politician that has been in office more than two terms and elect people with some common sense.

-- Troy Wright, DeseretNews.com, 5/23/08

[ With very few exceptions, career politicians make me shudder. Rarely do we see a true statesman worth keeping. Competent leaders and problem solvers from the private sector ought to be carried, kicking and screaming, into office and let off for good behavior at the end of their term. -- Kirt ]

Part of the problem

This may be cruel, but do you want to really confuse a Republican politician and leave them speechless? Ask them to identify ONE program or governmental effort that is outdated, detrimental to society or useless and that can be eliminated. I've done this and believe me.....they don't know what to say. But it speaks volumes. -- Liberty Tom, Rochester, NY, 5/22/08

Relearning the folly of appeasement

A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn. -- Joseph Lieberman, wsj.com, 5/21/08

Declaring the wrong enemy - Act I

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful. . . .

Kennedy promised . . . that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor -- a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.

-- Joseph Lieberman, wsj.com, 5/21/08

Declaring the wrong enemy - Act II

[In] the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate -- Vice President Gore -- championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent -- and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. . . . When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy -- not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush -- activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

-- Joseph Lieberman, wsj.com, 5/21/08

Conservatism Defined

Conservatism is alive and well in America; don't let anyone tell you differently. And by conservatism, I don't mean the warmed-over "raise your hand if you believe . . ." kind of conservatism we see blooming every election cycle. No, I'm speaking of the conservatism grounded in principles based upon enduring truths: an understanding of the importance of human nature in the affairs of individuals and nations. Respect for the lessons of history, the importance of faith and tradition. The understanding that while man is prone to err, he is capable of great things when not subjugated by a too-powerful government. -- Fred Thompson, wsj.com, 5/20/08

Democracies don't let people die

Tectonic plates in motion don't distinguish between democracies and autocracies, but the record shows that getting hit by an earthquake or cyclone in an authoritarian government is a high-risk proposition for the survivors. [Consider these examples...

• Communist China's Tangshan earthquake of 1976: 255,000 dead.
• Managua under Somoza 1972: at least 5,000 dead.
• Mexico City's 1985 earthquake under the PRI government: 9,500 dead.
• Soviet Armenia 1988: 25,000 dead.
• Iran, 2003: 31,000 dead.]

Common to all is that their governments never held real elections. In such places, after nature kills people, delay and incompetence kill the rest. Set aside idealism and the flowery rhetoric that must accompany a statement like the 2002 Bush Doctrine. The bottom line is accountability. In democracies, even poor or imperfect ones, public pressure, even outrage, pushes elected officials to act. In nondemocracies, the politicians don't give a damn because they don't have to.

There are no angels in politics. Absent accountability, though, a nation's people are at permanent risk. Democracy's greatest value may well be the average politician's cynical compulsion to survive the next election.

-- Daniel Henninger, online.wsj.com, 5/15/08

Border Economics

There have been suggestions that the border be sealed. But Mexico is the United States' third-largest customer, and the United States is Mexico's largest customer. This was the case well before NAFTA, and has nothing to do with treaties and everything to do with economics and geography. Cutting that trade would have catastrophic effects on both sides of the border, and would guarantee the failure of the Mexican state. It isn't going to happen. So long as vast quantities of goods flow across the border, the border cannot be sealed. -- George Friedman, Stratfor Geopolitical Weekly, 5/13/08

Selling Eden

A politician with good rhetorical skills can create a new Garden of Eden in people's minds, though only in their minds. However, that is sufficient, if that vision or illusion can be kept alive until election day, and its failure to materialize afterwards can be explained away by the obstruction of villains. . . . So long as the voters buy it, the politicians will keep selling it. -- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 5/14/08

The Course Not Taken

History is an elective few liberals choose to take these days... The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling. But in a presidential candidate it's dangerous. As Sir Winston Churchill said: 'Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it'. -- Jack Kelly

Old Professions

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. -- Ronald Reagan

Things I'd Say If I Was That Smart

There are seven reasons for anyone to support the eventual [Republican] nominee no matter who it is: The war and six Supreme Court justices over the age of 68. -- Hugh Hewitt

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened. -- Norman Thomas

Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security. -- William F. Buckley, Jr.

The way to get people's votes is to say that all their problems are caused by other people, and that you will stop those other people from giving them trouble. But if you really want to help, then you can tell them the truth and risk losing their votes... -- Thomas Sowell

Liberalism is so impressed with its own brilliance that results apparently don't matter. -- Brent Bozell

Liberals are always at their best chuckling at the ways of those they regard as hicks. That's because liberals place far more importance on sophistication than on character, decency and values. -- Burt Prelutsky

I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies. -- William F. Buckley Jr.

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection -- it is plunder. -- Benjamin Disraeli

A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. -- Calvin Coolidge

The current tax code is a daily mugging. -- Ronald Reagan

I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money. -- Arthur Godfrey

Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago. -- Will Rogers

We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. -- Davy Crockett

Blunt-speaking and heroism does not a president make

The fact that McCain makes short, blunt statements does not make him a straight-talker. . . .

When confronted with any of his misdeeds, Senator McCain tends to fall back on his record as a war hero in Vietnam.

Let's talk sense. Benedict Arnold was a war hero but that did not exempt him from condemnation for his later betrayal.

Being a war hero is not a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. And becoming President of the United States is not a matter of rewarding an individual for past services.

The Presidency is a heavy responsibility for the future of the nation, including generations yet unborn. Character and integrity are major qualifications.

-- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 2/1/08

Plotting to cripple the American economy

We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse-gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren. -- Bill Clinton

[In other words, Bill, global warming REALLY IS an anti-American, anti-capitalist ploy, right? -- Kirt]

The Republican candidate liberals want out of the race

Are you familiar with our 'no exchange/no return' policy on presidential candidates? Voting for McCain because he was a POW a quarter-century ago or Huckabee because he was a Baptist preacher is like buying a new car because you like the color. The candidate Republicans should be clamoring for is the one liberals are feverishly denouncing. That is Mitt Romney by a landslide. -- Ann Coulter

Romney for real

Romney's very public migration rightward over the last few years is a different kind of act, one intended not to hide his real views but to liberate them. In 1994, Romney struck me as an extraordinarily bright, talented, and decent man -- and a political neophyte who fell for the canard that the only way a conservative could win in Massachusetts was by passing for a liberal. [Now,] Romney is where he should have been all along. -- Jeff Jacoby

Straight Talk is not the same as Straight Walk

I seek the nomination of our Party because I am as confident today as I was when I first entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution that the principles of the Republican Party – our confidence in the good sense and resourcefulness of free people – are always in America’s best interests. In war and peace, in good times and challenging ones, we have always known that the first responsibility of government is to keep this country safe from its enemies, and the American people free of a heavy-handed government that spends too much of their money, and tries to do for them what they are better able to do for themselves. We want government to do its job, not your job; to do it better and to do it with less of your money; to defend our nation’s security wisely and effectively, because the cost of our defense is so dear to us; to respect our values because they are the true source of our strength; to enforce the rule of law that is the first defense of freedom; to keep the promises it makes to us and not make promises it will not keep. We believe government should do only those things we cannot do individually, and then get out of the way so that the most industrious, ingenious, and enterprising people in the world can do what they have always done: build an even greater country than the one they inherited.

-- John McCain, 1/18/08

[So, given all the "straight talk", how much do past misdeeds -- Keating savings and loan scandal, McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill, McCain-Feingold 1st Amendment sell-out, and judicial nomination side deals -- count towards walking the walk? -- Kirt]

A Good Government

I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations. -- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

[I think it is only in "its operations" that our government has earned our dismay. -- Kirt ]

The Jihadist War in Review

After the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the United States realized it lacked the military wherewithal to simultaneously deal with the four powers that made al Qaeda possible: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and Pakistan. The first phase of the Bush solution was to procure an anchor against Afghanistan by forcing Pakistan into an alliance. The second was to invade the state that bordered the other three-- Iraq -- in order to intimidate the remaining trio into cooperating against al Qaeda. The final stage was to press both wars until al Qaeda -- the core organization that launched the 9/11 attack and sought the creation of a pan-Islamic caliphate, not the myriad local extremists who later adopted its name -- broke.

As 2008 dawns, it has become apparent that though this strategy engendered many unforeseen costs, it has proven successful at grinding al Qaeda into nonfunctionality. Put simply, the jihadist war is all but over; the United States not only is winning but also has an alliance with the entire constellation of Sunni powers that made al Qaeda possible in the first place. The United States will attempt to use this alliance to pressure the remnants of al Qaeda and its allies, as well as those in the region who are not in the alliance.

This leaves Iran, the region's only non-Sunni power, in the uncomfortable position of needing to seek an arrangement with the United States.

-- George Friedman, stratfor.com, 1/8/08

Government needs a short leash

Freedom was given to humanity by God. But, governments, if they can help it, never give freedom. They just hand out slavery with slogans. -- Taylor Caldwell