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| WHAT WOULD JEFFERSON DO? |
By Roderick T. Beaman
May 13, 2008
In The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “...Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed...” The American War for Independence had just begun a little more 14 ½ months before he wrote that.
That excerpt is telling and each word and phrase should be contemplated. It’s obvious that Jefferson wants the reader to know that the action of that Congress was not a rash one, arrived at in the heat of the moment. No, the colonies had endured a host of abuses and could endure them no longer.
Jefferson also, tellingly, observes that people tend to bear the indignities that are heaped upon them. It is an observation of human behavior that rings true today from that great hall in Philadelphia down our history to us today. It is obvious that the abuses of our American government and our state capitals far outstrip any were being heaped upon us by King George III.
One of the reasons for the colonists’ consternation was that he had imposed taxes without their consent. Patrick Henry had thundered, in a phrase that has rung through the centuries since, “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” The most recent imposition had just raised the total tax burden on the colonies to an intolerable estimated three percent of the gross domestic product of the colonies! Can you imagine?
Jefferson then states that “...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, (continue)...to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” With this paragraph, he leaves no doubt that citizens must, not just may but MUST, throw off the offending government.
The context of the time should be recalled when considering Jefferson’s rhetoric. A war for secession had begun fifteen months earlier and the outcome was far from assured. It would continue until the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown in October, 1781. In total, the hostilities lasted 6 1/2 years and even then the peace treaty wouldn’t be finalized for another eight years.
Although the Continental Armies had held their own at Bunker Hill and Moore’s Creek, the British were not just folding their tents and going home. America was a crown jewel in an empire that would eventually encircle the globe, giving rise to the saying that the sun never sets on British soil. A victory by the American forces at Charleston, South Carolina on June 28 may not have even been known by those delegates to that Second Continental Congress in July of 1776. The British would score some impressive victories before that ultimate defeat.
There can be no doubt that Thomas Jefferson and the delegates understood that they were justifying their decision to leave the governance of The British Crown. There can also be no doubt that Jefferson believed and the others probably did as well that all human beings were compelled to overthrow any similar offending government that might arise for all eternity. Further, there can be no doubt that they considered the possibility that such an offending government would arise here. This is the only possible conclusion...
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Posted by editor on Monday, May 12 @ 23:10:28 PDT (37 reads)
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| Ron Paul's forces quietly plot GOP convention revolt against McCain |
by Andrew Malcolm
Los Angeles Times
May 12, 2008
Virtually all the nation's political attention in recent weeks has focused on the compelling state-by-state presidential nomination struggle between two Democrats and the potential for party-splitting strife over there.
 But in the meantime, Rep. Ron Paul and his libertarian-minded GOP backers are collecting delegates at the local level and planning a revolt against Sen. John McCain at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September. Paul's presidential candidacy has been correctly dismissed all along in terms of winning the nomination. He was even excluded as irrelevant by Fox News from a nationally-televised GOP debate in New Hampshire.
But what's been largely overlooked is Paul's candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party's most conservative conservatives. As anticipated a month ago in The Ticket, that situation could be exacerbated by today's expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party's presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.
Nevermind Ralph Nader, Republican and Democratic parties both face....
...potentially damaging internal splits that could cripple their chances for victory in a narrow vote on Nov. 4. Just take a look at recent Republican primary results, largely overlooked because McCain locked up the necessary 1,191 delegates long ago. In Indiana, McCain got 77% of the recent Republican primary vote, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, who've each long ago quit and endorsed McCain, still got 10% and 5% respectively, while Paul took 8%. On the same May 6 in North Carolina, McCain received less than three-quarters of Republican votes (74%), while Huckabee got 12%, Paul 7% and Alan Keyes and No Preference took a total of 7%. Pennsylvania was even slightly worse for the GOP's presumptive nominee, who got only 73% to a combined 27% for Paul (16%) and Huckabee (11%)... |
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Posted by editor on Monday, May 12 @ 06:58:44 PDT (116 reads)
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| Bush Business Donors Shunning McCain for Democratic Candidates |
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By Jonathan D. Salant
May 9 (Bloomberg) -- Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is struggling to attract money from some of the same industries that helped bankroll President George W. Bush's record-setting fundraising.
Employees from the securities, construction, pharmaceutical and energy industries, who accounted for about a tenth of Bush's money in 2004, are turned off by his record and giving more to his Democratic rivals, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
``A significant percentage of your base Republican support, whether financial or otherwise, are not fans of McCain because of various things he's done or said or sponsored,'' said Republican consultant Eddie Mahe, who is supporting the Arizona senator. ``Many of them don't see Mr. McCain as being a lot better'' than the Democrats.
Obama and Clinton each raised close to $11 million from the four industries through the end of March, compared with $6 million for McCain. In 2004, Bush raised three times more money from those sources than Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee that year.
The political action committee of the American Road and Transportation Builders, the Washington-based trade group for such companies as Caterpillar Inc., contributed the maximum $5,000 to Bush's presidential campaign in both 2000 and 2004. McCain has gotten nothing....
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Posted by editor on Saturday, May 10 @ 06:57:45 PDT (174 reads)
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| Why You Need to Meet the REAL John McCain |
by Gary Franchi | Thursday, 01 May 2008
| (A message from Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, Sr. Policy Advisor, U.S. Dept. of Education during the Reagan Administration) As a delegate to our state convention this coming weekend we have a solemn obligation to know the truth about the man who has been anointed the “presumptive nominee” of our party. Our job is not to be a rubber stamp for anyone else’s agenda, no matter how “nobly” the cause is presented. The Republican establishment in Maine is counting on us not having the documented information on this sheet. It is counting on our willingness to be told what to think in the same way that the mainstream media has been telling us what to think throughout this entire election cycle. We are expected to suspend any other concerns we may have in the name of “party unity.” The truth is that a patriot who loves his country makes it an ultimate priority to be well-educated about the decisions he or she must make. Unless we have come to understand how dominated by the leftist military-industrial complex America’s major media has become, and done some research, we are not prepared to do our duty at the convention. This letter, supported by many delegates to the Republican Convention, is literally about saving the party and the nation from a maniacal neoconservative war monger, who supports a United States presence in Iraq for 100 years, and who is not really even a Republican! “War hero” image is a media creation not supported by the facts McCain graduated 894th of the 899 cadets in his class at the Naval Academy. Google it. Why would we want someone who was a failure and took his responsibilities so flippantly as our commander-in-chief? - McCain was an irresponsible pilot who crashed 6 planes, and started a major fire on an aircraft carrier through negligent action. Why would we want someone this reckless in the most-important office on the planet?
- McCain collaborated with the enemy, was given “soft” treatment because his father was an admiral, and is known as “Songbird McCain” by those who were imprisoned with him. (http://vietnamveteransagainstmccain.com) He is the MIA/POW family’s worst enemy for his constant attempts to belittle their concerns and stifle their inquiries while serving in the Senate.
McCain ditched his ill wife to marry an heiress when he returned from Vietnam. Is this the type of morality we Republicans condone? Is this type of heinous lack of loyalty we want in a President? He also has a track record of shocking verbal abuse, including screaming profanities against his Senate Republican colleagues. Senator Thad Cochran, MS, says “The thought of his being President sends a cold chill down my spine.” Other Senators relate times when McCain screamed four-letter obscenities right in their faces in the Senate cloak room, like Dick Shelby, Rick Santorum or Jim Imhofe. “The man is unhinged,” one senator said. “He is frighteningly unfit to be commander-in-chief.” The truth is, John McCain is not even a Republican. He is a phony stalking horse who is a liberal in disguise. He not only can’t win this fall because he is so out of step with the majority of Americans and with the principled stands of Republicanism, but if we support this person for our nominee, he will likely destroy our party. Consider: - He was intimately involved in the “Keating 5” Savings & Loan scandal.
- He has been endorsed by the liberal/leftist New York Times.
- He is a big advocate of the extreme “green” global warming scare, and the economically horrific “solutions” being proposed by people like Al Gore.
- He has promoted illegal amnesty for millions of illegal aliens.
- His McCain-Feingold Bill has destroyed much of the rights of people to take part in the political process the way they see fit. This bill remains un-Constitutional and a major affront to the First Amendment protections on the right of free speech.
- He is a big-time gun grabber who is an extreme advocate of restrictions on 2nd Amendment rights.
- He opposes repeal of Roe v. Wade, and opposes a Constitutional amendment to protect all life.
- He is no fiscal conservative, and he supports raising taxes on Social Security benefits.
- He continues his aggressive support for the Iraq War, which costs the U.S. taxpayer $12 billion a month, even though only 34% of Americans support the war. (According to Paul Craig Roberts, Asst. Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, and vocal opponent of the Iraq War: 4,538 Americans have died in the war, 29,780 have been wounded, 300,000 soldiers are suffering from major depression, and 320,000 received brain injuries, all as a result of this unconstitutional and immoral war.)...
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Posted by editor on Saturday, May 03 @ 19:59:41 PDT (304 reads)
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| Congressman Sonny Bono Murdered: Says ex-FBI Special Agent-in-Charge |
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Posted by editor on Tuesday, April 29 @ 23:17:48 PDT (221 reads)
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| Will the Right Sit McCain Race Out? |
by Patrick J. Buchanan
April 28, 2008
If John McCain wins the presidency, his comeback—after the bankrupt debacle his campaign had become in the summer of 2007 with his backing of the amnesty bill—will be the stuff of legend.
And as nominee, he is entitled to conduct his own campaign and be cut slack by a party whose brand name is now Enron.
That said, McCain seems to have decided to win by love-bombing the Big Media and putting miles between himself and the base.
Consider his "Forgotten Places" tour of last week.
It began in Selma, Ala., where McCain went to Edmund Pettis Bridge to hail John Lewis and the marchers night-sticked and hosed down by the Alabama State Troopers on the Montgomery march for voting rights.
Now that was a seminal movement in the fight for civil rights.
But this is not 1965. Today, John Lewis is a big dog in the "No-Whites-Need-Apply!" Black Caucus. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is sermonizing White America. The Rev. Al Sharpton is trying to shut down the Big Apple. And the fight for equal rights is being led by Ward Connerly.
With no help from McCain, Connerly is trying to put on five state ballots a Civil Rights Initiative that declares white men are also equal and not to be denied their civil rights because of the color of their skin.
And where does McCain stand?
From Selma, McCain went to the Gee's Bend Quilters Collective, where black ladies make the famous blankets. The stop could not but call to mind the hundreds of thousands of textile and apparel jobs in the Carolinas and Georgia lost after NAFTA and Most-Favored Nation for China, both of which McCain enthusiastically supported.
McCain's next stop was Inez, Ky., where LBJ declared war on poverty. But LBJ's war was a politically motivated scheme to shift wealth and power to government, which led to a pathological dependency among America's poor, his own abdication and Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign against Big Government that ushered in the Conservative Decade...
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Posted by editor on Monday, April 28 @ 22:01:36 PDT (196 reads)
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| John McCain is Bitter and He Clings to Menacing & Assaulting People |
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by Delaware Watch Blog
April 21, 2008
Increasingly, Senator John McMad, the presumptive GOP candidate for President, is being exposed as a pathologically angry person unfit to be in the Senate much less serve as President of the United States. Therefore, any poll results now showing McCain running neck and neck with Obama and Clinton can be dismissed as irrelevant. The media has yet to turn their attention with any serious and prolonged scrutiny to Sen. McNasty’s record of menacing and assaultive behavior. Besides, they have been diverted weightier issues of presidential qualifications and suitability like Barack Obama’s lapel pins (or lack thereof) and his use of words like “bitter” and “cling.”
But when they do eventually discover a thriving market of Americans sensibly concerned about the prospect of a pathologically angry man becoming the President, they will have no end of evidence and witnesses, some within the ranks of the GOP. At a minimum the frightening quality of the TV commercials about McCain this Autumn could easily rival the Willie Horton ads George H.W. Bush ran against Gov. Michael Dukakis. They will probably be more frightening because in this case Willie Horton will be the GOP candidate for President himself, John McCain. The commercials will perform an important public service.
Let’s examine some of the trends in John McCain’s non-official rap sheet.
John McCain Intimidates and Demeans Women
As I have written before, I fully expect female supporters of Hillary Clinton to support Barack Obama after he captures the nomination for the Democratic Party. I cannot imagine how anyone with a conscience could possibly support a misogynistic verbal batterer like John McCain.
It is already known:
- He once publicly referred to his wife as a “trollop” and a “cunt”
- He said Chelsea Clinton was ugly because Janet Reno was her father (a trifecta of insult implicitly trading on the right-wing libel that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian)
But there is more just revealed thanks to the Washington Post:
In 1994, McCain tried to stop a primary challenge to the state's Republican governor, J. Fife Symington III, by telephoning his opponent, Barbara Barrett, the well-heeled spouse of a telecommunications executive, and warning of unspecified "consequences" should she reject his advice to drop out of the race. Barrett stayed in. At that year's state Republican convention, McCain confronted Sandra Dowling, the Maricopa County school superintendent and, according to witnesses, angrily accused her of helping to persuade Barrett to enter the race. "You better get [Barrett] out or I'll destroy you," a witness claims that McCain shouted at her. Dowling responded that if McCain couldn't respect her right to support whomever she chose, that he "should get the hell out of the Senate." McCain shouted an obscenity at her, and Dowling howled one back.
But John McCain is a war hero. We shouldn’t let his verbal battery of women dissuade us about his manliness and bravery.
John McCain Holds Grudges and Seeks Revenge
McCain strategist and co-author of five McCain books, Mark Salter, rationalizes McCain’s galloping fury:
"If he feels a challenge to his integrity, then he'll say something," Salter said. "If he thinks you betrayed him . . . he'll tell you, he'll be angry. . . . But he's also exceedingly forgiving."
The ruffian forgives the victim. How comforting. How co-dependent and enabling of Salter to say so.
But it seems that John McCain doesn’t always forgive immediately. In fact he can hold grudges for years, ones that fester and impel him to pounce and seek revenge at opportune moments:
During the early 1990s, McCain telephoned the office of Tom Freestone, a governmental official little known outside Arizona's Maricopa County. McCain had an unusual request. He wanted Freestone, then chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, to reject a job applicant named Karen S. Johnson, whose last governmental position had been in the office of a former Arizona governor and who had just interviewed for a position as an aide in Freestone's office.
A few years earlier, he had an angry exchange with her while she was the secretary for Republican Arizona Gov. Evan Meacham, who was impeached and forced out of office for campaign finance violations.
This wasn't an isolated incident. It appears to be part of a pattern:
During roughly the same period, McCain requested the firing of an aide to Arizona's senior U.S. senator, Dennis DeConcini, according to two top figures in DeConcini's office.
The aide, a veterans affairs expert named Judy Leiby, first ran into problems with McCain in the late '80s, when she sought to correct what she regarded as a McCain misstatement about DeConcini's record on a veterans issue. She was attending a Phoenix meeting between McCain and some veterans when she rebutted a McCain assertion that DeConcini, a Democrat, favored a bill that included a cut of some veterans benefits. "That is incorrect," Leiby said, detailing the specifics of DeConcini's position as McCain listened stonily.
Sometime afterward, McCain called DeConcini and asked that he dismiss Leiby, insisting to the senator that his aide had become a toxic, partisan figure.
It shouldn’t be overlooked that both Johnson and Leiby are women.
Women can be the subjects of McCain’s grudges revenge and so can the young:
[In 1982] Arizona Republican Party held its Election Night celebration for all its candidates at a Phoenix hotel, where the triumphant basked in the cheers of their supporters and delivered victory statements on television.
After McCain finished his speech, he returned to a suite in the hotel, sat down in front of a TV and viewed a replay of his remarks, angry to discover that the speaking platform had not been erected high enough for television cameras to capture all of his face -- he seemed to have been cut off somewhere between his nose and mouth.
A platform that had been adequate for taller candidates had not taken into account the needs of the 5-foot-9 McCain, who left the suite and went looking for a man in his early 20s named Robert Wexler, the head of Arizona's Young Republicans, which had helped make arrangements for the evening's celebration. Confronting Wexler in a hotel ballroom, McCain exploded, according to witnesses who included Jon Hinz, then executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. McCain jabbed an index finger in Wexler's chest.
"I told you we needed a stage," he screamed, according to Hinz. "You incompetent little [expletive]. When I tell you to do something, you do it."
But when, as a toddler, John McCain wasn’t holding his breath and fainting “during moments of fury,” later, as he grew older, he moved around to various military bases because his father was an admiral in the Navy collecting stars. It gave him a “chip on [his] shoulder,” he recalled recently.
Therefore, he’s entitled to menace people now because childhood trauma is always seen as a valid explanation by Republicans for anti-social behavior.
No One is Spared John McCain’s Wrath
The list of victims on John McCain’s unofficial rap sheet is impressive for it admits no class or partisan distinctions. He is an equal opportunity thug. His victims include:
- Sen. Charles Grassley
- Sen. Bob Smith
- Sen. John Cornyn
- Sen. Richard Shelby
- Sen. Thad Cochran
- Sen. Ted Kennedy
- Rep. Robert Torricelli
- Navy Secretary John Dalton
- Sen. Pete Domenici
- Sen. Strom Thurmond
- Rep. Rick Renzi
It’s a chore keeping up with all of them, so I’ve probably overlooked other victims and as with most serial abusers, there are probably more victims we will never hear about...
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Posted by editor on Monday, April 21 @ 21:43:17 PDT (281 reads)
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| Seeking Past Volunteers!: Be All That You Can Be! Etc. |
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Posted by editor on Sunday, April 20 @ 22:36:54 PDT (255 reads)
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| Could Bob Barr’s Run as Libertarian Doom McCain? |
by NewsMax.com
April 20, 2008
Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr is seen as the Libertarian Party’s most likely presidential candidate — and he could wind up torpedoing John McCain’s White House hopes.
“Given the recent fundraising prowess of a kindred spirit — Ron Paul's campaign for the Republican nomination siphoned up $35 million, mostly off the Internet — libertarians are feeling their oats,” political analyst George F. Will writes in Newsweek.
“Come November, Barr conceivably could be to John McCain what Ralph Nader was to Al Gore in 2000 — ruinous.”
Nader was a weak third-party candidate and won only 2,882,955 popular votes nationwide, but 97,488 of them were in Florida — where, because of Nader, George W. Bush won by 537 votes, Will notes.
Shane Cory, the Libertarian Party's executive director, “thinks his party is upwardly mobile,” Will writes.
“In 2004, its presidential candidate received just 397,265 votes, a mere .32 percent of the national popular vote…
“But in no state was the Libertarian vote larger than the winning candidate's margin of victory. This year, however, Cory thinks the party can far surpass its best national performance — 921,299 votes in 1980.”
Cory and Barr say the party almost certainly will be on the ballot in at least 48 states.
Republican consultant Craig Shirley recently wrote: “This Libertarian thing may be bigger than anyone is foreseeing right now.”
Barr left the GOP in 2006 over what he called bloated spending and civil liberties intrusions by the Bush administration.
A former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, Barr served eight years as a Republican congressman from Georgia before losing his seat in 2002 after a redistricting...
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Posted by editor on Sunday, April 20 @ 21:11:36 PDT (273 reads)
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| Book: McCain temper boiled over in '92 tirade, called wife a 'cunt' |
Nick Juliano
RawStory.com Published: Tuesday April 8, 2008  John McCain's temper is well documented. He's called opponents and colleagues "shitheads," "assholes" and in at least one case "a fucking jerk."
But a new book on the presumptive Republican nominee will air perhaps the most shocking angry exchange to date.
The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter, which will arrive in bookstores next month, reports an angry exchange between McCain and his wife that happened in full view of aides and reporters during a 1992 campaign stop. An advance copy of the book was obtained by RAW STORY.
Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days. The man who was known as "McNasty" in high school has erupted in foul-languaged tirades at political foes and congressional colleagues more-or-less throughout his career, and his quickness to anger has been an issue on the presidential campaign trail as evidence of his fury has surfaced...
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Posted by editor on Tuesday, April 08 @ 22:08:03 PDT (437 reads)
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| BOB BARR'S LIBERTARIAN NOMINATION Would Offer Conservatives a Choice |
by John Bender
April 8, 2008
 Congressman Bob Barr’s announcement that he is seeking the nomination to run for president on the Libertarian Party ticket is bad news for John McCain and good news for conservatives. Polls show Congressman Barr is the frontrunner in the race for the Libertarian Party nomination and very likely to get the nomination at the party’s national convention in May.
None of the four conservatives in the Republican race were able to gain traction in the primaries for various reasons, leaving the conservative base with yet another election in which they can hold their noses and vote for “the lesser of two evils” or stay home. Bob Barr entering the race changes that. If he is nominated, conservatives will have the additional option of voting for a conservative.
Congressman Barr is a solid conservative with a lifetime ACU record of 98%. His last two years in office he scored an ACU record of 100%. McCain’s lifetime ACU record is 82% but his 2006, the most recent year for which ratings are available, ACU record was 65%. Among Republican Senators only Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter had worse voting records.
During his entire career Bob Barr has been a strong advocate for smaller government, lower taxes, strict adherence to the Constitution (including ALL of the Bill of Rights), and the rule of law. He was the first elected official to demand Clinton’s impeachment.
Democrats, with the help of some establishment Republicans, redistricted Mr. Barr out of office. God knows the establishment hacks in both parties can’t stand having an effective, fearless, constitutionalist in office. Since then Mr. Barr has worked to advance liberty, protect our rights, and to restore the Constitutional restraints on government the Founding Fathers established. These endeavors haven’t gone over well with the Rockefeller Republicans who rule the Republican Party or with the far left who control the Democrat Party. Neocons and statists in the Republican ranks have attacked Mr. Barr for joining Congressman Dick Armey (ACU record 97%) in working with the ACLU in defending the Fourth Amendment. Even one of the smartest and most conservative talk show hosts to grace the air waves recently made the totally ridiculous statement that Congressman Barr isn’t a “real” conservative because he has sided with the ACLU in that fight. Yet it is interesting that some, maybe even most, of those who have attacked Mr. Barr for working with the ACLU on protecting the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law had no qualms about siding with the ACLU themselves to fight the McCain-Feingold attack on free speech. These hypocrites generally neglect to mention that Mr. Barr was not just siding with the ACLU in this effort to protect the Fourth Amendment. He was also siding with groups like the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, the Free Congress Foundation, the Second Amendment Foundation, and other solidly conservative groups. Nor do they mention that bedrock conservative groups like the Christian Coalition, the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Family Research Council, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, the Business-Industry Political Action Committee, the National Right to Life Committee, to name just a few, have also worked with the ACLU to protect a Constitutional right. Of course, it’s easier to attack one man than to attack scores of groups with millions of members and the resources to counter attack. It is easy to demonize an individual true conservative, but very risky to attack groups with millions of conservative members. Attacking every conservative leader or group who ever sided with the ACLU on an issue would immediately expose these hypocrites for what they are. Some of the talk show personalities, bloggers, columnists and talking heads, who have attacked Congressman Barr as not being a conservative because he works with the ACLU defending the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law, by their own reasoning must not be “real” conservatives either, since they sided with the ACLU defending the First Amendment. The truth of the matter is, if Bob Barr gets the Libertarian Party’s nomination, he will be the only conservative in the race. His candidacy will offer conservatives a choice of voting their convictions by voting for a man with an unblemished track record of supporting classical conservative positions, or voting for the lesser of two evils. |
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Posted by editor on Monday, April 07 @ 22:32:47 PDT (604 reads)
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| Educational Crisis in America: Caused by Relentless Immigration |
Anonymous "
by Frosty Wooldridge
April 8, 2008
Last week, many of you listened to ABC, CBS and NBC report on horrific educational failures in our major cities. Detroit, Michigan schools tallied a phenomenal 76 percent of their students as dropouts before graduating from high school. Chicago, Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Denver and many other cities feature from 50 to 60 percent dropout rates. Three years ago as reported by the Rocky Mountain News in "What Happened?" the dropout rate hit the ceiling at 67 percent in Denver Public Schools. Denver Post journalist, David Harsanyi addressed our national tragedy, but didn't dig far enough into the problem to reveal the source.
Harsanyi 'failed' as a journalist to study the 'core' reason for those failures across the nation. Harsanyi stands with thousands of American journalists that fail to connect the dots on the big ‘why’ of this national educational predicament. As a professional journalist and a teacher, I launch where Harsanyi dropped off. I'll try to 'teach' and mentor Harsanyi to do thorough journalistic work. To give you an example of why Denver suffers incredible educational consequences, we must investigate deeper. You may examine these facts as to that Rocky Mountain News report and my teaching experiences reveal: · Denver Public Schools and Colorado schools suffer over 20,000 to 30,000 illegal alien children along with an estimated 10,000 legal immigrant children at a cost of $654.1 million annually according to “Breaking the Piggy Bank: How Illegal Immigration Sends Schools into the Red” (Source: www.FAIRUS.ORG broken down by state). · DPS suffers 43 different languages that make it impossible to educate our children. (and theirs) ·One in five teachers quits or transfers out of DPS each nine month cycle because the chaos in the classroom exceeds their futility threshold.·
Classrooms suffer ethnic tension, racial bias and violence. ·Good and marginal Colorado students suffer as time and allocations go to illegal alien and legal immigrant children such as ESL classes.· Illegal alien children siphon funds from our kids via free breakfasts and lunch programs. We educate Mexico’s children in deference to our own as well as feed them. · We displace and dumb-down our courses to the lowest academic denominator that prevents Colorado students from pursuing a first class education paid for in taxes by their parents.· Up to half our Colorado students, because of a marginal high school education caused by the aforementioned points, must take remedial classes in order to ramp-up to academic requirements at the college level.
Please note that every American city suffers commensurate educational failures depending on the number of legal and illegal immigrants. Quality education cannot succeed by injecting 2.5 million legal and illegal immigrants into the United States annually. Those immigrants originate from third world countries where illiteracy dominates. Those examples illustrate the lose-lose situation for our Colorado and American students across this nation. As a teacher who taught in the ghetto (PC= inner city), I can assure you that our kids don’t stand a chance against illegal alien-filled classrooms.
You may extend that across the nation where an estimated four million illegal children and babies born here that received instant citizenship overwhelm our educational systems. Their parents remain illiterate in their own languages and illiterate in English. Thus, our educational systems cannot succeed. As you heard from the national reports, our educational system, once the envy of the world, fails stupendously. What does it mean in the long run? It means 1.2 million young people, as told by Brian Williams of NBC, hit the streets annually with little ability to read, write or speak correctly, i.e., functionally illiterate. It means millions of unwed mothers birthing babies that immediately go on welfare to further the cycle of poverty, illiteracy, despair and drugs. It means young men locked into the lowest rung on the employment ladder. Others digress into drugs, crime and violence. It means our prisons overflow with more hopeless lives. How can we solve our educational, linguistic and social dilemma? We must initiate a 10 year moratorium on all legal and illegal immigration. We need to stop the unrelenting and unending flow of over two million legal and illegal immigrants annually. Otherwise, we add more immigrant children that throws more gasoline onto our educational house that burns out of control. Here’s a question: what if we continue ignoring this national tragedy?
Journalist Mike Folkerth said, “Ignore what? The fact that this past January 1st, the first of 78 million Americans began the longest and largest retirement in history? And that this baby-boomer retirement line is 17 years long? That Medicare will pay out more than it takes in this year? The fact that America cannot mathematically grow out of what the Dallas Fed President reported last week is a $99.2 trillion unfunded debt? “Or maybe the fact that food prices including rice skyrocket as shortages appear around the world! Or that the US is running out of water? Or that oil reserves are diminishing and fuel costs are rising at an unprecedented rate? “So what’s so hard to ignore about a little immigration? After all, we can use the Calcutta, India and Mexico City master plan to deal with it.” Final note: I am looking for thinkers, writers and advocates to add to my monthly “Master Mind Think Tank.” In reality, our politicians create the problems that they campaign to solve. They never solve them; thus we spiral into deeper national chaos. I need new ideas and new creative thinkers to help me bring our most pressing issues onto the front burner: overpopulation in America caused by ceaseless legal and illegal immigration. As you know, the recent PEW report shows immigration adding 100 million people to our country in 30 years. We need to stop it and we need to stop it now. Join me in saving our civilization..."
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Posted by editor on Monday, April 07 @ 22:24:15 PDT (386 reads)
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| Former Congressman Bob Barr mulls Libertarian Presidential run |
by Ben Evans
Apr 4, 5:48 PM (ET)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Republican congressman Bob Barr is hinting strongly that he'll jump into the presidential race as a Libertarian.
Barr, 59, who left the GOP in 2006 over what he called bloated spending and civil liberties intrusions by the Bush administration, is expected to make an announcement Saturday at a Libertarian conference in Kansas City.
Should he run, Barr might sap votes from Republican John McCain, but whether it would be enough to alter the outcome of the presidential vote in any state was uncertain.
In a phone interview Friday, Barr wouldn't divulge his plans. But in response to widespread speculation that he will announce he is forming an exploratory committee, he said, "I do not intend to waste anybody's time that's there."
A former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, Barr served eight years as a Republican congressman from Georgia before losing his seat in 2002 after a redistricting.
When he announced he was joining the Libertarian Party in 2006, he said he had become disillusioned with Republicans' failure to cut government spending and with post-Sept. 11 erosions in civil liberty protections. He has been particularly critical of President Bush over the war in Iraq and says the government is endorsing torture and illegally spying on U.S. citizens.
He currently runs a lobbying and public affairs firm with offices in Atlanta and outside Washington.
His clients have included the American Civil Liberties Union and the Marijuana Policy Project, a group pushing Congress to allow medical marijuana use and to cut spending for what it says are failed anti-drug media campaigns aimed at young people. Barr also holds the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation and is a board member of the National Rifle Association.
In the 1990s, he became a darling of conservatives for his persistent attacks on President Clinton. He was among the first to press for impeaching Clinton and helped manage House Republicans' impeachment case before the Senate...
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Posted by editor on Saturday, April 05 @ 01:15:41 PST (383 reads)
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| That Fly on the Wall Could Be an American Cyborg Spy |
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
By Allison Barrie FoxNews.com A tobacco hawkmoth pupae is implanted with flexible plastic probes to allow it to be commanded through radio control. If you thought "Robocop" was a little far-fetched, think again. Cyborgs — especially cyborg insects — are making the spy technology scene.
The newest recruits in the War on Terror are high-tech "flies on the wall." Scientists in the U.S. are fitting insects — and rats, moths, pigeons, bulls and even sharks — with special implants so they can be remote-controlled and deployed for surveillance.
The creatures are installed with special electrodes, batteries and even video cameras. The goal is to create the ultimate cyborgs to serve the U.S. as undetectable super spies.
So how will cyborg rats be critical to national security?
They will be incredibly useful in search-and-rescue missions. Because they can identify specific scents, such as those of humans or explosives, cyborg rats are expected to be used to find people trapped under rubble or to sniff out bombs.
Cyborg rescue rats will be equipped with mini-backpacks to transmit to mission control messages such as "mission accomplished" or "target located." The most advanced generation will carry "rat cams" to give the cyborg commander a "rat's-eye view." They also will be trained to board a "ratmobile," so they easily can be transported to the site of their mission...
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Posted by editor on Wednesday, April 02 @ 21:32:53 PST (403 reads)
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