“I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” – Will Rogers

For some time congress has conducted an investigation into the firing of seven U.S. Attorneys by the Bush administration. Headlines have been made, subpoenas issued and criticism of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as well as President Bush is rampant by Democrats and their house organs in print. But what is this all about?

Will Rogers had it right when he said:

"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts."

The investigation into these firings would be comical if it wasn’t so insincere and serious.

Congressional Democrats have been chomping at the bit for years over the firing of these seven U.S. Attorneys because they see in this a "scandal" that can be exploited for political purposes. Especially newsworthy for Democrats and media allies is the possibility that instructions for the firings originated in the White House so they can blame President Bush for "the politicization of our prosecutorial system" (as per Senator Hillary Clinton).

It’s interesting that Hillary is leading this charge because she has personal experience with firing of U.S. Attorneys from her time as first lady to the morally corrupt President Bill Clinton. In the current investigation Hillary could be a prime witness along with that felon, Webster Hubbell who, in addition to being a former partner of Hillary in a Little Rock law firm, was Associate Attorney General under Janet Reno during the Clinton administration.

As everyone knows Mr. Hubbell was a former partner of Mrs. Clinton at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock and went to jail for mail fraud and tax evasion. While he was Associate Attorney General in the Justice Department, Janet Reno, his nominal superior, simultaneously fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys in March 1993; they were given 10 days to move out of their offices.

Democrats like to portray firing of all U.S. Attorneys at once by Clinton as something perfectly ordinary while the firings under Bush were "politically motivated": "All those people are routinely replaced," Clinton told reporters, "and I have not done anything differently." In fact however, the dismissals were unprecedented: Previous Presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, had both retained holdovers from the previous Administration and only replaced them gradually as their tenures expired. This allowed continuity of leadership within the U.S. Attorney offices during the transition. George Bush did the same thing when he came into office. In reality, Attorney General Gonzales only fired 7 of 93 U.S. Attorneys (7.53%).

The only involvement of the White House was an expression by the president that some of his political appointees are not doing their job by not aggressively addressing voter fraud. This was in reaction to concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not doing enough to investigate and prosecute fraud during recent elections. Among them was Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, who complained directly to the president. There was good reason to claim the fired U.S. Attorneys were not doing their job.

Take fired U.S. Attorney John McKay from Washington State for example. In 2004, the Governor's race was decided in favor of Democrat Christine Gregoire by 129 votes on a third recount. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other media outlets reported, some of the "voters" were deceased, others were registered in storage-rental facilities, and still others were convicted felons. More than 100 ballots were "discovered" in a Seattle warehouse. None of this constitutes proof that the election was stolen. But it should have been enough to prompt Mr. McKay, a Democrat, to investigate, something he declined to do, apparently on grounds that he had better things to do.

In New Mexico, another state in an election was decided by a thin margin, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias did establish a voter fraud task force in 2004. But it lasted all of 10 weeks before closing its doors, despite evidence of irregularities by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn. As Wall Street Journal John Fund reported at the time, Acorn's director Matt Henderson refused to answer questions in court about whether his group had illegally made copies of voter registration cards in the run-up to the 2004 election.

In the case of some of the other fired Attorneys, at least one seemed to be due to differences with the Administration about the death penalty; another firing dealt with questions about the Attorney's managerial skills. It is no surprise the dismissed Attorneys insisted their dismissals were unfair. However even if "unfair" it would not be the first time in history that a dismissed employee did not take kindly to his firing, nor would it be the first in which an employer sacked the wrong person. Obviously, the Justice Department and White House have botched the handling of this issue. But there is really no evidence that the Administration acted improperly or to protect some of its friends. If Democrats want to understand what a real abuse of power looks like, they can always ask Senator Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill.

Were these firings "politically motivated"; perhaps although only under the broadest definition of that term? However U.S. Attorneys are political appointees, not career civil servants. They likely have that status because it was understood that U.S. Attorneys are policy makers, assigned to not only carry out the law but respond to the orders of the Chief Executive of the United States.

If they were being fired because they were prosecuting the president’s friends, that would be wrong. If they were fired because they refused to prosecute the president’s enemies, that would be wrong. If the president or the Attorney General were "suggesting" that specific people be singled out for selective prosecution of crimes; that would also be wrong. However none of that was an issue in the firing of these 7 political appointees; they were let go simply for refusing to investigate and prosecute general voter fraud cases. Why can’t political appointees be fired for failing to do their job?

Looking back to the firing of all 93 U.S. Attorneys under the Bill Clinton administration; there were extraordinary circumstances indeed and politics were at play in the firings. At the time, Jay Stephens, then U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, was investigating then Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, and was "within 30 days" of making a decision on an indictment. Mr. Rostenkowski, who was directing Clinton's economic program through Congress, eventually went to jail on mail fraud charges and was later pardoned by Mr. Clinton.

Also at the time, allegations concerning some of the Clintons' Whitewater dealings were coming to a head. By dismissing all 93 U.S. Attorneys at once, the Clintons conveniently cleared the decks to appoint "Friend of Bill" Paula Casey as the U.S. Attorney for Little Rock. Ms. Casey never did bring any big Whitewater indictments, and she rejected information from another FOB, David Hale, on the business practices of the Arkansas insiders including Bill and Hillary Clinton. When it comes to "politicizing" the Justice Department, the Bush administration are rank amateurs compared to the Clintons.

Not many rise to the defense of President Bush in connection with the purported "firing scandal" but the Wall Street Journal did say:

"[T]hese are the same Democrats who didn’t raise a whimper when Bill Clinton’s Attorney General Janet Reno sacked all 93 U.S. attorneys in one unclean sweep upon taking office. Previous Presidents had kept the attorneys in place until they could replace each one. That was a more serious abuse than anything known about these Bush dismissals."

Do you think a Republican who said this could be elected president?

In his speech July 2 in Colorado Springs, Denver, media darling Barack Obama said:

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

What Obama meant:

“…we need a ‘civilian national security force’ that would be as powerful, strong and well-funded as the half-trillion dollar Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force …”

But as reported by Joseph Farah of WorldNet Daily Obama’s comments concerning a national police force are not included in published transcripts of his prepared remarks. Moreover, transcripts posted at both the Wall Street Journal and Denver Post do not have the critical passage and none of the major news media even mentioned Obama’s call for a national police force.

The transcripts have all had the above paragraph censored. But on the YouTube video you can hear the above comment.

The budget of the Defense Department is about $585 billion, over $200,000 per employee. The Heritage Foundation reports that spending on military personnel averages $70,000 per member, though it is not clear what that entails. If Obama is talking about funding his civilian national security corps at the same level as the military, he would need at least an additional $500 billion. That can buy a lot of clicking boots and Lugers and other wafen for his national Gestapo.

Joseph Farah on WorldNet Daily wrote:

"If we're going to create some kind of national police force as big, powerful and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces, isn't this rather a big deal. I thought Democrats generally believed the U.S. spent too much on the military. How is it possible their candidate is seeking to create some kind of massive but secret national police force that will be even bigger than the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force put together? Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? If not, why did he say it? What did he mean?"

I think Obama said exactly what he meant although as a slip of the tongue because this part of his agenda is not something to be expressed prior to the election. Obama has a socialist, near communist agenda, of government control and redistribution of wealth. A national police force would be important in achieving Obama’s goals and could be used to stifle opposition. If you think this is just conspiratorial thinking, reflect back on the days before Hitler’s rise to power in Germany.

I thought we already had the FBI, DEA, BATF, U.S. Marshals, TSA, postal inspectors, park rangers, Secret Service, state bureaus of investigation, state police, local police, sheriffs and constables, among others, to already handle domestic law enforcement; why do we need an additional national police force? The only reason would be to exercise authority the existing agencies do not have.

In all his life Obama has never managed an organization larger than a Senate staff, or that of a law school publication. And, he's never operated a for-profit business or been responsible for any profit center within one. Yet now too many Americans seem willing to entrust him with management of the largest business in the world; and with a national police force as well.

All Obama’s experience prior to his 123 days in the U.S. Senate has been in community organizing. Among other things he worked with ACORN, the extremist community organization whose rap sheet include perpetration of numerous acts of violence, such as the destructive actions in Philadelphia where numerous buildings were burned to the ground. His other experience includes assisting in the Meals-on-Wheels programs in Illinois, training programs for Vietnamese Refugees, assembling congregations and a synagogue in a mid-sized Texas town to provide emergency assistance to low-income citizens, and being an expert witness at a Texas Senate hearing when legislation forming the state's Commission on Human Rights was being drafted. Although some of these community action deeds may be commendable, on one level, they hardly constitute any sort of experience to justify his election to the country’s highest office, and any comparison to Senator John McCain’s experience and background is laughable.

Putting Obama in charge of a national police force is akin to giving a paper hanger (Hitler’s previous profession) an armed force funded with billions of dollars (to be commensurate with the existing military) and the power to enforce an agenda that will change every fabric of American freedom.

I do not trust Barack Obama in the least and this only adds to my mistrust. If it had been John McCain who had made this proposal, the press would have been all over it. Why does Obama get a pass from the media; because they want Obama elected president!

Do you Obama supporters still want him to be president after knowing about this part of his agenda? If you buy into Obama's call for "change", is this the kind of change you want?

We should not expect a public uprising against the Mullahs in Iran

Those of us who expect the people in Iran to overthrow their Shariah shackles are in for a great disappointment. Along with outright Gestapo-like intimidation, Iranian people have been drugged into submission.

According to “official surveys” reported in Iranian government newspapers, about six million Iranians, or nearly 10% of the total population of 65 million, can be classed as drug users. The Iran newspaper said that out of the total number of narcotics users, some 2.5 million people were actual addicts; but gave no further details; experts believe the number to be higher. Iran is on a major trafficking route for heroin, opium, morphine and cannabis from Afghanistan. In the past ten years Iran has experienced an explosion of narcotics use.

Unemployment in Iran is somewhere between 11 percent (the official level) and 25 percent (the estimate given by some outside economists). One in four Iranians lives in poverty, despite high oil prices and high oil revenue. Some in government say because of these dire economic conditions—particularly among those under thirty, who comprise 70 percent of Iran’s population—people turn to drugs. Bill Samii of RFE/RL in the Brown Journal of World Affairs writes “This grievance combines with general boredom and a lack of options.” The Washington Post says a government poll shows almost 80 percent of Iranians believe there is a direct link between unemployment and drug addiction.

Samii, who has written extensively about drug abuse in Iran, reports that young Iranians, restricted from drinking alcohol in pubs, are increasingly switching to synthetic “club drugs” like methamphetamines and LSD, in addition to cannabis, ecstasy, and crystal forms of concentrated heroin. Iran’s state welfare organization tells RFE/RL that an estimated 10% of the adult population is addicted to drugs, with 90,000 Iranians becoming drug addicts—most of them hooked on heroin or opium—each year. Government sources say “Drugs are symptomatic of a people’s social problems. In Iran it’s a conflict between pre-modern and modern Iranians.”

But is poverty and boredom the only real causes of increasing drug addition among the populace?

Officially, the economy, and especially the high rate of joblessness, tops the list of reasons given by Iranians for drug abuse. Unemployment stands at 14% officially and is estimated by outside experts to be in the 25% range. But in actuality it is the despair people, especially young people, feel about their prospects in a government controlled theocratic society depriving them of freedom that is responsible. In one report, a young man in the town of Islamshahr said “We’re all jobless. We have nothing to do. We try to do a little bit of business here and there and we get arrested as troublemakers. That’s why there are so many drug addicts here. It’s the despair.” Another addict said that he had been in combat for forty months during the Iran-Iraq War, but when he returned the regime abandoned him. He supported his drug habit with odd jobs and charity, and he warned, “The youth are becoming drug addicts. We have no freedom, no jobs, nowhere to go and have fun. So we are all addicts.”

The availability of drugs not being discouraged by the government also has an impact. In the words of an individual who deals with addiction treatment and prevention at one Welfare Organization in Iran, “the purchase of heroin has become easier than the purchase of a bottle of milk. To buy bread, we are forced to wait in a line for a long time, but to purchase drugs, no problem exists.”

While a war veteran was describing the lack of alternatives to taking or dealing drugs said that the local park only has four trees, an opium addict added “Instead of trees in our parks, all you find are drug dealers.”

There are also other factors contributing to drug abuse in Iran. A member of parliament who is also secretary of the Anti-drugs Society attributed drug abuse to the way individuals are treated in society: “In our society, human beings are not looked upon with dignity and respect, otherwise people who are socially accepted would not turn to drugs.”

Of course, the government answer to increasing drug use cannot admit the problem is a government controlled society that denies freedom to its people so they have to attribute the drug problem to poverty; ironically for which they are also responsible. Naturally too western culture of free countries has to be blamed as well.

A member of the theocratic parliament explained that culture is behind the demand for drugs: “Today, the youth are bored with what they have and wish for things they haven’t got. This is rooted in Western culture and should be confronted with the use of cultural tools.” This explanation and others also are the kinds of reasons one expects to hear from Iranian officials. One cleric said that weak religious faith is the main reason why people are attracted to drugs. Another cleric said that Iran’s enemies are encouraging the youth to consume drugs (but it is the Iranian government that is responsible for the ease with which drugs are available).

Drug rehabilitation programs are available but people are reluctant to use them because of the stigma associated with being an admitted drug addict. Moreover, many who quit using drugs resume their addictions because of the country’s bleak realities and because of the lack of alternatives. Ex-addicts are rejected by their families and cannot get good jobs if they have served prison time, even though work centers have been created for them. As a result, they fall back in with drug users. A psychiatrist who works with addicts concurred that many who supposedly are cured resume their habits, because the focus is on curing addiction rather than on what causes addiction. To acknowledge the real reason for drug addiction requires implied admission that the theocratic system of freedom deprivation is the root cause.

It is true that the government in Iran makes a show of trying to halt the flow of drugs into the country and punishes seriously some found to sell or distribute drugs but this is window dressing to show the world that Iran cares about the drug blight on its people. The reality is that drug addiction is not discouraged because it is useful to keep the population under control. Addicts are not likely to take up arms to overthrow the theocratic regime.

However even in the area of seeming attempts to thwart entry of drugs the government is woefully inadequate,

In 1995 the U.S. State Department described “intermittent reports that drug-related corruption is endemic…extensive bribing of border guards…traffickers are sometimes set free upon payment of a bribe.” A police commander later admitted, “Traffickers sometimes persuade police personnel to take bribes. In the province so far this year [March 1999-January 2000] there have been such cases.” A parliamentary deputy from the southeastern town of Minab said that the local Law Enforcement Forces “have put the city’s people under heavy pressure, beat them, and kill them in the name of fighting drug trafficking. Further, the [police] are taking bribes, while people who suffer from hunger and poverty are accused of illicit drug trade.” A Western journalist noted that official reports do not mention corruption, while in Tehran “street dealers pay police patrols $15 a day to turn a blind eye.” “Security officials are poorly paid. They can earn finders’ fees for confiscating narcotics, but smugglers can offer them much more money. The chief of police specifically mentioned the problem of low salaries when he complained about inadequate financial resources for drug interdiction.”

Does this sound like a government serious about preventing introduction of drugs and easy access to drugs in the country? I don’t think so; it sounds to me like what it is; another tool for Islamists to use to control the population and the state for Allah (and for themselves).

If Barack Obama had a truthful political theme, it would be “Elect me and I will raise your taxes.”

If you believe as I do that the tax hikes proposed by Barack Obama and Democrats are bad for the country, then we are in good company.

No less an authority than Nobel Prize winner and Columbia University economist Robert Mundell, a principal contributor to the creation of the euro, says that ending the Bush tax cuts — as proposed by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama — would cause "a big recession, a nosedive."

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mundell said, "the most important thing that could be done with respect to tax rates is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent." Mundell, a recognized expert in many areas of economics including the theory that low taxes stimulate an economy, was also involved in the Reagan tax-cut revolution.

During the Reagan years tax cuts were a product of so-called "supply-side economics" approach to encouraging economic growth — Mundell says they were "as important to the United States as the creation of the euro was to Europe — a fundamental change."

Tax rates in the United States fluctuated wildly throughout the 20th century. The first income tax rate, which took an amendment to the constitution to establish, was 3% in 1913; it went up to 60% during World War I, and ultimately sky rocketed to a top rate of 92.5% during World War II.

After taxes were cut to 28% under Reagan, the economy began to boom and recover from the horrifying Carter years. However, the tax rate was then increased up to almost 40% percent during the Clinton administration. Taxes were cut by President George W. Bush to the dismay and anguish of Democrats in government.

Mundell says "Making the Bush tax cuts permanent would eliminate economic uncertainty and would be more important than pushing for a further cut ... in the income tax rates." Mundell also says that adding tax increases to the long list of financial woes afflicting the U.S. and global economies would be economically destructive; "the big issue economically ... is what's going to happen to taxes." Obviously not of concern to Democrats, and not honestly reported by the news media, eliminating the Bush tax cuts and restoring previous tax rates and rules, will amount to the largest tax increase in history.

Abruptly raising taxes could be "lethal," according to Mundell. "This would be devastating to the world economy, to the United States, and it would be, I think, political suicide," says Mundell.

An ideal rate, according to Mundell, would be a 30% ceiling on marginal rates, which he advocates. That would be 5 percent lower than the current 35 percent top rate. To further stimulate the economy, Mundell would cut the corporate tax rate to 25 percent. "It could be even lower." However although in my opinion businesses must pay taxes, placing too high a tax burden on business does two things: causes some businesses to close down and increases costs to consumers - neither of which are good for the economy.

Although After Jimmy Carter and Yassir Arafat awards of Nobel Prizes I don’t put much value on the award, Nobel Prize winner Robert Mendel’s track record shows he does know about economics and his opinions carry more weight.

Of course, we cannot expect the Democrats to relent on increasing taxes while in power and electing Barack Obama president will make higher taxes inevitable.

Time to take another look at Islam and Shariah Banking

With false prophet Barack Obama in the Middle East acting presidential, it’s time to consider again what we, the free people of the world, can expect if through Obama’s appeasement approach to solving Middle East problems, Islam extends its reach around the globe.

With Islam comes Shariah law. This is the framework or rules and regulations enforced in Islamic theocracies as "law." Examples of authoritarian Shariah law include: requirement of women to obtain permission from husbands for daily freedoms; beating of disobedient woman and girls; execution of homosexuals; engagement of polygamy and forced child marriages; the testimony of four male witnesses to prove rape; honor killings of those, principally women, who have dishonored the family; death to apostate Muslims who chose to leave Islam; inferior status of non-Muslims, and capital punishment for those who "slander Islam." This is what Islam replaces freedom with wherever Muslims succeed in taking over – Shariah law at its finest absurdity.

If you realize what Islam and Shariah law is all about; it is virtually impossible for western minds to comprehend why anyone would be attracted to an Islamic system of life, especially women.

Whoever says Islam is a religion is totally blind to the obvious or is a sympathizer. Islam is a complete authoritarian government-political-business-control enterprise whose only object is total subjugation of mankind and the destruction of western civilization. They invade the host country as a virus by exploiting the host’s freedom of speech, religion, political correctness, and laws and eventually grow to demand Shariah law and Shariah banking. As we appease Muslims and accede to their demands we will see the decline of western civilization. The western world may have started out as Neanderthals but learned from experience and developed into societies of rights, duties and obligations to themselves and one another – Islam and Muslims have remained the same since that day 1,500 years ago when Mohammed camped out in the desert and worked out how to control the world.

Understanding Shariah law is essential to understanding the dangers of Shariah-compliant finance. Shariah law is Islamic law dating back to the 7th century and is today the law of the land in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, UAE and other Islamic countries, and the law under which the Taliban operates. Some recent polls seem to indicate that only 10-15% of Muslims worldwide want to live under this all-encompassing archaic system of Islamic jurisprudence that covers all aspects of a Muslim’s life including religious, social, political, and military obligations. However in Islamic countries the state is so powerful that even modern Muslims comprising 85-90% of worldwide Muslims who prefer not to practice some of the Shariah law mandates are intimidated and forced to accept whatever the Islamic government requires of the people; an example may be Iran whose population is said to want to live a more western lifestyle. Nonetheless, with a current world population of about 1.5 billion Muslims, 10-15% of hardcore Islamists translates into a huge pool of Jihadist recruits and supporters - approximately 150 - 225 million Muslims.

Shariah Financing and Shariah Banks has become a growing vehicle to use western money to finance terrorism and expansion of Islam. Shariah Finance is dangerous because Shariah investments are being used as a place for the Taliban, Iran and other Shariah regimes to invest their petrodollars.

Here is a statement of the problem as provided by American Congress for Truth:

"Terror Financing Mechanism: SCF (Sharia Compliant Banks) as monitored by paid Shariah law advisors to U.S. banking institutions must "purify" certain return on investment (ROI) dollars that do not meet Shariah law standards. This money must be donated to Islamic charities - including some that promote Jihad and support suicide bombing. Investment disclosures state that these sums can be as high as 6% of profits of investments. With $800 billion already in SCF assets, the potential for billions of dollars to be siphoned off for terrorism is real. This would be a serious criminal violation of U.S. law."

Shariah law authorities, some of whom are now being paid handsomely by Barclays, Dow Jones, Standard & Poors, HSBC, Citibank, Merrill Lynch, Deutschebank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Credit Suisse and others, have the power to dictate Shariah compliance as deemed by "scholarly consensus" on matters of finance, family, penal law, apostasy, and war.

U.S. investment banks are essentially being money managers for regimes who want to build building nuclear weapons and those providing terrorists with weaponry used for killing American soldiers. The Taliban is reported in the news to be on the rise in Pakistan, funded by Shariah investment profits and embedded donations to "Shariah Islamic Charities." As these regimes gain legitimacy in our banking system and their net worth increases, the network of extremism and terrorism grows. One sad example from the past: September 11th attacks were funded by Shariah Banks which provided profits to Al-Qaeda. Evidence of this was presented in a court in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on behalf of Cantor Fitzgerald, Ace, Allstate, Chubb and other life insurance companies, which paid insurance benefits to over 3000 widows, widowers or surviving family members.

Shariah Law is being forced upon and/or tolerated in Europe at a rapid pace, especially in Great Britain. The correlation between Shariah expansion with Shariah Finance is clear: Shariah Finance has strong market share and acceptance in Great Britain, and now the British are dealing with serious issues of whether or not to accept Shariah Law over British Law. The consequences will be the same in America if we don’t stand guard to prevent Shariah financing from expanding and American banks from accepting Muslim standards in order to become Shariah compliant – greed is a strong motivation.

We in the West, particularly in the U.S., are indirectly financing the enemy in the "War on Terrorism." What I didn’t realize was the large number of banks; including huge international banks having names I recognized, are on the list of Shariah compliant banks. Having accounts or even just having a credit card associated with one of these banks is helping the terrorists.

For a list of Shariah compliant banks, send your request to gioia@gte.net.

Is anyone listening to what Obama says?

It is incredible and disgustingly sad at the same time that the American people are not completely turned off by this guy even though some of Obama’s comments are actually reported in the main stream press.

While his trip to Europe is viewed as the second coming, Obama’s stance on foreign policy issues of importance go largely unabsorbed by infertile minds.

For example, in acknowledging the devastating blow inflicted upon the United States on 9/11, Obama said the 9-11 attacks were carried out because of al Qaeda’s lack of "empathy" for the suffering of others. Can you imagine, these ruthless sub-humans have a lack of "empathy" which is the reason why they kill innocents, chop off heads and sacrifice children’s’ lives?

Messiah Obama also said after 9/11 that al Qaeda’s terrorist ideology "grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair." In essence, we are responsible for the suicide killing of thousands of Americans on U.S. soil because we have done nothing to alleviate "poverty", "helplessness" and "despair" of the terrorist Cretans. The fact that Islamists want to take over the world for a future Caliphate, and are willing to kill and do anything else they can think of to achieve that goal, is unknown to Obama – or he chooses to ignore it.

WorldNet Daily reminds us "Obama went on to imply the September 11th attacks were in part a result of U.S. policy, lecturing the American military to minimize civilian casualties in the Middle East and urging action opposing ‘bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle-Eastern descent’."

"Even as I hope for some measure of peace and comfort to the bereaved families, I must also hope that we, as a nation, draw some measure of wisdom from this tragedy,’ Obama wrote in a piece about 9-11 published on Sept. 19, 2001, in Chicago's Hyde Park Herald."

Is this the person Americans want to lead the nation as we battle for survival against an implacable enemy bent on killing and destroying our country?

If you are still not convinced we should not place our trust in Obama, here is more of the liberal drivel the Democrat presidential candidate spews on us:

"We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity or suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence; it may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics."

"Most often, though, it grows out a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."

"We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad. We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle-Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe – children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and within our own shores."

As like other liberals, Obama believes that our enemies can be dissuaded from killing innocent people and inciting resurrection where ever possible by understanding "the root causes" of their actions and treating them as poor innocents who lacked love as children while they lived in poverty "across the globe". Without doubt this thinking is behind Obama’s desire to smoke the peace pipe with Iranian thugs and maybe hold a love-in "without preconditions" so they may succumb to his messianic message of "change". Diplomacy will somehow change the hearts and minds of those who would slit his throat without any qualm under different circumstances.

Thank God for the internet; only there is the truth available since the main stream press doesn’t want Americans to know the character and beliefs of the person chosen to be the next U.S. president. We got to see the cover of the New Yorker magazine which aptly described the next first couple; Michelle Obama in terrorist fatigues and AK-47, the future president dressed as a Muslim, the American flag burning in the background and a picture of the other "Osama" (bin Laden) hanging on the wall in the oval office. Of course this was not editorial comment by the liberal magazine; it just accidentally described the true nature of these two and their arrogance about the intellect of the folks.

Michelle Malkin in her usual excellent style wrote in National Review Online:

"Is this man for real? Osama bin Laden’s murderous legions are plenty able to 'imagine' the 'suffering of others.' Go watch an al-Qaeda beheading snuff video. Just Google it or surf You Tube. Imagining the suffering of infidels is covered amply in basic Jihadi Training 101."

Robert Spencer, director of the Jihad Watch website, also had it right:

"What Obama could not, and apparently cannot, allow himself to do is to investigate the nature of Islam, to find out what it teaches about Believers and Infidels. I can help out a bit. I can tell him, right now, right here, that Islam is based on a clear division of the universe between Believers and Infidels."

Abe Greenwald in Commentary Magazine wrote, "[P]overty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.' Strange, considering our attackers were wealthy and educated, connected and ecstatic. You know, if Obama is going to keep ex-terrorists around, he should at least utilize them. He could have asked Bill Ayers, 'Bill, did your 'failure of empathy' stem from your impoverished upbringing as the son of the CEO of Commonwealth Edison?"

Last year WorldNet Daily conducted an interview with am unsuccessful suicide bomber and inquired if the terrorist act he wanted to commit was due to his desperation out of living in poor conditions. No that was not the case said the disciple of jihad; he was persuaded to do this to "satisfy Allah and his instructions. No money interests, nothing. No brainwash, no pressure; it is my decision."

"[It] became stronger when I understood what status I will have in heaven if I scarify myself for Allah."

When asked about media reporting Palestinian suicide attackers are acting in response to occupation or poor living conditions, the defender of Allah said those media claims are "lies" and "Israeli propaganda."

Wakeup America! We must not put Barack Hussein Obama in the Whitehouse; our lives and the life of the country as we know it is in the balance.

The truth about the Muslim Brotherhood

Credo of the Muslim Brotherhood:

"Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Quran is our law.
Jihad is our way. Dying in the service of Allah is our highest hope".

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded as an Islamic movement in the Egyptian town of Isma'iliyaa in March 1928 by a school teacher Hassan al-Banna. Virtually all of the Sunni terrorist groups - including al Qaeda, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad - are derived from the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood's goal has been to promote the implementation of Shari'ah (Islamic law derived from the Quran and the Sunnah).

In early years, the Brotherhood focused on education and charity but it evolved into politics. The Muslim Brotherhood is still a major player in Egyptian politics but, more importantly, it is an inspiration for Muslims everywhere. The Brotherhood is so popular that it grew from about 800 members in 1936, to over 2 million in 1948; and is now a pervasive international Sunni Islamist movement, with covert and overt branches in over 70 countries and numbering in many, many millions.

Since its founding, the Muslim Brotherhood has openly sought to reassert Islam through the establishment of Sunni Islamic governments that will rule according to the strict and specific tenets of Sharia Law.

The Moslem Brotherhood has become a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times. It represents itself to Muslims over the world as having the most accurate understanding, comprehension and embrace of all Islamic concepts of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgment, the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam. In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood purports to make the rules for Muslims to follow wherever they are. Its tentacles extend throughout the Middle East and Africa – into almost any country with a Muslim population, including the United States. It is important to know that all Islamic terrorist groups have roots in the Muslim Brotherhood.


In the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood founded the terrorist organization Hamas as a Palestinian chapter. Article II of the Hamas charter states: The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine.

To the Brotherhood, the correct primary goal of human civilization is the unification of all countries under the banner of the Caliphate - or universal Islamic state. According to al-Banna, the Brotherhood founder, the Caliphate must govern all lands that were at one time under the control of Muslims. He stated:

"We want the Islamic flag to be hoisted once again on high, fluttering in the wind, in all those lands that have had the good fortune to harbor Islam for a certain period of time and where the muzzein's call sounded in the takbirs and the tahlis."

"The Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea must once again become Muslim seas, as they once were. [After this] is accomplished, the Caliphate is to be expanded to cover the entire globe, erasing national boundaries under the flag of Islam."

Jihad is at the center of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology. In a booklet entitled, "Jihad" and in other works, al-Banna defines jihad as violent warfare against non-Muslims to establish Islam as dominant across the entire world. He wrote:

"Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded. Allah has ascribed great importance to jihad and has made the reward of the martyrs and fighters in His way a splendid one. Only those who have acted similarly and who have modeled themselves upon the martyrs in their performance of jihad can join them in this reward."

These views being promulgated to Islamic masses by the Brotherhood are derived from the Quran and Hadith, which al-Banna quotes extensively. The quotes define jihad as the obligatory nature of jihad. On the specific subject of "fighting with People of the Book [Jews and Christians]," al-Banna quotes Quran 9:29:

"Fight against those who believe not in Allah nor in his Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the Religion of Truth (i.e. Islam), from among the People of the Book, until they pay the jizya [poll tax] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

The Muslim Brotherhood founder al-Banna, also quotes a Hanafi scholar:

"Jihad linguistically means to exert one's utmost effort in word and action; in the Sharee'ah it is the fighting of the unbelievers, and involves all possible efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the enemies of Islam including beating them, plundering their wealth, destroying their places of worship and smashing their idols."

Islam allows jihad and permits war until the following Qur'anic verse is fulfilled:

"We will show them Our signs in the universe, and in their own selves, until it becomes manifest to them that this (the Qur'an) is the truth" (Surat al-Fussilat (41), ayah 53

The Muslim Brotherhood is behind all Islamic terrorism in the world today but this goes largely unacknowledged by most Americans and others in the western world; its credo quoted above says it all. They want to wage offensive jihad "in order to liberate the world from the servitude of man-made law and governance." The Brotherhood uses activism, mass communication and sophisticated schemes to build a large support base within the lower class and professional elements of society. By using existing support networks built around mosques, welfare associations, neighborhood groups and the prison population, the Brotherhood is able to effectively educate and indoctrinate people in Islam.

The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to restore the historical Caliphate and then expand its authority over the entire world by dismantling all non-Islamic governments. The Brotherhood aims to accomplish this through a combination of warfare - both violent and political. They provide the ideological model for almost all modern Sunni Islamic terrorist groups.

Richard Clarke, - the chief counterterrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council under Presidents Clinton and Bush told a Senate committee in 2003 - when discussing Hamas, Al Qaeda, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad - that "The common link here is the extremist Muslim Brotherhood - all of these organizations are descendants of the membership and ideology of the Muslim Brothers."

The leadership of Al Qaeda, from Osama bin Laden to his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed all were influenced by Muslim Brotherhood ideology. In fact, al-Zawahiri was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood as a young man, but according to Steve Emerson: "he broke with them because he thought the Brotherhood was neglecting jihad in favor of participating in elections; for him the Brotherhood was not violent enough."

Americans tend to be unaware of the threat because radical Islam as preached by the Muslim Brotherhood comes in a multitude of forms and uses a variety of tactics and strategies. Because of this flexibility, internal security is the prime threat to our country. While the government focuses on the external threat, the internal threat is overlooked.

For a long time trained Islamists have been operating successfully and with significant effect in our country using our own freedoms against us. We see this in the endless use of political correctness from claims of racism to highly charged litigation; all for the purpose of lessening objection to Muslim lifestyles and practices which are contrary to the American culture and laws. The nature and scope of this growing and complex internal threat is rarely addressed in public forums.

American-based Islamists and Islamic groups increasingly rely on Political Action to reduce government capability to uncover and dismantle terrorist cells and support mechanisms. They take advantage of our failure at all levels - from the individual to the government - to act against and counter their Political Action activities intended to achieve a radical Islam agenda. As Steve Emerson says "our open society is used as both a sword and shield by Muslims in this ideological warfare."

How many times have you heard the woeful exclamation by our liberals; "Why do they hate us?" Although the answer is obvious: too many of us in and out of government fail to accept the reality that Islamists do not hate us because of the freedoms we enjoy or because we are wealthy and powerful; they don’t even hate us because of our support of Israel. They hate us because we are the main obstacle to achieving their vision of a global caliphate under Sharia law. Since they know they cannot beat us with armed or economic warfare, or even with terrorism, they have adopted a strategy of political warfare to which our free society lends itself. They know, although we may not be able to be destroyed from without, if they are patient and clever we will self destruct from within.

Behind all this are the masters of Islamic warfare: the Muslim Brotherhood.

Did you ever wonder why we are called “The United States?”

Did you ever wonder why we are called "The United States of America"; I didn’t think about it until I read an article by Jeff Jacoby for the Boston Globe.

We could have been called the United People of America, many of the worlds dictatorships in fact refer to themselves as "The Peoples Republic" of this or that or by similar mislabels. No, instead the founders created a country where an assembly of individual states is brought together under one federal government. The intention was clearly that the national government only be given limited powers because history up to that time had numerous examples of the evils an overpowering central government, and the succeeding centuries bore out this concern.

For the founders the best way to avoid destruction of freedom was to minimize authority of the national government in favor of state’s rights. The reason is that it was expected the people would be better able to have their voices heard at the state level than at the national government far away in the capital city. Of course they had no way of knowing this immensely important aspect of government would be destroyed by an overbearing congress and an uncontrolled judiciary. They expected those inuring to positions in the legislature and the judiciary would be honorable and would practice self restraint; in this they were unfortunately most naive.

The founders also contrived a new way of selecting those who would represent the people. In addition to limiting the national government, they knew it was also very important to prevent "tyranny of the majority." The framers of the Constitution did not believe that political contests should be decided by majority rule. They rejected "pure democracy," as James Madison explained in Federalist No. 10. In his article Jeff Jacoby wrote: "They knew that with ‘nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual, blind reliance on majority rule can become as great a menace to liberty as any king or dictator". As Jeff Jacoby says "the term ‘tyranny of the majority’ was coined for good reason".

The founders went to great lengths to prevent popular majorities from getting their way too easily and dominating the federal government unreasonably. They did not concentrate unlimited power in any single branch of government or in the voters. They divided authority among the three branches of the federal government, and subdivided the legislative branch into two chambers; while reserving all powers not expressly given to the federal government to the states.

One bed rock provision in the constitution does a great deal to try and avoid tyranny by the majority; the creation of the Electoral College for the election of the president and vice president.

More than 700 constitutional amendments to abolish or alter the Electoral College have been proposed during the last two hundred years. None has ever come close to being adopted which indicates that the present system is acceptable to the country.

However to put this in perspective, in only four of the nation's 54 presidential elections since 1789 has the electoral vote winner not been the candidate who won the popular vote. Moreover, in each case the margin separating the candidates has been very small. (George W. Bush won the presidential election in 2000 in the Electoral College but lost the national popular vote by about 500,000 votes, which was just one-half of one percent of the more than 105 million votes cast.)

Ironically the Senate itself eschews the one-person-one-vote rule. States are represented in the Electoral College roughly in proportion to their population with each state having the same number of electors as it has members of Congress; from just three for the smallest states (and the District of Columbia) to 55 for California. But the founders did this intentionally; they wanted all states to be equal in the senate. This means all voters are not equal; for example, California, with over 14 million registered voters is entitled to the same number of senators as Wyoming which has 265,000 voters. By doing the arithmetic, one voter in Wyoming is 53 times as influential as one voter in California. This may seem unfair to some but this was exactly what the founders had in mind so that just a few large states would not dominate the federal government over smaller states.

The people who wrote and approved the constitution believed that national elections should not be decided by majority rule as in a true "democracy."

James Madison explained (in Federalist 10) that regarding "Pure democracy," they knew that with "nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual, blind ‘majoritarianism’ can become a menace to liberty the same as a king or dictator". "Tyranny of the majority" was of great concern.

To avoid such tyranny, the founders went to great lengths to prevent popular majorities from easily dictating to the minority; so unlimited power was not invested in a single branch of government or in majority of voters. Authority was divided among the three branches of the federal government with the legislative branch being subdivided into two chambers, and all powers not expressly given to congress were reserved to the states.

The founders wanted to preserve the most important role in the country for the states and not the federal government. They did this by establishing the Electoral College. Thus, the country was named "United States of America" to reflect the fundamental limitation of the federal government; that was their deliberate intention. Consequently we are a nation of states having distinct identities and interests, not of autonomous individuals. The founders took great pains to protect the rights of states. Most Americans today either never learned or forgot that the states created the federal government; not the other way around.

Since democratic elections take place in each state, the majority of voting citizens in each state choose the electors to vote there will in the Electoral College. Therefore, elements of democracy are preserved in the Electoral College system.

The losers of the four elections in our history who achieved a national majority vote may complain, but by and large the system works and tyranny by majority is avoided. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 68 "If the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent."

Is it time to mourn for Israel?

Once upon a time there was an Israel that was a power in the Middle East feared by its uncivilized neighbors; an Israel with leadership and countrymen who fought bravely to maintain an oasis of freedom in a desert of hostility and human debris. Now it appears the oasis is running dry and the people have lost their desire to remain staunch in the face of an increasing threat to their existence.

The latest outrage, among many under the present leadership, is the release from prison of a heinous murderer in exchange for two boxes of bones of Israeli soldiers whose deaths remain un-avenged. There was a time when the country of the dead soldiers would not settle for boxes of bones, it would have somehow taken action to recover the soldiers alive and give a hundred eyes for an eye in the process. But after the Israeli version of “the greatest generation” left this world, their heirs are willing to settle for bones instead of respect.

For many years Israel has exchanged huge numbers of enemies caught while killing or attempting to kill Israelis for far fewer numbers of men and women soldiers snared by Muslims. However this math was justified in terms of human worth since one Israeli is of much greater value than the vermin for which they were traded; who wouldn’t trade one life for a nest of vipers or insects? But the latest “prisoner exchange” is not a trade of vermin for people, it is for the remains, albeit honored remains, for the dredge of society.

Samir Kuntar and four other terrorists were released from jail to a military facility near Rosh Hanikra recently in this exchange for the Israeli' soldiers bones. Samir Kuntar is a child-murderer of the worse kind. He participated in an attack on an Israeli family in 1979, and was convicted later that year of murdering three Israelis: an Israeli policeman, a 31 year-old man, and his 4-year-old daughter. The man's 2 year-old daughter suffocated as her mother tried to quiet her crying. The 4-year-old was killed by having her head bashed in with the butt of a rifle by Kuntar. Kuntar received four life imprisonment sentences; he should have been hanged by his balls instead. Now he is a free man and no doubt will participate in still more vicious killing of Israelis, he said as much.

After the prisoner exchange deal with Hezbollah which included the release of Kuntar, reaction among the remaining real Israeli mench was less complacent than the Israeli government responsible for the deal. Shlomo Goldwasser, father of Ehud Goldwasser one of the soldiers whose bones were released, had defiant words for those who killed his son. "If Hezbollah’s great achievement is the release of Kuntar, who is nothing but a repulsive murderer, then I pity them."

Another family member of a terror victim, the mother of one of Samir Kuntar's four victims, expressed outrage at the release her son's killer and other murderers, calling it a "disgrace."

Nina Keren, mother of Dani Haran, one of the four Jewish victims of Kuntar's 1979 cross-border murder spree, said that she "could not stop crying" when she heard the news that her son's killer will be freed. Keren said that releasing terrorists with blood on their hands is a "big mistake", warning reporters that Samir Kuntar will kill more Jews once he is released back into Lebanon, echoing Kuntar's own vow to resume his terrorist activities against Israelis once freed.

There have been a few who have recognized the swap for what it is; including top military and intelligence officials who urged Prime Minister Olmert's cabinet to reject the deal, considering it a big mistake for Israel.

A backlash against the prisoner release was also expressed by many in the Knesset. MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud) condemned the release of Kuntar and the other terrorists, calling it a "tragedy.”

"This is a tragic end for the families [of the soldiers], and it is also a very bad end for Israel's fight against terrorism," said Steinitz. The celebrations of the terrorist organizations in Lebanon - and they have reason for celebration - conclude two years of a failed Israeli battle against terrorism."

Steinitz was being honest when he also cited the growing strength of Hezbollah as a factor in the terror group's ability to manipulate Israeli policymaking. "Hezbollah has come out of these two years stronger military and stronger politically. With our help, Hezbollah has misled us for two years regarding the condition of the abducted soldiers, as to whether they are dead or alive."

"We have become the only country in the West and perhaps in the entire world, which is ready to release terrorist murderers in exchange for bodies and body parts," he remarked. "This is a dangerous precedent… and I must say that the entire country has derailed."

Steinitz also indicted the Israeli press for contributing to national derailment and charged: "The media has a part in this."

"Even in difficult situations, there remain principles. And our leadership…must lead, and not be led by the public or by the media, and not even by the families [of the POW's]. And when you lead, there are long term factors of national security to be taken into consideration."

Steimetz concluded "A prize was awarded today to terrorism. It reflects a general policy of surrender to Hezbollah and to Hamas in Gaza. We have given Hamas a de facto authorization to continue to rearm and build itself into a Hezbollah II in Gaza."

Former Defense Minister Moshe Arens echoed the anti-swap deal sentiment, condemning the decision to release the terrorists as a "complete lack of judgment" and calling the Olmert cabinet's deal a "mistake that is forbidden to make," as it encourages the enemy to kidnap more soldiers.

While Israel mourns a painful homecoming for its dead soldiers amid many protests over the release of living and unrepentant terrorists, the enemies of the Jewish state are cheering what they see as a clear victory over Israel.

The Lebanese government plans to hold a state ceremony in Beirut honoring the terrorists about to be released by Israel, including those who murdered innocent Israeli civilians.

One Israeli newspaper reported: “In the ceremony in the Lebanese capital, Prime Minister Fouad Saniora and President Michel Suleiman will officially greet the freed operatives, ahead of a Hezbollah event celebrating what the terror group declares is an Israeli admission of defeat.”

Hezbollah boasted about the prisoner swap in a report from the AP. The terrorist group who kidnapped and killed several IDF soldiers boldly announced that Israel's approval of the swap deal is an official admission of defeat by the Jewish state. In Gaza, Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh congratulated Samir Kuntar on his impending release from Israeli prison and his triumphant return to Lebanon. Haniyeh praised "the great victory the resistance has had, which proved the righteousness of our ways," and said his own terrorist organization would likewise remain loyal to its operatives jailed in Israel as well.

Realistically, this is a hint that Hamas has been emboldened by the release to kidnap more IDF soldiers; and the cycle of exchanging bones for brutal murderers will continue.

Democrats playing (bad) politics with oil

Despite gasoline priced at well over $4.00 a gallon over most of the country, and the public calling for "drill now", Democrats continue to display a degree of obstinacy unparalleled in modern politics. This may be very bad for the country but it is good for their political opponents.

President Bush has finally cancelled the Executive ban on oil drilling while calling for congress to rescind the congressional ban. Until he took this action any criticism of congress’ failure to act sounded a bit hollow. Now however it is only congress that stands in the way of efforts to extract oil from the continental shelf just as Cubans and Chinese are doing. If we add to world oil supplies, the price will go down as supply is potentially able to meet or exceed demand. In fact, some experts think merely authorizing drilling and by so doing indicating a commitment to increase oil supplies in the near future, the price of oil will go down and with it the price of gasoline at the pump.

So what is the problem and who is holding up this sensible action, why Democrat leaders in the House and Senate, that’s who?

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this week that he would not allow a vote on an amendment giving states new authority to seek oil off their coasts when he brings a Democratic energy bill to the floor later this month. Reid criticized President Bush’s announcement earlier in the day to rescind a longstanding executive order banning offshore oil drilling, saying it was a gift to the oil companies that are not exploring for oil in 68 millions of acres available to them.

There are many millions of acres available to oil companies to drill for oil but any sensible person would consider why there has been no drilling there before making it a condition precedent to rescinding the ban on ocean drilling. Would oil companies deliberately refrain from getting oil where they could? Isn’t it logical to assume that oil companies have not taken action on these tracts because it was not cost effective to do so? There are reports that these areas either do not contain oil or the cost of extraction is too great to be commercially viable. Only those with some nefarious agenda would try to convince the public that oil companies are intentionally foreclosing themselves from an opportunity to obtain more oil, especially at today’s prices.

Despite calls from Republicans in the Senate, and President Bush, to rescind a congressional moratorium prohibiting the practices and give states the option to decide whether to allow drilling off their coasts, Senate Democrats refused.

"We want oil and gas companies to drill on the leases they’ve been given," Reid said. He also wants oil companies to report to Congress their activities on their leased tracts.

It was not long ago that Senator Reid and other senate Democrats had oil company executives before committee hearings to explain why oil prices are so high and expected them to say it was their fault. The news media as might be expected jumped on the band wagon blaming oil companies for the situation – and why not, they all received the memo from the Democrat Party with marching orders about this. However, as the facts came out, largely due to the internet and conservative talk show hosts, the argument of oil company responsibility became increasingly implausible.

This of course this then required Democrats to find another scapegoat to blame so that attention would be distracted from for their part in causing high oil prices; enter the "speculators."

Democrats blame market speculators on oil industry futures for propping up oil prices, and are drafting a bill to target the practice. When the Senate votes on that bill, Reid said he would not allow amendments dealing with oil drilling which the Republicans will almost certainly attempt.

Democrat presidential candidate, Barack Obama, is setting the pace for Democrat inaction on oil drilling because he too opposes lifting the offshore-drilling ban. Incredibly, Obama said through a spokesman that "It would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years"; conveniently ignoring the fact that the practices of the past years failed because of Democrat obstructionism. To his credit, Senator John McCain reversed his support for the ban and has said that boosting supplies will help bring down soaring oil and gas prices.

The only sensible comments about the issue in the senate were by Republicans. "Senator Lamar Alexander said "The key to bringing down record-high gas prices is to find more American energy, as well as use less. After today’s announcement by the president, the only hurdle left to beginning offshore exploration is congressional action, and it’s time for the Democratic leadership to listen to the millions of Americans who are demanding we begin today."

New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici called Reid a "chicken" for not allowing votes on oil drilling. "Does it seem to you like it does to me like Harry Reid is either scared chicken to have a vote, or has he decided that he's going to dictate to the United States Senate?" That’s really a silly question senator, isn’t that what Democrats do in congress when they have majorities?

Domenici added "Does it seem to you like it does to me like Harry Reid is either scared chicken to have a vote, or has decided that he's going to dictate to the United States Senate?"

Lamar Alexander said it all: "Any serious proposal to deal with $4 gasoline prices has to include finding more American energy ... and Senator Reid is not willing to do that."

Of course Democrat idiocy is not confined to the senate. Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement on President Bush's announcement lifting the executive ban on drilling in protected coastal areas:

"Once again, the oilman in the White House is echoing the demands of Big Oil. The Bush plan is a hoax. It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence. It just gives millions more acres to the same companies that are sitting on nearly 68 million acres of public lands and coastal areas. If the President wants to bring down prices in the next two weeks, not the next two decades, he should free our oil by releasing a small portion of the more than 700 million barrels of oil we have put in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It's time to tell the oil industry: 'You already have millions of acres to drill. Use it or lose it.'"

What will it take for Americans to understand that Democrats are really responsible for the high gas prices; not the oil companies, not the speculators, not the Bush administration and not most Republicans (only those Rhinos who share the wacky environmental ideology that puts people last in the food chain)?

Pelosi, like all Democrats in leadership positions believes that if you make a shrill attacking statement, no matter how ridiculous, the American people will buy it and salute their party. We can only hope Americans deep down are too intelligent to accept that; if not, we are in for a long ride to "never, never land."
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Are internet news sites a better source of information than newspapers?

As someone who finds more receptivity from internet news sites, I admit I may be a bit biased in the answer to this question. However, looking at my local paper, and yours is probably pretty much the same, I see almost all the national news is from the Associated Press and therein lays the problem.

It is almost impossible to find an AP source article that does not have a liberal and/or Democrat Party spin. For example, in Sunday’s paper there is an article with the heading "Obama fully embraces contrasts with McCain." Not only is the heading misleading because Obama has actually shifted to some of McCain’s views, but the body of the article seems as if it were written by an Obama staffer.

Obviously it would be possible to cite numerous AP articles as examples but time and space do not permit so I will stay with this one.

This "news" article (note it is on page 2 not on the opinion page) starts with a paragraph as follows:

"Barack Obama has found something that eluded him during the primary season – contrast. And he’s basking in it."

To emphasize the writer’s point (this AP article is written by Liz Sidoti but she should not be blamed for the newspaper's placement of it), one of the top paragraphs says:

"In McCain, the likely Democrat(ic) nominee faces an opponent who is the opposite of him in every way – an Iraq war backer who supports free market economics, opposes abortion rights and is a Republican. Obama delights in pointing out the differences, and does so often."

So from this we can assume (1) there are no similarities in the views of Obama and McCain; (2) Ms. Sidoti didn’t get the memo where Obama says "mental stress" should not be a reason for abortion and; (3) Obama does not support "free market economics".

Note to Ms. Sidoti and Mr. Obama: the United States IS all about free market economics. Anyone that does not favor a free market and capitalism is in the wrong country and certainly should not be running for president.

But I digress; let’s continue with this AP "news article." How is this for something right out of the Obama campaign book?

Apparently quoting from Obama since the paragraph is in quotes:

"’If you are satisfied with the way things are going now, then vote for John McCain,"’ Obama says before rattling off a list of current concerns, home foreclosures and job losses as the country fights two wars. Then Obama promises ‘fundamental change.’"

Obviously the reader is supposed to assume McCain is somehow responsible for foolish loans taken out by the imprudent, job losses where unemployment is still lower than it was for many years before, and McCain financed the two wars all by himself while Democrats had majorities in both the House and Senate.

I could go on and on but you get the point; the AP article is anything but real news. Obama campaign headquarters could post this article right next to the Che Guerra flag on the wall and it would not be out of place.

If you want real news and opinion commentary clearly labeled as such and don’t know where to go, Google the title of this and other articles on my blog.

“Flip-flop” is just another way of saying deceitful

I don’t like the term "flip-flop" to describe politicians changing political positions in an election campaign; it reminds me of those hard-to-wear thong-type foot sandals. A better and more accurate description of such political behavior is "deceitful."

It is often said that a politician seeking a party’s presidential nomination tacks left or right during the primaries and then veers to the center in the run for the office. This is accepted nuance by the news media and perhaps even expected by the electorate, but no matter how you slice it, the practice is simply dishonest and used merely to hoodwink as many as possible to support and elect that candidate. Why it has become acceptable without scorn and criticism is beyond me.

However as bad as switching campaign styles in the race for nominee selection is, it is unquestionably something that should disqualify a candidate for dishonesty and lack of morality when done during the presidential campaign itself. Some might say that changing political views is a sign of "maturity" and "learning by experience", but someone who is to lead the United States should have learned what is needed to be learned well before seeking to lead our country. I don’t think we should want someone in that office who is treating it as a learning experience; we want a leader who knows the world and has convictions to stand by. The best example of this is Ronald Reagan.

John McCain has changed his mind about a few things, like oil drilling off shore and perhaps border control, but by and large he still maintains his unreasonable views of global warming, amnesty for illegal immigrants and campaign finance laws. I disagree with John McCain a lot but he keeps to his views on these issues despite huge disagreement by those whose votes he needs to win the election; is this a good thing or not? I could argue not a good thing from the political issue standpoint but at least he is consistent.

The same cannot be said for his opponent, Barack Obama.

For a long time Obama has preached the Democrat mantra about gun control. Now however Obama would like the voters to believe he is a gun- rights advocate. He applauded the Supreme Court's overturning of a Washington, D.C., ordinance banning the possession of handguns.

Even on the hot-button issue of abortion Obama is now deviating on the liberal position of absolute free choice by saying he thinks "mental distress" should not justify late-term abortion.

Suddenly Obama has religion, and I don’t mean the Reverend Wright kind; which he has had for twenty years. Obama now favors expanding Bush's controversial faith-based initiative program of involving churches in government anti-poverty programs. The Democrat Party has criticized this program as involving religion in public affairs.

After accepting the idea of limits on campaign funds as have all presidential candidates before him, Obama now decides to forego public funds in place of seeking large contributions from left-leaning supporters in Hollywood and that icon of anti-Americanism – George Soros – thereby rejecting the idea of campaign-finance reform.

In fact, Obama is the largest raiser of private cash in American political history, and no longer disdains accepting "special interest money." Even wealthy Republicans seem to like the Obama "kool-aid" and heap lots of money onto their view of the likely November winner.

Who can forget Obama joining with Hillary Clinton to decry NAFTA? During the campaign run he now has no interest in changing the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Probably the most exotic demonstration of Obama’s scruples or lack thereof, concerns the Iraq war and other foreign policy issues. First he was the messiah of troop withdrawal from Iraq. He promised a strict and rapid timetable for withdrawing our troops. But now that Bush’s surge and General David Petraeus' change in tactics have seen success, Obama is saying he won’t withdraw troops unconditionally and that withdrawals will be "based on the conditions on the ground in Iraq." Isn’t this the same thing Bush has said? How different is this new Obama stance from the present plan to send troops home in increments as conditions on the ground improve?

Obama once criticized the proposal to give telecommunication companies exemption from lawsuits over tapping private phone calls at government request. Now Obama voted for the bill.

Those attending the AIPAC convention in Washington, D.C. recently were pleasantly surprised to hear what appeared to be sentiments from Obama supporting Israel after many previous comments in support of Palestinians. Now Obama says that Jerusalem must be "Israel's eternal and undivided capital." However he also says Palestinians should have a contiguous state of their own but to do that Israel must cede territory between Gaza and the West Bank. What would this do to Israel’s efforts to defend itself against terrorists and in the next Mid East war?

It wasn’t long ago that Obama minimized the threat from Iran. Do you recall when he said the danger from Iran was exaggerated because Iran didn’t "pose any serious threat?" Lately though he agrees with the president that Iran now in fact is a "grave threat" and wants to meet directly with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "without preconditions." (Does he expect to charm the little tyrant without a teleprompter?)

Although many seem to believe Obama is sincere in his many changes of heart; I don’t. Obama has not become a convert to Republican beliefs; he has the same liberal ideology he has always had. Obama is merely showing us that he will do and say anything to be elected but once in office he will push our country headlong into socialism and reduce our ability to defend ourselves from the threat of Islam.

His "flip-flops" are empty shoes just as he is an empty suit.

The time for appeasement of Islam is over

Islamists have it all over everyone else in the art of intimidation using freedom in western civilization as a weapon in the battle to rule the world. One reason this practice has been successful is that civilized societies cannot comprehend a doctrine so pervasive in its goal to take over the world that so many non Muslims are unwilling to accept that we are in a war of different worlds. The threat is not extra terrestrial; it is a real threat by real people.

To followers of Islam there is but one goal; replace all other religions and governments with Islam and Sharia law. In this there is no compromise, there are no rules, and everything is allowed to achieve success.

We are the victims of our own tolerance and "political correctness." Everywhere we are told that we should not offend anyone with words or deeds while Muslims are not limited by the same rules. Curiously, criticism and lampooning the Christian religion is not out of bounds in art or politics but Islam is to be protected by law and custom from such behavior. Disgusting art denigrating Christ and symbols of Christianity are tolerated but cartoons of Mohammed elicit violence and mayhem without any organized and effective control of such actions.

Responsible for this situation, at least in part, is that the news media is filled with misinformation about Islam. Despite untold acts of atrocities by Muslims, Islam is still regarded in many circles as "a religion of Peace"; how absurd is that?

In Islamic countries the non Muslims are treated like second or fifth class people and their populations are decreasing enormously. Countries that had significant numbers of Jews and Christians a century ago now have almost none. There are a handful of Jews left in Iraq. The Copts in Egypt are now only about 8% of Egypt's population. Where did they go? They converted or went to the West.

Political Islam says that we live in "dar al harb", the land of war. Proof that we live in the land of war is found in the refugees from jihad here in America. They are invisible; only a few like Nonie Darwish and Brigitte Gabriel are willing to risk their lives to bring out the truth about Islam and though their audiences are growing they pale in comparison to the numbers still unaware of the threat to freedom Islam poses. No one wants to know their history or Islamic horror. Actions of political Islam by jihad cause terrible suffering for the persecuted. Not only are their families and friends gone, but their cultures are gone too. The tragedy thrust upon these refugees is that no one wants to hear their stories. We must record and publicize their suffering to honor the dead and for use as weapons of war against Islamic imperialism.

We must develop all manner of propaganda: film, video and audio to inform the public about what faces the world if we continue to be complacent. Books are also an important tool but we must also have other sources of information such as a system of making films and videos that can implement our strategy of informing about the enemy abroad while confronting the enemy at home. This means that we need to engage in the effort not only through films and videos; we must address the financial culture and reveal the truth about Sharia banking and finance. We must also prepare propaganda that is directed towards the blue collar workers. None of the books written today are of any use for the working classes. Short audio MP3 files can be used for everybody.

While we take no or only limited action, political Islam has every single element of their strategy in place at the global, national, state, and local level. Organizations like CAIR (Council on Islamic-American Relations) are active both as lobbyists and plaintiffs in legal actions all over the country where anyone resists providing special treatment for Muslims so that they may continue "to practice their religion" in public institutions like schools, airports, places of employment and everywhere else that does not grant similar concessions to others.

There are four ways to discuss Islamic politics to show the world what Islam is really all about: history, current practice, Muslim's personal behavior, and Islamic and Sharia doctrines. Islamic history of violence and subjugation is almost unknown to many and has been suppressed by our own media and government. Current knowledge is only what we see in the newspapers and on TV. This source is largely biased by the media elites never reporting the truth about Islam.

Judging Islam by any Muslim's actions is not accepted by many. Misconceptions of Islam in the modern era can be challenged if people become better informed.

Islamic doctrine is precise and is easily learned. The good news is that Islam never deviates from its "playbook" doctrine. Therefore it is easy to understand what they do and what they will do next. We must become bigot-proof because any challenge will invite accusations of racism.

Presently Muslim and Muslim practices cannot be criticized but you can't be a bigot in saying what Mohammed did and talking about Islamic politics. The facts of Islamic doctrine are shocking and repulsive. As long as we discuss doctrine we win. By informing the public when apologists discuss how bad the non Muslim world is, how bad Christians are, or how they know a "good" Muslim; remind them about Islamic doctrine and Islamic cruelties.

In the 1800’s America sent its Navy and Marines to fight the Barbary pirates in North Africa. But the Muslims never called their naval raiders "Barbary pirates." They called them ghazis, sacred raiders. Naming them "pirates" showed that we "kafirs" (non Muslims) had no idea about the doctrine and history of Islam.

Even in the news these days the media report about intifada, and label it an uprising by the Palestinians against the Israelis. But the terms intifada, Palestinian, and Israeli are misnomers. The truer terms are jihad, Muslim and infidel (because Jews are non Muslims), if we follow the Koran. The doctrine of political Islam clearly states that jihad is to be waged by all Muslims against all Jews and other "kafirs." Today is no different from 1400 years ago in Islam.

One writer put it this way: "The events of 9/11 are recorded in the West as an attack by terrorists. Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attack, was a pious Muslim. He left a letter clearly stating his intentions: 9/11 was pure jihad. An attack is a single event, but jihad is a 1400-year continuous process. Therefore, a terrorist attack is not the same as jihad. Terrorism does not have the same meaning as jihad."

We have been in a war declared by Islam for centuries. We have tried a strategy of appeasement without changing anything; we have recently tried empty threats and when that did not work we have pretended that if we are nice enough Islam will be nice. We refuse to believe the doctrine of political Islam. It just can't be true.

We cannot fight a defensive war if we are to defeat Islam. The war must be offensive and fought with the idea of defeating Islam with such totality that, as Ariel Sharon said in his book ‘Warriors", we instill in them a "psychology of defeat such that they come to believe they cannot win." For far too long the West has believed that some form of defensive coexistence can work; it cannot. Such a practice against Islam has never worked for 1400 years and it won't work now.

While Islam's power grows daily, our government and others in the western world will not acknowledge there is a war against political Islam; instead we actually aid it through welfare, immigration and civil rights legislation. The time for appeasement is over. Those of us who understand Islam must band together to expose the enemy abroad and attack the enemy at home.

It is simple; we either fight or lose our civilization. Continuing denial and pacifism will be the end of our way of life and of freedom.

The “Group of Eight” met and all they brought back was this lousy tee shirt

When the "G-8" meets you expect that momentous decisions will be made and the results will be posted on the front page of newspapers and be lead stories on the evening news. That this does not happen is a tribute to the uselessness of such events.

Leaders of the group of eight countries; the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Canada, Italy and Russia; met recently in Tokyo, Japan, to discuss world problems but any expectation that some degree of success at solving problems might result would be a mistake.

Of course as one might expect global warming was on the agenda and from all reports that was the only issue worthy of discussion since apparently no other topic was the subject of comment in the final press release. Simpletons, like me, might have thought oil, Mid East conflicts, Iraq, Iran, a depreciating dollar and escalating Euro, economies of each country, and the like, would have also appeared to be of sufficient importance to be considered by representatives of the eight largest economic powerhouses of the world. But perhaps to get into such tedious subjects may have been too tiresome and would interfere with a pleasant interlude in one of the most expensive cities of the world. Of course cost is no factor or the group might have considered meeting in for example; Accra, Ghana or Mexico City (or even Palm Desert, California), or some other place less expensive than Tokyo.

Since global warming was the subject de jour judging from actual reports in brief articles about the conference hidden on inner pages of newspapers, what were the results of the meeting of global minds on the subject? Well, how about this as a statement from the group:

"We support a shared vision for long-term cooperative action, including a long-term global goal for emission reductions that assures growth, prosperity and other aspects of sustainable development."

Most horrifyingly, another statement from the group said they pledged to support a U.N.-led effort to conclude a new global warming pact by the end of next year – which, conveniently, is after George Bush leaves office and either of the two global warming gullible takes office. We who are enjoying incandescent light bulbs, moderately priced electricity and gas, the prospect (at least) of becoming energy independent, can expect that future history books and the soon-to-be elders among us will look fondly back to the good old days when people actually had some control over their lives before control was forfeited to the governments of the world, including the United States.

Although global warming was the primary focus; just so the conference was not a total waste of time energy was also mentioned, but was any energy-related problem solved? Well, judge for yourself.

A report of the group’s proceedings in The Yomiuri Shimbun (a Japanese English-language newspaper) had this to say about the meeting; I’m sure it will give you comfort that our leaders really know how to deal with the pressing problems of the world:

"Leaders of the Group of Eight major countries Tuesday expressed concern that the world economy is facing uncertainty and increasing global inflationary pressure.

They also agreed the world economy is slowing down compared to last year, according to sources.

Morning discussions on the second day of the summit meeting here focused on joint measures to address surging oil and food prices.

Based on the recognition that soaring oil and food prices pose serious threats to the world economy, the leaders confirmed their intention to continuously take appropriate action to address the problem.

To defuse the crisis of surging oil prices, the leaders agreed to ask both oil producers and consumers to take necessary steps, such as boosting oil production capacity, expanding investment in refineries and other oil-related facilities, and promoting energy-saving efforts, the sources said."

As you can see the Group of Eight conference article was properly placed in the news. The out come was as useful as other meetings, the best about which could be said: "We had a useful exchange of views." Overlooked in the Japanese newspaper article was what conferees thought about apple pie, mother, home and country; maybe they can take these up at the next conference instead of talking about how to mess up the world and the people in it.

Who will appoint judges during the next four years will be a matter of our survival as a free people

If anyone needed more convincing about the importance of the next presidential election, one need go no further than the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller where a Washington, D.C. ban on hand guns was declared unconstitutional because a majority of justices properly interpreted the Second Amendment.

The 5-4 decision in this case required the assent by one man, Justice Anthony Kennedy, to join with four other justices, which is bad enough inasmuch the court's opinion should have been unanimous; but worse still is the thinking process about the constitution as expressed by some justices in the minority opinions.

The Second Amendment:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

To most readers of the constitution, the wording is clear; the people have a right to own guns and use them in any lawful manner. But gun control advocates do not accept this basic right even if set forth in the constitution so they resort to a liberal judiciary willing to replace the language of the constitution with their own version of what should be the law to satisfy their social perspective. The Heller case minority opinions make this abundantly clear. If Barack Obama is elected president, and there is the anticipated increased Democrat majorities in the House and Senate, we can expect anyone appointed to the court when the need arises will have views resembling those justices now on the court who are willing to ignore clear constitutional language in favor of achieving some social end result more to their liking.

Justice Antonin Scalia writing for the court's majority, after observing - "The two sides in the case have set out very different interpretations of the amendment." - wrote that the meaning of the Second Amendment is that Americans have "an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home." In contrast Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the Second Amendment "was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several states to maintain a well-regulated militia," and he finds no "evidence supporting the view that the amendment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regulate the civilian uses of weapons." However, the evidence to support Stevens is not found in the amendment itself.

Furthermore, it is absurd to believe, as Stevens does, that a state supported militia would not supply weapons as needed but must rely upon arms possessed by individuals. It is also defies the purpose of the constitution to “look for evidence” in the constitution to limit the power of Congress since it was the intention to only grant limited powers to the government while reserving all others to the states and the people. There is no doubt that the original intention was to prescribe a limited government with limited powers.

In his written opinion Scalia declares that "a prefatory clause does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause and only by putting a background intention firmly in place can one stabilize a text that (like all texts) varies with the purpose assigned to it."

However the best example of what we may expect of judges appointed to the court is found in the opinion of Justice Breyer. For a large part of his separate dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen G. Breyer shows he is less concerned with intention and purpose of the constitutional language than with the problems faced by crime in urban areas.

His question is not how can we be true to the framers' intention but how can we read the amendment in a way that furthers our (meaning his) efforts to deal with a serious social problem? He wants to focus on "the practicalities, the [D.C.] statute's rationale, the problems that called it into being, its relationship to those objectives - in a word, the details." He identifies as the statute's "basic objective" the saving of lives and he cites statistics that establish, he believes, a strong correlation between the availability of hand guns and crime. Handguns, he observes, "are involved in a majority of firearms deaths and injuries in the United States." And they are also, he declares, "a very popular weapon among criminals."

He puts particular weight on a report from a congressional committee that found handguns "to have a particularly strong link to undesirable activities in the District's exclusively urban environment.

Where's the link to what the Constitution says? Breyer claims to find it in the phrase "exclusively urban environment" in the congressional report but not in the constitution itself, which allows him come to conclusions that look more like an internationalist argument. The reasoning is convoluted because it relies on a social desirability (from his viewpoint) and not on the actual constitutional wording. The problem the statute is intended to redress, he says, is largely urban; so in thinking about the Second Amendment, the framers would have been "unlikely to have thought of a right to keep loaded handguns in homes to confront intruders in urban settings," if only because in the America they knew there were no urban settings. Therefore they couldn't have had the intention to disallow a regulation of a kind they could not have contemplated. [Query: were not rural dwellers also concerned with self defense?] Whether or not this argument is persuasive as an account of the framers' intention (and it wasn't persuasive to the five in the majority), its intention is clear - Breyer is more concerned with "doing good" than in doing the judicial job of interpreting the law and not in making the law.

For the majority it is important to ascertain the intention of the writers of the constitution in regard the subject matter of the Second Amendment. In that, the record is quite clear.

The framers of the constitution possessed the early American character of independence and self reliance, and no one or country was ever again going to take away their freedom. The only way this right to freedom could be assured was to mandate that Americans would always have the ability to defend themselves, not just against criminals but also against the state if and when necessary, by being able to own and possess arms. As James Madison said:

"[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation... (Where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." --James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46

A desire to be and remain free was paramount and possession of arms was necessary to this end.

"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." -- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356

"No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Proposal Virginia Constitution, 1 T. Jefferson Papers, 334, [C.J. Boyd, Ed., 1950]

Samuel Adams made quite clear the meaning and intent of the Constitution:

"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms ... " -- Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (Pierce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850)

Liberals choose to ignore what those responsible for the Constitution of our country had to say about what was written; this simply doesn't fit with their desire to make us "safe" by taking away 'arms', i.e. guns, from all of us. It never occurs to them that disarming Americans doesn't make anyone safe because it denies the right of self protection. Trite though it may be, it is nonetheless true that if peaceful citizens don't have guns, only criminals will.

Early Americans were self reliant, and patriotic; many of their present day counterparts are neither. What do you suppose the likes of Madison, Jefferson and Adams would think about what Americans today assume is their birthright, "the government will take care of me", therefore I don't need a gun"? That's fine if liberals want to believe that, but I don't. I want to do as the early great Americans did, and provide for my own defense.

If you want to see how much liberals have deteriorated over the years, here is what a one-time liberal icon had to say about the subject about 50 years ago:

"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms ... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard, against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible." -- Hubert H. Humphrey, Senator, Vice President, 22 October 1959

Current day liberals are not the first to think gun ownership by the citizenry is bad. They have this in common with one of history's notables:

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing." -- Adolph Hitler, Hitler's Secret Conversations 403 (Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens trans., 1961)

If we elect Barack Obama to the presidency we will see judges like Justice Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court and in other judicial positions around the country. Instead of people who honor the constitution in its original form, we will have a judiciary with the kind of social activism that will destroy the rule of law and replace it with the law of the "politically correct”, and result in loss of our freedom.