Bill Maher Dumps More Hate On Tea Party, Repeats Tired Liberal Lies

I dare say that “liberal media personalities” (an oxymoron in virtually all cases for these prototypically moronic morons) such as Bill Maher and Rosie O’Donnell only have any following at all because they faithfully keep playing the game “Jump the Shark” they started with themselves.  Every episode they have to be more hateful and more deceitful than they were last time – and every episode they manage to succeed.

Bill Maher had this to say recently:

“Now that they’ve finished reading the Constitution out loud,” Maher said to chuckles from the audience, “the tea baggers must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs. I’m talking of course about the founding fathers.”

Maher:

“Now, I want you teabaggers out there to understand one thing: while you idolize the Founding Fathers and dress up like them, and smell like them, I think it’s pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would have hated your guts. And what’s more, you would’ve hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris, and thought the Bible was mostly b—s—.”

Maher went on to claim that the Founding Fathers had a moral code, but it didn’t come from the Bible – ”except for the part about, ‘it’s cool to own slaves.’”

I mean, on a surface examination, I’m sure you’re right, Maher.  They’d hate the people who actually care about what they wrote and what they thought; they’d love liberals like you, who demonize them as evil slaveholding bastards.

Clearly Obama’s speech wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on, when his own side didn’t bother to pay attention to him about his “let’s make Christina proud of us” calls for restraint for even five minutes.

But let’s go beyond the surface, where the founding fathers love Bill Mahr – even though Bill Maher clearly despises them – and hates the tea party.  Because maybe it’s not the way Maher thinks it is.

Bill Maher reminds me of Homer Simpson; both men think their incredibly stupid and buffoonish ideas are clever.  The only difference between the two cartoon characters is that Homer Simpson usually discovers that he’s an idiot by the end of the episode, whereas Bill Maher is pathologically immune from reality or truth.

And, of course, unlike Maher, at least Homer is smart enough to believe in – as he calls him – “Jeebus.”

I’ve had to respond to these atheist versions of Homer Simpsons before.  Here’s a response to one such that basically confronts Bill Maher with the facts he so despises:

Whose Country Do We Want: Our Founding Fathers’ Or Our Secular Contemporaries’?
By Michael Eden, 07/26/2009

This article consists as part of a much longer discussion with a self-described “Democratic socialist” found here (with much of the rest consisting over an argument as to what is or isn’t socialism and the supposed benefits of socialism to societies).  An argument over the significance of the founding fathers relative to “current Americans” provides for what I believed to be an informative article.

Poster: I profoundly disagree that Christianity has been the wellspring of America’s greatness. Christianity in American history has too often been the source of narrow-mindedness, intolerance and reaction.

I too love and revere the Constitution, and would risk my neck to defend it and the USA. But the Constitution is a living, organic document that evolves and pulsates. I agree with the late Justice Brennan that the only correct way to interpret it is as modern Americans. I don’t care about the “original intent” of the Founding Fathers.

Michael Eden: Let me start with the words and meaning of George Washington in his Farewell Address given on September 17, 1796:

What are the foundations of America? After 45 years of public service, George Washington, our greatest patriot and the father of our country, gives his farewell address. He says, ‘We need to remember what brought us here. We need to remember what made us different from all the other nations across Europe and the rest of the world. We have to remember what our foundations are.’ It was the road map, showing us how we’d become what we were, and how to preserve it. It has long been considered the most important address ever given by any US president. President Lincoln set aside an entire day for the entire Union Army and had them read and understand it. Woodrow Wilson did the same during WWI. But we haven’t studied it in schools for over 45 years, so your lack of understanding is understandable. Washington said:

“Of all the habits and dispositions which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” — George Washington, Farewell Address

If you want your politics to prosper, the two things you will not separate will be religion and morality. If you want your government to work well, if you want American exceptionalism, if you want the government to do right, if you want all this, then you won’t separate religion and morality from political life. And America’s greatest patriot gave a litmus test for patriotism. He says in the very next sentence (immediately continuing from the quote above):

“In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars.” — George Washington

Washington says, Anyone who would try to remove religion and morality from public life, I won’t allow them to call themselves a patriot. Because they are trying to destroy the country.

And he wasn’t alone. I can well understand why you would throw out the wisest and most brilliant political geniuses who ever lived. I can understand because George Washington wouldn’t have even have allowed you to call yourself “a patriot” in his presence. What they wrote, what they thought, what they believed, utterly refute you. But it was THESE men, and not Marx, or Mao, or any other socialist, who devised the greatest political system the world has ever seen.

Statements by our founding fathers (who presumably understood what the Constitution that they themselves wrote and ratified meant better than Justice Brennan) announcing their religious beliefs, and stating the profound impact those beliefs had in their founding of the United States of America:

“We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams

“…And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” –- George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept 17, 1796

“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundations of public liberty and happiness.” –- Samuel Adams, Letter to John Trumbull, October 16, 1778

“The great pillars of all government and of social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor…and this alone, that renders us invincible.” –- Patrick Henry, Letter to Archibald Blair, January 8, 1789

“Without morals, a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.” —- Charles Carroll (signer of the Constitution), Letter to James McHenry,November 4, 1800

“Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God.” –- Life of Gouverneur Morris, Vol III

“Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity…in short of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.“ –- Samuel Adams, Letter to John Adams, October 4, 1790

“In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes, and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be republicans and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government. That is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible.” —- Benjamin Rush, “A Defense of the Use of the Bible as a School Book”, 1798

“In my view, the Christian Religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed…no truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian Religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.” –  Noah Webster, Reply to David McClure, Oct. 25, 1836

“Information to those who would remove (or move) to America”: “To this may be truly added, that serious Religion under its various Denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced. Atheism is unknown there, Infidelity rare & secret, so that Persons may live to a great Age in that Country without having their Piety shock’d by meeting with either an Atheist or an Infidel. And the Divine Being seems to have manifested his Approbation of the mutual Forbearance and Kindness with which the different Sects treat each other, by the remarkable Prosperity with which he has been pleased to favour the whole Country.” —- Ben Franklin, 1787 pamphlet to Europeans

“Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, the fate of republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and a people who reject its holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power.” —- Lewis Cass, A Brigadier-General in the War of 1812, Governor of the Michigan Territory, a Secretary of War, a Senator, a Secretary of State. The State of Michigan placed his statue in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? That they are not to violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.” –- “Yes, we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.” —- Thomas Jefferson

“So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have exited thro’ all the time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe.” —- Thomas Jefferson

“I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures that whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens…” — George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept 17, 1796

“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.” — John Adams, Letter of June 21, 1776

“It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe without the agency of a Supreme Being.” —- George Washington

“So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have exited thro’ all the time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe.” —- Thomas Jefferson

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.” —- Abraham Lincoln

“History will also afford the frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion, from its usefulness to the public; the advantage of a religious character among private persons; the mischiefs of superstition, and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern.” —- Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1749), p. 2

“I know, sir, how well it becomes a liberal man and a Christian to forget and forgive. As individuals professing a holy religion, it is our bounden duty to forgive injuries done us as individuals. But when the character of Christian you add the character of patriot, you are in a different situation. Our mild and holy system of religion inculcates an admirable maxim of forbearance. If your enemy smite one cheek, turn the other to him. But you must stop there. You cannot apply this to your country. As members of a social community, this maxim does not apply to you. When you consider injuries done to your country your political duty tells you of vengeance. Forgive as a private man, but never forgive public injuries. Observations of this nature are exceedingly unpleasant, but it is my duty to use them.” —- Patrick Henry, from a courtroom speech, Wirt Henry’s, Life, vol. III, pp. 606-607.

“Amongst other strange things said of me, I hear it is said by the deists that I am one of their number; and, indeed, that some good people think I am no Christian. This thought gives me much more pain than the appellation of Tory; because I think religion of infinitely higher importance than politics; and I find much cause to reproach myself that I have lived so long and have given no decided and public proofs of my being a Christian. But, indeed, my dear child, this is a character which I prize far above all this world has, or can boast.” —- Patrick Henry, 1796 letter to daughter, S. G. Arnold, The Life of Patrick Henry (Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1854), p. 250.

“This is all the inheritance I can give my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed.” — Patrick Henry, From a copy of Henry’s Last Will and Testament obtained from Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation, Red Hill, Brookneal, VA.

“It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe without the agency of a Supreme Being. It is impossible to govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being.” —- George Washington, James K. Paulding, A Life of Washington (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835), Vol. II, p. 209.

“While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe, the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to them whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.” —- James Madison, James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance (Massachusetts: Isaiah Thomas, 1786). This can be found in numerous documentary histories and other resources.

“Waiving the rights of conscience, not included in the surrender implied by the social state, & more or less invaded by all Religious establishments, the simple question to be decided, is whether a support of the best & purest religion, the Christian religion itself ought not, so far at least as pecuniary means are involved, to be provided for by the Government, rather than be left to the voluntary provisions of those who profess it.” —- James Madison, Religion and Politics in the Early Republic: Jasper Adams and the Church-State Debate, Daniel L. Dreisbach, ed. (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), p. 117.

“The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.” —- George Washington, 1778, upon seeing the divine hand in the Revolution against the greatest military in the world.

“Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. In this sense and to this extent, our civilizations and our institutions are emphatically Christian.” — U.S. Supreme Court in Holy Trinity v. U. S. — Richmond v. Moore, Illinois Supreme Court, 1883)

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” —- Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren dated February 12, 1779

“Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulties.” —- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

“I entreat you in the most earnest manner to believe in Jesus Christ, for ‘there is no salvation in any other’ (Acts 4:12). If you are not reconciled to God through Jesus Christ – if you are not clothed with the spotless robe of His righteousness – you must perish forever.” —- John Witherspoon, founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence.

“I am a Christian. I believe only in the Scriptures, and in Jesus Christ my Savior.” — Charles Thomson, founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence

“My only hope of salvation is in the infinite transcendent love of God manifested to the world by the death of His Son upon the cross. Nothing but His blood will wash away my sins. I rely exclusively upon it. Come Lord Jesus! Come quickly!” — Dr. Benjamin Rush, founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Dr. Benjamin Rush, John Adams said, was one of the three most notable founding fathers along with George Washington and Ben Franklin. Benjamin Rush was the founder of five universities (three of which are still active today); he was the father of public schools under the American Constitution; he was also the leader of the civil rights movement, the founder of the first abolitionist society in America, the founder of the first black denomination in America, served in 3 presidential administrations, is called the father of American medicine, and 3,000 American physicians bore his signature on their diplomas, started the American College of Physicians, founded the first prison ministry, and started the Sunday School movement in America, started the very first Bible Society in America, etc.

“I rely upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.” —- Samuel Adams

“An eloquent preacher of your religious society, Richard Motte, in a discourse of much emotion and pathos, is said to have exclaimed aloud to his congregation, that he did not believe there was a Quaker, Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist in heaven, having paused to give his hearers time to stare and to wonder. He added, that in heaven, God knew no distinctions, but considered all good men as his children, and as brethren of the same family. I believe, with the Quaker preacher, that he who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven, as to the dogmas in which they all differ. That on entering there, all these are left behind us, and the Aristides and Catos, the Penns and Tillotsons, Presbyterians and Baptists, will find themselves united in all principles which are in concert with the reason of the supreme mind. Of all the systems of morality, ancient and modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.” — Thomas Jefferson, “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson,” Albert Ellery Bergh, ed. (Washington, D. C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XIII, pp.377-78, letter to William Canby on September 18, 1813.

“To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others.” — Thomas Jefferson, Albert Bergh, “Writings of Jefferson,” Vol. X, p.380, letter to Benjamin Rush on April 21, 1803.

“But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of His own country, was Jesus of Nazareth.” — Thomas Jefferson, Albert Bergh, “Writings of Jefferson,” Vol. XIV, p.220, letter to William Short on October 31, 1819.

“The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.” —- John Quincy Adams, 1837 speech

“Why is it that, next to the birth day of the Saviour of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day [July 4th]? . . . Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birth-day of the Saviour? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the corner stone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity. . ?” — John Quincy Adams, John Quincy Adams, “An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport, at Their Request,” on the Sixty-first Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1837 (Newburyport: Charles Whipple, 1837), p. 5.

“We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better that the builders of Babel.” —- Benjamin Franklin, appeal for prayer at Constitutional Convention, as cited by James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, ed. (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 985.

“God commands all men everywhere to repent. He also commands them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and has assured us that all who do repent and believe shall be saved.” —- Roger Sherman.

“God has promised to bestow eternal blessings on all those who are willing to accept Him on the terms of the Gospel – that is, in a way of free grace through the atonement. — Roger Sherman. Sherman was the ONLY founding father who signed all four founding documents (the Declaration, the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and the Articles of Association). He is called “the master builder of the Constitution.” He came up with the bi-cabinal system with the House and Senate. He was a framer of the Bill of Rights. And he was also a theologian who got George Washington to announce the first federal Day of Thanksgiving proclamation, going through the Scriptures to show why we should do so. He was also a long-term member of Congress. A newspaper article on him (the Globe) dated 1837 quotes, “The volume which he consulted more than any other was the Bible. It was his custom, at the commencement of every session of Congress, to purchase a copy of the Scriptures to puruse it daily, and to present it to one of his children on his return.” He had 15 children.

“The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in His truth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Ghost.” —- John Adams

“There is no authority, civil or religious – there can be no legitimate government – but what is administered by the Holy Ghost.” —- John Adams

“There can be no salvation without it. All without it is rebellion and perdition, or, in more orthodox words, damnation.” — John Adams (And Abigail Adams was the REAL Bible thumper in the family, telling son John Quincy Adams, ‘You know how I’ve raised you. You know how you’ve been raised in church, how you’ve been taught the Scriptures, how you’ve been taught morality.’  She tells him that if he’s going to go to France and give up his faith, that the Lord seek him out and drown him to prevent that from happening).

“I am grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ our Lord, He has conferred on my beloved country.” —- Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration and framer of the Bill of Rights. He was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, dying at the age of 95 years.

At the age of 89 (in 1825), he wrote, “On the mercy of my Redeemer, I rely for salvation, and on His merits; not on the works I have done in obedience to His precepts.” —- Charles Carroll

“Almost all the civil liberty now enjoyed in the world owes its origin to the principles of the Christian religion…. [T]he religion which has introduced civil liberty, is the religion of Christ and his apostles…. This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.” — Noah Webster, History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), p. 300, Sec. 578.

And, of course, there is the assessment of the great political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville:

“Moreover, almost all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same.

In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.

There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and their debasement, while in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world fulfills all the outward duties of religion with fervor.

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1851), pp. 331, 332, 335, 336-7, 337, respectively.

As to your socialism, de Tocquevelle wrote:

“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”

Poster: Whatever outstanding Americans said or believed in the 1700’s or 1800’s is no refutation of whatever I said. Big deal, so George Washington said that morality is not possible without religion. Just because I appreciate that he spearheaded the military efforts against the redcoats doesn’t mean I care for his views on religion.

Many of the Founding Fathers you constantly bring up were not even Christians. Men like Jefferson, Franklin and Tom Paine were Deists. Forget the Founding Fathers when dealing with today’s issues. The Constitution that they gave us has evolved into something quite different since then.

I care what Americans today think. I am not interested in what men who died when even my grandfather was not yet born believed.

Michael Eden: Actually, one of the quotes that you probably didn’t bother to read has Thomas Jefferson specifically declaring his Christianity. And I have numerous quotes from Thomas Jefferson on display. Quotes by Benjamin Franklin abound – clearly attesting to his FERVENT commitment to the need for not only religious but specifically Christian religion as a necessary and fundamental support for the country being founded. I would further point out to you that Thomas Paine was NOT a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and he was also not a delegate to the Constitutional convention. So that kind of blows a gigantic hole in your thesis.

You show the portrait of the Declaration of Independence signing, and it’s funny that people have been trained to be able to pick out the two least religious founding fathers (Franklin and Jefferson – notwithstanding Jefferson’s profession of Christianity he was not as devoutly Christian as the rest). And then we’re assured that the rest of them are just as irreligious. But of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 54 were confessed Christians and members of Christian churches. 29 of them had seminary degrees and were ordained ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Not bad for a bunch of atheists and deists.

No one would ever have thought this was a secular nation in the past because Americans knew their history.  An 1848 book used in public school for generations entitled, “Lives of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.” And in public schools for years children learned the faith and character of their founding fathers.

And again, everything they believed was an anathema to what you believe.

And that says something. Because what you say, what you think, what you believe, fundamentally doesn’t work – and never HAS worked. And what they said, what they thought, and what they believed, has stood in irrefutable proof of their wisdom.

Your argument is this: the Constitution has “evolved” into whatever the hell anybody wants it to mean. It is intrinsically meaningless. If the Constitution truly is a living, organic document that evolves and pulsates, it “evolves” into whatever you want it to become and “pulsates” into whatever form you want it to take. We might as well have a telephone directory as our Constitution, so that scholars in voodoo-fashion could discern “penumbras and emanations” wherever they wished.

Let’s take a look at the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Your atheistic socialism has never worked and never will work because you fundamentally deny the SOURCE of the rights you claim: an objective, transcendent Creator God who created man with these fundamental rights. You have never had, and never will have, anything concrete or objective by which to secure the rights that our founding fathers’ secured. Furthermore, you would do to any such transcendent/objective rights exactly what you want to do to the Constitution itself: make them mean whatever the hell you – or the next dictator/tyrant on the block – WANT them to mean. And that is why your God-denying socialism has produced one despot and one nightmare after another, and why it always WILL.

What socialists ultimately pursue is power over people’s lives.  And so long as leftists hold such power, principles will not matter.  And frankly, even if there WERE any “binding” principles they would invariably be blurred into meaninglessness by a succession of “penumbras and emanations” to suit the will of the next dictator.  That ultimately becomes tyranny every single time.

And that is why George Washington would be kicking your butt across the floor as he shouted, “YOU ARE NO PATRIOT!”

You instead argue for a system of government that has NEVER worked and never will. I will tilt at the government handed down by my religious founding fathers and leave you to tilt at your godless socialist windmills.

If Glenn Beck Hijacked Martin Luther King, Then Martin Luther King Hijacked Abraham Lincoln

A pretty good (certainly not completely objective, but by today’s horrendous standards of objectivity pretty good) article by Mary C. Curtis sets up the dilemma of Glenn Beck’s “8/28” rally at the Lincoln Memorial:

Glenn Beck Rally in D.C. Saturday: Honoring MLK’s Legacy — or Hijacking It?

Forty-seven years ago today, hundreds of thousands of Americans joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and witnessed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech, which summed up the hopes of generations.

Today, crowds are repeating that trek – by bus, train, car and plane — to the nation’s capital, with their own hopes and dreams about what America should stand for.

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin — two conservative stars known more for their divisive political views than for their King-like stands for social justice — will lead Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally to pay tribute “to America’s service personnel and other upstanding citizens who embody our nation’s founding principles of integrity, truth and honor.”

At the same time, the National Action Network plans a “Reclaim the Dream” rally in Washington to honor King and the civil rights movement in its own way. Its leader, the Rev. Al Sharpton, acknowledges Beck’s right to rally, but not his claim to a part of King’s legacy.

One thing all sides and Glenn Beck himself can agree on: Beck is not Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Nevertheless, when Beck and Palin speak to a crowd gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, just like that day in 1963, the symbolism will be unmistakable.

Cindy Spyker, who is driving a group of 10 from Charlotte, N.C, has been to Washington before, for the 9/12 taxpayer rally last year and the protest of the health care reform bill. A member of CAUTION (Common Americans United to Inspire Our Nation), she said Beck is “one of the very few people willing to say what needs to be said, whether people like it or not. America was created on Christian-Judeo values.” The country has “turned away from faith,” she said, and “has to get back to principles like honor.” Spyker, 51, said of today’s rally: “Of course, it’s not so much the civil rights thing. What he’s trying to get across — content of character — is not about what we look like. It’s about who we are and how do we conduct ourselves, especially when people aren’t watching.”

Marette Parker will be taking a bus from Charlotte to a different Washington destination. Parker, 42, who is organizing a North Carolina chapter of National Action Network, is attending the group’s rally, starting at Dunbar High School and followed by a march to the site of the proposed King Memorial, which she said is “long overdue.”

Parker said that if King were alive today, he would “be proud that times have changed,” but would be saddened by problems that still exist. “We all have to come together as a community,” she said, “to mentor and motivate our young people.” She thinks Beck’s rally is “trying to hijack this particular day and steal media coverage,” she said. “We can’t let this happen.”

On his radio show Wednesday, Beck said: “I know that people are going to hammer me because they’re going to say, ‘It’s no Martin Luther King speech.’ Of course it’s not Martin Luther King. You think I’m Martin Luther King?” He said he has prepared only a few talking points so he doesn’t get in the way of “the spirit.” Though he has said the date wasn’t chosen with the anniversary in mind, when he found out he called the coincidence “divine providence.”

Whites “do not own” the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, and “blacks don’t own Martin Luther King,” Beck said on his show in June. “Not only is the event non-political, we have continuously encouraged those attending to avoid bringing political signs, political flyers, ‘I heart the RNC’ T-shirts and other similar partisan paraphernalia. There are plenty of opportunities to talk about politics. This isn’t one of them.”

Like I said, Mary Curtis did fine.  Her only display of bias is her describing Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as harboring “divisive political views” without characterizing Al Sharpton the same way.  Because I can guarantee you that conservatives find Sharpton’s views every iota as divisive as liberals find Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin’s.  But I can live with that.

What I can’t live with is the notion that Glenn Beck has “hijacked” Martin Luther King, whether he intended to make the great civil rights leader a major part of his event or not.

So-called black “civil rights leaders” are arguing that Glenn Beck has no right to hold his August 28 event in front of the Lincoln Memorial because that hearkens us to Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech.  And that hijacks the legacy of Martin Luther King – who was black.

But if that’s the case, then Martin Luther King himself was hijacking the legacy of Abraham Lincoln – who was white.  Glenn Beck hit that one out of the park.

For those lefties who argue that Glenn Beck should be banned from “hijacking” King not because of race, but because of ideas, then conservatives can argue that King STILL hijacked Lincoln.  Because Abraham Lincoln didn’t stand for the radical race-based crap that the left argues that Martin Luther King epitomized.

The greatness of both Lincoln and King was that they transcended their race and became moral heroes of every people of every color and even every creed.

And like it or not, Glenn Beck has as much right to appeal to Martin Luther King as any black person does.  And it’s frankly racist to argue otherwise.

And speaking of racism, how would blacks have reacted had whites staged a counter-event to compete with, say, Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March?  You don’t think there would have been cries of outrage?  Yet that’s basically what Al Sharpton did today.

One of the interesting issues underlying this debate about “hijacking” comes from the most famous lines in King’s speech:

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

For the most part, that last line almost seems to be an embarrassment of the pseudo civil rights movement of today.  Maybe Martin Luther King said it, but he didn’t really mean it.  And conservatives are determined to hold the civil rights movement accountable to that standard.

As the pro-liberal and pro-Democrat so-called “civil rights leaders” denounce Glenn Beck and conservatives, which side is guilty of refusing to make “the color of their skin” the primary issue?

Allow me to quote myself:

I am beyond sick of this crap.  Where’s the CONGRESSIONAL WHITE CAUCUS that dedicates itself to securing political benefits for white people, and blacks be damned???  Where’s the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF WHITE PEOPLE that is operating with prestige and acclaim???  Where are the HISTORICALLY WHITE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES that exist to educate white students rather than black students???  Where’s the UNITED CAUCASIAN COLLEGE FUND that exists to give scholarships to white students for the sake of being white???  Where’s the NATIONAL WHITE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE to secure business opportunities for white people against black people???

Hey, let me ask a more compelling question, given the occupant of the White House: where’s the national major white Republican politician who spent 20-odd years in a “church” that espoused a commitment to the white value system, which entails a commitment to the white community, a commitment to white self-determination, a commitment to the white family, a commitment to white education, a commitment to the white workforce, a commitment to the white ethic, a commitment to white progress, a commitment to support white institutions, and a commitment to pledge allegiance to all white leadership?

It’s not simply that liberals aren’t advancing a color-blind society; it’s that all they see is color, and they rabidly fixate on color and use color as an ideological weapon in every single imaginable way they can.

And, yeah, for the record, I’m just as sick of this crap now as I was back then.

One of the things that made Martin Luther King a transcendent figure was the fact that he straddled more than just a far left ideology.  He reached out and touched ALL people of ALL races.  Frankly, if he didn’t do so, he really isn’t all that great of a figure.

Some of what King said touched white people.  That was why his movement was ultimately so successful.  And why shouldn’t the white Americans who changed their views because of that movement be banned from it now?

The so-called “civil rights leaders” of today don’t want America to know how profoundly racist the Democrat Party has been throughout its history.  And they certainly don’t want you to know how rabidly racist and even rabidly anti-Martin Luther King the “spiritual mentor” of Barack Obama was.

But here’s a quote from Jeremiah Wright:

The civil-rights movement, Wright said, was never about racial equality: “It was always about becoming white . . . to master what [they] do.” Martin Luther King, he said, was misguided for advocating nonviolence among his people, “born in the oven of America.”

And why does Jeremiah Wright – Barack Obama’s pastor and spiritual mentor for more than twenty years – so despise Martin Luther King?  Because Martin Luther King wanted racial equality, and an emphasis on individual character.  Whereas so-called “civil rights leaders” like Jeremiah Wright want the emphasis to be on race-based preferential treatment apart from personal character.

But at least Jeremiah Wright – bigot that he is – had the integrity to honestly represent Martin Luther King’s primary message.  In that, he is far more honest than men like Al Sharpton, who dance around it with racial rhetoric, but never land on the heart of King’s message.  Sharpton will give equality with one finger, and then immediately take it away with the other hand.

The fact of the matter is that Martin Luther King was a registered Republican, as was his father before him.  And the fact of the matter is that:

During the civil rights era of the 1960s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs. It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools. President Eisenhower also appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court, which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation. Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman’s issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military.

Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded as a proponent of civil rights. However, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act while he was a senator, as did Democrat Sen. Al Gore Sr. And after he became President, Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican. President Kennedy, through his brother Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King.

In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King’s leaving Memphis, Tenn., after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a “trouble-maker” who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

Not many people today – black or white – know that we would have had a powerful Civil Rights Act in 1957, but that Lyndon Baines Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Al Gore, Sr., Robert Byrd, and other Democrats opposed it.  The mainstream media propagandists have really done their job well.

Nor do they know that the often-lauded 1964 Civil Rights Act was largely the result of Republicans’ efforts and support:

Mindful of how Democrat opposition had forced the Republicans to weaken their 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts, President Johnson warned Democrats in Congress that this time it was all or nothing. To ensure support from Republicans, he had to promise them that he would not accept any weakening of the bill and also that he would publicly credit our Party for its role in securing congressional approval. Johnson played no direct role in the legislative fight, so that it would not be perceived as a partisan struggle. There was no doubt that the House of Representatives would pass the bill.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Everett Dirksen had little trouble rounding up the votes of most Republicans, and former presidential candidate Richard Nixon also lobbied hard for the bill. Senate Majority Leader Michael Mansfield and Senator Hubert Humphrey led the Democrat drive for passage, while the chief opponents were Democrat Senators Sam Ervin, of later Watergate fame, Albert Gore Sr., and Robert Byrd. Senator Byrd, a former Klansman whom Democrats still call “the conscience of the Senate”, filibustered against the civil rights bill for fourteen straight hours before the final vote. The House of Representatives passed the bill by 289 to 126, a vote in which 79% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats voted yes. The Senate vote was 73 to 27, with 21 Democrats and only 6 Republicans voting no. President Johnson signed the new Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964.

Liberals have fought long and hard for racial quotas and preferential treatment for blacks.  But the greatest civil rights leader of all was fundamentally opposed to them.

Let’s listen to Frederick Douglass, escaped slave and greatest of all champions of civil rights, has to say:

Frederick Douglass ridiculed the idea of racial quotas, as suggested by Martin Delany, as “absurd as a matter of practice,” noting that it implied blacks “should constitute one-eighth of the poets, statesmen, scholars, authors and philosophers.” Douglass emphasized that “natural equality is a very different thing from practical equality; and…though men may be potentially equal, circumstances may for a time cause the most striking inequalities.”  On another occasion, in opposing “special efforts” for the black freedmen, Douglass argued that they “might ‘serve to keep up very prejudices, which it is so desirable to banish’ by promoting an image of blacks as privileged wards of the state.”

So, as a Republican, exactly why is it that I should be banned for life from honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King, and why can’t I explain what aspect of his message won my support?

Al Sharpton and those who decry Glenn Beck as “hijacking” Martin Luther King are profoundly wrong for insinuating that nothing Martin Luther King preached supported the Republicans’ message.  Especially when King himself was a Republican when he was teaching those things; and especially when it was Republicans who were hearing his message and responding to the changes he urged on America.

And for the record, given the fact that Glenn Beck specifically focused on honoring our heroic troops and the tremendous Special Operations Warrior Foundation (go here to donate), it’s all the more despicable that demagogic ideologues such as Al Sharpton would demonize it.

I’ll guarantee you whose side our SEALs Delta Force, and other Special Operations warriors are on, whose children will be provided for if they fall fighting for this nation because of Glenn Beck’s event today.  Beck raised more than $5 million today.

Update, August 30: Al Sharpton said this about Glenn Beck:

“They want to disgrace this day and we’re not giving them this day. This is our day and we ain’t giving it away,” said Revered Al Sharpton. He and other civil rights leaders staged a separate rally nearby to mark the dream speech anniversary.

A day for “us.”  Black people.  And specifically, only black people who think like Al Sharpton.

The only racist bigot who “disgraced this day” was Al Sharpton and those who think like him.

Why They Are Dangerous: Liberal Justices Make Case Against The Constitution

The liberal justices pretty much say, “Screw the Constitution, except for the nonexistent “penumbra and emanations” parts of it that we can make up.”

The nonexistent right to murder your own baby that exists nowhere in the Constitution?  Check.  The clearly stated 2nd Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear arms (which) shall not be infringed”?  Well, the liberals say they don’t like it, they don’t want it to be there, so screw that right.

The Declaration of Independence makes it crystal clear: rights come from our being created in the image of God.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights

These are natural rights.  The Constitution doesn’t grant them to us; we have them naturally from God, regardless of where we live or what government we have.  And if a government doesn’t allow these natural rights to be expressed, the people have the right to remove that government.

Elena Kagan doesn’t give a damn about natural rights.  For her, they are meaningless.  Government is god; rights come at the whim of Big Brother.

That philospophy flies in the face of Abraham Lincoln’s view.  He believed that the Declaration of Independence DECLARED the foundation of and purpose for the Constitution, saying:

“I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?”

Our most fundamental rights derive from God.  They most certainly DON’T derive from government, or from the ideological whims of a bunch of half-wit morally idiotic liberal judges.

The fact that Kagan doesn’t believe that the Constitution itself derives from a more fundamental and more powerful authority, that there is no foundational moral law which itself stands above the Constitution, is why she believes that the government should have no power outside of it.  Which is why she believes that the government may have the power to dictate that you must eat your fruits and vegetables.

Another question which is emerging is exactly what constitutes judicial activism?  Is it violating the Constitution and imposing ones’ will upon it, or is it reversing a terrible decision that had violated the Constitution?

To Democrats, it is the latter:

Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, his voice dripping with sarcasm, said that for Republicans accusing Democrats of judicial activism, “I have two words for you: Citizens United,” the shorthand name of the campaign-finance case.

Democrats point to what they claim is a nearly century old Supreme Court principle limiting corporations from rights that American citizens clearly have, such as the right of free speech.  And that stare decisis makes overturning that ruling sacrosanct.

But their problem is that those who view corporations as having the same free speech rights as persons under the law has a nearly TWO century precedent supporting it:

In the United States, corporations were recognized as having rights to contract, and to have those contracts honored the same as contracts entered into by natural persons, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, decided in 1819. In the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394, the Supreme Court recognized that corporations were recognized as persons for purposes of the 14th Amendment.^[1][2]

From the railroad case:

In an 1886 tax dispute between the Southern Pacific Railroad and the state of California, the court reporter quoted Chief Justice Morrison Waite telling attorneys to skip arguments over whether the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause applied to corporations, because “we are all of opinion that it does.”

Why does violating “sacrosanct” stare decisis for “a nearly century old” precedent qualify as “judicial activism,” but violating a nearly TWO HUNDRED YEAR-OLD precedent not count as judicial activism?

Let’s set aside that we on the right have the oldest precedent on our side, such that the stare decisis argument becomes utterly null and void.  Let’s consider the merits of the case itself.  Heritage responds to that by pointing out:

However, those criticisms ignore the fact that the Austin decision on independent expenditures and the part of the McConnell decision on electioneering communications were outliers in the Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence. The majority’s actions in Citizens United did not constitute judicial activism, but rather upheld basic First Amendment protections against unlawful encroachments by Congress. It is not judicial activism when a judge overturns two relatively recent decisions that were wrongly decided and that are in conflict with a long line of other precedents—particularly if the decision corrects constitutional errors. If this were not true, then the same critics of the Citizens United decision must believe that Plessy v. Ferguson[15] should still be the law of the land today and racial segregation should still be considered “constitutional” since under their slanted and sophomoric definition, the justices of the Supreme Court engaged in judicial “activism” in Brown v. Board of Education.[16] After all, the justices in Brown overturned Plessy and repudiated the “separate but equal” doctrine as unconstitutional—and arguably did so when they decided subsequent cases striking down similar policies by recalcitrant jurisdictions that acted contrary to Brown and its progeny.

Which is to say that the Citizens United case wasn’t a case of judicial activism, in which judges literally invented out of their own warped minds by “penumbras and emanations” a right that had never existed.  It was, rather, a case of constitutional strict constructionists restoring the constitutional principles that had existed prior to a bad law (Austin) being enacted by a group of judicial activists.

You want REAL judicial activism?  How about the liberal justices who voted to overturn the 2nd Amendment guarantee of the individual right to keep and bear arms simply because they don’t like it?

Let’s look to see the vapid legal arguments “justifying” these four moral idiots’ votes:

Gun Shy: Four Supreme Court Justices Make Case Against Constitutional Rights
Jacob Sullum

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment applies to states and cities as well as the federal government. Judging from their objections, the four dissenters were still reeling from the court’s landmark 2008 decision recognizing that the amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.

In their dissenting opinions, Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer (joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor) worry that overturning gun control laws undermines democracy. If “the people” want to ban handguns, they say, “the people” should be allowed to implement that desire through their elected representatives.

What if the people want to ban books that offend them, establish an official church or authorize police to conduct warrantless searches at will? Those options are also foreclosed by constitutional provisions that apply to the states by way of the 14th Amendment. The crucial difference between a pure democracy and a constitutional democracy like ours is that sometimes the majority does not decide.

Likewise, Stevens defends “state and local legislatures’ right to experiment,” while Breyer is loath to interfere with “the ability of states to reflect local preferences and conditions — both key virtues of federalism.” Coming from justices who think Congress can disregard state decisions about the medical use of marijuana because a plant on the windowsill of a cancer patient qualifies as interstate commerce, this sudden concern about federalism is hard to take seriously.

Another reason to doubt the dissenters’ sincerity: They would never accept federalism as a rationale for letting states “experiment” with freedom of speech, freedom of religion or due process protections. Much of their job, as they themselves see it, involves overriding “local preferences” that give short shrift to constitutional rights.

Second Amendment rights are different, Breyer says, because “determining the constitutionality of a particular state gun law requires finding answers to complex empirically based questions.” So does weighing the claims in favor of banning child pornography or depictions of animal cruelty, relaxing the Miranda rule, admitting illegally obtained evidence or allowing warrantless pat-downs, dog sniffs or infrared surveillance.

When they decide whether a law or practice violates a constitutional right, courts cannot avoid empirical questions. In cases involving racial discrimination or content-based speech restrictions, for example, they ask whether the challenged law is “narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest” and is the “least restrictive means” of doing so.

But unlike equal protection or freedom of speech, Stevens says, “firearms have a fundamentally ambivalent relationship to liberty.” How so? “Just as they can help homeowners defend their families and property from intruders,” he explains, “they can help thugs and insurrectionists murder innocent victims.”

Every right can be abused, with results that are immoral, illegal or both. Freedom of speech can be used to spread hateful ideas, promote pernicious political philosophies, slander the innocent or engage in criminal conspiracies. If there were no potential for harm from exercising a right, there would be no need to protect it, because no one would try to restrict it.

The dissenters’ most frivolous objection is that making states obey the Second Amendment “invites an avalanche of litigation,” as Stevens puts it. Every day we hear about cases in which people argue that the government has violated their rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth or Eighth amendment. Neither Stevens nor Breyer wants to stop this “avalanche.” Only when the Second Amendment is added to the mix do they recoil in horror at the prospect that Americans will use the courts to vindicate their rights.

I have to laugh that the author of the above piece recoils in horror at the prospect of the Supreme Court voting to ban books because, if they do [read ‘when’], they’ve got a “book banning” advocate in Elena Kagan.

Justice Stevens does not have to worry that his home would be broken into by “home invasion” attackers who storm into a house and terrorize and murder the occupants in the home.  If he did, do you think he would still argue that the ability of a homeowner to protect himself and his family with a gun was somehow nullified by the fact that the criminals could have a gun, too?

Elena Kagan’s mentor was Justice Thurgood Marshall, who once famously said, “You do what you think is right and let the law catch up” (see Deborah L. Rhode, “A Tribute to Justice Thurgood Marshall: Letting the Law Catch Up,” in the 44 Stanford Law Review 1259 (1992).

WHAT IF WHAT THE JUSTICE THINK IS RIGHT IS REALLY DEAD WRONG?!?!?!

Activist judges have repeatedly throughout history justified slavery, segregation, and racism, abandoning the plain sense of the Constitution in order to impose their views upon the text.  Let’s not forget that it was Democrats who fought to impose slavery, and it was judicial activists who bound the country up with laws that took the bloodiest war in American history to overcome.

What did Thomas Jefferson say about the threat of Supreme Court Justices imposing their own will upon the Constitution and imposing laws on the nation based on nothing but their own wills?

“This member of the Government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is, ad libitum, by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt.”
—Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825. ME 16:114

“The Constitution . . . meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other.  But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”
—Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51

“To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.  Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.”
—Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277

I don’t hear Jefferson praising “you do what you think is right and let the law catch up” as defining the role of our Supreme Court Justices.  In fact, I hear him turning in his grave over the abomination that Barack Obama’s and Elena Kagan’s philosophy is inflicting upon the nation.

[Note: I used the same quotes above in responding to the LAST abomination to the Supreme Court that Obama appointed].

Our Constitution is being poisoned by the left.  One day it will die, and they will be able to erect the Marxist-fascist state they’ve always dreamed of.

How long it will be before that evil day comes – which will undoubtedly occur in a 5-4 decision – is entirely up to you.

Abraham Lincoln’s Wisdom Applied To ObamaCare

Thought I’d add my own wrinkle to the excellent thought shared by Vocal Minority:

Abraham Lincoln once asked an audience how many legs a dog has, if you called the tail a leg? When the audience said “five,” Lincoln corrected them, saying that the answer was four. “The fact that you call a tail a leg does not make it a leg.”

That same principle applies today. The fact that politicians call something a “stimulus” does not make it a stimulus. The fact that they call something a “jobs bill” does not mean there will be more jobs.

— Thomas Sowell

The same thing applies to “health care reform” under the Democrats.

“Health care reform” is neither about health care or reform.  It’s about power and control, and whether the government or the people should have it.

Even Obama acknowledges that ObamaCare is much more about “Obama” than it is “care”:

“To maintain a strong presidency, we need to pass the bill,” Obama told the liberals

You can call this monstrosity whatever you want: You can call it the “Fatal Attraction bill” in honor of how many times you think you’ve finally killed it, only to see it come screaming back at you again; or the “Fiscal Nightmare Plan” in honor of how many blatant accounting shenanigans the bill has to make it seem like it somehow isn’t a black hole of boondoggles; or  even the “Arrogance of Power Power-grab bill,” in honor of Joe Biden’s previous remarks on the reconciliation strategy that would force it’s passage.  But it certainly isn’t “health care reform.”  Any more than a tail is a leg.

Harry Reid Invokes Slavery To Attack Republicans: The Real Story

Another day, another profoundly dishonest and immoral Democrat lie.

The Democrat Senate Majority Leader had this to say about the Democrats’ health care agenda and its relationship with wanting to own slaves:

“All Republicans can come up with is this: Slow down, stop everything and start over. If you think you have heard these same excuses before, you are right,” Reid said on the Senate floor Monday. “When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said, ‘Slow down, it is too early, let’s wait. Things are not bad enough.’ “

As Republicans erupted into outrage at the ugly and utterly despicable tactic – and presumably after Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele called on Reid to apologize for his “disgraceful statement” – Harry Reid spake again through his spokesman:

“Today’s feigned outrage is nothing but a ploy to distract from the fact they have no plan to lower the cost of health care, stop insurance company abuses or protect Medicare.”

Harry Reid conveniently forgets that his Democrat party is trying to strip Medicare of $460 billion in funding at a time when it needs those funds the most, against unanimous Republican objection.  But facts don’t really amount to much with hard-core liars.

Let me try Harry Reid’s trick:

“All Democrats can come up with is this: tell lies, make stuff up and use deception to make the cost of their bills look different than it really is. If you think you have heard these same excuses before, you are right.  When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of child molestation, there were those who dug in their heels and said, ‘Slow down, buggering little boys is fine, it’s discrimination to go after them. Things are not bad enough.’ “

And if Democrats become outraged at being compared to being a bunch of child molesters over their takeover of the health care system, I’ll just trot back out and say:

“Today’s feigned outrage is nothing but a ploy.”

Because, after all, when I slander you with the most hateful demagoguery, how DARE you respond in outrage?

I tell you what: Joseph Goebbels is just so freaking happy listening to Harry Reid from his special place in hell.  Every demagogue in history has got to be dancing.

If I really wanted to continue with the Democrat tactics, I would make sure that everyone knew that this was hate speech that would incite black people to begin murdering Republicans.  And the moment I found any registered Republican killed by a black guy, I would immediately cite the event and decry Harry Reid as a blood-faced murderer.

Harry Reid wants to talk about slavery.  So let’s talk about slavery.  Democrats fought the bloodiest war in American history to keep blacks in bondage; Republicans under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln won the emancipation of black slaves at the cost of their own lives and limbs.

During the 1860 presidential election, Democrat candidate Stephen Douglas supported the doctrine of popular sovereignty: allowing settlers in each territory to decide for themselves whether abortion – oops, I mean slavery – would be allowed.

On October 13, 1858, During Lincoln-Douglas debates, U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) stated: “I do not regard the Negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother, or any kin to me whatever.”

An article entitled “The African Civil War” has a very simple entry as to how the Civil War began:

Abraham Lincoln was against slavery. When he was elected President in 1860, seven Southern states left, or seceded, from the United States. They formed the Confederate States of America

The Democrat Party: the Party of slavery.

A little history lesson:

April 16, 1862
President Lincoln signs bill abolishing slavery in District of Columbia; in Congress, 99% of Republicans vote yes, 83% of Democrats vote no

July 17, 1862
Over unanimous Democrat opposition, Republican Congress passes Confiscation Act stating that slaves of the Confederacy “shall be forever free”

January 31, 1865
13th Amendment banning slavery passed by U.S. House with unanimous Republican support, intense Democrat opposition

April 8, 1865
13th Amendment banning slavery passed by U.S. Senate with 100% Republican support, 63% Democrat opposition

November 22, 1865
Republicans denounce Democrat legislature of Mississippi for enacting “black codes,” which institutionalized racial discrimination

February 5, 1866
U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-PA) introduces legislation, successfully opposed by Democrat President Andrew Johnson, to implement “40 acres and a mule” relief by distributing land to former slaves

April 9, 1866
Republican Congress overrides Democrat President Johnson’s veto; Civil Rights Act of 1866, conferring rights of citizenship on African-Americans, becomes law

May 10, 1866
U.S. House passes Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the laws to all citizens; 100% of Democrats vote no

June 8, 1866
U.S. Senate passes Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the law to all citizens; 94% of Republicans vote yes and 100% of Democrats vote no

The above-cited article entitled, “The Democrat Race Lie,” goes on with numerous entries detailing well over a century of Democrat opposition to racial equality, to match their support of the institution of slavery.

So in other words, Harry Reid is accusing Republicans of being so vile, so hateful, so ugly, so despicable, so depraved, so morally evil, that they have become like Democrats.

And those are fighting words.  Because as bad as Republicans are, there’s no way they are THAT loathsome.

After the Civil War, the Democrats formed the Ku Klux Klan as a violent terrorist organization which

resisted Reconstruction by assaulting, murdering and intimidating freedmen and white Republicans.

So you can understand why I would be deeply offended and appalled that Harry Reid would say that I’m such a nasty piece of work as a Republican that I’m somehow like a Democrat in wanting to continue slavery.

Let’s move ahead to 1924, to see how the Ku Klux Klan still owned the Democrat Party:

The 1924 Democratic National Convention, also called the Klanbake,^[1] held at the Madison Square Garden in New York City from June 24 to July 9, took a record 103 ballots to nominate a presidential candidate. It was the longest continuously running convention in United States political history. It was the first national convention in which a major party had a woman, Lena Springs, placed in nomination for the office of Vice President. It was also known for the strong influence of the Ku Klux Klan.

That’s why Martin Luther King, Sr., a major civil rights figure before his son took his mantle, “had been a lifelong registered Republican, and had endorsed Republican Richard Nixon.”  And that’s why Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., registered as a Republican in 1956.

The section entitled, “The Modern Civil Rights Era,” from an article, “Republicans for Civil Rights,” is worth reading:

During the civil rights era of the 1960’s, it was the Democrats who Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the other protestors were fighting. Democrat Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor in Birmingham let loose dogs and turned fire hoses on black civil rights demonstrators. Democrat Georgia Governor Lester Maddox famously brandished ax handles to prevent blacks from patronizing his restaurant. In 1963, Democrat Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in front of the Alabama schoolhouse chanting, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. In 1954, Democrat Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus tried to prevent desegregation of a Little Rock public school. It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who established the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, enforced the desegregation of the military, sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate the schools (using the 101st airborne), and appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court which resulted in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education (which ended school segregation). Eisenhower also supported the civil rights laws of 1957 and 1960.

Little known by many today is the fact that it was Republican Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois, not Democrat President Lyndon Johnson, who pushed through the civil rights laws of the 1960’s. In fact, Dirksen was key to the passage of civil rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965 and 1968. Dirksen wrote the language for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Dirksen also crafted the language for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in housing.

Conveniently forgotten today are significant facts about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The law guaranteed equal access to public facilities and banned discrimination by any establishment receiving federal government funding. The law was an update of Republican Charles Sumner’s 1875 Civil Rights Act which had been stuck down by the Democrat-controlled US Supreme Court in 1883.

In-fact, Democrat Senators Sam Ervin, Al Gore Sr., William Fulbright (credited as Bill Clinton’s political mentor) and Robert Byrd (a former Kleagle for the Ku Klux Klan), filibustered against the bill for 14 straight hours before the final vote. Former presidential candidate Richard Nixon lobbied hard for the bill. When the bill finally came to a vote, the House of Reps passed the bill 289 to 124. 80% of Republicans voted for the bill VS only 63% by Democrats. The Senate vote was 73 to 27 (21 Democrats voting no VS only 6 Republicans voting against). Simply put: Republicans are responsible for the bill being passed, not Democrats as they’d lead you to believe.

Equally important was the 1965 Voting Rights Act that abolished literacy tests and other tests used to prevent blacks from voting (a right granted by the 15th Amendment). With images of violence against civil rights protestors led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. shaping the national debate, Democrats in Congress finally decided not to filibuster the Voting Rights Act of 1965. When the bill came up for a vote, both houses of Congress passed the bill. In the House of Representatives, 85% of Republicans and 80% of Democrats voted for the bill. In the Senate, 17 Democrats voted no, and only one Republican voted no.

Democrat President John F. Kennedy is championed as a civil rights advocate. In reality, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil rights Act as a senator along side Democrat Senator Al Gore Sr. After he became president, John F. Kennedy opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph who was also a black Republican. President Kennedy, through his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI.

In a historic apology, issued unanimously on January 20, 2007 by the North Carolina Democratic Executive Committee, composed of over 700 party leaders and activists from 100 counties, resulted from the1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission Report of May 31, 2006. The report concluded that the Democrat Party was solely responsible for that 1898 murderous rampage against blacks.

“The Democrat Party was soley responsible” become the overarching theme.

The Democrats’ record regarding slavery is a record of abject shame and moral evil.

Democrats might point out that Strom Thurmond filibustered the 1957 Civil Rights Act signed by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.  But they should also recognize that he was a member of the Democrat Party when he did it.  And then they should account for the fact that their very own Robert Byrd – who continues to serve as a Democrat Senator today – not only filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but actively served the Ku Klux Klan in the leadership positions of “Kleagle” and “Exalted Cyclops.” And this now revered Democrat wrote a letter to Senator Theodore Bilbo that said:

“I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side… Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”

— Sen. Robert C. Byrd, honored Democrat in good standing.

And for Harry Reid to lecture Republicans, using slavery as an example, is an insult to history, in addition to generation after generation of Republicans trying to win first emancipation and then individual liberties for blacks against the bitter and steadfast opposition of the Democrat Party.

How dare he?  How DARE he?

Harry Reid should not only apologize, he should frankly resign in disgrace.  He won’t, only because the Democrat Party wallows in disgrace like pigs wallow in mud.

Another Milestone Day For Obama: The Monstrous Mistake Of Trying Foreign Terrorists Like U.S. Citizens

I didn’t used to believe in anything special about “Friday the 13th.”  It was just another day.  Turns out I was wrong.

Obama has brought about yet another “change.”

Friday the 13th now features a new monster – the President of the United States of America – as the Creature Who Made Terrorists Feel Right At Home.  I know the name doesn’t sound as scary as “Jason Voorhees,” the hockey-masked hacker-slasher, but believe me, this is a monster that can kill more Americans than Jason Voorhees ever did.

Under Obama, we’re undermining our CIA.  We’re mirandizing terrorists captured on foreign battlefields.  And now we’re trying mass-murdering terrorists like American citizens in our justice system.

And, of course, when a terrorists actually guns down more than two score unarmed soldiers on a military base, he denies the man is even a terrorist in a rush to whitewash lest the revelation somehow undermine our “diversity.”

Hope you terrorist-murderers feel at home.  If there’s anything else we can do for you, please let us know.  Our president will go to any lengths to make you as comfortable as possible.

And don’t you mind that whole “slaughtering” thing.  We’re really like sheeple now; we don’t mind.  Murder 3,000 of us, or 3,000,000; we’re fine with it.  Really.

Why are we going to put the 9/11 mastermind and four of his fellow murderers on trial in civilian court?  Because Barack Obama is more righteous and wonderful than our despicable presidents of the past – such as Abraham Lincoln and the admittedly less-righteous FDR – have ever been.  Honest Abe was actually DIShonest Abe because he had military tribunals.

NYC trial of 9/11 suspects poses legal risks

By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer Devlin Barrett, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 33 mins ago

WASHINGTON – In the biggest trial for the age of terrorism, the professed 9/11 mastermind and four alleged henchmen will be hauled before a civilian court on American soil, barely a thousand yards from the site of the World Trade Center’s twin towers they are accused of destroying.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision Friday to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to trial at a lower Manhattan courthouse.

It’s a risky move. Trying the men in civilian court will bar evidence obtained under duress and complicate a case where anything short of slam-dunk convictions will empower President Barack Obama’s critics.

The case is likely to force the federal court to confront a host of difficult issues, including rough treatment of detainees, sensitive intelligence-gathering and the potential spectacle of defiant terrorists disrupting proceedings. U.S. civilian courts prohibit evidence obtained through coercion, and a number of detainees were questioned using harsh methods some call torture.

Holder insisted both the court system and the untainted evidence against the five men are strong enough to deliver a guilty verdict and the penalty he expects to seek: a death sentence for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people who were killed when four hijacked jetliners slammed into the towers, the Pentagon and a field in western Pennsylvania.

“After eight years of delay, those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September the 11th will finally face justice. They will be brought to New York — to New York,” Holder repeated for emphasis — “to answer for their alleged crimes in a courthouse just blocks away from where the twin towers once stood.”

Holder said he decided to bring Mohammed and the other four before a civilian court rather than a military commission because of the nature of the undisclosed evidence against them, because the 9/11 victims were mostly civilians and because the attacks took place on U.S. soil. Institutionally, the Justice Department, where Holder has spent most of his career, has long wanted to reassert the ability of federal courts to handle terrorism cases.

Lawyers for the accused will almost certainly try to have charges thrown out based on the rough treatment of the detainees at the hands of U.S. interrogators, including the repeated waterboarding, or simulated drowning, of Mohammed.

The question has been raised as to whether the government can make its case without using coerced confessions.

That may not matter, said Pat Rowan, a former Justice Department official.

“When you consider everything that’s come out in the proceedings at Gitmo, either from the mouth of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others or from their written statements submitted to the court, it seems clear that they won’t need to use any coerced confessions in order to demonstrate their guilt,” said Rowan.

Held at Guantanamo since September 2006, Mohammed said in military proceedings there that he wanted to plead guilty and be executed to achieve what he views as martyrdom. In a letter from him released by the war crimes court, he referred to the attacks as a “noble victory” and urged U.S. authorities to “pass your sentence on me and give me no respite.”

Holder insisted the case is on firm legal footing, but he acknowledged the political ground may be more shaky when it comes to bringing feared al-Qaida terrorists to U.S. soil.

“To the extent that there are political consequences, I’ll just have to take my lumps,” he said. But any political consequences will reach beyond Holder to his boss, Obama.

Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in Obama’s plan to close the military-run detention center in Cuba. Obama initially planned to close the prison by next Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

Obama said he is “absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people will insist on it and my administration will insist on it.”

After the announcement, political criticism and praise for the decision divided mostly along party lines.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said bringing the terrorism suspects into the U.S. “is a step backwards for the security of our country and puts Americans unnecessarily at risk.”

Former President George W. Bush’s last attorney general, Michael Mukasey, a former federal judge in New York, also objected that federal courts were not well-suited to this task. “The plan seems to be to abandon the view that we are at war,” Mukasey told a conference of conservative lawyers. He said trial in open court “creates a cornucopia of intelligence for those still at large and a circus for those being tried,” and he advocated military tribunals instead.

But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the federal courts are capable of trying high-profile terrorism cases.

“By trying them in our federal courts, we demonstrate to the world that the most powerful nation on earth also trusts its judicial system — a system respected around the world,” Leahy said.

Family members of Sept. 11 victims were also divided.

“We have a president who doesn’t know we’re at war,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother, Charles Burlingame, had been the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon. She said she was sickened by “the prospect of these barbarians being turned into victims by their attorneys.”

From McClatchey:

Congressional Republicans, however, promptly accused the Obama administration of trying to return to a pre-Sept. 11 mentality of criminalizing the war on terrorism.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas warned that “bringing these dangerous individuals onto U.S. soil needlessly compromises the safety of all Americans.”

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said the possibility that the accused terrorists “could be found not guilty due to some legal technicality just blocks from Ground Zero should give every American pause.”

Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder – who actually has a track record for PARDONING AND FREEING TERRORISTS had this to say:

A big obstacle could be whether an impartial jury can be impaneled so close to where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.

Holder said that a careful jury selection process should dispel those concerns.

“I would not have authorized the bringing of these prosecutions unless I thought that the outcome … would ultimately be successful,” he said. “I will say that I have access to information that has not been publicly released that gives me great confidence that we will be successful in federal court.”

But what happens if you thought wrong, Holder?  What happens then?

What happens if these guys are found not guilty?  Are we supposed to just let them go?

What happens if the five terrorists draw a liberal activist judge who wants to make “torture” and issue, rather than “terrorism” and “3,000 murdered Americans”?  Is Obama and his Justice Department at work to circumvent the system relating to the assigning of judges to particular cases and guarantee that “the right” judge hears the case?  Wouldn’t that be tantamount to the very worst that Obama has claimed he wants to avoid in the first place?  Wouldn’t that amount to a show trial?

Obama is either taking a giant chance, a literal roll of the dice, or he’s already stacked the deck.

What happens if a Muslim is on the jury pool?  That one’s kind of interesting.  A single juror can hang the jury and lead to a mistrial.  Do we want to take a chance that a sympathizer throw a monkey wrench into the system?  Is the Obama team that so values “diversity” going to try to prevent Muslims from serving on the jury?

What about a change of venue?  Surely a judge would HAVE to grant such an obvious petition, given the fact that the attacks occurred in New York, virtually every adult was impacted, and “New York” is hardly the best place to find an untainted jury pool for the 9/11 attack on the “World Trade Center attack in New York”?  And yet New York has this mulit-million dollar high tech courthouse complex to deal with them.

I mean, again, if you grant the change of venue, people will justifiably become enraged.  And if you DON’T grant the change of venue, people will justifiably think that the fix is in.

A military tribunal of KSM and his terrorist buddies at Gitmo would have been a ho-hum affair.  A civilian trial in a lower Manhattan courthouse with the press swarming over every detail like cockroaches would be the trial of the century.

Propaganda forum?  You bet.  Journalists will cover every remark that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his merry band of mass murderers offers.  Including the words of solidarity with other jihadist murderers.  Including words of encouragement to any who would murder Americans anywhere on the planet.  This is hardly the message that the American media should be broadcasting, but rest assured we’ll be broadcasting every word of it.

Terrorists are different from jewel thieves and even from gang bangers: every single thing they do is directed toward spreading a message.

These terrorists want a big stage.  And Barack Obama and Eric Holder want to make sure they have that stage.

And what happens if the trial – whether it’s held in New York or somewhere else – stimulates more terrorist attacks?  It’s one thing if terrorists try to attack Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, quite another if they launch an attack in New York, Los Angeles, or wherever else.

And assuming (no guarantee anymore) that these terrorist monsters go to prison, you can bet in the age of Gitmo (which is actually a model prison) being shut down under Obama that these guys will end up in the U.S. civilian system.  And they will be welcomed like rock stars.

Authorities are becoming increasingly alarmed over the radicalized Muslim population coming out of the U.S. prison system:

“Over the past 30 years, Islam has become a powerful force in the U.S. prison system, with some estimates that up to 20% of the inmate population is now Muslim.  Terrorism experts are increasingly concerned that disaffected inmates drawn to radical Islam could become a source of homegrown terrorist activity.”

Authorities are seeing more and more “homegrown jihadists” coming out of the prison system.  Just two weeks ago, federal authorities were confronted by radicalized Muslims coming out of the U.S. prison system and organizing a cell that was claiming “that the government was the enemy and they must be willing to take on the FBI — even if it meant death.”  And thanks to this brain dead decision by Barack Hussein, we’re going to start seeing a lot more of this.  Putting these terrorists into the U.S. prison system is tantamount to putting crack cocaine in the hands of addicts.  It will not end well.

This is a truly stupid idea on every level imaginable.

My question is, what are we gaining from taking what Obama’s Justice Department ADMITS is a risk?  That we were “open”?

There’s the obvious question, “You know what?  This thing could backfire.  I mean these guys could be acquitted.”  And MSNBC Justice Department Correspondent Pete Williams has this to say, based on his sources:

“No.  They’ve got a drawer full of other charges that they could bring against these defendants.  There are already indictments pending against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for other crimes, so they will just re-arrest them and charge them with something else.”

The thing about a fair game is that either team could actually win.  This isn’t a fair game.  And everyone in the world is going to know that, no matter where it is held.  Contrary to what the White House might think, the inhabitants of the rest of the world are not as stupid and gullible and willing to believe propagandist drivel as Democrats are.  This isn’t going to be any kind of demonstration about how “open” we are.  People who didn’t believe it before won’t start believing it now – unless and possibly even including that we allow the five terrorists to walk out of court free men.

A National Review article entitled, “Holder’s Hidden Agenda,” reminds us of how Obama’s people just ripped into the CIA and started pulling out every wire and diode they could.  They demanded an investigation and just plain released all kinds of previously classified information that made the US and the CIA look as bad as they possibly could.  To what end?

This summer, I theorized that Attorney General Eric Holder — and his boss — had a hidden agenda in ordering a re-investigation of the CIA for six-year-old alleged interrogation excesses that had already been scrutinized by non-partisan DOJ prosecutors who had found no basis for prosecution. The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department’s obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the “reckoning” that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. […]

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s case against America. Since that will be their “defense,” the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America’s defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

Like I said.  The new Friday the 13th monsters revealed today as Barack Obama and his AG Eric Holder are far more dangerous to Americans than Jason Voorhees ever was.

Update, November 14: TEN jihadists terrorists are coming to the U.S. to stand trial in civilian court, rather than the five that Obama and Holder claimed.

Update, November 14: Barack Obama, on September 27, 2006, in the debate concerning “The Military Commissions Act of 2006,” assured America that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and those like him would face MILITARY justice, and that he would NOT get “all kinds of rights.”  Obama is, as usual, a documented liar.

Whose Country Do We Want: Our Founding Fathers’ Or Our Secular Contemporaries’?

This article consists as part of a much longer discussion with a self-described “Democratic socialist” found here (with much of the rest consisting over an argument as to what is or isn’t socialism and the supposed benefits of socialism to societies).  An argument over the significance of the founding fathers relative to “current Americans” provides for what I believed to be an informative article.

Poster: I profoundly disagree that Christianity has been the wellspring of America’s greatness. Christianity in American history has too often been the source of narrow-mindedness, intolerance and reaction.

I too love and revere the Constitution, and would risk my neck to defend it and the USA. But the Constitution is a living, organic document that evolves and pulsates. I agree with the late Justice Brennan that the only correct way to interpret it is as modern Americans. I don’t care about the “original intent” of the Founding Fathers.

Michael Eden: I could begin by simply stating that the Constitution has just “evolved and pulsated” to represent “the source of narrow-mindedness, intolerance and reaction.”  And now what the hell are you going to do – support the Constitution or rebel against it?  What you are REALLY saying with all your self-serving hyperbole aside is that you support your secular humanist worldview and are perfectly happy to twist and distort the Constitution – regardless of what the words actually say or what they historically were clearly intended to mean – until it “evolves” or “pulsates” into whatever you want it to mean.  And then you of course demand that the very “evolution” or “pulsation” you first demanded STOP so it can’t “evolve or pulsate” any further.  Which is precisely the reasoning you used to “evolve and pulsate” to Roe v. Wade only to then claim that now that we have so “evolved and pulsated” it is a matter of “settled law” and therefore cannot ever be altered.

That philosophical point made, let me begin with the historical words and clear historical meaning of George Washington in his Farewell Address given on September 17, 1796:

What are the foundations of America? After 45 years of public service, George Washington, our greatest patriot and the father of our country, gives his farewell address. He says, ‘We need to remember what brought us here. We need to remember what made us different from all the other nations across Europe and the rest of the world. We have to remember what our foundations are.’ It was the road map, showing us how we’d become what we were, and how to preserve it. It has long been considered the most important address ever given by any US president. President Lincoln set aside an entire day for the entire Union Army and had them read and understand it. Woodrow Wilson did the same during WWI. But we haven’t studied it in schools for over 45 years, so your lack of understanding is understandable. Washington said:

“Of all the habits and dispositions which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” — George Washington, Farewell Address

If you want your politics to prosper, the two things you will not separate will be religion and morality. If you want your government to work well, if you want American exceptionalism, if you want the government to do right, if you want all this, then you won’t separate religion and morality from political life. And America’s greatest patriot gave a litmus test for patriotism. He says in the very next sentence (immediately continuing from the quote above):

“In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars.” — George Washington

Washington says, Anyone who would try to remove religion and morality from public life, I won’t allow them to call themselves a patriot. Because they are trying to destroy the country.

And he wasn’t alone. I can well understand why you would throw out the wisest and most brilliant political geniuses who ever lived. I can understand because George Washington wouldn’t have even have allowed you to call yourself “a patriot” in his presence. What they wrote, what they thought, what they believed, utterly refute you. But it was THESE men, and not Marx, or Mao, or any other socialist, who devised the greatest political system the world has ever seen.

Statements by our founding fathers (who presumably understood what the Constitution that they themselves wrote and ratified meant better than Justice Brennan) announcing their religious beliefs, and stating the profound impact those beliefs had in their founding of the United States of America:

“We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams

“…And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” –- George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept 17, 1796

“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundations of public liberty and happiness.” –- Samuel Adams, Letter to John Trumbull, October 16, 1778

“The great pillars of all government and of social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor…and this alone, that renders us invincible.” –- Patrick Henry, Letter to Archibald Blair, January 8, 1789

“Without morals, a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.” —- Charles Carroll (signer of the Constitution), Letter to James McHenry,November 4, 1800

“Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God.” –- Life of Gouverneur Morris, Vol III

“Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity…in short of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.“ –- Samuel Adams, Letter to John Adams, October 4, 1790

“In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes, and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be republicans and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government. That is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible.” —- Benjamin Rush, “A Defense of the Use of the Bible as a School Book”, 1798

“In my view, the Christian Religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed…no truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian Religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.” —  Noah Webster, Reply to David McClure, Oct. 25, 1836

“Information to those who would remove (or move) to America”: “To this may be truly added, that serious Religion under its various Denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced. Atheism is unknown there, Infidelity rare & secret, so that Persons may live to a great Age in that Country without having their Piety shock’d by meeting with either an Atheist or an Infidel. And the Divine Being seems to have manifested his Approbation of the mutual Forbearance and Kindness with which the different Sects treat each other, by the remarkable Prosperity with which he has been pleased to favour the whole Country.” —- Ben Franklin, 1787 pamphlet to Europeans

“Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, the fate of republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and a people who reject its holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power.” —- Lewis Cass, A Brigadier-General in the War of 1812, Governor of the Michigan Territory, a Secretary of War, a Senator, a Secretary of State. The State of Michigan placed his statue in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? That they are not to violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.” –- “Yes, we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.” —- Thomas Jefferson

“So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have exited thro’ all the time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe.” —- Thomas Jefferson

“I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures that whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens…” — George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept 17, 1796

“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.” — John Adams, Letter of June 21, 1776

“It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe without the agency of a Supreme Being.” —- George Washington

“So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have exited thro’ all the time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe.” —- Thomas Jefferson

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.” —- Abraham Lincoln

“History will also afford the frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion, from its usefulness to the public; the advantage of a religious character among private persons; the mischiefs of superstition, and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern.” —- Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1749), p. 2

“I know, sir, how well it becomes a liberal man and a Christian to forget and forgive. As individuals professing a holy religion, it is our bounden duty to forgive injuries done us as individuals. But when the character of Christian you add the character of patriot, you are in a different situation. Our mild and holy system of religion inculcates an admirable maxim of forbearance. If your enemy smite one cheek, turn the other to him. But you must stop there. You cannot apply this to your country. As members of a social community, this maxim does not apply to you. When you consider injuries done to your country your political duty tells you of vengeance. Forgive as a private man, but never forgive public injuries. Observations of this nature are exceedingly unpleasant, but it is my duty to use them.” —- Patrick Henry, from a courtroom speech, Wirt Henry’s, Life, vol. III, pp. 606-607.

“Amongst other strange things said of me, I hear it is said by the deists that I am one of their number; and, indeed, that some good people think I am no Christian. This thought gives me much more pain than the appellation of Tory; because I think religion of infinitely higher importance than politics; and I find much cause to reproach myself that I have lived so long and have given no decided and public proofs of my being a Christian. But, indeed, my dear child, this is a character which I prize far above all this world has, or can boast.” —- Patrick Henry, 1796 letter to daughter, S. G. Arnold, The Life of Patrick Henry (Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1854), p. 250.

“This is all the inheritance I can give my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed.” — Patrick Henry, From a copy of Henry’s Last Will and Testament obtained from Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation, Red Hill, Brookneal, VA.

“It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe without the agency of a Supreme Being. It is impossible to govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being.” —- George Washington, James K. Paulding, A Life of Washington (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835), Vol. II, p. 209.

“While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe, the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to them whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.” —- James Madison, James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance (Massachusetts: Isaiah Thomas, 1786). This can be found in numerous documentary histories and other resources.

“Waiving the rights of conscience, not included in the surrender implied by the social state, & more or less invaded by all Religious establishments, the simple question to be decided, is whether a support of the best & purest religion, the Christian religion itself ought not, so far at least as pecuniary means are involved, to be provided for by the Government, rather than be left to the voluntary provisions of those who profess it.” —- James Madison, Religion and Politics in the Early Republic: Jasper Adams and the Church-State Debate, Daniel L. Dreisbach, ed. (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), p. 117.

“The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.” —- George Washington, 1778, upon seeing the divine hand in the Revolution against the greatest military in the world.

“Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. In this sense and to this extent, our civilizations and our institutions are emphatically Christian.” — U.S. Supreme Court in Holy Trinity v. U. S. — Richmond v. Moore, Illinois Supreme Court, 1883)

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” —- Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren dated February 12, 1779

“Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulties.” —- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

“I entreat you in the most earnest manner to believe in Jesus Christ, for ‘there is no salvation in any other’ (Acts 4:12). If you are not reconciled to God through Jesus Christ – if you are not clothed with the spotless robe of His righteousness – you must perish forever.” —- John Witherspoon, founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence.

“I am a Christian. I believe only in the Scriptures, and in Jesus Christ my Savior.” — Charles Thomson, founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence

“My only hope of salvation is in the infinite transcendent love of God manifested to the world by the death of His Son upon the cross. Nothing but His blood will wash away my sins. I rely exclusively upon it. Come Lord Jesus! Come quickly!” — Dr. Benjamin Rush, founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Dr. Benjamin Rush, John Adams said, was one of the three most notable founding fathers along with George Washington and Ben Franklin. Benjamin Rush was the founder of five universities (three of which are still active today); he was the father of public schools under the American Constitution; he was also the leader of the civil rights movement, the founder of the first abolitionist society in America, the founder of the first black denomination in America, served in 3 presidential administrations, is called the father of American medicine, and 3,000 American physicians bore his signature on their diplomas, started the American College of Physicians, founded the first prison ministry, and started the Sunday School movement in America, started the very first Bible Society in America, etc.

“I rely upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.” —- Samuel Adams

“An eloquent preacher of your religious society, Richard Motte, in a discourse of much emotion and pathos, is said to have exclaimed aloud to his congregation, that he did not believe there was a Quaker, Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist in heaven, having paused to give his hearers time to stare and to wonder. He added, that in heaven, God knew no distinctions, but considered all good men as his children, and as brethren of the same family. I believe, with the Quaker preacher, that he who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven, as to the dogmas in which they all differ. That on entering there, all these are left behind us, and the Aristides and Catos, the Penns and Tillotsons, Presbyterians and Baptists, will find themselves united in all principles which are in concert with the reason of the supreme mind. Of all the systems of morality, ancient and modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.” — Thomas Jefferson, “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson,” Albert Ellery Bergh, ed. (Washington, D. C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XIII, pp.377-78, letter to William Canby on September 18, 1813.

“To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others.” — Thomas Jefferson, Albert Bergh, “Writings of Jefferson,” Vol. X, p.380, letter to Benjamin Rush on April 21, 1803.

“But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of His own country, was Jesus of Nazareth.” — Thomas Jefferson, Albert Bergh, “Writings of Jefferson,” Vol. XIV, p.220, letter to William Short on October 31, 1819.

“The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.” —- John Quincy Adams, 1837 speech

“Why is it that, next to the birth day of the Saviour of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day [July 4th]? . . . Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birth-day of the Saviour? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the corner stone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity. . ?” — John Quincy Adams, John Quincy Adams, “An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport, at Their Request,” on the Sixty-first Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1837 (Newburyport: Charles Whipple, 1837), p. 5.

“We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better that the builders of Babel.” —- Benjamin Franklin, appeal for prayer at Constitutional Convention, as cited by James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, ed. (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 985.

“God commands all men everywhere to repent. He also commands them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and has assured us that all who do repent and believe shall be saved.” —- Roger Sherman.

“God has promised to bestow eternal blessings on all those who are willing to accept Him on the terms of the Gospel – that is, in a way of free grace through the atonement. — Roger Sherman. Sherman was the ONLY founding father who signed all four founding documents (the Declaration, the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and the Articles of Association). He is called “the master builder of the Constitution.” He came up with the bi-cabinal system with the House and Senate. He was a framer of the Bill of Rights. And he was also a theologian who got George Washington to announce the first federal Day of Thanksgiving proclamation, going through the Scriptures to show why we should do so. He was also a long-term member of Congress. A newspaper article on him (the Globe) dated 1837 quotes, “The volume which he consulted more than any other was the Bible. It was his custom, at the commencement of every session of Congress, to purchase a copy of the Scriptures to puruse it daily, and to present it to one of his children on his return.” He had 15 children.

“The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in His truth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Ghost.” —- John Adams

“There is no authority, civil or religious – there can be no legitimate government – but what is administered by the Holy Ghost.” —- John Adams

“There can be no salvation without it. All without it is rebellion and perdition, or, in more orthodox words, damnation.” — John Adams (And Abigail Adams was the REAL Bible thumper in the family, telling son John Quincy Adams, ‘You know how I’ve raised you. You know how you’ve been raised in church, how you’ve been taught the Scriptures, how you’ve been taught morality.’  She tells him that if he’s going to go to France and give up his faith, that the Lord seek him out and drown him to prevent that from happening).

“I am grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ our Lord, He has conferred on my beloved country.” —- Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration and framer of the Bill of Rights. He was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, dying at the age of 95 years.

At the age of 89 (in 1825), he wrote, “On the mercy of my Redeemer, I rely for salvation, and on His merits; not on the works I have done in obedience to His precepts.” —- Charles Carroll

“Almost all the civil liberty now enjoyed in the world owes its origin to the principles of the Christian religion…. [T]he religion which has introduced civil liberty, is the religion of Christ and his apostles…. This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.” — Noah Webster, History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), p. 300, Sec. 578.

And, of course, there is the assessment of the great political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville:

“Moreover, almost all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same.

In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.

The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.

There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and their debasement, while in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world fulfills all the outward duties of religion with fervor.

Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1851), pp. 331, 332, 335, 336-7, 337, respectively.

As to your socialism, de Tocquevelle wrote:

“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood; it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”

Poster: Whatever outstanding Americans said or believed in the 1700’s or 1800’s is no refutation of whatever I said. Big deal, so George Washington said that morality is not possible without religion. Just because I appreciate that he spearheaded the military efforts against the redcoats doesn’t mean I care for his views on religion.

Many of the Founding Fathers you constantly bring up were not even Christians. Men like Jefferson, Franklin and Tom Paine were Deists. Forget the Founding Fathers when dealing with today’s issues. The Constitution that they gave us has evolved into something quite different since then.

I care what Americans today think. I am not interested in what men who died when even my grandfather was not yet born believed.

Michael Eden: Actually, one of the quotes that you probably didn’t bother to read has Thomas Jefferson specifically declaring his Christianity. And I have numerous quotes from Thomas Jefferson on display. Quotes by Benjamin Franklin abound – clearly attesting to his FERVENT commitment to the need for not only religious but specifically Christian religion as a necessary and fundamental support for the country being founded. I would further point out to you that Thomas Paine was NOT a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and he was also not a delegate to the Constitutional convention. So that kind of blows a gigantic hole in your thesis.

You show the portrait of the Declaration of Independence signing, and it’s funny that people have been trained to be able to pick out the two least religious founding fathers (Franklin and Jefferson – notwithstanding Jefferson’s profession of Christianity he was not as devoutly Christian as the rest). And then we’re assured that the rest of them are just as irreligious. But of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 54 were confessed Christians and members of Christian churches. 29 of them had seminary degrees and were ordained ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Not bad for a bunch of atheists and deists.

No one would ever have thought this was a secular nation in the past because Americans knew their history.  An 1848 book used in public school for generations entitled, “Lives of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.” And in public schools for years children learned the faith and character of their founding fathers.

And again, everything they believed was an anathema to what you believe.

And that says something. Because what you say, what you think, what you believe, fundamentally doesn’t work – and never HAS worked. And what they said, what they thought, and what they believed, has stood in irrefutable proof of their wisdom.

Your argument is this: the Constitution has “evolved” into whatever the hell anybody wants it to mean. It is intrinsically meaningless. If the Constitution truly is a living, organic document that evolves and pulsates, it “evolves” into whatever you want it to become and “pulsates” into whatever form you want it to take. We might as well have a telephone directory as our Constitution, so that scholars in voodoo-fashion could discern “penumbras and emanations” wherever they wished.

Let’s take a look at the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Your atheistic socialism has never worked and never will work because you fundamentally deny the SOURCE of the rights you claim: an objective, transcendent Creator God who created man with these fundamental rights. You have never had, and never will have, anything concrete or objective by which to secure the rights that our founding fathers’ secured. Furthermore, you would do to any such transcendent/objective rights exactly what you want to do to the Constitution itself: make them mean whatever the hell you – or the next dictator/tyrant on the block – WANT them to mean. And that is why your God-denying socialism has produced one despot and one nightmare after another, and why it always WILL.

What socialists ultimately pursue is power over people’s lives.  And so long as leftists hold such power, principles will not matter.  And frankly, even if there WERE any “binding” principles they would invariably be blurred into meaninglessness by a succession of “penumbras and emanations” to suit the will of the next dictator.  That ultimately becomes tyranny every single time.

And that is why George Washington would be kicking your butt across the floor as he shouted, “YOU ARE NO PATRIOT!”

You instead argue for a system of government that has NEVER worked and never will. I will tilt at the government handed down by my religious founding fathers and leave you to tilt at your godless socialist windmills.

The REAL Cause of the Housing Finance Meltdown

What’s the biggest problem today in our financial market?  What caused this disaster?  Was it mismanagement?  Was it lack of regulations?  Was it the “other” political party?

Let me just state it for the record: the problem was greed, pure and simple.

We can see a level of shocking greed in our elite business and investment circles merely by looking at the disparity between worker salary and CEO compensation.  In the “better days” of the 1960s, the average CEO earned around 40 times what the average worker earned.  Today the average CEO makes over 500 times what the average worker earns.  And the gap is widening, year by year.

Why has this happened?  The pro-business side argue that this more than twelve-fold increase of CEO pay relative to the average worker can be attributed to proportionately similar increases in market capitalization of large US companies over the years.  The pro-labor side argues that the decline of unionization has been the primary cause of skyrocketing executive pay.  But again, you can’t just play with numbers and justify this massive disparity in compensation; nor can you claim that unionization would be our savior (particularly in a global economy, where increased unionization of labor would merely result in the increased “outsourcing” of jobs).

And the problem has persisted – and continued to dramatically increase – through periods of dominance of both political parties.

Let me say it again: the problem is rampant, cancerous greed.

And this greed does not merely exist at the top of the corporate and financial food chains.  It is in the masses of Americans who wanted more than their means could provide for, who took out loans they could never hope to repay.

And why has greed become such an enormous problem in American life?

Because our ruling elites have actively discouraged religion for decades, and we are eating the bitter fruit of cultural relativism and practical atheism.

What happens when we discourage belief in a Creator God – who created man in His own image, and holds us morally accountable as His image bearers, and begin to inculcate Darwinism in its place?  We get social Darwinism.  And in social Darwinism, the strong eat the weak, and the rich most assuredly devour the poor.  And why shouldn’t they?  Are they not merely living by the obvious standards of the law of the jungle?  Why not be predatory carnivores?  Isn’t that what we ultimately are?

In the early 1960s, during the Warren era of the Supreme Court, we began to see the Establishment Clause interpreted in a more and more secular humanist and blatantly anti-religious manner.  In the case of the Ten Commandments, it was decided that, “If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments.”  And we couldn’t have any of that, could we?

What happens when you divorce religion and morality from society and from public life?  The thought of our founding fathers, the thought of the men who framed and wrote our laws, and the thought of the men who contemplated what made our culture great, continues to teach us if we will but listen:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens…”
– George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept 17, 1796

“…And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
– George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept 17, 1796

“No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts in the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step, by which they have been advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”
– George Washington“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.”
– John Adams, Letter to Zabdiel Adams, Philadelphia, June 21, 1776

“We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion…  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
– John Adams, Address to the Officers of the Massachusetts Militia, 1798

“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundations of public liberty and happiness.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to John Trumbull, October 16, 1778

“The great pillars of all government and of social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor…and this alone, that renders us invincible.”
– Patrick Henry, Letter to Archibald Blair, January 8, 1789

“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?” -Thomas Jefferson in “Notes on Virginia”

“Yes, we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“Yes, we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they keep it, or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.”
– Thomas Jefferson”Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity…in short of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.”  – Samuel Adams, 1790

Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the
happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever by encouraged.
– Northwest Ordinance, Article III, July 13, 1787

“…[O]nly a virtuous people are capable of freedom.  As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Messrs. The Abbes Chalut and Arnaud, April 17, 1787

“The only foundation for…a republic is to be laid in Religion.”
– Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence and member of the Continental Congress

“The only foundation for…a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
– Benjamin Rush, “Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical,” 1798

“In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste
so much time and money in punishing crimes, and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be republicans and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government. That is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible.”
– Benjamin Rush, 1798

…I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel…
– Benjamin Franklin

We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages…I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business…”
– Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787

“…how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly appealing to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible to danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard and they were graciously answered… And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance?…
– Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention

“Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine…Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants.” Foundations Reappear
– James Wilson, “Of the General Principles of Law and Obligation,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Signed U.S. Constitution

“Without morals, a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.”
– Charles Carroll Letter to James McHenry, November 4, 1800.  Signer of the Declaration of Independence and member of the Continental Congress

“To preserve the government we must also preserve morals. Morality rests on religion; if you
destroy the foundation, the superstructure must fall. When the public mind becomes vitiated
and corrupt, laws are a nullity and constitutions are waste paper.”
– Daniel Webster, 4th of July, 1800, Oration at Hanover, N.H.

“In my view, the Christian Religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed…no truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian Religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”
– Noah Webster, Reply to David McClure, Oct. 25, 1836

“Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God.”
– Gouverneur Morris, 1832

“…as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should,
in all points, conform to his Maker’s will. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature…This law of nature…dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority…from this original.”
– William Blackstone, “Commentaries on the Law,” 1723-1780

“Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.”
– William Blackstone 1723-1780, “Commentaries on the Law,” 1723-1780

“…the moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws…  All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising
or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”
– Noah Webster, “History of the United States,” 1833

“It is alleged by men of loose principles, or defective views of the subject, that religion and morality are not necessary or important qualifications for political stations.  But the Scriptures teach a different doctrine. They direct that rulers should be men who rule in the fear of God, able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness…”
– Noah Webster, “Value of the Bible,” 1834, #302

“The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive one without the other.”
– Alexis de Toqueville, “Democracy in America”

“The religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me upon my arrival in the U.S. In France, I had seen the spirits of religion and freedom almost always marching in opposite directions, in America, I found them intimately linked together and joined and reigned over the same land…
– Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”

Religion should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions. From the start, politics and religion have agreed and have not since ceased to do so.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God…
– Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, Humiliation & Prayer, April 30, 1863

…We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us…and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own…
– Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, 1863

…Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
– Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, 1863

… that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

Our founding fathers knew full well that religion and morality were inseparable to good governance and to the well-being of a democratic society.  If you throw out God and religion, eventually morality and ethics will likewise go down the drain.  And then you will see more and more greed, worse and worse behavior, more and more crime, which in turn will necessitate more and more regulations and laws and more and more oppressive government in order to restrain an increasingly amoral and frankly bad people.

It should come as no surprise that our society, and frankly our country, began to unravel beginning in the early 1960s, as a series of sweeping policies from unelected secular humanistic judges and liberal politicians began to dramatically alter society.

We’re paying dearly for the amorality that has been increasingly encroaching upon our society.  And we will continue to reap the whirlwind until – like Lincoln – we realize that we have forgotten God.

It’s not yet too late to remember Him.  But I fear that we are on the verge of reaching a tipping point, where the culture just begins to spiral inexorably downward, as though driven by some giant reciprocating engine whose every stroke takes us farther and farther downward into a chaos from which we can never emerge.

Supreme Court Gitmo Verdict Shows Liberals, Obama Unfit for Power

Liberals have proven yet again that they are absolutely not to be trusted with power.

In a decision stunning for it’s breathtakingly counterproductive stupidity, liberal Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg ruled last Thursday “that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.” Conservative Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito held the very different view that foreign enemies of the United States captured while trying to kill American soldiers on foreign soil should not have the right to access American courts.

“At its heart, the 70-page ruling says that the detainees have the same rights as anyone else in custody in the United States to contest their detention before a judge. [Justice Anthony] Kennedy also said the system the administration has put in place to classify detainees as enemy combatants and review those decisions is not an adequate substitute for the right to go before a civilian judge.”

Senator Linsey Grahem (R-SC), who helped Senator John McCain write the military commissions law, said, “What happened yesterday was unprecedented. Americans are going to be shocked to find that that mastermind of 9-11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now has the same legal standing as an American citizen.”

Solicitor General Paul Clement has pointed out that the process in place already provided “combatants being held at Guantanamo Bay, [the opportunity to] enjoy more procedural protections than any other captured enemy combatants in the history of warfare.” Congress had already given Guantanamo Bay prisoners more rights than any prisoners of war, in any war, ever. Congress provided enemy combatants the the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act (DTA); they provided a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT); and a bi-partisan Congress (by 65 to 34 in the Senate) had already previously mandated that the 270 Guantanamo detainees were not free to avoid these procedures by filing habeas petitions in whatever federal district court they choose.

But the detainees’ lawyers have contended that the current law fails to protect the constitutional rights their clients were entitled to receive. They have demanded full habeas corpus rights, a constitutional protection that forces the government to justify in an open courtroom legitimate reasons an individual needs to be behind bars.

And now they have those rights. Yeah for them.

The decision also reveals the enormous divide between the two presidential candidates:

John McCain said Friday that the Supreme Court ruling on Guantanamo Bay detainees is “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

“We are now going to have the courts flooded with so-called … habeas corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material. And we are going to be bollixed up in a way that is terribly unfortunate because we need to go ahead and adjudicate these cases,” he said.

“Barack Obama released a statement Thursday saying the Supreme Court decision “ensures that we can protect our nation and bring terrorists to justice while also protecting our core values.”

“The Court’s decision is a rejection of the Bush administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo – yet another failed policy supported by John McCain,” he said. “This is an important step toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus.”

Notwithstanding the most liberal member of the Senate’s incessant attempt to demonize President Bush, the real “black hole” is the sheer number of questions this decision necessarily creates that must yet be answered. As Solicitor General Paul Clement pointed out, no nation has ever before in history granted so many rights and protections to its enemies as the United States now has. Just how many unintended consequences will this decision cause?

In order to get us to this point, the Supreme Court first had to toss out the principle of stare decisis (the abbreviated form of “stare decisis et non quieta movere” which means “stand by decisions and do not move that which is still.” No Supreme Court had ever before allowed an alien who was captured fighting against the United States to use its own courts to challenge his detention. Not until now.

As University of California at Berkely law professor John Yoo points out, “In World War II, no civilian court reviewed the thousands of German prisoners housed in the U.S. Federal judges never heard cases from the Confederate prisoners of war held during the Civil War. In a trilogy of cases decided at the end of World War II, the Supreme Court agreed that the writ did not benefit enemy aliens held outside the U.S. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, we in the Justice Department relied on the Supreme Court’s word when we evaluated Guantanamo Bay as a place to hold al Qaeda terrorists.”

One of the Justices who participated in the World War II decisions was the late Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson. His worldview was further shaped by his incredible experience as Chief War Crimes Prosecutor at Nuremburg. In the 1950 opinion that was tossed out into the dustbin of history last week, Jackson denied habeas to a Nazi prisoner because in all of history there had been “no instance where a court has issued habeas corpus to an alien enemy who…has never been within its territorial jurisdiction.”

Ponder for a moment Jackson’s admonition in a free speech case heard by his Court:

“If the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

Today we have too many liberals and Democrats who would argue that the sacrifice of an American city of tens of millions is surely preferable to the water boarding of a single terrorist who knew of an impending attack but refused to communicate with US intelligence. Why? Because such a sacrifice of American blood would be preferable to the sacrifice of a single Constitutional principle (such as the penumbras and emanations that were used to justify abortion?) as liberals (mis)understand it. Realize that for all the pompous posturing and self-righteous indignation over water boarding, it was a non-fatal, non-harmful, and non-invasive interrogation technique that was used only two or three times at most when it was determined to be absolutely necessary by intelligence professionals.

The second thing tossed out was the Constitutional principle of the separation of powers, “which grants all war decisions to the president and Congress. In 2004 and 2006, the Supreme Court tried to extend its reach to al Qaeda terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay. It was overruled twice by Congress, which has the power to define the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Congress established its own procedures for the appeal of detentions.”

Joel J. Sprayregen, a former general counsel of the Illinois ACLU who finally saw the light of judicial sanity, put it this way in his article, ‘It Will Almost Certainly Cause More Americans to Be Killed‘ (available at):

The smallest of majorities is disregarding judicial history and pretending we live in a world where captured deadly enemies can be granted an advantage, without it affecting the likelihood of victory. I can’t say it better than Justice Scalia:

“America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole. On September 11, 2001, the enemy brought the battle to American soil, killing 2,749 at the Twin Towers in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon and 10 in Pennsylvania… It has threatened further attacks against our homeland; one need only walk about buttressed and barricaded Washington, or board a plane, to know the threat is serious… Last week, 13 of our countrymen in arms were killed.”

In his blistering dissent, Justice Scalia said the decision “will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

There are a couple of points that simply must be considered.

First of all, the practical impossibility of releasing Guantanamo detainees:

LONDON — More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions.

The delays illustrate how much harder it will be to empty the prison at Guantanamo than it was to fill it after it opened in January 2002 to detain fighters captured in Afghanistan and terrorism suspects captured overseas.

In many cases, the prisoners’ countries do not want them back. Yemen, for instance, has balked at accepting some of the 106 Yemeni nationals at Guantanamo by challenging the legality of their citizenship.

Second (and related to the first), the sheer absurdity that results from granting our enemies captured on the battlefield our legal protections:

David Rivkin, a lawyer who worked in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush, concedes that some Guantanamo detainees may be innocent, but if the system for evaluating people seized as terrorists becomes any more stringent, he said, “we wouldn’t be able to hold most of these people, not because they’re innocent but because we don’t have enough information to establish that level of rigor because, in war, you rarely have this kind of information. So, we would be releasing all of them; the system would be broken from the other side.

Rivkin said he does not believe the U.S. government could justify detaining most of the Guantanamo detainees if it were put to the more rigorous test of a habeas corpus hearing in U.S. courts. Moreover, “I’ve been told, back when I was at Guantanamo, that Guantanamo itself has become a gigantic al-Qaida training cell — it’s like a graduate school, if you will, for these guys.”

And despite the best efforts of the U.S. government, in many cases, Rivkin said, countries don’t want to take back the detainees.

“Let’s assume quaintly that they’re not innocent shepherds. We cannot hold them, and we cannot send them to any other country. What are we supposed to do — give them political asylum here? Let them walk the streets?” Rivkin said.

At least six former detainees have been killed or captured after their release. As many as fifty have returned to fight against American forces. Considering that we’re talking about fewer than 400 detainees, that’s a large number. And it was military tribunals which released them; how many more murderous fighters will be released when civilian courts become involved?

We have moral idiots like Erick Goldstein, who wrote, “The United States can begin to regain its moral authority in combating terrorism when the Guantanamo Bay detention facility is closed. But that’s only if the government stops sending detainees back to places like Tunisia.”

The fact of the matter is that many of the countries that have been most vociferous in critizing Guantanamo have privately refused to accept their own citizens back. Most of these people are extremely dangerous.

When Guantanamo is closed because of liberal policies and strategies, mark my words, they will start ending up in places like Tunisia, and places much worse. The American soldiers’ only alternative would be to execute their enemies in the field. But the liberals who create this total disaster will certainly never admit their stupidity.

Third, how are we to legally proceed against enemies captured on the battlefield? Could we have possibly won World War II if our soldiers and Marines were ordered to collect forensic evidence of German and Japanese soldiers’ firing upon them to present in court? Could we have brought non-American witnesses to American court to testify? Could we have defeated our enemies when, following every battle, American servicemen had to return home to testify against the captured enemy?

How are our forces supposed to proceed when the liberals on the Supreme Court now implicitly order them to become Crime Scene Investigators gathering evidence instead of soldiers fighting a war?

And how do we keep the terrorists from using the discovery process that must necessarily result from granting them habeas corpus rights in U.S. courts against us?

Sprayregen writes:

Scalia detailed how prisoners released from Guantanamo — because they were not considered combatants — had returned to murder Americans and our allies. Scalia is foreseeably correct in concluding that the decision “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

The Court is basing its decision — disregarding two centuries of decisions holding that habeas is unavailable to aliens captured abroad — on the fact that Gitmo is “functionally” under U.S. control. But so are U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Terrorists captured there are now invited immediately to compel our military to reveal its basis for detentions; this is the meaning of habeas. It gets worse. Justice Kennedy explained in invalidating the DTA — which provides wider access to Government evidence than the Geneva Convention – that

“the detainee’s ability to rebut the Government’s evidence is limited by the circumstances of his confinement and his lack of counsel at this stage.”

If you do not comprehend that the ACLU and its fellow revelers are preparing petitions in blank to seek — on behalf of every terrorist captured overseas — to compel the Government immediately to disclose its evidence, then you understand nothing.

Chief Justice Roberts pointed out in his dissent what the Court is opening the door to:

“free access to classified information ignores the risk the prisoner may convey what he learns to parties hostile to this country, with deadly consequences for those who helped apprehend the detainee.”

Roberts noted that our troops are not equipped to handle subpoenas on the battlefield. Information given to defense lawyers in the first World Trade Towers trial on a restricted basis quickly appeared on al-Jazeera.

The alleged shoplifter at a suburban mall is entitled to see the prosecution’s file because she needs it to defend herself. The terrorist wants his file so he can arrange to slit the throats of intelligence operatives and informants. The Court’s decision undermines that result.

These are not theoretical dangers. In the United Kingdom, two dangerous terrorists are being released for lack of sufficient evidence to criminally prosecute them. An article titled “Abu Qatada: Terror chief next to be released on bail” by Security Correspondent Duncan Gardham illustrates what we have opened ourselves up to in this Supreme Court decision.

The release of terrorists known only as “U” and “Y” (in order to protect their oh-so-important privacy rights) due to lack of sufficient evidence reminds me of one of those cases of a terrified woman who is denied by the court of legal protection against a stalker due to lack of sufficient evidence until after he murders her.

President Abraham Lincoln famously suspended habeas corpus for two years during the Civil War.

In 1862, when copperhead democrats began criticizing Lincoln’s violation of the Constitution, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus throughout the nation and had many copperhead democrats arrested under military authority because he felt that the State Courts in the north west would not convict war protesters such as the copperheads. He proclaimed that all persons who discouraged enlistments or engaged in disloyal practices would come under Martial Law.

Among the 13,000 people arrested under martial law was a Maryland Secessionist, John Merryman. Immediately, Hon. Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States issued a writ of habeas corpus commanding the military to bring Merryman before him. The military refused to follow the writ. Justice Taney, in Ex parte MERRYMAN, then ruled the suspension of habeas corpus unconstitutional because the writ could not be suspended without an Act of Congress. President Lincoln and the military ignored Justice Taney’s ruling.

This Abraham Lincoln – regarded by many liberals and conservatives alike as the greatest American president ever – is the same Lincoln who disregarded the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision. In issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and freeing the slaves, Lincoln in effect said to the Supreme Court, “You are wrong.”

The Supreme Court has been terribly wrong before, and it is terribly wrong now. Alas, we don’t have a Lincoln who will stand up against the moral stupidity of the Court today.

Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

Which is a more legally-precise way of saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Liberals live in a world of theory, and whenever the facts conflict with their theory, they simply ignore the facts. It doesn’t matter how idiotic their ideas are; it doesn’t matter how disastrous are the consequences: it only matters that they have good intentions.

We have placed ourselves at a significant disadvantage voluntarily. For the last several years, Democrats repeatedly threatened to prosecute telecommunications companies that assisted the Bush Administration with information following 9/11. The Democrats recently caved in on the new FISA bill after a lengthy and determined campaign to hold telecommunications criminally responsible for their cooperation with their government. Don’t think for a second that these companies will ever be so willing to assist the United States again. We will be more blind in the future thanks to Democrats.

And now judicial liberals have issued this stunningly stupid and self-defeating ruling. And they’ve done this terrible thing with all the “beneficent purposes” that Justice Brandeis warned about. Our valuable and vital national security secrets will go to the terrorists who would kill us, even as we are forced to free more and more of them to fight again due to lack of sufficient evidence to stand up in a civilian court of law.

The fact that Barack Obama has cheered their verdict is another powerful proof that he should never be allowed to become our president. If elected, you can count on Barack Obama to appoint Justices and judges who will go even further in undermining our ability to defend and protect ourselves. A vote for Obama is a vote for baring the nation’s throat to those who would slash it in a nanosecond.

President Bush Honors Fallen SEAL With Medal of Honor

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/04/20080408-3.html

President Bush noticeably teared up as he honored Petty Officer Michael Monsoor for sacrificing his life for his Teammates. At one point he clearly could not speak. Not nearly as much of a “warmonger” as he’s frequently credited with being, I suppose.

Master of Arms Second Class Michael Monsoor was providing rear security for two snipers on a rooftop when an insurgent’s grenade was tossed at them. The grenade struck Monsoor in the chest and rolled toward his Teammates. Monsoor screamed “Grenade!” and threw himself on the explosive, sacrificing himself. He alone had a clear path of escape; he chose to save his teammates at the cost of his own life.

As President Bush said, “On Saint Michael’s Day — September 29, 2006 — Michael Monsoor would make the ultimate sacrifice. Mike and two teammates had taken position on the outcropping of a rooftop when an insurgent grenade bounced off Mike’s chest and landed on the roof. Mike had a clear chance to escape, but he realized that the other two SEALs did not. In that terrible moment, he had two options — to save himself, or to save his friends. For Mike, this was no choice at all. He threw himself onto the grenade, and absorbed the blast with his body. One of the survivors puts it this way: “Mikey looked death in the face that day and said, ‘You cannot take my brothers. I will go in their stead.'”

The words from Jesus in John 15:13 come to mind. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

President Bush’s words are far better than any I can offer. He continued:

“Perhaps the greatest tribute to Mike’s life is the way different service members all across the world responded to his death. Army soldiers in Ramadi hosted a memorial service for the valiant man who had fought beside them. Iraqi Army scouts — whom Mike helped train — lowered their flag, and sent it to his parents. Nearly every SEAL on the West Coast turned out for Mike’s funeral in California. As the SEALs filed past the casket, they removed their golden tridents from their uniforms, pressed them onto the walls of the coffin. The procession went on nearly half an hour. And when it was all over, the simple wooden coffin had become a gold-plated memorial to a hero who will never be forgotten.

For his valor, Michael Monsoor becomes the fourth Medal of Honor recipient in the war on terror. Like the three men who came before him, Mike left us far too early. But time will not diminish his legacy. We see his legacy in the SEALs whose lives he saved. We see his legacy in the city of Ramadi, which has gone from one of the most dangerous places in Iraq to one of the most safest. We see his legacy in the family that stands before us filled with grief, but also with everlasting pride.

Mr. and Mrs. Monsoor: America owes you a debt that can never be repaid. This nation will always cherish the memory of your son. We will not let his life go in vain. And this nation will always honor the sacrifice he made. May God comfort you. May God bless America.”

President Abraham Lincoln’s Nov 21, 1864 letter to a mother who lost five sons fighting for the Union are worthy of mention here.

“I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should
attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your
bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

Abraham Lincoln

Master At Arms Second Class Michael A. Monsoor, today your country honors your life and your sacrifice for laying your own life upon that hallowed alter. May your family and your Teammates overcome their grief at your loss and cherish your memory and your example. May all of us in some small way become better people, more willing to think of others more than we think of ourselves, because of what you did that day on 29 Sep 2006.

And we honor our Navy SEALs and all of our magnificent warriors in the combat zones, who sacrifice themselves for us every single day by volunteering to serve in a dirty, difficult, and dangerous environment. May your sacrifices ultimately be rewarded with a stronger America and a better world.