Long wait times and secret lists that result in our nation’s heroes dying before they can get medical care – all while the VA spends hundreds of millions on solar panels – isn’t right, plain and simple. And it’s not going to get better unless we demand that it does.
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I wanted to share a little story with you from the life of Ben Franklin and the founding of our nation, because I believe it is instructive for our time. In the summer of 1787, the newly independent United States of America sent delegates to Philadelphia for a constitutional convention. Government under the Articles of Confederation, adopted during the Revolutionary War, had already proven itself untenable. General George Washington, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, feared “ruin” unless the fledgling nation established a new constitution, “well-guarded and closely watched to prevent encroachments.”
The challenge would be to fashion a government powerful enough to keep the country together, but not so powerful as to trample on the rights of the people and the states. The delegates soon discovered that challenge was going to be greater than they had anticipated.
The Convention’s oldest delegate at 81, Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Franklin, watched with increasing concern as the weeks ticked by with little progress being made. In fact, he said he often looked at the chair George Washington was sitting on as he presided over the convention, which depicted a sun on the horizon, and wondered if the image (and symbolically the United States) was to be a rising or setting sun. By late June, a setting sun seemed the more probable. New York’s delegation had already left in frustration; others threatened to do the same.
Franklin, who had done so much to help secure America’s independence, realized there was something missing that was central to the success of the Revolutionary War. With the delegates assembled for what promised to be another fruitless day, he signaled Washington, that he wished to speak. James Madison recorded Franklin’s words, “Mr. President, the small progress we have made after four or five weeks of close attendance and continual reasonings with each other—our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ayes—is, methinks, a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the human understanding…
“In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights, to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were in the struggle must have observed the frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor…
“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 man.” Then referencing Jesus’ words, Franklin noted, “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.’”
We have reached another defining moment in our nation’s history. We know the nation faces ruin not only financially if we continue down our current path, but also in the loss of our sacred freedoms the Founders and generations of Americans since did so much to secure. The list of scandals and actions taken by this Administration that run directly contrary to constitutional government is myriad: AP, IRS, ObamaCare, surveillance state, Bureau of Land Management, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, non-recess appointments, and the list continues to grow.
We all know how the story of the Constitutional Convention ended. The delegates came together in what has been called the “Miracle at Philadelphia” and fashioned the longest standing form of government in the world today. Following Franklin’s speech, the delegates, in fact, did all attend a church service together on the Fourth of July, and the whole atmosphere of the proceedings seemed to change when they reconvened after the break. Franklin, a few days after his call to prayer, was chosen to serve on a committee, which successfully addressed one of the most difficult issues the convention faced: how representation would work in the new form of government.
On September 17, 1787, as the delegates came forward to sign the document they had just crafted, Madison overheard a tearful Franklin discussing how often he had looked at Washington’s chair with the question of the Sun’s position in his mind. He could now report, “I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.”
I am convinced that it can be morning in America again. I am just as convinced that human wisdom and effort alone will not be enough to address our current crisis and reverse the encroachments on our constitutional rights. Franklin had it right, “God governs over the affairs of this world.” We must pray for God’s wisdom and divine hand of favor to be upon our efforts and to stir the hearts of the people to act.
Photo Credit: YouTube Brian Miner was pulled over in Illinois last week after he honked his truck horn at a state police officer he claims was using his cellphone while speeding on a wet highway.
“I pulled you over – the horn, I don’t know what that was about,” the officer told Miner, who recorded the traffic stop.
“Because you were speeding and had your cellphone in your hand,” said Miner, explaining why he was honking.
“Police officers can actually use technology when they’re driving,” said the officer.
“Oh, so you guys are above the law?” Miner asked.
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Photo Credit: Zero HedgeThe greatest problem we have is misinformation. People simply do not comprehend why and how the economic policies of the post-war era are imploding. This whole agenda of socialism has sold a Utopian idea that the State is there for the people yet it is run by lawyers following their own self-interest. The pensions created for those in government drive the cost of government up exponentially with time. The political forces blame the rich and this merely creates a class warfare with no resolution for the future. Even confiscating all the wealth of the so-called rich will not sustain the system. Consequently, we just have to crash and burn and start all over again.
The Guardian reported that some 50,000 people marched in London to protest against austerity. They cried: “Who is really responsible for the mess this country is in? Is it the Polish fruit pickers or the Nigerian nurses? Or is it the bankers who plunged it into economic disaster – or the tax avoiders? It is selective anger.”
The exploitation by the bankers has been really a disaster. They have been their own worst enemy and in the end, they have become the symbol that inspires class warfare if not revolution. They are not the representatives of those who produce jobs…
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Photo Credit: NY PostHillary Clinton claimed that, at the moment she and her husband were signing up for $18 million in book deals, that they were “dead broke.”
Harry Reid (who lives in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel) said liberals are getting bullied by Republican billionaires but the Democratic Party “doesn’t have many billionaires” behind it.
Joe Biden (family earnings: $407,000 last year plus a free house, driver, meals, etc.) claims he “I don’t own a single stock or bond. . . . I have no savings accounts . . . I’m the poorest man in Congress.” (Triple fail: Joe isn’t poor, isn’t in Congress and wouldn’t be the poorest member of it if he were.)
Right here in New York, we’ve learned that City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the daughter of a wealthy doctor who left a $6.7 million inheritance, took advantage of a no-interest loan intended for underprivileged New Yorkers to buy a Harlem townhouse. Then she forgot to declare the rental income on required city disclosure forms. The townhouse you and I helped buy her for $240,000 is today worth $1.2 million.
The more Democrats insist on their proletarian cred, the more absurd it gets. They’re no longer just holier than thou: Now they’re prolier than thou.
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Photo Credit: WNDBy Joe Kovacs.
A conservative legend responsible for the election of countless Republicans to office is now blasting today’s GOP as “the Party of Stupid” for letting left-leaning media outlets control presidential debates.
“If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result, welcome to the nut house of the establishment media-sponsored Republican presidential debates,” says Richard Viguerie in his brand-new book, “Takeover.”
“What would you call a political party that hands the power to set the agenda during its presidential primaries to its sworn enemies in the liberal media, then doubles down to give the power to set the agenda in the waning days of the general election to a self-perpetuating ‘commission’ of Washington, D.C., progressive insiders? Some people might call that the national Republican Party – I call it the Party of Stupid.”
Viguerie, whose mission in “Takeover” is for true conservatives to take back control of the GOP from moderate and even-left leaning Republicans, says the way the national media outlets such as CNN or PBS handle debates puts Republicans at an immediate disadvantage.
“It isn’t by fabricating news or outright lying; it is by selecting questions that set the agenda on liberal terms and presuppose the outcome favored by liberals – or by editing out the conservative viewpoint or facts that tend to support the conservative viewpoint.
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Photo Credit: TownHall Conservatives, Losing One Battle Doesn’t Mean We Have Lost The War
By Kurt Schlichter.
I was furious that Thad Cochran slimed his way to victory, but every time we hardcore conservatives lose a battle, it seems a contingent of bitter-enders starts up about how the Republicans and Democrats are exactly the same, and how they’ll refuse to vote in the general, and how they’ll take their collective ball and go home.
That’s crazy talk. We can get even with the GOP establishment later; we need to beat the Democrats first.
Now, many of my good friends disagree with me here, but I respect them enough to say what I think. And I think that when we focus on the establishment’s antics in Mississippi instead of focusing on November, we make Barack Obama happier than if he got to play 18 holes with the ghost of Karl Marx.
Let us assume that Thad Cochran didn’t play fair. Now let me assume the role of your father:
Life is not fair.
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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesSay this for President Obama: He’s got an uncanny ability to block out distractions and keep his eye on the ball.
Facing a horrific expansion of terrorism in the Mideast, a meltdown of public support at home and major rebukes by the Supreme Court, the president remains fixated on No. 1.
“I’m finding lately I just want to say what’s on my mind,” he told a Minneapolis audience Friday, and then ticked off a series of complaints about — surprise — Republicans.
“They don’t do anything, except block me and call me names,” he said. “If they were more interested in growing the economy for you and the issues that you are talking about instead of trying to mess with me, we would be doing a lot better.”
He wasn’t finished: “The critics, the cynics in Washington, they’ve written me off more times than I can count. But cynicism doesn’t invent the Internet. Cynicism doesn’t give women the right to vote.” There you have it: the presidential mind in Year 6. Don’t cry for Argentina — cry for me!
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Photo Credit: WNDPresident Obama should deploy the U.S. military across the Mexican border to work bilaterally to curb illegal immigration, declared Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio in a radio interview Sunday.
“If we are worried about the danger, then I would send the military across the border, work with their military bilaterally and get the job done,” said Arpaio. “That’s what I would do and we’d clean up this mess.”
“Of course, you have to get the Mexican president to OK it,” he added. “I would just go in there and have a few drinks with him and get the job done.”
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Photo Credit: National Review State Department officials, under pressure since Sudanese woman Meriam Ibrahim and her American family were prevented from leaving the country for the United States, have discouraged congressional leaders from speaking out publicly on behalf of them, advocates for the family say.
Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman sentenced to death for apostasy before the government ultimately overturned her conviction, was arrested for a second time on her way out of the country. Her husband, American citizen Daniel Wani, was also arrested.
The State Department said this week that Ibrahim’s family wanted members of Congress to “keep quiet” about her case, according to a religious-liberty advocate whose organization works with the Ibrahim family’s lawyers in Sudan.
“And that’s simply not true,” says Tina Ramirez, founder of Hardwired, which provides legal training in Sudan on religious liberty, told National Review Online. State was “lying” about the wishes of the Ibrahim family, she says. “I don’t know why they would say such a thing.”
Ramirez explained that the State Department told members of Congress that Meriam Ibrahim’s husband and her brother-in-law, Gabriel (who lives in New Hampshire), had asked that Congress stand down.
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Photo Credit: Brendan Smialowski / GETTY IMAGESThe controversy over President Obama’s decision to exchange five high-ranking Taliban leaders for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl last month focused largely on the price paid. There was less focus on Obama ignoring a federal law that required him to notify Congress 30 days in advance of releasing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Laws such as this have been enacted to allow vital oversight of actions of such consequence. If this were an isolated instance, it could be dismissed. It is not.
After announcing that he intended to act unilaterally in the face of congressional opposition, Obama ordered the non-enforcement of various laws — including numerous changes to the Affordable Care Act — moved hundreds of millions of dollars away from the purposes for which Congress approved the spending and claimed sweeping authority to act without judicial or legislative controls.
A growing crisis in our constitutional system threatens to fundamentally alter the balance of powers — and accountability — within our government. This crisis did not begin with Obama, but it has reached a constitutional tipping point during his presidency. Indeed, it is enough to bring the two of us — a liberal academic and a conservative U.S. senator — together in shared concern over the future of our 225-year-old constitutional system of selfgovernance.
We believe that people of good faith can likewise transcend politics and forge a bipartisan coalition to examine these changes. In our view, the gridlock in Washington is not simply the result of toxic divisions. The dysfunctional politics we are experiencing may in part be the result of a deeper corrosion — a dangerous instability that is growing within our Madisonian system.
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