Liberty in Decline, but Not Dead

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Photo Credit: Katy Miller

Photo Credit: Katy Miller

The United States today is not the free nation it was, even 10 years ago. Although the slow decline of the broad liberties Americans have long held has been going on for decades, it has accelerated enough in the last few years that ordinary people are feeling it close to home.

Security checkpoints now stop and make warrant-less searches of Americans on highways far from the borders. Privacy is virtually a thing of the past, with numerous whistle-blowers telling of the frightening ways in which the federal government monitors nearly everything we do. Overreaching federal regulations are trickling down into every workplace and job, stifling small businesses that cannot jump the hoops as easily as giant corporations.

It seems in my own workplace, most new policies trace back in some way to federal regulation. Recent federal laws have blatantly undermined religious liberty, attempted to undercut the Second Amendment and caused millions to lose the health care they chose, forcing many hardworking, productive Americans into a massive welfare system they never wanted.

Some time ago, I encountered Sen. Mark Begich touring Alaska discussing the important of the grassroots, all the while surrounded by an entourage of powerful D.C. lobbyists. I wonder how anyone cannot see where the loyalty of this man lies, having voted with Obama’s agenda 97 percent of the time.

On the other side, we have Republican Senate candidates with longstanding records of support for many misguided federal and UN policies.

And then there is Joe Miller, with a consistent message of individual liberty and a return to the free market principles that made the U.S. the economic powerhouse of the planet. I choose to believe that liberty is not a dying ideal in America by voting for Joe Miller for our Republican candidate for Senate on Aug. 19.

Immigrants Deserve Better than Obama

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Photo Credit: Bob Daemmrich

Photo Credit: Bob Daemmrich

We should welcome a debate over how to secure our borders and reform the legal immigration system. That’s not a debate, however, that President Obama and his supporters are willing to have.

Instead, they are devoted to amnesty — and they’re holding the safety and security of our nation hostage to get it.

Although polling shows that 68 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama’s immigration policies, the president and his allies remain committed to an agenda that has created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis at our southern border.

As the son of a refugee from Cuba, I understand the plight of immigrants in a very personal way. And I’m unwilling to follow the president’s course of spending billions on social services but maintaining the amnesty that will in perpetuity cause thousands more children to be victimized.

I am opposed to the president’s immigration policy because I believe immigrants deserve better.

Read more from this story HERE.

We Must Always Stand With Israel, Our Ally

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Photo Credit: ChameleonsEye / Shutterstock.com

Photo Credit: ChameleonsEye / Shutterstock.com

The state of Israel this past year celebrated its 66th birthday, one that it would not have been able to observe had it not been for the leadership and tenacity of one brave and principled American president. President Harry Truman, going against nearly the entire Washington establishment, made the United States the first nation to grant official recognition of the State of Israel a scant 11 minutes after they declared their state official.

Israel is the only free country in a region that is dominated by monarchies, theocracies, and dictatorships that repress freedom, oppress women, limit educational opportunities, outlaw religious and racial tolerance, and sponsor terrorism against freedom-loving people. As such, the approximately 8 million citizens of Israel, living in an area about the size of West Virginia (our 10th smallest state) including Jews and Arabs who live within the Armistice Lines of the 1948 War of Independence, enjoy freedoms not available to the hundreds of millions living in neighboring Muslim dominated countries. They can express their opinions, criticize their government, worship according to the dictates of their conscience, publish opposition newspapers, and hold free un-coerced elections. They are by far the most free people in the Middle East. In spite of criticism to the contrary, Israel provides more freedom to Muslim citizens than neighboring Muslim countries grant themselves. Both Hebrew and Arabic are the official languages of Israel; and Israeli Arabs enjoy the same rights as their Jewish neighbors, have representatives elected to the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), and have positions as associate justices on the Israeli Supreme Court.

On May 14, 1948, the day the British Mandate over Palestine expired, the Jewish People’s Council gathered to declare their independence. In that document, they declared that the Land of Israel “was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance.”

“After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

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Hide ‘D,’ Showcase ‘R’

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

It is such common sense as to be undeniable that basic journalism requires a party label to be affixed to a story about an elected public official, the president excepted. It is the DNA of the “who” in a news report. “Senator Robert Byrd, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, died today.” Take out “Democratic” and try that sentence. It doesn’t work. “Mike Lee, GOP senator from Utah and God’s gift to mankind, coasted to reelection last night.” Ditto.

It follows that the rule applies to stories about political scandal, precisely because it’s just that — politics. But what happens when that cardinal rule is applied to one party but ignored for the other? Favoritism? Bias? No, it’s far worse than just that. It is a commitment to abide by the rules of journalism with one party and then a deliberate attempt to protect the other, even if it means violating the most basic rules of news reporting.

Now wait a minute, Bozell. What about another possibility? Why can’t it be an honest mistake? Cannot we believe that even if such an egregious violation is committed it might not just be an accident, a reckless, sloppy oversight? If it happened once, fine. Stunning but fine. Twice? I don’t believe in coincidences. The record, however, shows it is much worse than that.

On Friday, September 29, 2006, Representative Mark Foley of Florida resigned after ABC News exposed him for having sent explicit e-mails to male House pages. That evening and on the next day’s morning news shows, ABC, CBS, and NBC all tied Foley to the GOP. “This is more than just one man’s downfall,” Today co-host Matt Lauer solemnly declared on NBC. “It could be a major blow to the Republican party.”

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"As President, I Will Defend Americans Against the Moral Bullies"

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Back when Al Gore was running for president in 2000 he had a line about “fighting for the people against the powerful.” It’s the standard line of the activist. No doubt it’s what the marginalized and dependent classes are looking for in a president.

But if you are a responsible individual like me you find that sort of thing insulting. People of the Responsible Self don’t want some community organizer drilling them in a street protest; we just want a government that defends us from enemies foreign and domestic.

Defending against enemies foreign and domestic is what governments are actually supposed to do. But America has another little problem right now. You know what it is. America is suffering from a plague of the liberal moral bullies with nothing better to do than humiliate people that don’t agree with them.

Even as we speak, the indefatigable Michelle Malkin reports that all the best cities now have their own social justice magnet school. Really? America needs to encourage more kids to become social justice activists? I’d say a bigger need is magnet schools in every bland suburb to teach ordinary American kids how to defend themselves against the liberal bullies and the social-justice activists.

That’s why we need a leader, right now, ready to defend Americans against the social-justice activists.

Read more from this story HERE.

We The People Speak: Illegal Immigration Taking Away from Americans

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Photo Credit: AP / Gregory Bull

Photo Credit: AP / Gregory Bull

By Mark Grabowski.

The main problems caused by illegal immigration are lost jobs, lower wages, stolen taxpayer resources, increased crime and domestic terrorism. Each of these problems harms Americans in many ways. These illegal kids are being let loose onto our streets with many different diseases. We quarantine animals before they come into our country before being released. Why are these illegals not being quarantined first before being sent into our streets with our children?

Millions of American citizens are out of work or unable to find a job because we have 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in America as a result of politicians such as President Barack Obama supporting illegal immigration instead of protecting Americans. Americans for Legal Immigration PAC estimates that illegal immigrants are stealing more than $125 billion worth of American taxpayer resources each year. Illegal immigrants are in our country against the wishes of American citizens. They are breaking our laws and, yet, as taxpayers we are forced to pay for their education, their health care needs, increased infrastructure to handle their presence in our land and increased costs in our courts and prisons. When American citizens need these taxpayer resources, we find illegal aliens filling our emergency rooms, classrooms and courthouses, demanding that we speak their language and provide free interpreters for them.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Illegal Alien Crime Victim Slams Boehner Absence at Border

By Matthew Boyle.

Several victims of crimes committed by illegal aliens criticized Speaker John Boehner’s absence at an event on the southern U.S. border in McAllen, Texas Saturday, saying the Ohio Republican and champion of immigration reform should witness the violence spilling over from Mexico first hand.

The group had earlier invited Boehner and his family to tour the border with them, but Boehner’s office has not responded to the letter or issued any public statement about it since the invitation.

“Thank you all for being here this afternoon—we came down here to McAllen, Texas, where we had sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner to come down and join us on this border to see firsthand the issues that are going on down here,” George Wilkerson, whose son Josh was murdered by an illegal alien in November 2010, said at a press conference on Saturday.

Behind Mr. Wilkerson was a tent with several empty chairs, underneath a banner reading: “McAllen TX Welcomes Spkr John Boehner & Family.”

“We are part of the victims of the problem out here—our son was murdered in Pearland, Texas, from an illegal immigrant,” George Wilkerson said at the event, hosted by the Remembrance Project—a group devoted to remembering victims of horrific crimes like murder and homicide committed by illegal aliens.

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Nixon vs. Obama: Yes, Nixon Was Bad But Obama is Worse

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Forty years ago public outrage about the actions of President Richard Milhous Nixon, lead by his long time liberal critics, forced him to be the first U.S. chief executive to resign the presidency. Critics screamed about Nixon’s extra-legal and extra-constitutional conduct as protestors ringed the White House chanting “Jail to the Chief.”

Nixon’s men had spied on their fellow citizens, allegedly used the IRS to harass their political enemies, waged war without the consent of Congress and used the CIA in an effort to hide their crimes.

No man, Nixon’s critics assured us, was above the law. For his transgressions, Richard Nixon was forced from office, evading prosecution only because of a presidential pardon.

Liberals are silent as Obama shreds the Constitution in ways Richard Nixon would have marveled at.

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In the Future We’ll All Be Renters: America’s Disappearing Middle Class

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Photo Credit: The Daily Beast

Photo Credit: The Daily Beast

In ways not seen since the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, America is becoming a nation of increasingly sharply divided classes. Joel Kotkin’s The New Class Conflict breaks down these new divisions for the first time, focusing on the ascendency of two classes: the tech Oligarchy, based in Silicon Valley; and the Clerisy, which includes much of the nation’s policy, media, and academic elites.

The Proleterianization of the Middle Class

From early in its history, the United States rested on the notion of a large class of small proprietors and owners. “The small landholders,” Jefferson wrote to his fellow Virginian James Madison, “are the most precious part of a state.” To both Jefferson and Madison, both the widespread dispersion of property and limits on its concentration—“the possession of different degrees and kinds of property”—were necessary in a functioning republic.

Jefferson, admitting that the “equal division of property” was “impractical,” also believed “the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind” that “legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.” The notion of a dispersed base of ownership became the central principle which the Republic was, at least ostensibly, built around. As one delegate to the 1821 New York constitutional convention put it, property was “infinitely divided” and even laborers “expect soon to be freeholders” was a bulwark for the democratic order.

This notion of American opportunity has ebbed and flowed, but generally gained ground well into the 1960s and 1970s. The very fact that the United States was more demographically dynamic, notes Thomas Piketty, naturally reduced the role of inherited wealth compared to Europe, most notably in France, where population growth was slower. Mass prosperity hit a high point in America in the first decades after the Second World War, the period where the country achieved its highest share of world GDP at some forty percent. By the mid-1950s the percentage of households earning middle incomes doubled to 60 percent compared with the boom years of the 1920s. By 1962 over 60 percent of Americans owned their own homes; the increase in homeownership, notes Stephanie Coontz, between 1946 and 1956 was greater than that achieved in the preceding century and a half.

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ISIS is Murdering Children, and Obama Drops Two Bombs

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Photo Credit: AllenBWest

Photo Credit: AllenBWest

By Allen West.

During my morning run, I pondered last night’s address by President Obama regarding the current situation in Iraq. What immediately struck me was that Obama spent more time talking about what he did not want to do than really defining what needed to be done.

Everyone is talking about an F/A-18 aircraft striking an ISIS artillery piece — hardly a strategic objective. This does back up what Obama so narrowly defined last night as his intent – address the threat to Americans in Irbil and Baghdad. I am pleased that we took the action to provide humanitarian relief.

The president was very careful in his words, and they were mostly political – not practical. But Obama was more adamant in declaring what he is not going to do — meaning the enemy has been provided a gap to exploit.

However, why was Barack Hussein Obama in such a rush to provide U.S. military resources in Libya supporting Islamist forces? We were told it was a humanitarian crisis, but it seems now hardly so. And please, don’t tell me it was just NATO — America is NATO. And now Americans know Libya as the place where an ambassador and three other Americans were killed in a terrorist attack, our embassy has been evacuated, and as we reported here, the same Islamists we supported have established a caliphate in eastern Libya.

Last night, President Obama had the chance to define a clear and present evil in our time. ISIS represents the Nazis of this century. There is no clearer portrayal of 7th century barbarism than this movement which we have allowed to gain strength, momentum and victory. Its blitz across Syria and Iraq can easily be compared to that of the 20th century blitzkrieg of Hitler. And the savagery being inflicted is beyond belief — consider the marking of Christian homes — history does repeat itself.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Obama Remains Consistent in His Indifference to Slaughter

By Jonah Goldberg.

In the summer of 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama was asked if he was worried that his proposed withdrawal from Iraq would result in ethnic cleansing or even genocide.

He scoffed at the premise.

“By that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” he told the Associated Press. “We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea.”

Obama glossed over a crucial distinction. The slaughter in Congo wasn’t caused by our actions. The assumption behind the AP’s question — backed by countless experts — was that a withdrawal from Iraq at the time would almost certainly lead to slaughter. Obama’s remarkable answer was that even if you accepted the premise that leaving would ignite mass slaughter, it would still be right to bug out of Iraq.

Of course, as is his wont, Obama covered all of the rhetorical bases. He acknowledged that leaving prematurely would be bad.

Read more from this story HERE.

And the Credit for Defeating Slavery in America Goes to… Criminals!

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140808frontimageIf you’re like me, you learned in school that the slaves of the old American South were freed by Abraham Lincoln, or at least by the central government of the United States. I believed that for a long time, and was not only surprised, but troubled, when I learned otherwise.

But as I dug through the facts about slavery in the South, I found the same pattern that I’ve seen over and over when I examined historical turns for the better: that the true benefactors were opposed and punished.

The people who did the actual work to end slavery were regarded as criminals by every level of the United States government, from Congress and the Supreme Court, down to the local sheriff. The laws of the United States enforced slavery, and powerfully so. Anyone who broke those laws was hunted and punished, exactly the same as ordinary criminals are now.

The Criminals, North and South

There is enough information on the criminals of the North to describe them fairly well. There is relatively little information available on the criminals of the South. For example, look at this map of the Underground Railroad, a people-smuggling network:

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