Don’t expect KsReaganite to shed any tears for Republican Representative Tom Tancredo dropping out of the presidential  race. A more divisive, polarizing, and damaging figure is hard to find in the GOP. That he was effective in promoting his imprudent and xenophobic agenda goes without saying. Thanks to Tancredo, as the report below points out, a core constituency of the Republican Party is parceling out votes and dollars to the Democrats who otherwise could not imagine being the beneficiary of such largesse.  Tancredo appealed to the worst instincts in the human psyche and, in turn, ended up tarnishing the image of the Republican Party and alienated the fastest growing segment of the population, a segment that George Bush had almost split even with the Democrats.  Much of the credit for Democrats winning Mountain West seats in 2006 goes to Tom Tanrecdo. Much of the credit for Democrats outraising Republicans in campaign contribution goes to Tancredo as well. Not surprisingly for little people like Tom Tancredo, their bluster is only skin deep and their courage largely non-existent. Congressman Tancredo, seeing the writing on the wall, has decided he cannot even get elected to his own seat in the House of Representatives, let alone the White House. Thank God and good riddance Tom. Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out. And see if the Democrats can find you a job…for all the help you gave them by backstabbing your own party.

 

http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/071218/dec2007db20071214881757.html?.v=1&.pf=career-work

 

Today Jon Corzine, the liberal Democrat governor of New Jersey signed a law abolishing the death penalty in his state, citing the ‘deep moral objection’ to the practice. The same ‘moral objection’ argument was used by the liberal majority in the NJ legislature to pass the bill last month, over objections of victims’ families and the Republican minority.

 

Chances are that you didn’t hear peep out of all those radical liberals who never tire of screaming how horrible it is to impose one’s ‘moral’ beliefs on society. How many times have we heard that those of us who want to protect all innocent life from womb to tomb are guilty of attempting to legislate our morality? But apparently it is quite fine and dandy, as far as the New York Times and the Left is concerned, for the liberals to openly impose their version of morality on the rest of us. Typical liberal Democrat hypocrisy. You see they really have no problem legislating morality….just as long as the morality in question is duly endorsed by the high priests of ACLU and high priestesses of NOW.

 

Nonetheless what New Jersey’s governor and legislature did, as troubling as it is, is only natural in a representative democracy. Notwithstanding the shrill commentaries of hypocrite editors, reporters, and liberals, the fact is that we as a society impose our collective morality on ourselves EVERYDAY. Sanctions against drug use, murder, theft, and rape are nothing but legislations of morality since our Judeao-Chrsitian heritage prohibits such wanton conduct.  Where standards or norms of morality differ in degree, or even in kind, between the several states, our federal system reserves the right to the states to legislate in accordance with the prevailing moral standards of the state..which is exactly what New Jersey did. So liberals, please don’t look even more intellectually bereft than you already are, by screaming the logical fallacy of “don’t legislate morality”.  

Our 'ally' general, the biggest Asian consumer of American taxpayers' aid largess, has an interview in today's New York Times where, among other gems, he admonishes America for being too 'obsessed with human rights, democracy, and civil liberties'. Funny that General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's tyrant president should choose this day, December 16, for making that outrageous, ungrateful pronouncement, so wont of dictators. For exactly 36 years ago, on December 16 1971, Musharraf's Pakistan was cut into two precisely because of that kind of attitude backed by brute military force. Nine months of gencodie, mass rape, and wanton destruction of infrastructure between March and December of 1971 did not save Pakistan's army from having to surrender the erstwhile Eastern Province of Pakstan which was to become the free Republic of Bangladesh.

General Musharraf and the Pakistan Army that he draws his power from, needs an attitude adjustment, if for no other reason than keeping what's left of Pakistan intact.

I received an important piece of news today that prompts me to make a second entry to the blog in one day. It is good news relayed to me a little while ago by senior staffers on Capitol Hill. Almost an entire year of pest-like lobbying by KsReaganite and many others on military child custody protections is about to bear fruit. An amended version of the Turner Amendment is part of the final 2008 Defense Authorization Bill that the President has indicated he will sign before the end of the year. The measure clarifies the Uniformed Service Member Civil Relief Act to specifically include child custody proceedings and will become law on January 1, 2008 with retroactive effect to October 1, 2007, the beginning of the federal fiscal year. This closes the loophole that radical family court judges, sinister ex-spouses, and disgusting divorce lawyers have used across the country to deprive deployed servicemen of their children as soon as the said servicemen were called up and thus unable to defend themselves. It was a travesty of monumental proportions where, in a bizarre twist of justice, America’s courts punished those who served their country by kidnapping their children.  While this is far from the ideal where men and women are treated equally in the application of the law, it is a small victory for justice for those who only ask that we protect their children as they risk all to protect us.

 What a beautiful Christmas gift to the approximately one hundred thousand deployed servicemen who are either divorced or single parents.

Here's to Corporal Levi Bradley, USMC, whose shoddy treatment at the hands of the Kansas Supreme Court earlier this year prompted me to get into the fight personally. Let us hope that no United States serviceman in the future is rewarded for his service to country by being robbed of his child as happened to Levi Bradley (and countless others) at the behest of judges whose very prerogative to judge emanates from the daily sacrifice of those in uniform.

Governor Mike Huckabee is not my candidate for the nomination and I find some of his past comments on taxation to be troubling. Nor am I entirely comfortable with his coziness with the mob bosses at the teachers extortion racket NEA. Bur far more troubling I find the anti-religious bigotry of the New York  media directed towards him as he becomes a viable candidate for the Presidency.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071213/ap_po/huckabee_women;_ylt=Ah_xB_u514.SLQWkH3eNCeQb.3QA

 

He is a Southern Baptist, the liberal thinking goes, so lets saddle him with all the negative stereotypes about the biggest Protestant denomination in the country. He is against sending women to die in combat, therefore he must be anti-woman….only liberal logic could come up with that piece of wisdom. He is pro life, therefore he must be against women. And so on and so forth. For the record I am strongly against sending women into combat, as are a majority of America’s women and the military top brass. Oh yes, you liberals, by the way a plurality of American women (and a majority of women of child bearing age) are pro life. So now, by the logic of these liberals, most women in America are, well, anti-women!!! The fact of the matter is that Governor Huckabee’s views are very much in the mainstream not only of America in general but of American women in particular. It is not a coincident that the biggest women’s organization in the country is Concerned Women for America which dwarfs its smaller but much noisier radical rival, the National Organization of (Radical) Women, by three to one in terms of membership.

 

Logic….never a strong suit of liberals. And it’s getting worse now that it’s compounded by bigotry and NEA run public schools.

Not often, especially these days, are the bland Episcopalians known for bold decisiveness on matters of faith or principles. A church that was once jokingly known as ‘the Republican Party at prayer’ is now controlled by a clique that is best described as the ecclesiastical apologist wing of the Democratic National Committee.  The go along-get along-anything goes mentality has led what was once the spiritual home of the nation’s chief founders to be a decaying, increasingly irrelevant, and atrophied left wing noisemaker. Under the new ‘presiding bishop’ Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the only thing that has changed is that the vacuous leftist ideology is now being imposed by hierarchical extortion upon the few dioceses that have managed to remain true to Biblical teachings during all these decades of radical control of the church’s New York headquarters. Jefferts Schori, in true form of ‘tolerance’ that she preaches to anyone and everyone who cares to listen to this spike haired oceanographer, has sent out letter threatening disciplinary action, property confiscation, and disenfranchisement of parishes and dioceses that refuse to go along with the Episcopal national office’s radical political agenda. Such a letter went out in September to the Very Reverend Robert Duncan, the Episcopal Bishop of Pittsburgh whose reply, sent in November, was a classic reminder of the debt all Christians owe to Martin Luther’s defiance at the Diet of Worms in 1521. Quoting Luther almost verbatim, Bishop Duncan’s short letter tersely declared to Jefferts Schori that “Here is where I stand; I can do no other. I shall remain true to the Biblical faith given to the saints. I will stand by and protect my flock.” What price Bishop Duncan and his flock pay at the hands of Jefferts Schori and her fawning media and judicial acolytes (they had gone agog at her becoming the first female ‘presiding bishop’ of a major national church) is yet to be seen. What has already been seen, however, is that there still remain some Episcopalians who are witnesses for Christ and ready to bear His cross.

The mainstream media, as always, dismissed the very notion that a newly minted Republican-turned-liberal Democrat with organized radical feminist support could ever stoop to sexual harassment of his female employees. We warned them, we pleaded with them to at least give it serious thought; but no, they were too busy destroying an honorable law officer who had gone after the protectors of child molesters in Wichita and Kansas City. After all, former Attorney General Phil Kline was everything the liberals loathed: erudite, conservative, energetic, and a bane to those who preyed upon children. The liberals celebrated when Paul Morrison, the new Democrat, beat Kline, brushing aside serious allegations of sexual harassment, inappropriae conduct, and intimidation from former women subordinates of Mr. Morrison. In fact, Paul Morrison denied everything and claimed that Kline was simply trying to destroy his good marriage.

Well, well, well. Late Sunday night Attorney General Paul Morrison, that champion of women's rights admitted to having a two year affair with a former staffer. Furthermore, he declined to confirm or deny the former staffer's chilling affidavit as to how then DA Morrison forced her to sneak into confidential prosecution files to find dirt on Phil Kline and protect Planned Parenthood (an organization that was indicted today in Kansas City on child abuse charges and has been a major contributor to Morrison's campaign). The victim further claims, claims unrebutted by Morrison, that their sexual liasons took place on courthouse premises and during taxpayer funded trips to judicial conferences.

Adultery, which Attorney General Morrison admitted Sunday night, is a class C felony in the Great State of Kansas. Beyond that, how much he has done to interfere with legitimate prosecution and investigation of cases that Phil Kline was handling, remains to be seen. We have essentially just found out that our chief law enforcement officer is an admitted felon with a track record of sexual harassment, extortion, and obstruction of justice for political ends. If Paul Morrison has any shred of decency left, he should resign right now. But then what decency can we expect from a felon, a habitual liar, and a betrayer of his own family.

More likely than not most Americans will not think of today as anything different than another Friday on the way to fast approaching holiday festivities. It is a pity. For today should be a somber remembrance of what President Roosevelt called ‘a day that will forever live in infamy’. More accurately, December 7 should be a day that reminds us what kind of a people we are. On that day, the armed forces of the Japanese Empire attacked the United States, unprovoked and undeclared. Almost ever it has been in this Republic’s history that she has never gone to a war without provocation and never grabbed foreign territory as a spoil of war. The war that began on December 7, 1941 was no exception. Thus it has an eerie similarity with September 11, 2001 when once again the enemy attacked us unprovoked.

 

The war that began on December 7, 1941 ended almost four years later with Imperial Japan brought to its knees by the forces of the United States and the British Indian Empire. Whether such a clean defeat of the current enemy will happen in our lifetime or not is difficult to predict. What we do know is that the struggle will be every bit as intense and painful. What we also realize is that no matter how peaceful our intentions, such may not be the case with those who wish us harm. There is simply no alternative to being prepared for war. If anything, such a bold and obvious preparation is one of the surest, if not fail safe, deterrents to war. To quote the WWII veteran and anti-war Republican Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, “the most important task of the B-1 bomber is to assure that it is never used.” Hatfield should know; not only was he a decorated officer but a principled politician who never voted against defense spending and never voted for war.

Two years ago, in an interview panel, Dr. Fareed Zakaria had encapsulated a warning and vision for his fellow Yalie George W. Bush and Congressional Democrats, admonishing them "to not craft policies on terrorism, trade, and immigration on the basis of fear, but rather on the groundswell of American greatness". The advice was somewhat lost on the President, entirely on the Democrats, and is apparently unheard of amongst the current crop of GOP contenders. They should pay heed to Zakaria.

A conservative realist in the mold of his mentor Samuel Huntington, the Indian born Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek, and a  former editor of Foreign Affairs who had been warning about radical Islam long before 9/11 happened. As the son of a prominent couple with impeccable credentials in politics and Islamic scholarship, he should know what makes radical Islam prosper and what makes it wither. As the embodiement of the American dream, a New Yorker to bone, and a father of two kids with New York City photojournalist  Paula Throckmorton Zakaria, his interests are those of America.

Fareed Zakaria's philosophy on policymaking represents that of Ronald Reagan..open, robust, and optimistic as befits the greatest Republic in the history of man. It is a pity that those who claim the mantle of Reagan in 2007-2008, are speaking the language of frightened politicians instead.

I have difficulty sitting up at the PC and writing much, so my readers will forgive me in being short and simply asking them to read the story below and draw their own conclusions.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/22022965/
The names are different but story is the same: another little child murdered by the mother's new sex partner, as is wont in many, many species in nature, from majestic lions to the miniscule rats.
The question is who and where is the judge that is the co-conspirator and chief enabler of Baby Grace's murder? You know, the 'family court' judge that awarded the murderous mother and her murderous boyfriend custody. And don't tell me the judge didn't know that Baby Grace was in danger, removed so many states away from her natural protector, her father. So while the mother and her boyfriend face charges (and I doubt she will serve more than a couple of years in a mental institution at best), the third person responsible, that family court judge, is conveniently enjoying the weekend probably making speeches at a Rotary club about parenting and what not.

I was not going to write today...as I alluded in my previous blog entry. But write I must in the little window of opportunity afforded today for a great American is no more. Former congressman Henry Hyde, a fallible man who was redeemed, passed away today losing his battle with old age at 83 years of age. A fighter for civil rights, family medical leave, human rights, this eclectic Republican was the author of the landmark Hyde Amendment which protects the right of conscience of American taxpayers, Hyde leaves a noble legacy that few of today' members can match. Mr. Hyde was far from a perfect man; rather his background as a young man included actions that are perhaps the most despicable and dastardly of any hornorable individual. Whether he was forgiven for his most repugnant actions by the many victims thereof, I do not know. Nor do I know whether God has forgiven this man that He receives back today in His fold. But if any fallen man can indeed be fit for the Grace of God and His Forgiveness, I suspect it may be someone like Henry Hyde. In his life of public service, Congressman Hyde helped us reach deep into that reservoir of decency and compassion that is the essence of America. He infuriated doctrinnaire Republicans, including former President George HW Bush and yours truly, by standing firm on the issue of federal minimum wage and federally guaranteed family and medical leave....and getting his way. He was hated by the radical liberals for making sure to this day (via the Hyde Amendment) that the spending bills of Congress respected the wishes of the 80 % of Americans who do not want their tax dollars to go towards performing the ghastly task of abortion. And those were just a few of the quirks of the late Mr. Hyde.

And so goes another giants of public service.

Sorry, KsReaganite has been under the weather, doesn't seem to be getting too much better too fast, and on the road. So not too many posts. Yet, briefly have to point out that I found Governor Romney, a man I have endorsed for the Presidency, to be way out of line when attacking John McCain on torture. Nobody on that stage, let alone Romney, has the standing to challenge, decorated officer,  war hero and torture victim McCain on that issue. 

As for Giuliani, we know he lies; his lips move.

Godspeed and Godbless.

I finally had the opportunity to see this year’s somewhat underrated release Amazing Grace. It is one of those rare modern films where a mastery of the cinematography art brings together exceptional acting, a powerful story line, and a very uplifting message. And it is a tale as true as the winter night is long.  I certainly don’t recommend my doctrinaire liberal friends watching it because they will find two of the key themes of the movie very offensive: Christian witness in democratic policy-making and rejection of the idea that one human being owns the life of another.

 Narrating the political life and times of Conservative British Member of Parliament (MP) William Wilberforce, Amazing Grace portrays a man born into privilege and educated at Oxford who goes into Parliament and single handedly takes up the almost impossible task of fighting against slavery. A devout Anglican (the American progeny of which is, alas, the Episcopal Church), Wilberforce struggles between being a ‘man of God’ and a ‘man of politics’ until his conscience and friends convince him that a man of God can indeed be a man of politics and, in times of moral crisis, should be. His first effort to outlaw slavery in the British Empire yields 18 votes in the House of Commons while the other side, funded by slave traders and passionately supported by the enlightened ‘moderates’ of the time, garners over 300 MPs. Fifteen years of tireless education, advocacy, and politicking later the numbers are reversed and in his fifth attempt Wilberforce succeeds in outlawing slavery across the British Empire. By the wayside fall the silly argument that his opponents used that if you were against slavery, you had no right to impose your ‘radical Christian conservative’ views on others. One hundred and eighty years later, the very same arguments are still made today by those who have nothing else to offer in the defense of patent evil.

 What was worthy of note, as a sublime background in the movie, was the character of the man beyond the politician in Wilberforce. Opposition to slavery came perhaps naturally to him. A passionate advocate for preventing cruelty to animals, a critic of child labor, and a legislative friend of orphanages and soup kitchens, Wilberforce seemed to have had an instinctively masculine revulsion to the unfairness of hurting those who are unable to defend themselves. No bleeding heart hippie ‘can we all get along’ type, William Wilberforce was a well dressed, well read, reserved man who enjoyed alcoholic libations, vigorously defended the Monarchy, and found most women to be annoying distractions (and then he met his intellectual match and married Barbara Spooner..lol).

 Reflecting on the film after watching it, I was reminded of Dante’s famous line that ‘the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality.’

A man is known, it has been often said in many cultures, by the company he keeps. And Bernie Kerik is not the only dubious character that is good buddies with Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Equally troubling, if not more so, in this age of terrorism is one of Rudy’s original cheerleaders, Congressman Peter King of Nassau County. No other federal Republican politician, or for that matter politician of any party, has been so vocal a defender of terrorism, advocate of murderers, and friend of political violence than Representative King. A twenty year long obsessive love affair with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Europe’s number one terror group, saw Peter King praising IRA terrorists as freedom fighters and fighting their expulsion from the United States. He gleefully raised money in New York for the IRA and was listed as a security risk by both the United States Secret Service and the British intelligence agencies. Of course, the congressman’s tune changed pretty quickly on September 12. 2001, the change landing him a top spot on the House Homeland Security Committee. Indeed elective politics throws up strange ironies sometimes.

 Whether it is just his tune that has changed or his heart as well, is yet to be seen. But the fact that Rudy Giuliani gets counsel on homeland security from a known terrorist sympathizer should give pause to any American.

 http://www.nysun.com/article/15853?page_no=1

http://politicalinsider.com/2007/03/rep_peter_king_endorses_giulia.html

It is rare for me to find fault with a pro-life politician's zeal for protecting unborn children. After all, since my days in college, I have had a simple and straightforward position on the issue: all innocent life should be protected by law, as it has been at common law at least since the time of the Magna Carta, that great charter of life and liberty of the English speaking peoples. For if the law does not protect the most vulnerable and the most innocent of us, what kind of a people are we?

It is with some trepidition, thus, that I consider the remarks made by former governor Mike Huckabee this morning to be imprudent. Rightly he compared abortion to slavery, for both 'peculiar' institutions draw their legal basis not from the will of the American people but from the wilful deceit of unelected judges and the weak hearts of the New England elite who know evil but are too chicken to say anything except "well personally I am..but..". Where Gov. Huckabee overreached, however, is his assertion that states do not have the right to have their own policy with regards to abortion and that the federal constitution should reflect a blanket protection of the unborn. As much as I sympathize with the heartfelt feeling behind that position, I cannot let go the constitutional flaws in it.

The constitution reserves to the states two policy areas that affect abortion directly (and have been wrongly usurped by six unelected men in black robes in 1973): criminal prosecution of local actions and regulation of professions. If the people of California through their elected representatives decide, as is largely (if not exclusively) their prerogative, not to prosecute the murder of children and not to regulate the businesses that conduct such heinous activities, then there is little we can do. By the same token, if the people of Kansas through their elected representatives decide to protect all human life and severely regulate the likes of the businesses run by their own neighbor George Tiller, that is the right and prerogative of the people of that great state. Such is the essence of our federal representative democracy.

Yes, a federal Human Life Amendment will change the issue entirely and give the federal government a mandate to protect all innocent human life. But as Mike Huckabee and KsReaganite both know, the chances of that amendment passing muster in Congress, never mind the three fourths of the states, are less than zero percent. Rather, the very fight over that amendment will embolden the defenders of infanticide and empower further their allies in the mainstream media and, thus, set back the cause of life for years. I hate to be so clinical and almost cold about it....but that is how the atmosphere of the country is right now. And let's not forget that if life has to be defined in the constitution, liberal judges will find numerous other loopholes to force us to define every little thing to forestall their malice.

The solution, federalist and pro-life, then is to have a president who will appoint judges who will overturn the disgrace called Roe v. Wade, and return the issue to the people of the 50 states where it belongs while the federal government-meaning all three branches-gets out kit and kaboodle of the grisly business of abortion. And then the issue can be decided by the people of the several states through their elected representatives after rigorous, open, and informed debate, as is wont in a representative democratic dispensation.

Yes, someday abortion will go the way of slavery and America will live up to the pledge of its founding creed that 'all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights', the first of which is life. It won't happen in Mike Huckabee's lifetime and perhaps not in mine. But happen it will. For as President Lincoln remarked so often, the inherent decency of the American people cannot be suppressed too long, even by their own individual self-interests. We have come a long way: a plurality of Americans are pro-life today (real pro-life not the "personally..but" type), the most pro-life segment of the population is young women of child bearing age, ninety percent of counties no longer have an abortion provider, and Planned Parenthood is terrified that more and more medical school graduates opt out of optional abortion training every school year (no self respecting physician wants to touch murder with a ten foot pole). Yet, we have a long way to go.

Let's not upset the applecart on that journey, Governor Huckabee. The words, the deeds, and the policy choices of the pro-life community have to be prudent, measured, and consistent with the principles of our federal republic. We must win by being more principled, more ethical, and more prudent than the other side. Actually, given the powerful nature of the opposition, that is the only way we can win.