8/28/10 in DC

Beck, Palin tell supporters to restore America's value

More than 500 from Valley join hundreds of thousands for Washington rally

Read the story in 

The Morning Call

Wheat, Weed, and ObamaCare: How the Commerce Clause Made Congress All-Powerful

Philly requiring bloggers to pay $300 for a business license!

If this catches on around here we're out of business!
Article in the Washington Examiner.

Understanding the tea party is...

...essential to predicting what the country's political scene will look like.

That's the sub-title of an article in this weekend's Wall Street Journal --- America's Insurgent Pollster

"Americans don't want to be governed from the left or the right," Scott Rasmussen tells the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conference of 1,500 conservative and moderate legislators. "They want, like the Founding Fathers, to largely govern themselves with Washington in a supporting—but not dominant—role. The tea party movement is today's updated expression of that sentiment."

Thoughts on Gracedale

My Thoughts on Gracedale

by Kim Schmidtner

I have to say that I was a bit apprehensive about attending last night's Northampton County Council meeting. I went into the meeting defensively, knowing that the union had walked out on negotiations earlier in the day, and that the room would most likely be packed with union thugs trying to maintain an iron grip on their unrealistic and unsustainable benefits packages. I prepared myself for the potential fireworks and a nasty fight, and was fully expecting that I would become very angry at some things that might occur. However, as I sat at the meeting last night, I listened and observed the crowd that had packed into Courtroom #1 at the Northampton County Courthouse. As the meeting droned on, instead of becoming angry, I found myself feeling very sorry for the people who were there--not because the county was considering privatizing Gracedale, but because of the hopeless, emotial and dependent state of most of those in attendance. I kept asking myself, "Is this really America, the home of the free and the brave? The champion of unalienable individual rights? Where is the American independent, can-do, self-reliant spirit?" Being as fiercely independent as I am, and understanding the liberating nature of that independence, I was taken aback by the downtrodden, depressed, and desperate tone of those who spoke. I then truly realized what being a "slave of the state" really meant, and it is something that neither I want to ever experience for myself, or to pass on to my child and grandchildren.

Unfortunately, I learned too late that I had to sign up before the meeting to speak, but had I had the opportunity, this is what I would have said:

The Tea Parties and the Future of Liberty

The following comes from the latest issue of Imprimis. 

“Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” SUBSCRIPTION FREE UPON REQUEST. ISSN 0277-8432. Imprimis trademark registered in U.S. Patent and Trade Office #1563325.

The Tea Parties and the Future of Liberty
Stephen F. Hayes
Senior Writer, The Weekly Standard

Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Within a month he signed a $787 billion “stimulus package” with virtually no Republican support. It was necessary, we were told, to keep unemployment under eight percent. Overnight, the federal government had, as one of its highest priorities, weatherizing government buildings and housing projects. Streets and highways in no need of repair would be broken up and repaved. The Department of Transportation and other government agencies would spend millions on signs advertising the supposed benefits of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I saw one of them on Roosevelt Island in Washington, D.C. It boasted that the federal park would be receiving a generous grant to facilitate the involvement of local youth in the removal of “non-indigenous plants.” In other words, kids would be weeding. We need a sign to announce that? And this was going to save the economy?

Then there was American Recovery and Reinvestment Act project number 1R01AA01658001A, a study entitled: “Malt Liquor and Marijuana: Factors in their Concurrent Versus Separate Use.” I’m not making this up. This is a $400,000 project being directed by a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The following is from the official abstract: “We appreciate the opportunity to refocus this application to achieve a single important aim related to our understanding of young adults’ use of male [sic] liquor (ML), other alcoholic beverages, and marijuana (MJ), all of which confer high risks for experiencing negative consequences, including addiction. As we have noted, reviews of this grant application have noted numerous strength [sic], which are summarized below.”

So what were those strengths? “This research team has previous [sic] been successful in recruiting a large (>600) sample of regular ML drinkers.” Also, “the application is well-written.” Well-written? With three spelling mistakes? But who am I to judge? As for the other strength, there is no question that the team’s recruitment had been strong. But is that really a qualification for federal money? After all, they were paying people to drink beer!

The Move to Eliminate Local Government

There's a proposal in Harrisburg by a state representative to amend the Pennsylvania state constitution to consolidate all local government to the county level. So instead of going to town hall, you have to go to the county seat. Instead of local police and services you'll have county police and services.

I don't think it has a chance in hades of going anywhere.

An article on the proposal is found at the Morning Call website.

What's interesting is that this is the sort of governmental over reaching that could galvanize small communities in their opposition to being swallowed up. The local Nazareth news site, News Over Coffee, has an interesting piece on how larger governments are not as responsive to the people as local governments are. And would a county-wide entity care about the events in small communities that make them unique?

The Direction of Being "Progressive"

 In our previous post Andrew Klavan demonstrated how instead of striving to preserve, protect, & defend the Constitution our elected officials have become "power hungry low-lifes" (his words) looking to circumvent it. This is commonly said to be done in the name of "progress" and the people who share this view are usually called liberals or progressives.

 The "Tea Party Movement" is often described as a reaction to the "Progressive Movement". I would say there is much truth in that statement even though it risks painting us as the opposite of progressive, or "regressive". The problem is that just because a movement is called "progressive", there is nothing that says that it's "progress" is in the right direction. And if in it's methods it's adherents feel compelled to "progress" by any means necessary, alarm bells should sound off everywhere.

 The word "progressive" has no meaning if we do not all agree on the direction of this progress. To give it meaning is to have an almost religious belief in what it is to progress. When the country is divided on which way to go, the term progressive ends up being just a slogan to make the owners of it look more positive or righteous than their opposition.

 The roots of the progressive movement extend back more than a hundred years. And a hundred and five years ago the English writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton wrote about what he thought about this "progressive" age in his work Heretics. I think his words are as applicable today as they were than. What follows comes from the end of the second chapter, "On the Negative Spirit":

Nobody has any business to use the word "progress" unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals. Nobody can be progressive without being doctrinal;

This is your Constitution. This is your Constitution in Washington DC.

FAQ's... we need them

It's been brought to my attention that a FAQ page would be very beneficial.

But are those FAQ pages I see on other sites actually questions that have been asked, frequently or otherwise? So in the interest of honesty I open this post up to the inquires of the questioning public.

So have at it...