Securing the Blessings of Liberty
by Gordon S. Jones 
“How can I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name.”
So says John Proctor in The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem Witch Trials or something. I’ve been acting in a community theater production of the 1953 classic, and it has prompted some thoughts on names, which I will transmute into a proposal for congressional reform before I’m done. [Read more...]
How they were changed to obscure the truth
by Stephen F. Hayes 
Even as the White House strove last week to move beyond questions about the Benghazi attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2012, fresh evidence emerged that senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what had happened in the days following the assaults. The Weekly Standard has obtained a timeline briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing the heavy substantive revisions made to the CIA’s talking points, just six weeks before the 2012 presidential election, and additional information about why the changes were made and by whom. [Read more...]
by George Landrith 
Ronald Reagan coined the phrase, “Peace through strength,” but it was not a new idea and it had not been an historically partisan concept. It dates back to George Washington who said, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” Washington and Reagan understood that peace is achieved through strength and conversely that weakness invites attack. This was once a universally accepted truth among American leaders. Current events prove, it should again become American policy regardless of party.
We live in a dangerous world. Kim Jung-un is threatening military invasions and nuclear attacks. We’ve recently learned that the North Koreans are much closer to being able to put a nuclear warhead on a missile than was previously believed. China, already a nuclear power, is rapidly developing a large navy and stealth aircraft. Russia has been sending its military aircraft into American airspace on provocative test missions. [Read more...]
With Lady Margaret Thatcher’s recent passing, tributes and praise for her leadership are flowing freely from former allies and adversaries alike. This is entirely fitting as she was not only the first and only female Prime Minister of the U.K., but she reclaimed a declining economy and helped defeat communism. Lady Thatcher was an effective leader, a principled and skilled politician, and she strengthened the special relationship between Great Britain and the United States. Lady Thatcher was one of the world’s most influential and greatest post-World War II leaders.
A resolution honoring Lady Thatcher has been passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. A resolution was also supposed to pass in the Senate earlier this week. However, well placed sources on Capitol Hill report that Senate Democrats have placed a hold on the resolution honoring Lady Thatcher, according to Katherine Rosario at HeritageAction.com. [Read more...]
by Gordon S. Jones 
My last column on the Electoral College prompted a number of thoughtful responses, so I would like to deal with those, and then make some general points in (qualified) support of the Electoral College itself.
One reader produced polling results demonstrating that support for the elimination of the EC and its replacement with a direct popular election of the president runs between 70 and 80 percent in every state in the country.
With opposition like that, it is quite astonishing that the EC can survive. Surely it must have some things going for it. I shall try to explain what those are as I go along. [Read more...]
by George Landrith
With the sequester deadline looming, there has been a marked uptick in the hyperbole emanating from Washington. Little wonder, a Pew Research poll says that only about one in four is paying close attention to the sequester.
This must be disconcerting to the White House because it has been full-court pressing the issue — suddenly releasing criminals from prison, falsely claiming that teachers are being pink-slipped, holding campaign style events with President Barack Obama personally issuing overblown and false warnings that firemen and policemen and teachers will be pink-slipped, that air traffic will be at greater risk, that waiting times at airports will increase and that meat will not be inspected and may be tainted. The White House even announced that it won’t deploy an aircraft carrier to a hotspot because of sequester budget constraints. [Read more...]
by Nolan Finley 
Playing the crisis card won’t work forever for President Barack Obama. At some point, the people will expect their leader to lead.
And the president hasn’t yet demonstrated the will to do so. Instead, he answers monumental moments such as the upcoming sequestration deadline with brinksmanship and blame-gaming.
For now, the approach is working. A Pew/USA Today poll last week found decisively more voters blame [Read more...]
by George F. Will
Even during this desultory economic recovery, one industry thrives — the manufacture of synthetic hysteria. It is, however, inaccurate to accuse the Hysteric in Chief of crying “Wolf!” about spending cuts under the sequester. He is actually crying “Hamster!”
As in: Batten down the hatches — the sequester will cut $85 billion from this year’s $3.6 trillion budget! Or: Head for the storm cellar — spending will be cut 2.3 percent! Or: Washington chain-saw massacre — we must scrape by on 97.7 percent of current spending! Or: Chaos is coming because the sequester will cut a sum $25 billion larger than was just shoveled out the door (supposedly, but not actually) for victims of Hurricane Sandy! Or: Heaven forfend, the sequester will cut 47 percent as much as was spent on the AIG bailout! Or: Famine, pestilence and locusts will come when the sequester causes federal spending over 10 years to plummet from $46 trillion all the way down to $44.8 trillion! Or: Grass will grow in the streets of America’s cities if the domestic agencies whose budgets have increased 17 percent under President Obama must endure a 5 percent cut! [Read more...]
by Gordon S. Jones
With the Senate having acted and the House set to take up the bill as early as next week, it is time for someone to answer the question posed by the Florida Times-Union: “How in the world can people vote against the Violence Against Women Act?”
(Before engaging in the kind of politically incorrect analysis that follows, it is customary for the analyst to issue a disclaimer along the following lines: “Needless to say…” and then go on to say it. I am not going to do that. Raymond Saulnier, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Nixon Administration, used to note that if you did what I am going to do here, you would be accused of being “against people, and I’ve told you many times” he would continue, “don’t be against people.” So I have been warned, but I’m going ahead anyway.) [Read more...]
by Gordon S. Jones
Now that a Virginia state senator has dropped plans to re-work his state’s method of allocating votes in the Electoral College, let’s consider some other proposals for “improving” this venerable, if somewhat creaky, institution.
One, called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, comes out of California, home to many nutty ideas, though this particular one has been endorsed by some conservatives as well, including Utah’s always interesting state senator Howard Stephenson. In brief, the Compact would require the Electors of each compacting state to cast their ballot in the Electoral College for the winner of the national popular vote majority. [Read more...]
by Gordon S. Jones
Regular as clockwork, every four years, we get calls for scrapping that archaic relic of the 18th century, the Electoral College. An institution unique to the U.S. political system, the EC takes a beating for occasionally producing a president who was not elected by a majority of the voters.
The issue is timely, because Virginia is considering a change in the way it allocates its Electoral College votes, and some conservative groups are salivating that this change, if emulated in other states, could enhance Republican presidential prospects. Their “evidence” is that if this change had been in effect in only five states, Mitt Romney would have won the election last year
What is this “silver bullet” of reform, and what would be its real world effects? Let’s take a closer look. [Read more...]
by Lloyd Green
Sometimes, Barack Obama acts like the Constitution does not apply to him and the Congress is an imaginary being. Friday, the United States Court of Appeals brought the president back to Earth and reminded him that that the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and the U.S. Senate are very much part of reality by voiding three of Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.
The D.C. Circuit ruled that the president could not end-run the confirmation process merely because at the beginning of 2012 the U.S. Senate was meeting every three business days in, what lawyers call, pro forma session. Oh, and during that pro forma session the Senate was also busy passing the payroll tax extension. Some pro forma session. [Read more...]
by George Landrith
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally made it to Capitol Hill to testify about what happened five months ago in Benghazi, Libya on September 11th — the 11th anniversary of the original 9/11 attacks. What we knew before Hillary’s testimony is that a well-planned and coordinated terrorist attack in Benghazi killed four Americans, including our Ambassador. After Ms. Clinton testified, the mainstream media rushed to tell Americans how amazing Ms. Clinton’s performance was and how small-minded the Republicans had been. As usual, the mainstream media demonstrated itself to be shamelessly dishonest and embarrassingly servile. But there is nothing new in that. [Read more...]
by George Landrith
President Barack Obama repeatedly chided Mitt Romney’s budget plan during the presidential campaign on at least two grounds: (1) it lacked detail, and (2) the math didn’t add up. Perhaps, we should use these two standards to see how Barack Obama’s plan stacks up. There is more than a little irony in Barack Obama criticizing others for not providing details or for their math not adding up. Obama has always been short on details and his math has almost never passed even the straight face test, much less actually adding up.
Nonetheless, let’s apply these two standards — (1) are there sufficient details? and (2) does the math add up? — to evaluate Barack Obama’s proposals for solving the so-called fiscal cliff. [Read more...]
by Jennifer Rubin
Each new revelation about the Benghazi debacle reinforces the idea we are either not hearing the truth or everyone in the administration was behaving irrationally. If you are waiting for someone to finally give a satisfactory explanation, I think it’s going to be a long wait.
The latest is that the director of national intelligence is claiming responsibility for the changed talking points. [Read more...]
by Peter Brookes
We don’t have all the details of former CIA Director David Petraeus’ testimony to congressional Intelligence Committees on Friday, but it looks like the American people were grossly misled about the Benghazi attack.
Is anyone surprised? You shouldn’t be.
The last thing the Obama administration wanted to tell the American public during a tight presidential campaign was that al Qaeda had attacked a US consulate on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, killing four brave Americans. [Read more...]
November 7, 2012
Dear Fellow Americans,
For many of us, there is tremendous disappointment and frustration that a President who spent the last four years stagnating the economy, expanding the government, projecting weakness abroad, and attacking and dividing Americans has been reelected to a second term. But despite our disappointment, we must remember that there are no permanent victories and no permanent defeats. We must take courage. [Read more...]
by George Landrith
The most recently revealed State Department e-mails regarding the attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi show that President Barack Obama has not been shooting straight with America. Whatever national security errors were made in the months and weeks leading up to the Benghazi attack, engaging in a cover up always makes things worse.
We now know that an e-mail was sent from American embassy personnel in Libya to hundreds of officials in the Obama Administration only minutes after the attack began. This e-mail’s subject line was “US Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and stated that “approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four [embassy] personnel are in the compound safe haven.” [Read more...]
by Jeffrey Klein
According to specific public statements made by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Jay Carney and Susan Rice, for almost two weeks after the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya–during which our Ambassador, his aide and two former Navy SEALs were ambushed and murdered, the Administration maintained that current intelligence gave no indication that it was more than a protest that got out of hand as a result of an anti-Islamic video, repeatedly declaring:
…we shared intelligence information with the American people as we received it.
Maybe not so much. [Read more...]
Part II, Job Prospects?
by Scott L. Vanatter
In part one, I discussed whether racial recriminations or even riots will follow an Obama loss. Short answers, respectively, probably yes, and probably not. American has indeed progressed. Well . . . except certain liberal commentators.
Here in part two, after reviewing a bit of his history and current predicament, I discuss what Obama will do if he loses in November. In part three, I will delve into whether he will run for president again and if so, when?
