True Colors, baby

The grassroots Democratic party, hell, I'll just say it, are lunatics.

I mean, Hillary is left, there's not doubt. But Democrats at the local level are whacked out. After all, it's local democrats in San Fran who banned military recruiting. It was grassroots Democrat officials doing gay marriages all over the damn place. And now, local dems have decided that a county's emergency warning system does not belong on the same station as Limbaugh and Hannity.

It's all right by me, though. Rush has been the Early Warning system, preaching the disastrous impact of liberalism for decades. Putting their little county thing on the air with him would be, well, redundant.

Impeach Gonzales

It boggles the mind.

Renowned RINO Arlen Specter is going to vote for a "no confidence" vote for Attorney General Al Gonzales, alongside his democrat buddies in the Senate. This guy, who is by any measurement an ideological liberal, is portrayed by his supporters as being strong-willed enough to stand against the Republican establishment. The problem is that Specter, like most liberals, is spineless.

You see, here's the thing. If Gonzales had done something illegal or inappropriate, congress has a built-in remedy: impeachment. The AG serves at the will of the President, and always has. But congress has the ability to impeach the AG just as they do any of the President's cabinet. So, why this charade of a "no confidence" vote? I mean, other than the fact that Gonzales hasn't done anything wrong?

It's simple: the Dems (and Specter) feel like they're in a win-win situation. On one hand, they may get Bush either have to fire Gonzales, thus admitting that there was impropriety over at Justice. Alternatively, they will pressure Bush and he will stand by Gonzales in the face of a media who have already crucified him at least twice. In their minds, they win either way.

The problem is here that the Dems (and Specter) are being as political, or even more so, than Gonzales. If the Dems (and Specter) truly believe that Specter is not the man for the job, the only true recourse is to impeach him. The option of "Bush defends a guilty Gonzales" doesn't help the country, even if it helps the Democratic party (and Specter).

I told you so, Loren

I used to work with a fellow by the name of Loren. Loren was a good guy. He was good natured, had a wonderful sense of humor, and was good at his job. I even convinced him to play some D&D with Cliff, Doc, Nitz, and myself for a little while. He was even a relatively staunch conservative. Loren had one problem, though.

You see, Loren fell for the lie that was being perpetuated at the time that only stem cells from embryos could produce medical advancements that might cure Chris Reeve. I tried to tell him that only a small number of stem cells needed to be embryonic, and that regular stem cells made the research harder, but not impossible. Using stem cells from discarded embryos, at least using federal money to do it, was a violation of the religious rights of Catholics and other pro-life advocates. If I believe an embryo is life or potential life, then using my tax money to destroy that life is a severe violation of my conscience. Loren said that the research was too important. I, of course, countered that NO research is more important than any one of our freedoms. (As a point of disclaimer, I am not Catholic and I'm rather agnostic on the question of whether a frozen embryo is a person).

At any rate, the science has caught up with the ethics on this one, finally. As it turns out, you CAN do research on stem cells without destroying embryos.

So, Loren, wherever you are, I'd just like to say: thhhhppppppptt!!!!!

A Thank You

For those who have gone before us and paid the ultimate price to insure that this last, best hope for the world would not perish from the earth, I offer a humble citizen's thanks and gratitude.

May D-Day never be forgotten.

Secession

No, kids, this isn't one of professor Younce's interesting rants on the War Between the States, although there are elements here. Nope, this one is about radical anti-American activist, Thomas Naylor.

Naylor, you see, hates America. He hates Bush, and he is one of the perpetuators of the "War on Terror is a Myth" ideology. However, we happen to agree on a few things.

First, Naylor thinks that Lincoln ruled with an iron fist, and was a master political manipulator. Beyond that, Naylor suggests that Lincoln was responsible for moving us from a representative government in which the states and the people were superior to the federal government, to a federal system in which Washington is plainly superior to the individual States, and, ultimately, to the people. I tend to agree with this analysis. Before Lincoln, it was "These United States." After Lincoln, it was "The United States."

But, this isn't a rant about Lincoln. Honest, it isn't. You see, Naylor believes that the state of Vermont should secede from the union. So does Donald Livingston, another force behind the Vermont secessionist movement. In my mind, Livingston's arguments tend to be more convincing, but Naylor certainly is the more prolific of the two. At any rate, these guys argue that the citizens of the state of Vermont have the inherent right, if they so desire, to form their own government, separate from the United States, and to be an independent political entity. I also tend to agree with this.

The thing is, regardless of the implications, self-determination is one of our most sacred values. Whether we talk about it with words like independence, self-government, freedom, or whatever, as Americans we believe that human beings are meant to be able to determine for themselves what is best. The citizens of the state of Vermont have that same God-given right, just like their forefathers did when they "seceded" from England.

Yeah, a secessionist Vermont creates some headaches. Border security becomes interesting, at the very least. However, as a land-locked country, Vermont needs to do some serious begging to get the United States to allow planes to fly in, for example. There are workable ways that this sort of thing could still be managed, from the perspective of a 49-state United States.

But a secessionist Vermont does some other things. It gets rid of 3 Democratic electoral votes, more than likely. It gets rid of Bernie Sanders. If Naylor is right, it also gets rid of a lot of disillusioned leftists. Maybe even Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin might take up residence in Vermont. Hell, if they become voting citizens of Vermont, we can always revoke their citizenship and then deny them passports. Or flyover permission. How awesome would that be to have those two nutjobs landlocked for the rest of eternity? I'm thinking a Hillary Clinton presidency might be good right there in Vermont.

If Vermont wants out, I say let 'em go. From then on, when we say "love it or leave it" to some patchouli-smelling freakazoid, we can just point to the nearest Grayhound headed for Vermont.

Chicken Farm

You have to wonder, deep down, what folks like Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and Rosie really wanted to happen this weekend in New York.

I mean, think about it. From all of the rhetoric of the antiwar left, we've got to believe that George W. Bush and the U.S. millitary are the terrorists, right? That 9/11 couldn't have really been caused by Islamic Fundamentalists who hate anyone who isn't an Islamic Fundamentalist, especially Americans. And so the thwarted Kennedy plot was probably just that a$$ Bush offing some innocent people who maybe pissed off his big oil buddies, right?

How can you go through things like this weekend and NOT believe that we need to be now, more than ever, involved in the global War on Terror?

Truly, though, I think we have been a little too PC in this whole thing. The "war on terror" is one method to describe the current international conflict between millitant Islamic fundamentalism and the rest of the world, especially Western Democracy. Why does millitant Islam hate Western Democracy? Well, Western Democracy is made up of two very divergent and opposed ideologies: namely, what remains of Christian Rationalism and Modernist Liberalism. Millitant islam hates Christian Rationalism because, of course, millitant Islam hates Christianity. It hates Modernist Liberalism because Modernist Liberalism is decadent.

This is not all that dissimilar to the conflict that occured at the nation's founding. What remained of Catholicism (i.e. France) was in conflict with the Biblical Christianity/Rationalism alliance, represented by England. Our little war of revolution was just a small part of that bigger conflict, just as Iraq, for example, is a smaller part of our larger conflict today. To miss this is to completely miss reality.