(The following post was written by Micah Clark and appeared in the American Family Association of Indiana Weekly Newsletter)
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One of the biggest responses I have received from readers of this email in the last month came about after I mentioned Senator Richard Lugar’s vote in favor of Elana Kagan and talk of whether he should be challenged in the Republican Primary.
Talk of challenges to Senator Lugar in the 2012 Republican Primary has become a hot topic of discussion in some political circles. Some see a challenge to the longest serving Republican member of US Senate (34 years) as a fool’s game. In light of the recent Arizona primary results, there may be evidence that taking on a legendary figure is a lot harder than some think. That does not mean that discussion or consideration of a challenge is akin to blasphemy, but that is how the establishment seem to be reacting. This is very interesting in light of Indiana’s most recent primary.
An article in the state’s largest newspaper by Matthew Tully titled, “Far-Right Attack on Lugar Would Be Just Wrong” went to an interesting source in the defense of Senator Lugar. (By the way, just out of curiosity I need to ask Matthew, whom I talk with often, if he has ever written an article with a title saying anything about the far left being wrong.) Tully quoted former Director of the Republican Party, Luke Messer, as a defense of Lugar’s 84% record of support in voting with the party this year. Messer stated that Lugar is “deeply respected by Republicans.”
The irony of this goes to the very reason why so many in the base of the GOP are upset with Senator Lugar. Luke Messer nearly defeated Congressman Dan Burton in May, in part, by saying that the Congressman had been there too long. Burton has been a Congressman six years less than Lugar has been a Senator. Yet, Messer does not seem to have the same concerns about Richard Lugar’s 34 years. There’s a difference, of course, between Lugar and Burton. Representative Burton is a consistent conservative. Yet, when he had five challengers in May, no one in the Indianapolis Star or the political establishment, and certainly not Luke, the former State Party leader, spoke of Dan Burton as an untouchable legendary Hoosier icon who deserved respect and a free pass through the primary.
Predictably, the “Restoring Honor” rally on the National Mall last Saturday has evoked a lot of consternation.Because the rally explicitly and studiously avoided trumpeting a political agenda, it freed up a lot of people to fill in the blanks themselves. For instance, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post insists it was all a con: “As high-minded as that may sound, the real point of stressing the rally’s apolitical goals was political.” By leaving the listener to infer an anti-Obama agenda from all of this talk of lost honor, host Glenn Beck was practicing “classic political demagoguery.”
So let me get this straight: If Beck had done the opposite, and invited hundreds of thousands of anti-Obama signs, and carved up Obama like a turkey dinner, folks like Sargent would think the rally was less demagogic? Hmmm.
Obviously, Sargent’s not entirely wrong about the rally’s political resonance. Of course it was a conservative-and-libertarian-tinged event. Of course it would have been impossible without the right-leaning tea-party movement. Of course the fact that Beck and Sarah Palin managed to attract so many people to the Mall is not a ringing endorsement of the Democrats.
But the partisan implications of the rally aren’t that interesting. Nor, really, is the argument that the relentless celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. at the National Mall amounted to some grave insult to his memory.
Our leftist rulers are starting to figure out that they can’t impose their radical agenda openly without paying a heavy political price, as they will for ham-fistedly seizing control of the healthcare industry. This is why their major initiatives are now imposed in the shadows, by faceless bureaucrats rather than legislation. Granting amnesty to tens of millions of illegal aliens might cause open revolt. A safer approach is to quietly implement de facto amnesty:
The Department of Homeland Security is systematically reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal records, according to several sources familiar with the efforts.
Culling the immigration court system dockets of noncriminals started in earnest in Houston about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys, who have reported coming to court anticipating clients’ deportations only to learn that the government was dismissing their cases.
By definition, there is no such thing as a “noncriminal” illegal alien. But the federal government is seeing to it that undocumented Democrats are left to drop their anchor babies in peace unless they commit crimes other than invading our country — in which case they are deported, so that they can bounce right back across the essentially unguarded border. Most misdemeanors are ignored.
Yet another homeowner’s association has taken issue with an historic American phrase. After an HOA in Florida told Joe Milenkovic he couldn’t display a “God Bless America” magnet on his garage door, another in Arizona has told Andy C. McDonel that he cannot display his “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. The irony seems apparent.
After flying the flag above his house, the New York Times reports, he received a letter from the HOA telling him to “remove ‘the debris’ from his roof.”
The “Restoring Honor” event at the Lincoln Memorial was inspiring. That should be just the beginning of a “Restoration Movement.” We don’t really need a revolution in America; all we need to do is restore what once was. I have a suggestion for another aspect of our Founding that needs to be restored—a suggestion that some will call unrealistic, yet one that the Founders considered essential.
Let’s restore the provision in the original wording of the Constitution that allows state legislatures to choose a state’s senators who serve in Congress.
Article I, Section 3 says, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof.”
The reasoning was lucid: the people of each state already had direct representation into the national government via the House of Representatives; it was necessary as well to provide representation for the state governments in the national Congress. The goal was to make sure that laws passed by each state were not going to be overturned by the national government without good reason.
It was one of those key checks on power; it was to provide balance in the federal system.
There is no limit to the tyranny our liberal rulers would like to impose on us. However, there are limits to what they can get away with, and they know it. An attempt to repeal the Second Amendment through a ban on lead ammunition by the fascists infesting the EPA has been abandoned:
In a swift and unexpected decision, the Environmental Protection Agency today rejected a petition from environmental groups to ban the use of lead in bullets and shotgun shells, claiming it doesn’t have jurisdiction to weigh on the controversial Second Amendment issue. The decision came just hours after the Drudge Report posted stories from Washington Whispers and the Weekly Standard about how gun groups were fighting the lead bullet ban.
The EPA had planned to solicit public responses to the petition for two months, but this afternoon issued a statement rejecting a 100-page request from the Center for Biological Diversity, the American Bird Conservancy, and three other groups for a ban on lead bullets, shot, and fishing sinkers. The agency is still considering what to do about sinkers.
The decision was a huge victory for the National Rifle Association which just seven days ago asked that the EPA reject the petition, suggesting that it was a back door attempt to limit hunting and impose gun control. It also was a politically savvy move to take gun control off the table as the Democrats ready for a very difficult midterm election.
Push back, patriots. It works, so long as we push hard and don’t ever let our guard down.
It’s not easy to escape the conclusion that conservatives are simply a better breed of people. Here’s what the National Mall looked like after half a million turned out for Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally yesterday:
Here it is after the coronation of the Manchurian Moonbat:
Drifting garbage is applied liberal ideology. There’s no need to take responsibility for your own waste when other people will be paid with someone else’s money to take care of everything later.
On August 28, 2010, Fox News host Glenn Beck held his “Restoring Honor” rally at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The aim of the event, explained the lachrymose TV personality, was to “come celebrate America by honoring our heroes, our heritage and our future.”
“For too long, this country has wandered in darkness, and we have wandered in darkness in periods from the beginning,” Beck said, at times pacing at the memorial. “We have had moments of brilliance and moments of darkness. But this country has spent far too long worried about scars and thinking about the scars and concentrating on the scars.
“Today,” he continued, “we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished – and the things that we can do tomorrow. The story of America is the story of humankind.”
Despite the presence of former Gov. Sarah Palin and many Tea Party trappings, the event was not political, or at least not in any conventional sense. Rather, the speakers called for bringing religion into the public square and using it as the guiding force in all aspects of American life.
Reason.tv was on hand to take in the day and talk with some of the thousands of people who showed up (crowd estimates were unavailable at the time of this writing, though the crowd felt thinner than the one at last year’s Tea Party rally). Most of the people we talked to were openly skeptical of politicians of both major parties and agreed strongly with the religious bent of the rally, often arguing that some sort of religious orientation was necessary for what that saw as a return to national greatness.
“What We Saw at the Glenn Beck Rally in DC” was shot by Jim Epstein with help from Josh Swain. Edited by Epstein and Meredith Bragg. Hosted by Nick Gillespie.
Go to http://reason.tv for downloadable iPod, HD and audio versions of this and all our videos.
In the 18 months following approval of President Obama’s stimulus package, the Department of Transportation required recipients of government funds to post placards touting the economic recovery. As a result, signs prominently featuring the recovery act logo appeared everywhere — by the side of the road, in public transportation stations, as bumper stickers on government vehicles.
Then, abruptly, on July 15, the Department of Transportation relaxed its requirements. No longer would government agencies require grant recipients to mount the by-then-familiar signs: They would simply encourage them to do so. The White House website was updated to reflect the change — and, seemingly, to give the impression that signs had never actually been required.
It might just have been a coincidence, but, shortly before the shift in policy, on June 24, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), ranking member of the House Government Oversight Committee, asked the DOT inspector general to look into the administration’s use of the signs. That request was part of a larger investigation into White House propaganda use.
The principle of the Constitution is that of a separation of legislative, Executive and Judiciary functions, except in cases specified. If this principle be not expressed in direct terms, it is clearly the spirit of the Constitution, and it ought to be so commented and acted on by every friend of free government. — Thomas Jefferson, January, 1797
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