What $1T looks like

With gratitude to Suitably Flip (click for larger)

Martin/Harrell - Tort Reform Returns

The US Chamber of Commerce recently ranked the fifty states on a series of tort and liability issues in terms of their business friendliness.

The results? South Carolina’s ranking dropped in 2008 from 37th to 43rd, despite the tort reform and workers compensation reforms passed earlier in the decade?

Why are we ranked so low? The data points we took the most grief from included non-economic damages, the competence of our judges, and our treatment of scientific evidence. Class action lawsuits got a particular nod as well.

Here’s where that rubber meets the road – every frivolous lawsuit in South Carolina costs roughly $30K to defend. Since the median wage in the state is now hovering around $29K, this means that every single lawsuit against business costs the state roughly one job. So, the fact that we’re in the bottom ten in business friendly litigation and unemployment (currently 49th at a whopping 9.5%) at the same time makes some sense.

One other note on what’s wrong, before we get to the fix. The other problem that needs fixing relates to bad judges. In the recent Colleton Prep v. Hoover case, the SC Supreme Court, in a ruling handed down by Justice Don Beatty, found that a construction contractor was liable not for the damage that was done, but for the damage that could have been done when a roof partially collapsed. (That’s jurisprudential malfeasance, and it happens when legislators pick judges without regard to their judicial philosophy, but rather on who is scratching whose back, or comes from whose home county. But I digress…)

Into this mess steps Senator Larry Martin (along with 12 Senate co-sponsors and a probable House counterpart to be introduced next week by Speaker Harrell) with a tort reform bill S.350 that can have a solid positive impact on the business-friendly nature of our legal system.

“Martin/Harrell” – S.350 is modeled after the tort reform proposal of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and seeks to put our state on more of a nationally normed footing. That includes improvements to the way our state handles class actions, punitive damages, and admissibility of certain types of evidence. The bill includes a paragraph modeled after SC’s medical malpractice statute, giving businesses the same protective caps on non-economic damages that our doctors currently enjoy. The bill includes language worked out by Attorney General Henry McMaster to provide standards and accountability for the hiring of outside legal counsel. And, yes, the bill reverses the definitions of two bad SC Supreme Court decisions, including the “could have been” Economic Loss Rule provisions from the regrettable Colleton Prep case.

Senator Martin and Speaker Harrell should be applauded for bringing this bill to the Legislature, especially at a time when our economy needs a boost. The best kind of boost we can give is to ease the tort burdens on business that allow them to hire more workers. The House and Senate should work to pass this bill this year. We’ll be watching to make sure they do.

In Praise of Senator Jim DeMint

There has been a lot going on in the past couple of months, and it seems to me that with all of the good things we’re trying to do and all of the bad things the liberals are trying to do, there’s one great guy with us in the trenches these last two months – Senator Jim DeMint.

Stopping Hillary Clinton from turning the State Department into her own private social engineering lab? Didn’t work, but Senator DeMint voted against her confirmation - one of only two Senators to stand up and do the right thing.

Stopping a tax cheat from becoming Secretary of the Treasury (and thus, nominal head of the IRS)? Didn’t work, but Senator DeMint voted against the confirmation of Timothy Geithner, even as ten of his Republican colleagues buckled.

Stopping the ill-advised TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) that the Bush Administration was shoving down Congress’ throat? Didn’t work, but Senator DeMint was the only one to consistently stand up against the bailout.

Fighting against the Obama administrations policy to allow federal tax dollars to go for overseas abortions? Didn’t work, but Senator DeMint was the elected South Carolinian who brought the amendment to the Senate floor to strip the funding. (seriously, how does a country like ours, with a trillion dollar deficit, whose economy is in the toilet, even begin to consider paying for other countries to kill babies? I just don’t understand this concept – at all. But I digress.)

Now Senator DeMint is fighting against the $1T debt-funded Obama/Pelosi/Reid “stimulus” package (and twittering about it along the way.) I don’t expect we’ll win this one either, in the short run, but with Senator DeMint taking the right stands, we can hope it at least gets somewhat stripped down.

Keep up the good work, Senator. We may be losing these fights right now, but we absolutely appreciate having you in the trenches fighting for us. History will show that you continued to do the right things, even as all those around you lost their minds for socialist Big Government programs and bailouts.

More Government jobs than Manufacturing?

graph courtesy Contrary Investor, HT: Jawa Report

The Jawas are pointing out that government employment has now surpassed manufacturing and construction sectors.

As they also point out:

What is the government's product? How well is it selling? What tax revenue does government generate (not collect)? What is the profit margin for government, and when will it begin paying for itself? What tangible good or service is the rapidly-growing government producing? Why is there a recession if government is the answer? If government is trying to compete with manufacturing as a big-time employer, then why doesn't it start generating its own income rather than taking it from productive people?

Reagan was right - the tendency for government is to grow into the closest thing to eternal life that we'll ever know on this planet. Are we better off for it? The only time government payrolls noticably decreased for any real length of time was under the Reagan Administration (blips under the others), so this is a systemic problem that crosses party lines (the two lines crossed during Bush's term, highlighting the 'success' of "compassionate conservatism").

Better Late Than Never: Ramos, Compean freed

Word is breaking this afternoon that President Bush has commuted the sentences of Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who had become a cause celebre for those of us in the "border hawk" camp. Inexplicably, Fox News is reporting that the sentences are commuted not to time served, apparently, but to March 20, so they still have two months to serve. Still, commuting these sentences (if not an outright pardon) was the right thing to do, and politically all the easier with the bipartisan support these two law enforcement officers have received from across the country, especially from the entirety of the Texas House contingent.

While I don't understand the two month delay, I'm grateful that these two will get out sooner rather than later. They faced 10 year sentences if the President hadn't acted.

Random thoughts on the State of the State

Had a fun evening last night. The Lexington Young Republicans (of which I am Treasurer) hosted a party last night in honor of the State of the State - it was a pre- and post- party, though most of the folks came to the pre. Now, Will likes to refer to the YRs as the "land of 1000 virgins." I hate to break it to him, but a fairly large number of the YRs in Lexington and Richland (and around the state for that matter) are married couples and young professionals. So, you can pop that perception.

We had about 45 people come through last night, including a handful of legislators (the entire Lexington House delegation plus a few others) and our esteemed Attorney General and his lovely wife. It was also great to see County Councilman John Carrigg there with his wife Beth.

We went over for the speech around 6:30. I was somewhat surprised at the number of empty seats and the ease of getting one. By the time the speech started, there were still around 50 empty seats out of the roughly 200 in the House gallery. I suppose there is less interest in a Governor's 7th State of the State, but I was still surprised.

I thought Governor Sanford did better this time around. Most of the stumbles were gone, Thomas Friedman was nowhere to be found, and he laid out a simple 5-point plan for where he wanted the state to go this year. He invoked the Obama factor with references to "Yes, we can" without naming the new presidency, which was interesting. He thanked my Representative Nikki Haley and Nathan Ballentine for their terrific work (against tremendous opposition) on getting roll call voting through the House (which passed 115-0 yesterday; still wonder who those 9 holdouts were...). As a result, he got more applause this year (well, that and there were two rows of YRs in the stands... heh.)

I did find it a bit different that Governor Sanford recognized his Cabinet, but not the Constitutional officers in the stands. Sitting on the front row (two rows in front of me) were Attorney General McMaster, Comptroller General Eckstrom, Treasurer Chellis, Secretary of State Hammond, and Agriculture Commissioner Weathers. I didn't see Adjutant General Spears, and I didn't see Education Super Rex, though he was clearly there for the cameras afterwards. Of course, Lt. Governor Bauer was in front, gavelling the chamber to order in the purple robes of the evening. (Bauer and Speaker Harrell really did look like two guys from the Heavens Gate cult in those robes. Very scary. Now that indigo is the state color, perhaps it's time to change the robes from purple to blue... But, I digress.)

The post-party was very interesting. The usual crowd of the restaurant/bar we were at had filtered in, mostly USC students, from the look of it. I had the pleasure of meeting Mattheus Mei of Leonardo's Notebook, and we talked Evangelical/Catholic theology for the better part of an hour. (Matt - it was a pleasure meeting you.) I also had the chance to chat with Wes Wolfe, the one-time freelance writer for the Columbia City Paper and two-time "anonymous blogger" who managed to get his identity outed both times. (In the process, I hopefully have disabused him of some of his more conspiratorial notions involving me.) Wes - it was a pleasure.

Moving forward, it will be interesting to see how the legislature reacts to the overall tone of the speech itself. The applause line of the night may have been "let bygones be bygones." Hopefully, in an economic crisis like the one we're facing now, the Governor and Legislature will be able to put their heads together to figure out how the state can best move forward with the least negativbe impact to the citizenry.

Oh - and thanks to Cam and Jay-dub for noticing that I was shown on TV from the gallery last night. Hopefully I looked attentive...

EPA proposes... a Federal Livestock Tax?

News this week that the Environmental Protection Agency, in its usual tizzy over thoroughly discredited global warming hysteria, has proposed a revolutionary new tool in the fight against a problem that doesn't exist.

A Federal Cow Tax.

Because, y'know, it's not like we're in a recession or anything.

Nothing like taxing the food off of the table of the poor to make the economy go hummmmm.

In its worse-than-usual brilliance, the EPA is suggesting a $175 tax on cows, an $87.50 tax on bulls, and a $20 tax on hogs. (Say, is it sexist to tax female bovines at twice the price? I'd call them sexist pigs, but the pigs got taxed, too. But I digress...)

If that's not enough, the EPA wants to force Title V (Clean Air Act) licensing on any farm with more than, say, 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle, or 200 hogs. If this goes through, say goodbye to the family farm. We'll all be buying our beef from Brazil and Argentina. You think hormonal milk is bad now - how do you propose to control that if we're importing it all?

The good news is that the government is hardly unified on this point. The Department of Agriculture warned the EPA about the licensing provisions and the costs involved to consumers and farmers, and the Farm Bureaus seem to be awakened to the danger.

Still, the idiot bureaucrats responsible for this one need to be fired, and within the next ten days or so, before the next batch of global warming hysterists take charge of the agency. (For those of you who still believe the Bush Administration was "right-wing", this should pretty well prove otherwise. Again.)

For those of you who ask "what do you have against conservation" (a non-sequitur, by the way) in response to my dissection of the global warming agenda, a quick response. I have nothing against conservation. I believe personal responsibility extends to our usage of resources - and I try to live like it. But, conservation has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the hoax that is global warming. If you want to sell me on clean air or clean water or the beauty of Yosemite, do those things for their own sake, as I've argued previously. When you link your cause to something that is so clearly and dramatically a fraud, you do yourself a disservice.

Time for a real National Championship

OK, so let's go non-political for a minute (well, maybe not entirely non-political, since I agree with the President-Elect on this one.)

It's time for a real national championship in college football.

We can still market it as a "Bowl Championship Series" if we want to - but it has to be a real championship, not just one game masquerading as a championship like we have now.

The bowl system we have now is failing. Just look at all of the empty seats at games in the last month - they were hard to miss in any of the wide-shots or blimp views. With the exceptions of the big major bowls, sellouts were few and far between.

Part of this is the death of the tradition of the bowls themselves. The Cotton Bowl played it's last game in the Cotton Bowl this year; they move to the new Cowboys stadium next year. The Orange and Sugar Bowls haven't been played in stadiums with those names in years. This will leave only the Rose Bowl as being played in the stadium of the same name.

Instead we're treated to a cornucopia of television induced corporate names - the papajohns.com bowl, the insight.com bowl, the Eagle Bank Bowl. Look I like Papa John's as much as anyone (had their pizza this weekend while I watched games), but that's not why I watch football.

The "traditional" New Years bowl games are now spread across a full week to maximize television viewership and eliminate competition between networks. Today is January 5 - the Fiesta Bowl is tonight. It features a Texas team that beat the Oklahoma team in the BCS Bowl against an Ohio State team that lost to both Rose Bowl participants. Yippie.

Did you know that Division I-A football is the only NCAA sport (at any division level) without a championship tournament? Any other sport, played by either gender, at any other level, and they decide the thing on the field. Just not Division I-A (now called the "FBS" - no kidding), which gets voted on by reporters. Of the 119 FBS schools, 68 got into the record 34 bowls this year. That's not a "commitment to excellence", it's a commitment to mediocrity.

If you watched the Sugar or Rose Bowls this year, you watched two teams with legitimate claims to the mythical "national championship" - the USC Trojans and the Utah Utes. Personally, though I am a Trojan fan, I think Utah has the stronger case, having beaten 6 bowl teams en route to an unbeaten season as Sugar Bowl champs. SEC fans - how many times have you lamented (rightly!) that your conference champion who went on to win the Sugar Bowl was jobbed out of a shot at the title? Utah is in exactly that position this year - unbeaten, with a stifling defense and a superlative offense, knocking off TCU, BYU, Oregon State (who beat USC), Air Force, Colorado State, and finally Alabama in that Sugar Bowl. Oh, and in case you think they were scheduling weaklings, they started the season by beating Michigan - in Ann Arbor. (granted, a bad year for Michigan, but Utah couldn't have known that when they scheduled them.)

I'm not saying we eliminate the bowls - those cities have been hosting games for the better part of a century in some cases. Rather, I'm saying use fifteen of them as the sites for a 16-team national championship tournament.

Now, when choosing sites, you have to go with the most bang for your buck. 5 Bowl sites have chosen "national champions" in the past - the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, and Fiesta. I would propose rotating the national championship final between those five sites, as is mostly done now, but as the end of the real tournament, much like the Final Four sites in basketball. The other four bowls would still host games every year - two of them would host semi-finals, and two quarter-finals.

That leaves ten more sites to choose, who would each host one quarterfinal every 5 years, and first round games in the other four years. How do we choose 10 sites from the remaining 29 bowls? Well, it's not that hard, once you think about it. Some of these sites host 2 games on one fiels a week apart - that knocks us down to about twenty sites. Then take out the obviously bad choices - the atrocity of a blue field in Boise, the possibility of a game in Toronto, and the awful seams in the field of the Alamo Dome, for example. With a small nod to the history of some of these games, as well as the warm weather factor (for fans and local tourism, this just makes more sense to draw people in) it's then easy to pick ten:

Atlanta (Peach)
Charlotte (Meineke)
El Paso, TX (Sun)
Houston, TX (Texas)
Jacksonville (Gator)
Memphis (Liberty)
Nashville (Music City)
Orlando (Capital One)
San Diego (Holiday Bowl)
Tampa (Outback)

Honorable mention: Shreveport, LA, home of the Independence Bowl

Personally, I schedule it out basing the four quarterfinal games on New Years Day. move ten to fourteen days back for the first round games (giving a Christmas break), then one week to ten days later for the semifinals (avoiding the NFL playoffs), and another week after that for the championship final. It adds only one week to the full schedule. I would also take out one regular season non-conference game to make up for it.

As for the rest of the bowls - still have your games. Still have the Poulan Weedeater Bowl, the insight.com bowl, or the GMAC bowl, featuring the usual two mediocre teams that usually wouldn't play in a bowl game (except for this year's Credit Union Poinsettia thriller between Boise State and TCU). We'll just treat them like College Football's version of the NIT - consolation prizes for the teams that just weren't good enough to make the Big Dance.

**

So who would make up the sixteen teams to play for the title? Any decision making organism would need to take into account a few things - the human polls and the computer rankings (as the BCS does now), the conference championships (with special deference to the conferences that have championship games), as well as the win-loss records, and possibly a "strength of schedule" component.

I would propose that each of the eleven conference champions would get in. This year that would mean:

Virginia Tech (ACC)
Oklahoma (Big 12)
Cincinnati (Big East)
Penn State (Big 10)
East Carolina (Conference USA)
Buffalo (MAC)
Utah (Mountain West)
USC (Pac-10)
Florida (SEC)
Troy (Sun Belt)
Boise State (WAC)

That would leave five teams for the BCS formula to determine - not to arbitrarily pick a champion, but to pick the next best 5 teams to get wild card slots.

Using the something like the current formula - percentage of the human polls plus the percentage of the computer rankings plus win-loss percentage, I pick five wildcards: Texas, Alabama, Texas Tech, Ohio State, and TCU.

Then you rank the sixteen teams, using the same formula to determine seeding... and Voila! you have a bracket.



So... Which would you rather see - that tournament or South Florida vs. Memphis in the Magicjack bowl in a half-empty dome?

Yeah, me too.

**

There is, of course, another option - adding a "conference champion" component to the system - 1.0 points for any winner of a conference championship game, 0.5 points for any other conference champ. Then rank the teams, and pick the top 16, regardless of who won their conference. That would encourage more conference championship games the first week of December - and more "play-in" games. It would also eliminate the most questionable of the conference champs while leaving the possibility that smaller conference champs could still get a shot.

This year, that would replace East Carolina, Buffalo, and Troy with Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech, and BYU. Just for fun, that bracket looks like this:



Your thoughts?

Picture of the Year

CAPTION CONTEST...

Sign seen at anti-Israeli protest in Manhattan yesterday. (or, perhaps, against the prune industry? who knows...)
(H/T: LGF, who accurately pins it as "numb-skulled hatred")



Possibly related: Mark Steyn reports in National Review that 75% of Pakistani Muslims in Britain are married to their own first cousins...


Happy New Year, everybody.

London Daily Telegraph: 2008 to be remembered as the year Man-made Global Warming was disproved

Great piece by Chris Booker in yesterday's Telegraph:

Looking back over my columns of the past 12 months, one of their major themes was neatly encapsulated by two recent items from The Daily Telegraph.

The first, on May 21, headed "Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts" , reported that the entire Alpine "winter sports industry" could soon "grind to a halt for lack of snow". The second, on December 19, headed "The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation" , reported that this winter's Alpine snowfalls "look set to beat all records by New Year's Day".

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming "energy gap" - within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.

Bush announces 19 pardons - but where are Ramos and Compean?

Matt Lewis points out that Bush's latest list of 19 pardons leaves off three major names we're looking for in the waning days of the Bush Presidency.

The two we're looking for closest, the ones who deserve it, perhaps more than any Presidential Pardon has been deserved in any of our lifetimes, are Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. Ramos and Compean are currently looking at 20 years in prison because (get this) they shot a drug dealer who was shooting at them in a cross border bust gone wrong.

As Matt puts it, this is a "no-brainer." The case itself is a terrible miscarriage of justice (the drug dealer lived, though its doubtful he deserves to), and puts a damper on our ability to enforce our southern border.

So... as the President pushes out another batch of pardons, the question has to be asked - why not Ramos and Compean? We're pardoning dead guys who helped Israel become a nation, but not two guys who help protect our own nation? (FYI: I have nothing against pardoning Charles Winters, especially since he's already moved on to the Great Weapons Depot In The Sky, and since Reagan and Clinton have already pardoned his two fellow smugglers... but I digress.)

Forcing these two agents to spend another Christmas in prison is not justice, and President Bush should be ashamed on this one. Hopefully these two are released before the end of his term, but this does ask the question - what is he waiting for?

As Matt tweets, "If Marc Rich can be pardoned..." I couldn't agree more.

***

The other name we're waiting for is Scooter Libby. Scooter doesn't deserve prison either, in my estimation, as we already know he wasn't the source of the leaks (Richard Armitage was.) Yet, he gets nailed for perjury (on an unrelated matter) and the prosecutor gets his scalp. Libby is less important to me than Ramos and Compean, simply because they were in the line of duty, and Libby is "just" a political appointee. Still, it'd be awfully nice if these three guys got out in time to celebrate a New Year...

Bill Kristol on the Obama shift from Rev. Wright to Rev. Warren

Bill Kristol, writing in the Weekly Standard:

Is this smart politics on Obama's part? Sure. Does it mean Obama has studied the mistakes of his predecessors, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? Probably. Obama may have learned from their examples that, even though everyone says the economic crisis has put social issues on a far back burner, mishandling those issues can severely damage one's presidency: Recall gays in the military under Clinton and the IRS ruling on Christian schools under Carter...

No conservative should kid himself about what the Obama administration is going to be like. Many of its key policies will be anathema to social conservatives. But social conservatives need to persuade some social moderates, and social undecideds, and social conflicteds, and social uncertains of the reasonableness of conservative concerns, and the sincerity of conservatives' claims that they seek progress in these areas, not merely conflict. There will be plenty of occasions to draw lines with the Obama administration. For now, it might be a good idea to offer a few olive branches to Obama as well.

And the selection of Rick Warren may turn out to have significance beyond short-term political maneuvering. One can see this from the hysteria on the left and among gay activists. They sense that Obama isn't willing to sign on to their campaign to delegitimize, to cast out beyond the pale of polite society, anyone who opposes same-sex marriage--and in particular, anyone (like Warren) who supported Proposition 8 in California, the initiative that overturned the California Supreme Court's legalization of same-sex marriage.

The assault on Prop 8 supporters has been extraordinary in its mean-spiritedness and extremism--but the left knows what it's doing. The purpose has been to intimidate people with an opposing point of view from defending their position. To be against same-sex marriage, even against the judicial imposition of same-sex marriage, is to be a bigot. As one leftwinger said on CNN, Warren is a "hatemonger" comparable to "the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan." Or, as the Human Rights Campaign's Brad Luna told Byron York of National Review, dismissing the fact that the benediction will be delivered by the Reverend Joseph Lowery, who is more friendly to gay marriage: "I don't think any Jewish Americans would feel much comfort in knowing that an anti-Semite is starting the inauguration with an invocation, but we're going to end it with a rabbi." So the claim is, opposing same-sex marriage is tantamount to being a racist or an anti-Semite.

Making that charge is at the heart of the agenda of the gay lobby. They don't want to debate same-sex marriage. They want to demonize its opponents. Ironically, Lowery himself, who is a (somewhat equivocal) supporter of gay marriage, refuses to equate the gay rights and the civil rights movements: "Homosexuals as a people have never been enslaved because of their sexual orientation," he told the Associated Press. "They may have been scorned; they may have been discriminated against. But they've never been enslaved and declared less than human."

...Conservatives have to be ready to stand up for themselves--and for each other--if and when the left comes at them from the academy, Hollywood, and the media. Obama's invitation to Rick Warren doesn't mean his administration won't put a heavy thumb on the left side of the scale in our cultural conflicts. It doesn't even mean that organs of the federal government, over which Obama will of course be presiding, won't try to stifle nonconforming opinions. But the Warren invitation means that one can at least appeal to Obama's own precedent against suppressing out-of-favor views.

The left senses that the invitation to Rick Warren is a blow to their effort to establish a soft tyranny of "correct" opinion, to enforce society-wide political orthodoxy, on social issues. They're right. This isn't the time for conservatives to snipe at Obama's motives. It's time to welcome him into the American mainstream, to salute the president-elect's progress from Reverends Wright to Warren.

On the Inaugural Invocation

Some days politics and theology intersect – and this is one of those days. For those of you who have somehow missed that I’m an Evangelical, this may be a difficult post, but please bear with me – there’s a political twist here, I promise.

In the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, Greece, he writes:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not
be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor
homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor
revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

In other words, people who are defined by their sin do not enter the kingdom of God.

This makes sense in context with another passage, in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia:

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ
lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in
the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

So here’s the context – for those of us who have become Christians, it is not our sin that defines us any more, but our life in Christ. We are no longer listed under “sinner” (though in our imperfect human nature, we will continue to sin – just less and less as we surrender to Christ and are changed), but we are now listed as “Christian” or more literally - “Christ-follower.” This is borne out in the next few lines of the Corinth letter:

And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you
were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God….For
you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your
spirit, which are God’s.

In other words, God loves us too much to leave us in the sin we started out in, and He loves us so much He sent His son (whose birth we celebrate at this time of year) to die as a replacement for us, His death the penalty we would have paid if we were to die without that forgiveness. In the process, our identity is changed – from being identified with our sin to being identified with Christ. We are to love the sinner (because we all were there before we were “washed” and “bought with a price”), even as we hate the evil of the sin itself, whether it be murder, theft, extortion or homosexuality, as Paul lists above.

This does get tricky sometimes. In our modern world, Hollywood culture often tries to make these sins feel acceptable – whether the violence of the Godfather or the Sopranos, the adultery of Desperate Housewives or Dallas, or the theft/extortion of Leverage or the Italian Job.

There are Christian leaders who have gotten this issue right – and Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Orange County, California is one of them. Now, I must admit I’ve had my issues with Pastor Rick (I think his “seeker-sensitive” church model waters down the Bible, I think his “40 Days of Purpose” book was a bit thin, and I think he gets off on tangential environmental issues a little too much). But all in all, Rick’s a good guy trying to do his best. Rick is known (among other things) for an outreach to the homosexual community that loves the individual while condemning the sin – because God loves the sinners He came to save from their sins. To love the sin is to hate the sinner – because it condemns them to continue in their sins (and without God).

In that light, Pastor Rick worked hard for the passage of Proposition 8 in California this year, a proposition which reaffirmed a past decision of California’s voters (on DOMA – the Defense of Marriage Act) by constitutionally defining marriage as solely between one man and one woman.

I also think Rick was the best debate moderator in the 2008 Presidential cycle. But I digress…

So, yesterday we learned that President-Elect Barack Obama, continuing his headlong rush towards the middle of the political spectrum, has tapped Pastor Rick to do the invocation at the inaugural. I happen to think this is a good thing – and I pray that Rick Warren is one of the voices the new President will listen to in the coming Administration – especially on the policy issues relating to abortion and homosexuality, which Rick is strong on, as mentioned above.

Not everyone is so happy, though, reports Ben Smith of Politico:

“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your
inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans,” the president of Human Rights
Campaign, Joe Solomonese, wrote Obama Wednesday. “[W]e feel a deep level of
disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given
the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination.”

…“It’s a huge mistake,” said California gay rights activist Rick Jacobs, who
chairs the state’s Courage Campaign. “He’s really the wrong person to lead
the
president into office.”

…“His presence on the inauguration stand is a slap in the faces of the millions
of GLBT voters who so enthusiastically supported him,” (the editor of the
Washington Blade, Kevin) Naff wrote, referring to gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgendered people. “This tone-deafness to our concerns must not be tolerated.
We have just endured eight years of endless assaults on our dignity and equality
from a president beholden to bigoted conservative Christians. The election was
supposed to have ended that era. It appears otherwise.”

The people who have allowed themselves to be defined by their sin (in this case, homosexuality) are lashing out at the one who is defined by Christ. In another of Paul’s letters – this one to the church in Rome – he explains why this is to be expected.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the
incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and
four-footed animals and creeping things.

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

The logical flow of this section? That those who practice homosexuality do so because of a conscious rejection of God and His natural order. In response to that rejection, God “gives them up to vile passions.” (Note how similar this passage is to the list in the Corinth letter – people defined by their sin rather than defined by their new life in Christ.)

So, it makes sense that the people who define themselves by their sin (“LGBT/GLBT voters”) would lash out at “bigoted conservative Christians” like Rick Warren (who are defined by Christ). It is impossible for people of faith to stay true to God (and His Word) and make those folks happy as long as they remain in opposition to God by choosing to be defined (and defiled) by their sin. (They say “Open minds”, Paul says “Debased minds”; I’m with the Apostle Paul on this one.)

Our choice as Christ-followers then, must be to continue to love them, while standing against their attempts in the culture and government to legitimize their lifestyle of sin, whether redefining marriage or adoption or employment rights or using tax dollars for certain tourism promotions.

So (for the first time) I give kudos to President-Elect Obama for his choice for the inaugural invocation. I fear it will be the last time, but hope it won’t – as I hope and pray that the reasonable (and frankly moderate) voice of Pastor Warren is one that the new President will listen to and hear, as Rev. Billy Graham was (at least in name) to Obama’s Democrat predecessor, Bill Clinton. We pray this with the words of Solomon, the author of Proverbs, in mind:

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.

President-Elect Obama could do far worse than Pastor Warren, and frankly not much better.

All Scriptures quoted above in New King James Version.

Rove on the need for fresh GOP strategery

Not too much comment needed on this, other than to say, I think Karl Rove in today's Wall Street Journal is right on point. Anyone running for RNC (or SCGOP) Chair needs to clip this out and remind themselves of it at regular intervals... Emphasis is mine.

What a difference a month makes. Since November's election, the GOP is three wins, no losses.

The first win came in Georgia, where Sen. Saxby Chambliss crushed his Democratic opponent by 15 points in a run-off election on Dec. 2. The other wins came in Louisiana congressional races on Saturday. One was in a Republican-leaning district in the state's northwest corner. Democrats outspent the GOP three to two and still lost. In the other, Republican Anh "Joseph" Cao defeated nine-term Democrat William Jefferson in a district where John McCain received 24% of the vote.

These victories have boosted Republican spirits. So has Sen. Norm Coleman maintaining a narrow lead in the Minnesota recount, leadership elections that injected new blood into the GOP congressional hierarchies, and a positive race (so far) for Republican National Committee chairman. Republican governors emerged from meeting in Miami energized, optimistic and eager for the 38 gubernatorial races in the next two years.

But many challenges lie ahead. Much of the GOP's work is away from Capitol Hill, governor's offices and party committees. In recent years, Democrats have done a much better job of tending the networks, initiatives and institutions important to political success. There are at least seven important functions, communications channels or institutions the GOP must launch or strengthen.

First, Republicans need something similar to Democracy Corps, a James Carville and Stan Greenberg creation that uses polls that are made public to help party leaders pick themes likely to resonate with voters and draw attention to the Democratic narrative on issues.

Second, while it's the responsibility of all, someone must take the lead on training candidates and party leaders and nurturing their focus on ideas. Under its founder, Newt Gingrich, GOPAC once did this. It needs to be revitalized or its original mission taken up by a fresh group.

Third, more than one out of five Americans eligible to vote is unregistered, meaning there are millions of unregistered Republicans. The RNC once used sophisticated "micro-targeting" to develop a list of 291,000 unregistered Texans who voted in the GOP primary or were registered Republicans in the state or community where they last lived. There were 1.3 million more likely Texas Republicans with no primary voting history. The GOP needs to take this nationwide. New ways must be found to encourage party organizations and independent efforts to focus on registration.

Unions and third-party groups spent $194 million on independent ads for Democrats over the past two years, giving them a five-to-two advantage over similar third-party assistance to GOP candidates. This doesn't include hundreds of millions in unreported expenditures by unions.

So fourth, GOP fund-raisers and allies must create cost-effective independent expenditure groups for House and Senate races, or Republicans will sink under the weight of negative ads, mail, calls and canvassing.

Fifth, there must be a special focus on state legislative races. Legislators elected in 2009 and 2010 will redistrict Congress and themselves in 2011. Today, there are 25 state Senates where either party's majority is smaller than 10 seats and 21 state Houses where the majority is less than 20 seats. In eight states, legislative control is divided, with one party controlling the Senate and the other the House. State parties and congressional delegations have a vital stake in recruiting, training and funding effective legislative campaigns over the next two years.

Sixth, new media require attention. Younger voters are increasingly getting their information from the Web -- twice as many 18-24 year olds get their news online than from newspapers. Political Web 1.0 was about faster and easier communications and Republicans had the advantage. Political Web 2.0 is about networking and Democrats grabbed the lead. The party that figures out where Web 3.0 goes will grab the decisive high ground in high-tech warfare.

Finally, ideas are always the most important currency of politics and never more so than after a party loses. The relationship between GOP policymakers and conservative policy thinkers should be strengthened.

It's not just conservative think tanks. There are independent scholars, academics, staff in governor's offices and state legislatures, and knowledgeable people throughout the country who can help make the party's conservative principles relevant today.

To do this effectively, candidates and party leaders must remember who they need to reach -- young voters who tilt Democratic; Hispanics and Catholics; and suburban and exurban families who were bedrock Republicans, but who have become disenchanted with both parties.

The GOP has the right principles to become the majority party again. What it must have are fresh, energetic voices who apply those principles to meeting the needs of American families. And it must put in place the infrastructure that will take that message and amplify it.

Those are challenging tasks -- but the last month has reminded us that the GOP remains formidable. The age of Obama may have begun, but so, perhaps, has the GOP comeback.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

Random thoughts on a Wednesday morning

When I was SC Communications Director for the Fred Thompson campaign, there were only three journalist blogs worth following in the state - Dan Hoover, David Stanton, and Brad Warthen. Hoover was "let go" last week, Stanton this week; can Warthen be far behind? (They do "go in threes", y'know...)

In all seriousness, losing Hoover and Stanton (on the heels of the retirement of Lee Bandy) leaves this state with no senior leadership in the journalistic community. The AP's Jim Davenport now inherits the title of "SC's best political reporter" (followed by the Young Guns: John O'Connor of The State and Ian Leslie in Beaufort; Jason Spencer in Spartanburg ranks a distant third in that group...); none of those three have the institutional knowledge that Davenport has (or that Hoover, Stanton, and Bandy had, for that matter), but Jim gets lost in the process stories a little too often for my liking (probably because he works for AP - I blame the system not the man - Jim's a good guy). The new generation of journalists has its work cut out for it, and Jim has his work cut out for him as the new Leader of the SC Pack.

Now, Adam Fogle over at the Palmetto Scoop revels in the blogosphere's resilience, but misses the point entirely. Political blogs (especially consultant driven outlets like Fogle's) can never fill the void that honest journalism should have been filling (but largely hasn't in years) - unbiased, unvarnished truth-telling (and we've had it better in SC because of Hoover, Stanton, Davenport and Bandy than the MSM in most states).

On the internet front, FITS comes closest in this state - and anyone who reads that has had too many eyefuls of Chargers cheerleaders and Pam Anderson to consider it a serious, long-term, unbiased news outlet - traffic or no traffic. SCHotline is the state's Drudge Report - but that's not reporting stories, that's collecting stories. I don't think we've seen where an honest internet news outlet can go in this state - but I hope we get the chance soon...

***

Note: I'm an opinion writer. I've never claimed to be a journalist.

***

Speaking of Adam Fogle, he's tearing up Governor Mark Sanford again today. Adam, you do realize he's not running for re-election, right? That second term is safely locked away...

Does make you wonder why Adam's so hung up on the Governor (though at least he's not as mean-spirited about it as the unhinged (and new leading Indigo Girl) Ross Shealy). I think you could almost hear Adam's head getting ready to explode when Attorney General McMaster dropped Sanford's name as potential Presidential material the other day...

***

Speaking of Presidential candidates - here's my early line on the 2012 Republican nomination:

Sanford: 4-1
Jindal: 4-1
Palin: 4-1
Pawlenty: 10-1
Huckabee: 20-1
Romney: 20-1
Giuliani: 25-1
Field: 100-1

It's got to be a proven, reform-minded, socially and fiscally conservative Beltway outsider with experience as an executive this time, boys and girls; Senators and Congresscritters need not apply. Those who lost in 2008 probably also need not apply, though I'm sure some will try.

***

Unsolicited advice for Gov. Huckabee: lose the TV show. All you're currently providing is an excellent reason to look elsewhere in '12, as well as taped fodder for future opponents.

***

While I'm laying odds, the early line on the 2010 Rep. Governor nomination:

Prohibitive Favorites:
Barrett: 4-1
Bauer: 4-1
McMaster: 4-1

Longshots:
Jimmy Merrill, Tumpy Campbell, Jake Knotts, Dr. Oscar Lovelace, and the long rumored but as yet "unnamed businessman" putting $2M of his own money to build name ID...

Winner to face the survivor of a Rex/Tenenbaum/Jimmy Smith brawl on the D side. Should be a fun cycle to watch.

Chance of Rep hold: 75%

***

Not on this list: Bobby Harrell. After last week's performance (stripping committee assignments from two Lexington County conservatives - Nikki Haley and Nathan Ballentine), he'll never be able to set foot in Lexington County again and be taken seriously, and certainly not as a candidate for statewide office. Somebody needs to spend the next two years figuring out how to replace the Speaker.

To bring the discussion full circle - when Mark Sanford runs for President, he can point to his relationship with Speaker Harrell as a reason to be supported. The Speaker's actions this week validate all of the criticism he has taken (by FITS, the Policy Council and elsewhere) for being part of the "Big Government Republican" problem. Just as Palin can say she stood up to the Murkowskis and the Stevens of the world, and Jindal to the corruption of the LA legislature, Sanford will say he stood up to the Bobby Harrells of the world - and voters will get it, because they're hungry for fiscal sanity - including the kinds of accountability and openness in government that Harrell has now proven himself so firmly deadset against. Honestly, it makes me wonder why Harrell's ear is so tone-deaf on this issue - he's a smarter politician than this.

***

Of course, if he stays Speaker, he's still the most powerful man in the State... Mayor of Importantille, indeed...

***

Great week for Corrupto-crats. First Dollar Bill Jefferson gets voted out, now Gov Blagojevich gets outed by the US Attorney for "auctioning off the Senate seat"... Nice to know Chicago is the same (cesspool of corruption) town it's always been.

***

So, today is a "Day without a Gay?" (and this impacts my life, how exactly?)

If we're really, really lucky, the firm of Vierdsen, Lydecker, Mattheus and Prozac takes the day off from blogging... (notverybright having vacated the sphere last month)

...Yeah, I don't actually think we're that lucky either...

...though one wonders with unemployment numbers running where they are right now, how many businesses who have people call in homosexual today decide tomorrow is a good day to lay off that particular headache and recruit a more stable workforce from the currently unemployed (and probably more desperate for - and willing to - work). Just sayin'...

Random Thoughts on President-Elect Hopenchange

A few thoughts while I watch the Prez-Elect introduce his new National Security team...

It's funny (and somewhat encouraging) to me to see how quickly Obama has stuck the knife in the collective back of the Left in his headlong dive towards the middle. Iraq War? Hey, looks like the surge worked and we won - oh, and we're keeping Defense Secretary Gates. (Interesting, isn't it? that Democrats two Administrations running have chosen Republicans to run the Defense Department... Even Democrats know you can't trust Democrats to run the military.)

Hispanics in the cabinet? Probably, but not that pesky Bill Richardson as Secretary of State - we'll put Hillary in for that one. (That has to be the most stunning stab in the back of the lot - Richardson is the most qualified Democrat to be SecState; he backs Obama over Hillary; Obama thanks him by... overlooking him for Hillary? Wow...)

Overturning don't ask, don't tell? Too soon to talk about that... Freedom of Choice Act? Well, we're not sure there's a consensus... Undo the Bush tax cuts? Y'know, a recession might not be the best time to do that...

The exhilaration at electing Obama is already wearing off for the left - making this perhaps the first administration whose honeymoon is ending before the inauguration.

***

Of course, that's if there is an inauguration. This pesky birth certificate thing is getting more steam than it should - and now we hear the Supreme Court might hear it this week? A few days before the Electoral College meets? Granted, very little news reporting is going on with this story, so much of what's going around is by email, (or WorldNetDaily) and of questionable repute. Still - this is a story that just won't die - even after the reprinted copy of the birth certificate was released by the campaign. (And was immediately attacked as a fake by critics.)

Dan has already posted the link to the Kenyan ambassador's unbelievable blunder in telling a reporter that Obama's Kenyan birthplace is already a national attraction, and that Obama's paternal grandmother insists he was born in Kenya. (Notable - Obama's maternal grandmother insisted he was born in Hawaii.)

Personally, I still can't get past the Honolulu Advertiser announcing the birth the next day (August 4, 1961). Many questions still arise (why is the hospital still unknown, why seal the records, where's the original), and Obama should put this behind him by coming clean about this whole thing. In my own estimation though, the preponderance of the evidence suggests Obama was born in Hawaii, to an American citizen mother, when he says he was, and is therefore Constitutionally allowed to be President.

***

...which may be more than we can say for Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, as it turns out. Pete Williams (NBC analyst, and former State Department spokesman) notes Article One, Section Six from the US Constitution:

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

Since the salary for cabinet secretaries has been increased while Clinton was a Senator, she would be constitutionally barred from serving. Question: do Senators decide not to confirm her over this, or does this one wind up in Court? I'm guessing the latter - the politically expedient thing to do is confirm her "in a spirit of bipartisanship" (blah blah, etc), and let's face it - the Senate isn't known for doing things that are anything other than politically expedient. Still - it will be interesting to see this one wind up before the Supremes.

Global Warming Hoax, Part 3567

News out this weekend that the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, run by Dr. James Hansen (a Global Warming Buddy of former VP Al Gore), misreported it's data for October. GISS, without any apparent irony, declared October of 2008 "the warmest on record."

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or "the people whose burueaucratic title actually allows them to comment on things like the weather," declared it the "70th warmest October of the last 114," which mathematically sounds a lot like "below average" to me.

The GISS numbers apparently took Russian data from September and repeated it (day for day), making the October numbers the same as the previous, and warmer month. (There are these things called "seasons"; apparently, it normally gets colder this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere. Who knew?)

Turns out that, in the US alone, October had 63 local snowfall records and 115 record low temperatures (while Arctic ice sheets were 30% thicker than last year.) GISS is scrambling to try to change their numbers to make up for the mistake after "climate skeptics" called them on the fraud. (Hurray for Climate Skeptics!)

GISS website now proudly proclaims that "Research at GISS emphasizes a broad study of global climate change." The UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses GISS as one of it's four data points, even though we now know that GISS has been fudging the numbers, probably at the behest of the Climate Crazies led by Mr. Gore and Dr. Hansen (as well as Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the Chair of the IPCC who has no known climate qualifications; The London Telegraph describes his prior employment as "railway engineer".)

US taxpayers should not have to continue paying for intentionally skewed research at GISS. Republicans in Washington: if you want to stand up for fiscal responsibility, here's an agency for which you should immediately cut off all funding. I know it won't pay for a bailout package, but at least it's something.

On the Election Results

OK, so this was supposed to be a You-Tube style video... we even shot it (fireside, no less). Sadly, the new technology we were trying out has some glitches (like, the camera and the new laptop don't want to talk to each other...)

So, instead of a new web video you get... the transcript of a video that never will be seen. Go figure.

Enjoy anyways.

*****

Hello. My name is Joshua Gross. I live in Lexington, South Carolina.

I’m talking with you today to share my thoughts on this election and to call you to action as a result of what happened yesterday.

For the last eight years, President George W. Bush has led America through difficult times, fighting a two-front war in Asia, after the deadliest terrorist attack in our nation’s history and dealing with numerous natural disasters at home and abroad.

Unfortunately, those crises left our President without bargaining chips when it came to dealing with corrupt Washington politicians in Congress. When those politicians came asking for money, President Bush apparently felt he had no choice but to give in to those demands, for fear of losing support for an increasingly unpopular war, despite the successes that war faced on the ground.

As a direct result, the Bush years will be remembered for their bipartisan Washington corruption, and for the massive load of federal debt left behind in their wake. Our national debt now stands at ten trillion dollars. In budgetary terms, the federal government is now five times as large as it was when Ronald Reagan took office in 1980 on his message that the Government was too big and spent too much. The recent bipartisan Wall Street bailout alone was $100B larger than the entire 1980 federal budget.

Yesterday’s election results can rightly be judged as the repudiation of President Bush’s policies (and his willing Republican accomplices in Congress) in exchange for amorphous promises of “hope” and “change”.

Now our country faces the farthest left-wing Socialist government in our history – top to bottom, led by Obama, Reid and Pelosi. If you’re hoping that Harry Reid is the Voice of Reason among those three, you are indeed in very deep trouble.

We in the conservative movement need to realize that the Founding Fathers vision of liberty was not what voters repudiated yesterday – they rejected what they saw as a third Bush term – hardly a conservative notion. Exit polls tell us that voters saw Republicans as “having lost our way” or being inept in governance. Only 9% of Americans thought Republicans were “too conservative.”

So,what do we need to do as conservatives? We need to get back to the basics our Founding Fathers intended. We don’t need to be all things to all people – we need to be all things to the people in our conservative coalition. We need to be liberty-minded conservatives first and Republicans second. We need to realize that power for its own sake must never be the answer we seek; rather we seek to protect the rights and responsibilities of the individual free American to seek life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the manner that he or she sees fit.

In the past, our conservative coalition has stood on four legs of a stool. We must reaffirm our commitment to all four of those legs if we are to succeed.

We need to continue to stand up for life and for natural marriage. We need to stand against the corruption of higher taxes and Big Government Socialism while we stand for the dreams of individual liberty and responsibility embedded in our Constitution. We need to continue to stand for a strong military and against the threat of Islamist Sharia. And we need to provide for the basic needs of a nation, securing our borders and ensuring the rule of law. Over the next four years, we are going to have ample opportunity to fight each of these battles at every level of government.

We need to make these fights under a new generation of leaders at every level, from town councils to the U.S. Senate, in government and at the grassroots level of party politics.

We need new leaders in Congress who will stand up against the onslaught of Socialism over the next two years and lead under the banner of conservative vision.

We need new leaders in state legislatures – here in South Carolina and around the country – who will learn from the mistakes of Washington Republicans and stop the out of control government spending. This means making difficult and sometimes politically unpopular choices that the left will demagogue. Those choices must still be made, and must be explained in the larger framework of liberty and individual empowerment.

And we need new leaders at every level within our Party, from the precincts to the RNC. The conservative movement can retake our primacy within the structure of the Republican Party, but it will require focused effort on our part.

The character of this new generation of leaders will be forged in the fires of fierce opposition as we stand up for what is right. We will need to be reform minded – keeping in mind Lord Acton’s warning about the corruption of absolute power. And we will need to stand up for the values that unite us as conservatives.

I hope to be one of those leaders. And I hope that you will too. We have much work to be done, and many who will oppose us at every turn. I hope you will join us anyways.

May God Bless each of you, and may He bless the United States of America.

Obama's Self-Attack Ad

Speaks for itself. Great stuff by Mary Katherine Ham.





Vote today! and Vote McCain/Palin!

Why the NRA backed McCain (or why Barack Obama will lose Florida - and maybe PA and Ohio too?)

Clip of the Day: Barack Obama telling NPR in Chicago that he would ban Concealed Weapons Permits.





Second Amendment fans aren't going to like that...

Cleaning Up Republican Corruption: Stevens and the Skinheads?

This is Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. He posed for this picture... seriously. Apparently, VERY seriously.

Senator Ted is the Republican that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin keeps talking about - you remember the quote "I've fought against corruption against the good old boy network in my state - even against corruption in my own party!" Yeah, in case you missed it, Senator Ted is that corruption.

And now he's going to prison, after being found guilty of seven felonies. Not sure what the law in Alaska is, but it's ironic that he might not be able to vote for himself next week, though apparently, he'll still be allowed to remain on the ballot. I think we can rate that one a "Probable Democrat pickup".

He's facing up to 35 years in prison, though at age 80, that's pretty unlikely.

Senator Stevens is also the Father of the Bridge to Nowhere, as the former Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He's the King of Pork, and now he's going to prison. This is a good thing, even if his actions weren't.

Senator Stevens also made a point of requesting a speedy trial so that the outcome would be known before the election. Gee, thanks, Ted. Republicans everywhere truly appreciate your gesture. Now go away. Yes, that way. Up the river.

***

Speaking of morons trying to affect elections, did you catch the news about these two nutjobs? Apparently they wanted to murder 102 African-Americans culminating in the assassination of Dear Leader Himself.

Apparently the numbers 88 and 14 have some sort of meaning for Neo-Nazi skinhead types (who knew?), and when you add those two numbers, you get 102. (My fellow public school grads: trust me on this one). When you add their ages, you get 39, which amazingly also corresponds to their collective IQ.

At any rate, and all joking aside, one does hope the three of them will become bestest buds in federal prison, where all three deserve to remain for a very long time...