PINE BEETLES STRIKE THE WEST

Photo: Scene of Rocky Mountain National Park beetle kill.

Nearby here there is a small town. It grew up at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century around logging for the mine timbers and lumber for the mine buildings. Later the mill was converted to a two by four stud mill and logs for many get away log cabins were culled from the timber in the process. I recall not long ago that the train still came down the spur to pick up the pallets of studs and uncut cabin logs and the hardware store and lumber yards got supplies and finished goods delivered by the train.

The little town is surrounded by million of acres of National Forest. Although there was little noticeable evidence of logging, the Forest service bowed to pressure from environmentalists and gradually but relentlessly reduced logging operations in the surrounding national forest.

Environmentalists, generally, are people who don’t seem to need a job very bad. Usually they are escaping the crowded cities where they live and make their money. They build get away homes here so they can get a couple of weeks reprieve from the stress of their jobs and the hectic city life; or they retire here on a pension or inheritance. Around here we know that environmentalists are people who have already built their cabin in the woods.

Eventually the lumber company went out of business. All of the machines and buildings were auctioned off for scrap and the mill site itself was sold out of bankruptcy to speculators. The railroad shut down and now the spur is just used for storing old cars before they are sold to China for the scrap steel. The speculators who bought the mill site planned to build a town center there with shopping, a theater and grocery store. They thought that soon the many people building their get away cabin in the woods and the new ski resort expansion would create enough demand that a shopping center would be economically viable.

They were wrong. The environmentalists stopped the planned expansion of the little local ski resort. They claim it will cause too much pollution in the mountain stream even though a state of the art water treatment plan it planned and they claim the increased traffic will kill endangered and threatened species that are trying to cross the road. We know different because, you see, we know the environmentalists. We see them in the grocery store or at the gas station. In private conversations between assumed like minded people they will admit that they really do not want a bunch of people causing the ski pass price to go up and long waits at the lift lines. You see, they already have their cabin in the woods. But that’s another story.

A few years back a pine beetle infestation started up in Wyoming. The experts say this happens every hundred years or so. The environmentalists claim its caused by global warming. The pine beetles kill every pine and spruce tree over six inches in diameter wherever they infest and they spared though the forest like a wildfire. The big trees just die on the stump and turn the whole forest brown. Hundreds of millions of acres of forest pine and spruce have died from British Columbia to New Mexico. They have now infested our little area too. All the mountains around my town and the little nearby town I am talking about are brown now as far as I can see.

Dead standing beetle kill timber makes great house logs and lumber because the pine beetles only get into the area just under the bark. The best part of the tree is fine and the trees dry and cure naturally on the stump. The environmentalists won’t let them be harvested though, because they say the roads necessary to access the dead timber would cause too much damage and privately though down at the grocery store they tell us that they don’t want that much access for the tourists to get to the forest.

The problem is though that the dead timber is a huge fire hazard. If the logs aren’t harvested there will be massive forest fires and even in areas where there is not a fire then when the trees eventually fall down the forest will be so densely laden with fallen timber it will be impassable even for the animals. So the Forest Service is planning massive controlled burns of the forest to eradicate the dead standing and presumably the beetles too. Hundreds of millions if not billions of board feet of timber will go up in smoke. A lot of the evnirontmentalists don’t want that because the ifres might get out of control and burn down their cabins in the woods. Gee, wouldn’t that be a shame.

Meanwhile the real estate boom finally busted; and, with out a ski resort expansion or second home building, there was no way the new town center could be built on the old saw mill cite. Now just weeds grow there. There’s a twenty foot logger carved with a chain saw from a single log outside the local diner and the town still has a “Logger Days” celebration in the summer, but pretty much nobody does any logging around here anymore.

HOUSE FALLS ON WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST

Nancy Peosi speaking at far left anti-free speech organization "People for the American Way" funded by George Soros. PFAW is supporting a boycott of Fox News and an amendment to the constitution to prohibit any business from being able to publish its views on matters of importance.

Except for the lame duck session, which could lead to further insults to the American people, Nancy Pelosi is out as leader of the house as of January 19, 2011. Ding Dong, the wicked Witch is dead.

With the exception of Barak Obama himself, Nancy Pelosi was the most contemptuous of the people, including her own supporters, of any American Political leader in modern times.

After having railed for years about the culture of corruption and earmarks in the Republican Congress, Pelosi was so starved for pork that she approved many earmarks and oversaw the massive stimulus bill, which included over $400 billion dollars of pure pork spending. You could virtually hear the calls of "sueweeee, pig, pig, pig" screeching out across America to all the Democratic pigs to come get their fill. And pig out they did. House Democrats were so frantic to find any spending bill to reward their friends they funded things like studies of how to eradicate pig stink, Chinese prostitutes' drug habits and flies in the Amazon rain forest, just to name a few. Pelosi and company sold this abuse of the American taxpayer as "economic stimulus" ; and they had actual Harvard and University of California economists and New York Times Columnists to say it was so.

Fortunately, the American people didn’t buy it. They did everything they could to get the freight train of waste stopped, but Pelosi plowed it through over all objections. The results confirmed the people's common sense conclusions. The stimulus was a dismal failure and ran up as much governmental debt in one fell swoop as the entire Iraq and Afgan wars combined.

For years Pelosi promised transparency, including public meetings on important negotiations, if Democrats took the Congress. Then, when asked why she was conducting House/Senate reconciliation meetings in private, Nancy famously quipped, “We promise a lot of things on the campaign trail.” Never before in my memory has a politician so contemptuously admitted she lies on the campaign trail because her voters are too stupid to notice. Apparently she knows what she’s talking about; because, in spite of it, her district reelected her in a landslide. Fortunately the rest of the country is not so gullible.

In another famous moment, when confronted with the fact that the health care bill as rewritten in reconciliation was being brought to a vote without time for the voters to fully absorb it and without even posting it on the Internet as promised, she stated, “we’ll just have to pass it so you can read what’s in it.” Even Hugo Chavez couldn’t top that arrogant condescension for the voters. He probably made a note of it for future reference.

For years she claimed Republicans had given tax breaks to US corporations to send jobs overseas, and then, during four years as speaker of the house, never passed or even submitted a bill to alter this alleged Republican abuse. And, this during the worst recession in modern history. At the same time she claimed that expanding food stamps and unemployment compensation benefits are the best ways to create jobs. Someone recently said the only jobs she ever created were house seats for Republicans.

Now it appears Nancy will not be just melting away, but rather will run for minority leader. Go Nancy! By the time you're done the only Democrats left will be the ones living in the land of OZ.

Communist Deep Moles Honored in Russia While Democrats Rally for Soclialist/Communist State in America

The One Nation rally on October 2, 2010 was sponsored by numerous admitted socialist and communist organizations, unions, the White House and the Committee to Reelect a Democratic Senate. Photo by
http://www.flickr.com/photos/talkradionews/

Last week, a gala event in Russia honored the ten deep moles that where expelled from the US for being deep cover secret agents. A few months ago, news of the expulsions was met by yawns from the US press, except for interest in some sensual photos of one of the agents. Many reporters even joked about the incident, implying that the agents were bumbling fools, too unimportant to warrant serious investigation.

Russia, however, does not agree. The President presented them Russia's highest award for their efforts to infiltrate the US. Not only did the Russian government think this was important apparently the people do to, since the agents have become big popular stars.

Just as the press swept the significance of soviet spies under the rug and concentrated on punishing the messenger in the fifties, the press now has tried and generally succeeded in minimizing the importance this story. There has been precious little press reporting on who these people were and what they were doing while here. Wouldn’t you think that some aspiring reporter would have checked that out? What do their neighbors and employers say about what they were doing? What groups did they belong to? What kind of political organizing were they involved in? How much money did they donate directly or indirectly to political parties or causes? In the scant information that was published was the fact that one worked with the US agency dealing with nuclear arms reduction efforts and the another was involved heavily in local party politics.

Instead of concentrating on the issue of foreign money from our enemies, the Democrats are talking about completely unsubstantiated alleged donations from foreign corporations to the Chamber of Commerce. Amazingly these are the same people who swept under the rug the one substantiated and admitted case of the Communist Chinese Military funnelling millions to Clinton/Gore's reelection campaign.

In light of the strong communist leanings of union leaders close to the President, Acorn's effort to falsify the vote and obvious connections to the communist party as well as the President, numerous close friends and aids to the President who have expressed their sympathies for Marx, Mao, Che, etc., and the known history of Democrats taking money from our communist enemies, when is someone in the press going to take this issue seriously?

OBAMANOMICS NOT BASED ON REALITY

After six years of claiming the Bush administration gave tax cuts only to the wealthy and ignored the middle class, Obama is now arguing the middle class tax cuts of Bush need to be extended to save the middle class from economic devastation.

Moving right along with the subject of Democratic misrepresentations over the last eight years, look at the O.M.B. graph at the top left of this article. This graph shows the deficit since 2003 and shows the spending on the Iraq war insofar as it impacted the budget.

First, note that the total spending on the war, accumulated over the six years from 2003 through 2008, Bush’s last year in office, totals less than Obama’s stimulus package passed in his first four months in office. This contradicts Obama's often cited claim that he inherited huge deficits from Bush caused by the Iraq war.

Thirdly, note that, although the deficit was about $400 billion in 2003, it steadily decreased over the next five years to around $200 billion in 2007. The graph shows the cumulative effect of the tax cut was not to drive deficits up over the long haul, but, rather, to increase tax revenues as the economy responded by increasing earnings, thus gradually bringing deficits down. This directly contradicts Obama's claims that the tax cuts did nothing to stimulate the economy or to reduce deficits over time.

It is true that the deficits begin to sky rocket in 2008 to $400 billion; however, as we know, 2008 is the fist full year the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate, and, as such, controlled spending. This was the year of TARP. Democrats supported TARP, and almost all real Republicans in the House and the Senate, voted against it. Obama repeatedly complains that he inherited a huge deficit from Bush, but he was a Senator who voted for iTARP and the rest of the budget at the time. In 2009 the deficit doubles to $1.4 trillion under the Democratic Congress and Obma's first year as President (a four fold increase) and stayed almost that high in the current year, 2010.

There is no doubt the economy was sliding into a deep recession in late 2008. But, this was not caused by tax cuts nor was it caused by deficit spending. It is well recognized that the 2008 recession was caused by a housing bubble bursting and a resulting credit crisis. This was caused by Govenment efforts to over stimulate lending and home ownership, not by ordinary free market forces. In fact Obama claims hyper-deficit spending is what we need to get out of the recession. Thus, he impossibly argues Bush's deficits were the cause of the recession but Democrat's deficits are the cure.

Democrats are misrepresenting basic economic fact. Reduction of government, by tax and spending cuts and reducing administrative burdens are the only measures that will work to unleash the economy. Unfortunately, instead, Obama and the Democratic Congress are passing one multi billion dollar bailout to government workers and unions after another and piling on new entitlement programs.

If there is not a massive take over of the house and Senate by real Conservatives, instead of RINO Republicans, this recession will be a long one.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

America's last combat brigade crossing the Iraqi Border

Recently President Obama announced the end of combat operations in Iraq in only his second oval office address. In doing so, he reluctantly acknowledged Bush's patriotism and that there were "disagreements" between them. Then, he took credit for ending combat operations in Iraq "as he had promised".

Regardless of the President having congratulated himself for the accomplishment, we all know, he does not deserve it. Who can forget that years of incredibly brutal warfare in Iraq, were made agonizingly worse for our soldiers by Obama and the rest of his cronies doing everything they could to defeat the effort. From John “our soldiers are cold blooded killers” Murtha, to Harry “the war is lost” Reid, to Nancy, denying the MRAP to our troops, Pelosi; to Erick "the detainees are victims" Holder; to the New York "the CIA are torturers" Times, to the ACLU the military tribunals are illegal, to Code "Bush and Cheney are war criminals" Pink, To Kieth "Bush lied people died" Oberman, to Everybody all together now: "the surge won't work", and in a thousand other ways, liberals relentlessly tried to defeat us in Iraq.

This is not the first time liberals have tried to defeat the US in war. The pattern is becoming all too familiar. Liberals relentlessly tried to stop the Korean War. They eventually caused a stalemate that allowed North Korea to survive. Sixty years later, its now nuclear and is one of the most repressive and destabilizing regimes on earth. Liberals caused us to pull out of Viet Nam on the verge of victory and then refused even monetary or military supplies to the South, resulting in a slaughter and dislocation of millions. Our embassy was attacked and employees with diplomatic immunity held hostage by Iranian radicals; an indisputable act of war. Liberals refused to fight. Thirty years later a, soon to be nuclear, Iran is a major source of world terrorism and threat to world peace. Liberals relentlessly fought Regan's military build up that ended the cold war. This time,they pulled all of the familiar efforts to defeat the US in Iraq and a bunch of new ones, but lost. Sorry liberals. Nice try but we won this one in spite of you.

If we had not gone into Iraq, what would the situation be today? You know the answer. Iraq would be on the verge of going nuclear like Iran, and it would be exporting terror around the world. Terror would be king and we would be on the run instead of the opposite. Liberals would be saying what can we do about it? A recent poll shows 58% of Ameicans think the Iraq invasion was the right decision in spite of the massive media campaign to villify Bush and Cheney.

The returning troops, all who served in Iraq and George Bush should have a victory parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. Hundreds of thousands if not millions would be lining the streets to cheer their heros. And, since he’s so good at apologizing for the American people, Obama could then and there apologize to the American people for himself and his fellow Democratic Party leaders, for their vitriolic campaign against anyone who in any way supported the war, for almost defeating the US in Iraq and for always doing whatever they can to make the world a much more dangerous place for Americans.

FREEDOM OF RELIGION OR TERROR?

I am as tired of the ground zero Mosque debate as anyone, but, I'm also just as tired of hearing the "bigot" label from the left about anyone who asks reasonable questions about possible criminal behavior.

Do we really need to be lectured by the President and the Mayor of New York that the first amendment to the constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion? Why aren’t they concerned about the freedom of the Greek Orthodox Church destroyed by the 9-11 attacks that, after nine years of trying, can’t get a permit from the City of New York to rebuild? Isn’t that in the Mayor’s job description? Isn't protecting the country in general and New York City in particular from fanatics the job of the President and the Mayor? Why isn’t the President concerned about using public funds to send the Imam Rauf on an Islamic good will tour around the world? Does that violate the “separation of church and state” clause? Apparently, that provision is relevant only when Christianity is involved.

Have you noticed that Liberals are the the prejudiced ones; and its against anything Christians say or do. For example, Muhammad had several wives and his favorite was twelve years old when he married her. This is not an ancient irrelevant artifact. The law of Muhammad, Sharia law, followed around the world today and openly promoted by the ground zero Imam Rauf, allows children to be placed in marriages and condones polygamy. Why isn't the President concerned about that? Identical conduct was grounds for the Federal government to invade the Branch Davidian compound and slaughter every one in there, including women and children when it was the beliefs of Christians. Liberals defended the Branch Davidian massacre, but why aren't they concerned about Muslims who want to establish these beliefs as law in the US?
Liberals advocate a very watchful governmental eye on the Mormons, but if your concerned about people advocating the imposition of Sharia Law (which has much more draconian repression of personal freedom than Mormonism) then your a bigot. How many Mormons have blown people up lately?

Yes, Mayor Bloomberg, the constitution guarantees free exercise of religion, but not religiously inspired murders! Yes, Mr. President, the first amendment prohibits any law respecting the establishment of religion, unless the religion holds that the constitution must be overthrown by violent means and the people forced to follow the law of one religion.

When an attack is perpetrated by followers of a particular religion who claim that that religion requires a holy war against the people of the United States; that entitles us to be just a little bit cautious about what the adherents to that religion propose to do here.

Mosques are the focal point in the US for communication between terrorists and terrorist supporters, and the prime recruiting ground for home grown terrorists. History has been quite clear on this. American Courts have forced Christians to send their children to school to learn ideas against their religious beliefs, and to get medical treatment they do not believe in. Why should Muslims be entitled to hide violent conspiracies behind Mosque doors?

When common sense tells the vast majority of the American people, that there is something suspicious, then there is something suspicious. Reasonable suspicion or probable cause is all that is required for a reasonable investigation. Not only is the place chosen for this mega mosque suspicious, its Imam has said in various ways that US policies have caused many more unjustified deaths world wide than Al Quaida and that, in turn, caused the 9/11 attacks. He is saying in a politically correct way that the US has acted criminally in world politics and the attacks are a justified response.

What is the Imam going to say on his tour, other than assure Muslim world leaders that attacks against us are justified? He certainly is not saying that the US policies have been justified in the past since he is on record saying we are accomplices to international crime. More than likely, just as Obama has openly apologized to the Muslim world for US actions, Imam Rauf and his wife are apologizing for the past and assuring Muslims leaders that the new administration is sympathetic to Islam. And, “Oh! by the way, how about a million or two for the new Islamic Victory Mosque at ground zero? Allah Achbar!”

Daisy Kahn, his wife, claims that the Mosque is intended to be a “symbol” to the world. I agree, just not the one she, and her husband, claim. It’s not a symbol of “building bridges”, but rather a monument to a great victory in the war of ignorance against an enlightened, tolerant and free civilization. We can not let our tolerance and enlightenment blind us to religious beliefs that are unacceptable in civilized society. We have a right to be on alert to insinuations of religious terrorists into our mist since they have proven their deadliness in the e past.

The stock argument of those supporting the Mosques is to point out that not all Muslims are violent. I have no specific idea how many Muslims are violent or potentially violent or terrorism sympathizers; nor do I specifically know how many want to see the eradication of freedom of religion and speech and the imposition of Sharia law in the US; but, it appears to me, based on their own conduct, its not a small number. Further, the terrorist ideas do not seem to be that far away from main stream Muslim doctrine.

During the Bush administration, liberals harped for years that claims of terrorist plots in the US were phony shams, based on Islamophobia, and aimed at scaring us into submission to a police state. Then, when Obama took office, the attacks increased. We had the underwear bomber, the Massacre at Fort Benning, the Times Square bomber and a host of foiled plots. Numerous Muslim Americans have turned up on Al Quiada web sites. Even now the administration refuses to label terrorist attacks what they really are. It’s time to stop deluding ourselves. The world wide Islamic war against us is not a figment of our collective imaginations. And it is not our fault or even George Bush’s fault. The natural logical response to the proposed Mosque is to be suspicious. Look, you have a gag reflex for a reason. When you’re gagging, it’s probably because something stinks.

WHY COMMUNITISTS MATTER

Van Jones, admitted communist revolutionary, was appointed Green Jobs Czar, precisely because of his previous communist revolutionary works, and later resigned under pressure. Van Jones is currently associated with the Center For Ameican Progress which has significant influence over White House policy. Photo from the files of The Center For Ameican Progress.

Recently, eleven Russian spies were arrested on charges of failing to register as foreign agents and money laundering. Almost immediately the Administration made a deal to exchange them for four alleged US spies held in Russia. The Russian spies were whisked out of the country and the exchange effectuated before any court hearings, admittedly because the government did not want information about them to be made public. Superficially, this was to protect investigative methods of the government, but could it have been done to protect the administration from divulging the true extent of Russian penetration of the US government and politics?

Little information was released as to what the spies were up to and their significance was uniformly minimized by government agents and the Media in general. It has been reported, however, that they were deep moles working to establish themselves in US party politics. (Is there any doubt as to which party they establishing themselves?) Was the money laundering related to money illegally brought into the US and then used to influence US elections? I have heard only one other mention in the news of the activities of these spies and that was that he/she was working for an agency of the US government involved in disarmament agreements. That does not sound innocuous to me.

In the 1920’s, much like today, communism became the politically correct ideology of the intellectual elite. Harvard, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford were fertile recruiting grounds. By the 1930’s the horrors of communism in practice in the USSR became apparent in spite of the liberal media’s efforts to hide the truth. (The new York Times has since apologized for its intentional effort to hide the Atrocities of Stalin before WWII).

At the beginning of WWII, The Soviet Union was an ally of Hitler and were complicit in starting World War II by invading Poland simultaneously with Germany pursuant to a secret non-aggression pact. By the time we got in the Hitler had already attacked Russia. Roosevelt made the Machiavellian decision to form an alliance with Stalin against Hitler. As a result, the Soviet Union gained unprecedented access to the inner workings of the United States Government, including the Military establishment, the State Department and the Treasury. Stalin did not miss the opportunity. Large numbers of sympathetic intellectuals were recruited as soviet spies.

In the east the government of Chaing Kai-Shek and the communists under Mao Se Dong waged their own separate fight against the Axis ally Japan. We supported both Mao and Chaing. Our ally, the Soviets, however, were successful in placing three agents within the US State Department in the precise place necessary to decide the fate of China. These three agents were the official US observers of Chaing and Mao and reported on which group was the more deserving of our support and ultimately to rule post WWII China.

They relentlessly misreported the facts in support of Mao and against Chang. They lambasted Chaing as a corrupt and inept dictator, and minimized his fight agsint hte Japanese; on the other hand, they veritably deified Mao as a true advocate of democracy, a lover of capitalism and the west and the only effective anti-Japanese fighter. As a result of their efforts, the US eventually reduced its support for Chaing and ultimately boycotted Chaing in the post WWII Chinese civil war. Without US aid to Chaing in the face of massive Soviet aid to Mao the communists were ultimately victorious. Chaing withdrew to the small inland of Tiawan off the mainland of China.

When it soon became apparent that Mao was no friend of the west, there was an uproar over how we could have let this happen. Even though there was much evidence at the time of the connections of those responsible with the USSR, and at least two of the three fled to Communist China from the US, the Truman administration nad the Demoicratic congress, relentlessly defended the people responsible and minimized their importance. Howerver, internal documents from the FBI, State Deparment, White House and Congress, produced fifty years later pursuant to declasification and Freedom of Information Act, have confirmed the US govenment knew all too well that the treachery was real and the US had been duped by Soviet spies. This was also confirmed by KGB files, released by Russia after Glasnost, that at least two of the three were in fact Soviet agents and many others were higher up in the chain of command.

Contrary to the false reporting from the communist agents anti-Chaing rantings, Chainng's China became a model of capitalism for the third world to aspire. Mao’s Peoples Republic of China, on the other hand, became one of the most repressive places on the planet. Mao will live in infamy for his lack of concern for how many people he killed in pursuing his policies. It is generally accepted that Mao Zedong was responsible for over 70 million deaths caused by his policies. In addition, his regime caused massive losses to the US over the next thirty plus years in both the Korean and the Vietnam wars. China is responsible for the proliferation of nuclear weapons to Korea, and Pakistan and attempts to extend them to Iraq, Syria and probably Iran. In spite of our recent economic relationship, China and its offspring North Korea, remain a lethal threatw to the United States instead of a staunch alies which would have undoubtedly been the case if we had supported Chaing instead of Mao.

It has been many years since the atrocities of the Soviet Union and Communist China. They are distant memories. The stories of how the Soviet Union through willing American dupes was able to change the course of history for the worse has been repressed by politicans eager to cover their own inattention to security, educators and the press who relentlessly advance their leftist ideology.

Communists in our government are very dangerous. They have never gone away. Van Jones, Anita Dunn, Willaim Aires, Cas Sunstien and numerous other leftists with influence in our govenment are not isolated phenomenon. They are part of a dedicated extremist movement. They have been relentlessly at work in our political system and today they are perhaps a more dangerous threat than at any time in our history, precisely because we seem to have become apathetic to the risks.

THE THIN BLACK LINE

Photo of Supreme Court at the White House for the swearing in of Justice Sotomayor

During his first state of the union address, President Obama looked straight at the assembled Justices of the Supreme Court and Chastised them for striking down a law barring the right of free speech to corporations and for allegedly allowing foreign corporations to influence U.S. elections. Justice Alito was seen mouthing the words "not True" and shaking his head "No" in response to the President's criticism.

It is not the Supreme Court's job to write legislation. They interpret the constitutionality of the legislation that Congress passes. The President is free to try again in light of the opinion expressed by the Court by initiating new legislation that accomplishes his goals without the constitutional defect.

Consider, however, the wisdom of rebuking a co-equal branch of the government with the power to overrule your every act on TV in the State of the union address. Every lawyer who ever tried a case knows that you don’t tick off the judge by openly criticizing his rulings in public. Yet, this law school professor president decided to embarrass the judges in front of the rest of the assembled government and the entire American voting public watching on TV; and he’s wrong to Boot! There is a separate provision of McCain-Feingold, the act the President was referring to, that was not struck down, which prohibits foreign companies from attempting to influence elections.

The President's comments only served to heighten the appreciation I have for the five people in black sitting there who he was criticizing. They have stood as bulwarks against the efforts of out of control big government progressives, including the other four justices on the Court, that have consistently attempted to strip us of our fundamental rights.

In Citizens United v FEC, the Court upheld the right of free speech in the first amendment against total restriction on the right of organizations to run political announcements prior to elections. Progressives, including the President, who essentially believe that corporate entities are the root of all evil, support this ban and argue that only the individual citizen has the right of free speech. But does the constitution say that? Must businessmen stand moot while the government demagogues them for pursuing the American dream and providing us goods and services in the process? The ability of the people to speak out requires huge amounts of money that can only be raised by banding together in political action groups, associations, clubs, churches and, yes, businesses. corporations are merely collections of people with a common economic interest. Don't they have a right to comment on issues that might affect those interests? Must they pitifully sit on the sidelines while other groups can use the media to full effect against them.

It could be argued that McCain Fiengold is actually a politicians relief package and that the ban on advertising could have had the opposite of the intended effect. Corporate political donations have not slowed since enactment of McCain Fiengold and, if anything, it has increased. In fact the vast bulk of corporate political donations go to the Democratic Party, the chief proponents of McCain Fiengold. It could be that a ban on the right of free speech of corporations has forced them to seek the only other avenue of political influence; direct donations or bundling of donations which has been a forte of the Democratic party. If you can not persuade the public then your only avenue is to buy the politician. Maybe this is really all the politicians who support the act really want.

On another critical bill of rights issue, the fundamental right to bear arms has been under assault. Since grade school we have presumed the right to bear arms is a fundamental right guaranteed by the constitution to self defense and ultimately as a check against a tyrannical government. Progressives, on the other hand, despise the second amendment for precisely this reason. They know they must eliminate this right in order to repress the individual and eventfully impose the total government control that is their ultimate goal. Eliminating the right to bear arms is the starting point of every dictatorship.

Surprisingly, not until 2008, in Washington DC v Heller, did the Supreme Court finally address, head on, whether the right to bear arms is a fundamental individual right. Heller contested a total ban on the right to carry or even own a gun that had been in effect in Washington, DC for many years. The right to bear arms was upheld by the Court but only by five to four margin. Simply put, there are four justices on the Supreme Court (all stalwart secular progressives) who do not believe you have a fundamental right to bear arms, and they so voted.

Also, recently, in Kelso v New London , the Supreme Court addressed whether the right of eminent domain includes the right of government to take private property solely for the purpose of giving it to some other private entity. In Kelso, by a five four majority with the progressives in the majority, the Court held that the government, and this includes, local municipal, county, state and federal governmental entities, can take any private property for any reason including to give it to some other private person the government favors more than the ones they took it away from. Anyone who covets the property of others can influence the local politicians by campaign donations or other means to take any private property they want for their purposes and the hapless owners are just out of luck. This decision subjects our basic right to property, which is the foundation of our freedom and our wealth, to the whims of local political hacks everywhere. Unfortunately the originalists lost Kelso and we the people lost a fundamental right as a result.

These three rulings demonstrate how little concern progressives have for our basic freedoms and how truly pervasive they have become in our government. To them, including the four progressives on the Supreme Court, our rights are malleable and even dispensable. Five men on the Supreme Court are all that stands between us and elimination of our most basic rights. When the President of the United States castigated these men before the assembled house and Senate who stood and cheered, I could feel in a very real way, the fears of our founding fathers. The forces of totalitarianism are strong, they are persistent and they have very real power in our country. As our government is now configured, all that stands between us and serfdom is a very very thin black line.

P.S.: I wrote this article a couple of weeks ago, but never published it. John Roberts just issued a statement expressing his concern over the criticism in the President's address, which affirms the relevance of the thoughts I have expressed here. The Supreme Court matters and the President picks the Supreme Court. We need to think about this when we, the people, pick the President.