11/30/2004
Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
mendment, some of our most basics rights are contained in this amendment. Freedom of speech, press, the freedom to peaceably assemble, to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and most important to me, freedom of religion.
Despite what many on the left will tell you, the passage pertaining to freedom of religion says nothing about separation of church and state. Our churches today must fight for tax exempt status and in winning that fight, they are subject to rules on what can and cannot be said from the pulpit. For example, calling homosexual behavior deviant could now be considered hate speech, and could result in the loss of the tax exempt status. Pastors cannot endorse a political candidate, and candidates aren’t supposed to “preach” (give stump speeches) from the pulpit. However, this rule has been ignored by the Democrats and the religious left for years.
I posted earlier on the subject of God given vs. Government given rights and the danger of forgetting where we get our rights. Our founding fathers knew that the people assigning the Government the ability to give or take our rights was a danger.
When they loose their virtue, they will surrender their liberties to the first internal or external invader –Samuel Adams
Cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the will of the people –George Washington in his farewell address
11/26/2004
I hope, over the next few weeks to take an in depth look at the Bill of rights, it’s history, and why it makes our country unique. I hope to cover each one of the ammendments individually, as well as the origin and meaning of the document as a whole.
First, let me start by saying that I am not a lawyer, I’m don’t even have a college degree. But, I do know how I feel about rights given to us by our creator. So, sit back and enjoy the ride.
11/24/2004
I want to wish all of my readers a happy and healthy Thanksgiving. We should all take time tonight or tomorrow to think about what we are thankful for and thank God for it. I know I have a lot to be thankful for this year.
- Gods love for me despite my many sins and failings
- My parents gracious hospitality
- My Family’s support of me over the last two years
- My continuing physical recovery
- My improving health
- The physical and occupational therapists who have work tirelessly with me over the last two years
- Much much more that I am saving for my own time with God tonight and tomorrow
Now, a thanksgiving message from our president:
“We are a nation founded by men and women who deeply felt their dependence on God and always gave Him thanks and praise. As we prepare for Thanksgiving in 2004, we have much to be thankful for: our families, our friends, our beautiful country, and the freedom granted to each one of us by the Almighty. During this holiday season, we think especially of our men and women of the armed forces, many of whom are spending Thanksgiving far from home. …Through their courage and skill and sacrifice they are keeping our country safe and free. America is proud of our military. We’re proud of our military families. And we give them our thanks every day of the year.” –President George W. Bush
11/23/2004
Intel Bill Ignores Election Day Mandate
Brendan Miniter gives us a look at the story behind the story from this past weekend. All we heard this past weekend was about obstructionist Republicans holding up “real” intelligence reform. The real story is the Democrats trying to make an end run around an election day mandate that’s as plain as the nose on my face.
The way Senate Democrats set up the bill, it pulled power, intel resources, and personnel away from our military and gave it to the intelligence czar. The intelligence czar could then route those resources and personnel to wherever he felt they were needed, most likely the CIA or FBI.
Some of you are asking ’so what? Well, as Miniter points out in his column, this creates a climate where our terrorism problem is handled in a law enforcement manor. The Kerry camp ran on a “handle terrorism with law enforcement” platform and it was soundly rejected.
The problems here are obvious. The intelligence czar, who was expected to occupy office space within the CIA, would likely end up draining intelligence resources away from the military to meet the needs of the CIA, FBI and other civilian spy agencies. That could leave soldiers in the field without the critical, real-time intelligence they need to fight on the modern battlefield–what House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter calls the soldiers’ “lifeline.” To use a current example, if this was already in place, soldiers fighting in Fallujah might not have had the satellite linkups they needed to study the changing battlefield. Money and technology aside, the military also feared the intelligence director would pull essential personnel away from military duties–something explicitly within his power under the Senate’s plan.
More disturbing was the proposal to give the intelligence czar the ability to move personnel out of combat support units. Not only would that break into the military’s chain of command; it’s the kind of bureaucratic micromanagement that is likely to cause operations to fail and maybe get soldiers killed–a concern Mr. Hunter expressed to me. An example I heard kicked around while walking the halls of Congress last week was Operation Desert One–Jimmy Carter’s failed covert mission to rescue Americans held hostages in Iran in which eight American servicemen were killed in a helicopter crash.
… These and other points were deal breakers for Republican House members because what the Senate’s bill reflects is not a war fighting mentality. Rather it’s a call for managing terrorism with small-scale and perhaps covert operations by taking the Pentagon out of the decision-making process and leaving the task of going after terrorists largely in the hands of the intelligence czar. In other words, treating terrorism more like a law-enforcement matter than a real war in which a large number of soldiers openly do battle with the enemy.
John Kerry just ran a national campaign pushing that very agenda, and he lost. For Congress then to have enshrined that thinking into law with these intelligence reforms would have been to ignore the election’s results. When it comes to defending this country, it’s not the American people we have to worry about, but rather the political class all too willing to stampede through the latest “reform.” (emphasis added — Jim C)
Do we need intelligence reform? Yes, that’s obvious. But, rather than trying to subvert the will of the people, might I suggest trying to undo some of the damage Democrats like John Kerry have done to the intelligence community over the last 20+ years.
11/21/2004
Berkeley E-Vote Fraud(ulent) Study
It’s amazing what will pass as news so long as it validates the crazy ideas of the fever swamp or bash’s Bush. Berkeley issued a study that claims to show proof that Florida was stolen by Bush again. One of many problems with this study — as Patrick Ruffini points out — is that it actually shows that Bush’s numbers actually went down in e-voting counties in Florida.
For those expecting a book-length entry fisking this “study”, I’ll have to disappoint you. This one only requires one or two sets of numbers.The conclusion that President Bush was more likely to improve his vote in counties with e-voting is laughable on its face. Using the Excel spreadsheet provided by the authors, I totaled the votes for counties with and without e-voting, and came up with this:
Percentage Change for Bush in Counties WITH E-Voting: 2.25%
Percentage Change for Bush in Counties WITHOUT E-Voting: 2.54%It looks like e-voting suppressed the President’s vote by about 0.29% — or 7,800 votes!
Taking each of these counties as data points, was the President “significantly more likely” to have increased his support in counties with e-voting? Again, no.
E-Voting Counties with Increased Bush Vote: 13/15 (86.7%)
Non-E-Voting Counties with Increased Bush Vote: 46/52 (88.5%)
That’s not the end of the problems with Berkely’s logic though. In a letter to the California Insider one critic of the study details several other problems with the study.
I have just read through the UC Berkeley paper you linked about e-voting. There is a pretty significant pair of errors in it.
The assumption is made (but never disclosed) that in an honest election, e-voting patterns would mirror those of paper voting. But in fact, there is no way to know this. For example, marginal Democratic voters — and since the error they purport to find is about 2.5%, we are talking about the margins — in the Democratic counties could well be older retirees from New York and more frightened by electronic voting, while Republican voters in those Democratic counties could be younger and actually attracted by e-voting; even younger Democratic voters could have been more moved by 9/11 than older Democrats, and might also be less afraid of e-voting.The second assumption is that if there is an actual discrepancy between the results as obtained by the e-voting=1 model (use of electronic voting machines) and the e-vote=0 model (no e-voting), that the correct way to interpret this is that there were between 130,000 and 260,000 “excess votes” for Bush. But mathematically, it’s equally valid to suppose that there was a Republican suppression factor in the 2000 and 1996 elections — that is, that the Democrats cheated in counting punchcards in heavily Democratic districts in past elections — which they were unable to do in 2004 with the electronic voting machines.
In fact, it is easier to cheat with punch cards: for one easy example, if you take a stack of ballots and push a long stylus through the “Gore” hole, this will have the effect of turning Bush votes into uncountable Bush and Gore double votes, while leaving Gore votes undisturbed. This requires no computer sophistication at all (or even a high-school diploma) and can be done by the lowest level of poll worker, long before the cards even leave the individual precinct.
All that the study actually found was that Bush’s support in Democratic counties of Florida increased more than the level one would have expected from projecting Republican support in 1996 and 2000, and that this increase seems correlated to electronic voting. It does not and cannot tell us whether those “excess” votes are in fact legitimate or a result of fraud… for all that the authors pretend that’s what they have found.
Given that the Democrats have a long standing history of cheating in elections, I would tend to believe that the second theory is more likely than not.
Hat tips to both Powerline and Patrick Ruffini for this one.
11/20/2004
From The Stupid People Files…..
I know the days leading up to the election were pretty intense. I was doing everything I could do to see George Bush re-elected. However, I think officially calling whatever liberals are experiencing right now a “psychological trauma” is a little ridiculous. When I think of a trauma in ones life, I think of a death in the family, or finding out you have a chronic illness, or seeing a fatal car wreck happen right in front of you, not having your candidate loose a presidential election. But, then I see this from the Federalist Patriot:
Rush Limbaugh has gone and made liberals mad — again. Limbaugh recently offered “free therapy” for John Kerry voters who had been “traumatized” by their candidate’s election loss. Mental-health officials complained that he made a mockery of valid psychological problems. (Snicker, chuckle). “Rush Limbaugh has a way of back-handedly slamming people,” said Sheila Cooperman, a licensed clinician with the American Health Association (AHA). “He’s trying to ridicule the emotional state this presidential election produced in many of us here in Palm Beach County. Who is he to offer therapy?” “Us?” Does that render Cooperman ready for therapy? The Boca Raton News reported that over 30 Kerry voters had contacted AHA seeking counseling after the election.
They’ve dubbed the “disorder” as “Post Election Selection Trauma” (PEST), “a legitimate syndrome or disorder within the trauma spectrum,” according to Cooperman. We’d simply call it “Liberalism,” but then again, we’re not licensed clinicians. “Rush Limbaugh has no clinical qualifications to counsel anyone,” Cooperman added. “He’s not only minimizing PEST, but he’s bastardizing the entire psychological field and our clinical expertise.” Yes, yes, of course.
I’ve got a handy solution for those who believe they’re suffering from PEST; get a life!! Go out and enjoy the fall weather, go hug your kids and thank God that this is the worst thing that’s happened to you in your life.
11/19/2004
Hugh sums up what Christmas is all about in just one paragraph. I wish I could write like some of the blogosphere greats; Hugh, Lileks, Captains Quarters, and Powerline. English class was never my favorite though. Here’s the meat of the post.
The season we are on the cusp of celebrating is uniquely a religious season. It has its origin in the journey of a poor and homeless family who were given shelter, and in the entry of grace and mercy into human history in the form of Christ. The Salvation Army is uniquely a mission to the homeless and the poor –the lost and the least. They are not just another charity, and it is not just any old time of year
I hope to have a series of posts over the next few weeks highlighting Christmas in America, and what it means to Christians. In the mean time, if any of you can provide examples of municipalities or organizations trying to take away Christmas, please send me the info, and a link to the news story.
11/18/2004
WashingtonPost.com is no longer running the cartoons of hard-hitting liberal Ted Rall.
Rall said he thinks the site dropped his work because of a Nov. 4 cartoon he did showing a drooling, mentally handicapped student taking over a classroom. “The idea was to draw an analogy to the electorate — in essence, the idiots are now running the country,” he told E&P.
“That cartoon certainly drew a significant amount of negative comment from our users,” said WashingtonPost.com Executive Editor Doug Feaver when contacted by E&P. But he added that the decision to drop Rall was a “cumulative” one that had been building for a while.
Rall is infamous for his cartoon depicting hero Pat Tillman as a dumb jock, Condi Rice and Colin Powell as “House Negroes”, and Bush a sadistic dictator hell bent on the torture of innocent terrorists. Here’s an example of his work.
Hmmm… is this economics at work, or has the WaPo finally seen the error of it’s ways? I would tend to believe this is an example of the former rather than the later.
11/17/2004
Yes, after a long hiatus (or at least it seemed that way to me) I’m back in action. It will take a couple of days to get back up to speed on things though. I look forward to resuming posting on faith, life with a chronic illness, and politics in the next few days. Until then check out the musings of my fellow RMA’ers.
11/3/2004
Colorado voters decided to reject the really bad idea. Unfortunately they also decided to reject Pete Coors. Late last night Mr. Coors graciously conceded to Ken Salazar. Let’s hope that Mr. Kerry will be just as gracious later today when he concedes to George Bush.
11/2/2004
Early exit poll numbers were a little distressing today. They seemed to be breaking for Kerry, but I just found this on Kerry Spot. Could it be that common sense has beat out the fever swamp left? Let’s hope so. If you haven’t voted yet, get out there and get it done. The polls are still open, and a Bush victory will be either sealed or spoiled by the votes in the next couple of hours.
On another note, many people take voting for granted. In fact you’d be surprised at how much we all take for granted. I certainly didn’t realize just how much I took for granted until I got sick in early 2003. I found myself thinking about this today as I stood in line to partake in something that, until this year, I considered a hassle, or at best an obligation. This year was different.
When I thought about what could have been today. Institutionalized, permanent brain damage, or death. Or when I think about where I came from. Paralyzed, on life support, and unable to do anything for myself. I consider myself very lucky to be able to be a part of one of the miracles of this constitutional republic. I, for one, will never take it for granted again.
It seems nearly 2000 votes have mysteriously appeared on four Philadelphia voting machines before the polls opened for voting. Republican party officials have gone to court to impound those machines. Democrats are saying the reports of tampered machines is false.
11/1/2004
I tried really hard to get this post out last night, but every time I looked at the subject matter I turned beet red in frustration and steam started rolling out of my ears. I have never, in my lifetime, seen such an overt effort by the MSM to destroy a sitting President. First you have CBS’s Rather Gate. Now this: The ‘old gray lady’ published six anti - Bush articles yesterday, and there were no articles talking about ohhh…. for instance the fact that our economy is growing faster than any other major industrialized nations, and it has been George Bush’s steady hand that has guided us through a recession caused by, among other things, the attacks of 9-11.
Of the six articles, two of them are either straight news or features articles. The other four are editorial articles that are so slanted to the left that they make John Kerry look like a moderate. Here are the titles and a brief description:
In Iraq, US officials cite obstacles to victory: A damning article on the situation in Iraq. Here’s the key, all the remarks by civilian and military officials indicating that things are going bad are ‘off the record’ because of fear of them being used for campaign fodder.
But when pressed in interviews and informal conversations - mostly not for attribution, because of fear that their more candid remarks could be used as campaign fodder back home - senior commanders and civilian officials voiced misgivings about how their plans could go awry, reflecting the unpredictability of events in Iraq.
Decision 2004: Fear Fatigue vs. Sheer Fatigue: This beauty is out of the arts section. Frank Rich’s premise in this piece is; yeah Kerry is boring, and we’re all tired of him but Bush’s fear mongering over the war on terror is far worse.
If the cliche of 2000 remains true, that entertainment-addicted Americans will never let a tedious president into their living rooms for four long years, then Mr. Kerry, like Al Gore, is toast. But now that Mr. Kerry enters the final stretch of 2004 with a serious chance of unseating an incumbent in wartime, a competing theory also rises: it’s possible for America to overdose on entertainment. No president has worked harder than George W. Bush to tell his story as a spectacle, much of it fictional, to rivet his constituents while casting himself in an unfailingly heroic light. Yet this particular movie may have gone on too long and have too many plot holes. It may have been too clever by half. It may have given Mr. Kerry just the opening he needs to win.
As George Will has pointed out, our war in Iraq has now lasted longer than America’s involvement in World War I. The span from 9/11 to Election Day 2004 is only three months shy of the 41 months separating the attack on Pearl Harbor from V-E day. And still the storyline doesn’t compute. Mr. Bush, having not brought back his original bad guy dead or alive, is now fond of saying that “three-quarters of Al Qaeda leaders have been brought to justice.” Even if true, is he telling us the war on terror is three-quarters over? Al Qaeda is, by our government’s own account, in 60 countries. Last time I looked we’re only at war in two.
The administration tries to finesse such narrative disconnects by creating a noir mood of “perpetual fear” - to borrow Philip Roth’s totemic phrase from “The Plot Against America” - in line with what it sees as a perpetual war.
More Questions about Halliburton: Another editorial on the evil Halliburton’s Iraq Contracts. Need I say more?
Subverting Science: An editorial critical of the Bush administration’s stem cell research policy.
Will Osama Help W?: Maureen Dowd in her Michael Moore - tin foil hat club finest.
The Bushies’ campaign pitch follows their usual backward logic: Because we have failed to make you safe, you should re-elect us to make you safer. Because we haven’t caught Osama in three years, you need us to catch Osama in the next four years. Because we didn’t bother to secure explosives in Iraq, you can count on us to make sure those explosives aren’t used against you.
You’d think that seeing Osama looking fit as a fiddle and ready for hate would spark anger at the Bush administration’s cynical diversion of the war on Al Qaeda to the war on Saddam. It’s absurd that we’re mired in Iraq - an invasion the demented vice president praised on Friday for its “brilliance” - while the 9/11 mastermind nonchalantly pops up anytime he wants. For some, it seemed cartoonish, with Osama as Road Runner beeping by Wile E. Bush as Dick Cheney and Rummy run the Acme/Halliburton explosives company - now under F.B.I. investigation for its no-bid contracts on anvils, axle grease (guaranteed slippery) and dehydrated boulders (just add water) .
The Apparent Heir: A sick piece by Thomas L. Freidman comparing John Kerry to the elder Bush. It uses all sorts of twisted logic to show how supporters of the elder Bush are better served by voting for Kerry than George W. Bush the son.
So as we approach this critical election of 2004, my advice, dear readers, is this: Vote for the candidate who embodies the ethos of George H. W. Bush - the old guy. Vote for the man who you think would have the same gut feel for nurturing allies and restoring bipartisanship to foreign policy as him. Vote for the man you think understands the importance of facing up to our fiscal responsibilities for the sake of our children. And vote for the man who has the best instincts for balancing realism and idealism and the man who understands the necessity of using energetic U.S. diplomacy to make Israel more secure - by helping to bring it peace with its Arab neighbors, not just more tours from American Christian fundamentalists.
Yes, next Tuesday, vote for the real political heir to George H. W. Bush. I’m sure you know who that is.
I would expect this kind of tripe from the likes of political hacks such as Michael Moore and Ted Rall, but not from the pages of the nations most respected paper (he says as he rolls his eyes). Uhh… then again maybe they’re all one in the same.