You have been put on notice: Your policies are not desired by the people of this country. If the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey last year weren’t enough of a wake up call – to recap, normally Blue-State New Jersey elected a Republican over the incumbent Democrat and strictly Purple-State Virginia elected Republicans to all three executive branch offices by 15-20% margins – yesterday’s special election in Massachusetts should have been. The most recently elected 10 Representatives, 2 Senators, Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Treasurer and Receiver General, Attorney General, State Auditor, and nearly 90% of both houses of the General Court (the state legislature) are all Democrats. The People of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts haven’t elected a Republican to the Senate since 1973 or to any seat in the Federal Government since 1994. Or, perhaps I should say “hadn’t” because they just did.

The Massachusetts special election for a senator to replace the late Teddy Kennedy happened yesterday. The run-up had been followed around the country because in the unlikely, but not altogether impossible event that the Republican candidate would win, that could break the super-majority the Democrats had in the Senate and allow the Republicans to filibuster some of President Obama’s more damaging initiatives, like ObamaCare. On the death of Senator Kennedy, the Democrats were fairly confident that they could replace him with a fellow Democrat in an election. Given the recent voting history of the People of Massachusetts, such confidence would seem to be warranted.

I once heard someone say – and I can’t remember who – that we are all liberals when it comes to other people’s money, but we are all conservatives when it comes to our money.   Put another way, everyone will accept government help as long as it doesn’t hurt their own bottom line, but no one wants their own taxes raised, particularly to pay for frivolous services that only really help a small segment of the population. The People of Massachusetts, while they may align solidly to the Left, are not dumb. They know that ObamaCare will be a massive expenditure for which they will have to foot the bill and that nationalized medical care has never worked well. So they swallowed their partisan pride and voted in someone – anyone – to stop the train wreck.

So if you Democrats didn’t listen in ’09, perhaps you should now. This wasn’t a Republican winning in a normally red or purple state. It was a Republican winning in the bluest state in the land. And it was the bluest state in the land telling you people in Washington to scrap ObamaCare. If you don’t listen to this, if you don’t hear what the people are trying to tell you in the only polls that matter – elections – your losses will be catastrophic in November. 

Umm, I have a question (insert image of a man raising his hand and waving it vigorously)…

What happens to this settled, unquestionable theory when (not if, I’ll get to that in a moment) the empirical evidence – you know, things like actual temperature measurements, weather patterns, and changes in Arctic sea ice – doesn’t follow the computer model?

An article in the London Daily Telegraph last Sunday punches a gaping hole in the Global Warming theory. Without reprinting the article in its entirety (see the link for that) some top climate scientists, including ones who work for the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the group that has been shilling the Global Warming theory for the last 22 years – now believe that (a) the globe may be cooling, (b) that any recent warming and future cooling is natural, not manmade, in origin, and (c) that the cooling trend may last 20-30 years during which we will see cooler summers and harsher winters. While much of this is theoretical or speculative, the science is sound, being based in recent actual – as opposed to computer-modeled – atmospheric trends.

The natural cause for the climate changes, both warming and cooling, is theorized to be based on ocean temperatures. The changes in ocean temperature originate at depths that cannot be affected by atmospheric CO­₂ (something like 3,000 feet). Another data point this article questions is an assertion made last year that the polar sea ice would be gone within 4 summers. Apparently such pronouncements are cast into doubt by empirical data that show the Arctic ice cap to have grown by 26% since 2007. The people questioning the theories aren’t just right-wing nuts. They are climatologists, some of whom work for the IPCC and accept the idea that human activity can affect the climate.

The theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming relies solely on what I call the Global Warming Trifecta: that (a) the globe is warming, (b) human activity is responsible, and (c) that continued manmade warming will have catastrophic, destructive consequences in the mid- to long-term. With the Trifecta being true, the Left says, governments must “do something” to reverse the change. The refutation of any one element of the Trifecta renders the entire theory impotent, particularly the “do something” conclusion. If, for example, the globe is cooling rather than warming, or if temperatures are essentially stable, then nothing needs be done. If the warming is proven to be natural, man has no part in the “damage”, thus any solution man would attempt would either be ineffective or cause more damage than it would repair. If the warming will either not cause significant global harm or will be globally beneficial – a distinct possibility – then the discussion of whether it’s happening and how is moot in a political sense. It would be something like a politician saying “we need to reduce the number of fluffy, white clouds.” While understanding the mechanics of cumulus clouds is scientifically significant, it is politically irresponsible to dedicate resources to seeing how to reduce their incidence. They don’t cause problems.

Thus, Conservatives – including me – try to cast doubt as to the certainty of one or more of the legs of the Trifecta, because it is that alleged certainty that has helped the Left gain support for economically crushing policies that have no real effect on the global climate, even by their own admission. The truth about Global Warming is that it is far more a political tool than a scientific fact, and more and more hard evidence is coming out that makes it appear less and less factual. The purpose for relying on Global Warming is the redistribution of wealth from countries that have a lot to countries that have none. They who wish to dispute this simple fact must answer one question first: Why are the Kyoto Protocols, the most important anti-Global-Warming treaty out there, designed to place most of the burden on the US while exempting China, India and third world countries because of the expected effect on those countries’ economies, all for a net delay of 10 years for the impending doom?

Conservatives point to inconsistencies within the story as evidence that there’s something amiss with the “settled” part of the science. Of course, most people are aware of the global cooling scare of the 1970s. Back then, pollutants were going to blot out the sun and prevent its heat from reaching earth. During the 80s, the temperature started to climb, again, so the politicians started raving about global warming which, again, was caused by man, alone, threatening to create a runaway greenhouse effect with our output of CO₂.  Once the Global Warming scare began it was much easier to control the information. People don’t notice whether it’s cooler or hotter one year to the next, they simply believe what the radio tells them (“It’s the hottest summer on record” or some such). You can’t see CO_­2 so you can’t tell how much is in front of you, unlike smog. Further, it’s actually very difficult to measure how much CO₂ is produced by a given process. Most “measurements” are estimates based on the expected amount released from a process. Finally, since no one among the masses really knows what will happen if the globe warms, anything can be attributed to Global Warming. In recent history, I have seen articles attributing the following to Global Warming: summer heat waves, winter cold snaps, flooding one year and drought the next in the same region (Washington, DC, for example), the record high number of hurricanes in 2005 and the unusually low number of hurricanes in 2006, not to mention specific hurricanes both devastating (Katrina, 2005) and merely annoying (Isabel, 2003), and even events that have nothing to do with the climate or weather or the atmosphere, like the 2004 Tsunami. Every natural disaster or disagreeable weather anomaly is blamed on Global Warming. Why? Because if you believe Global Warming caused Hurricane Katrina to form, strengthen to Category 5, and hit New Orleans (as posited by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in the weeks after that storm) you will be more willing to sacrifice to stop it. If, however, you don’t see any trouble with a warmer globe, your willingness to spend more of your hard earned money for no benefit to you will diminish to negligible proportions.

The hoax of Global Warming got its first real, public revelation late last year when the University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had the contents of its e-mail servers publicized by a whistle-blowing hacker. The e-mails detailed not only the lack of empirical evidence for Global Warming, but the positive attempts to exclude contrary points of view from public discourse. Further, in the midst of the revealing e-mails the raw data used by the CRU and other organizations – the IPCC for instance – to promote the Trifecta was mysteriously lost so that it could not be independently analyzed and audited.

As if that wasn’t a bad enough blow to the world of Global Warming alarmism, information is leaking out that the globe may not even be warming, and that any negligible warming for which we humans may be responsible is easily outstripped by natural climate trends, mainly driven by ocean temperatures, which we humans cannot affect.

The Left says we don’t put forth alternative theories. Of course, they are lying when they say that because there are a number of competing theories out there about what affects the climate more than man possibly can. Changes in solar energy, ocean temperatures, and volcanic discharge each cause greater changes than all the factories, cars, airplanes, power plants, and hot-air spewing environmentalists combined.

…And the workplace usually isn’t it. – “Happy” Jake Greene’s Rule #4

OK, I’m joking about it being rule #4, I haven’t really summed up all my own little proverbs, sayings and rules. Maybe another time.

The reason I opened with my philosophy is to talk a little bit about Professional Basketball player Gilbert Arenas. If you haven’t happened past ESPN in the last couple of weeks, Arenas, a guard for the Washington Wizards, has essentially admitted to having brandished a gun in the team’s locker room on December 21 after an argument over a card game debt he owed another player, Javaris Crittenton. Crittenton, whose name is lost in the coverage because Arenas is a star in the NBA, apparently also drew a weapon. No shots were fired, and no one was hurt.

My first reaction was “Cut them.” My opinion has not changed. The NBA has suspended Arenas “indefinitely” – the actual term of suspension to be determined after the legal system takes its course. NBA Commissioner David Stern had initially intended to wait until the police had investigated before suspending Arenas, but he changed his mind after Arenas showed no hint of regret or remorse over the incident.

I am generally pro-gun insofar as the law is concerned. I believe that the Constitution is pretty much iron-clad on the idea that individuals are to be allowed to “keep and bear arms” in the general sense. I’m all for common-sense gun laws. Violent criminals, the clinically insane, and young children ought probably not be allowed to purchase guns, but other than that gun ownership should be decided by the individual, not the government. That said, private companies have the absolute right to define conduct rules within their organizations, especially during duty hours and in the workplace. And there are certain things you just don’t do at work. Bringing in your arsenal and displaying your armaments in a manner that can be considered threatening is one of them.

Being pro-gun does not mean being anti-responsibility, and gun ownership is something that requires responsible behavior. Making even veiled threats involving firearms and without proper justification – imminent threat to your own life – is not responsible behavior. Engaging in such behavior at work should be grounds for immediate dismissal regardless of what the law says about guns. Given what I’ve heard about the story, the NBA has rules on the matter, anyway, so immediate suspension without pay was the appropriate punishment.

Now, someone may look at this piece, and look at an earlier piece I wrote and say that I’m being inconsistent.  In that piece, I compared Michael Vick’s 2-year prison term for dog fighting with Plaxico Burress’s like term for gun possession and said that Burress got an unfair punishment, especially when compared with Vick’s, given that Vick’s crime is generally considered to be more heinous. The point of that piece was that Burress was convicted merely of keeping and bearing arms, a right that the Constitution is supposed to protect. My commentary on Burress’s conduct was that it was probably stupid and irresponsible, just like Arenas’s. The main difference is that Arenas did what he did in his workplace, and it’s his workplace punishment I’m supporting, not the legal ramifications. I don’t care that he owns and carries a gun. I don’t even necessarily care that he keeps it on him to and from work (his “office” is in the middle of downtown DC, after all). But if your job says “don’t bring guns into the office,” don’t bring guns into the office. And if you do, and you’re caught (or you do something patently stupid with them), don’t whine when you get summarily fired.

It amazes me that the Republican leader rejects the suggestion that what we are doing [in attempting to pass healthcare reform] is truly historic. In fact, the day before yesterday he said it is ``an act of total arrogance.'' That is a direct quote. I am confident history, ironically enough, will prove the Republican leader wrong. This is indeed historic, as I began my conversation today. I am not afraid to say it is. But instead of joining us on the right side of history, all Republicans can come up with is this: Slow down. Stop everything. Let's start over.

   If you think you have heard these same excuses before, you are right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said: Slow down. It is too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough.

   When women spoke up for the right to speak up, when they wanted the vote, some insisted they simply slow down. There will be a better day to do that. Today isn't quite right.

   When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some Senators resorted to the same filibuster threats we hear today. – Senator Harry Reid, 7 December 2009.

So, let’s recap. Global Warming skeptics are no different from holocaust deniers. Opponents of Embryonic Stem-Cell Research are “theocrats.” They who oppose abortion support legalizing rape. Critics of President Barack Obama’s administration, his policies, and his suitability for office are racists. Prsident George W. Bush and his administration were fascists or Nazis. Now, opponents of a government takeover of the best healthcare system going – along with the massive tax increases, drastically reduced quality and timeliness of care, rationing, and the “duty to die” mentality that are inextricably linked to government-run healthcare – are comparable to supporters of slavery, opponents of women’s suffrage, and segregationists. 

I suppose it’s worth noting here that Senator Reid failed to mention that it was his own party that supported slavery and segregation. I mean, if we’re tossing around baseless allegations and irrelevant comparisons, we might as well be fair about it, right? Oh, wait, what I said about the Democratic Party supporting slavery and segregation was true.

The worst of it is that 40% of the people in this country, including, supposedly, the more highly-educated among us, actually buy that bill of goods lock, stock, and barrel. And another 5-20%, depending upon the year, are willing to give it a second thought.

I will agree with the Gentleman from Nevada on one point, passage of healthcare reform would be truly historic. It’s worth pointing out that the holocaust, the Great Leap Forward, both World Wars and a host of other catastrophically bad things were “truly historic.” History is not filled solely with sunshine and roses, and many a historic decision are known for being historically bad. I give you, for example, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s decisions at Little Bighorn.

But let’s take a look at Senator Reid’s comments in context. It’s been a pattern on the Left to level ad hominem attacks against opponents. More to the point, it’s often an attack that has little to do with the issue at hand. To illustrate what I mean, if Bill Clinton were debating on integrity and marital fidelity, what someone could consider a reasonable ad hominem argument would be something like talking about Monica Lewinski or asking about the definition of “is.” Neither would further the counter argument, whatever that may be, but at least the attack would have something to do with the topic at hand. Now, if, in the same debate someone indicated that Clinton’s argument was akin to supporting Nero’s persecution of the Christians, the correct response is “what has that to do with the price of tea in China?” It’s a meaningless argument that probably isn’t even true.

And so it goes with the Left’s debate style. They will frequently take a position that is in opposition to what the average Joe wants and rather than justifying or defending that position, they hurl charges against their opponents. Having Barack Obama for a President gives the Left a ready-made racism attack against anyone who opposes his policies – an attack that has been used on a few occasions. Since many of the Left’s positions are intended to give the appearance of benefiting racial, cultural, or morality-challenged minorities, opposition to those positions is couched as bigotry against and hatred of the specific minority in question (affirmative action, immigration, profiling Muslim terrorists, gay privileges, abortion, etc.). Opposition to those positions that don’t specifically advocate special treatment of some minority are either considered generally “intolerant,” based on “fanatical” or “superstitious” religious beliefs, or are compared with active support for some genocidal horror, or some combination. This is a tiresome, overused argument that is only effective because people are too lazy to attempt to understand what is being done. And the point of arguing ad hominem is to deflect attention away from the emptiness of the position the attacker is taking. If universal healthcare could be defended solely on its merits, Senator Reid would not have to compare its opponents with pro-slavery Democrats. He could argue the merits of the system and would be open to alternatives that don’t involve government bureaucrats making your healthcare decisions, requiring abortion coverage, covering people who do not pay into the system (such as illegal immigrants), or the eventual nationalization of an enormous private industry. But since any possible merits (covering a few who do not elect healthcare coverage) are heavily outweighed by costs in time, money, quality of care, and freedom, the merits themselves do not support the policy. Thus, arguing solely on the merits is doomed to failure.

It occurred to me this morning that Major Nidal Hasan, now charged with 13 counts of murder and 32 counts of attempted murder, is also guilty of what in Sharia law would be a capital crime: blasphemy. Now, before you say “But, Happy, shouting ‘God is Great!’ before killing a dozen innocent people isn’t blasphemy and you’re intolerant for saying it is,” I’m not talking about him shouting “Allahu Akbar!” Every Commissioned Officer in the US Armed Forces takes the same oath: “I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” That oath (or affirmation) is required on the accession of Officers into the military and usually repeated at promotion, which Major Hasan would have received three times. If then Second Lieutenant Hasan used “swear” and “so help me God” as is typical, his intentional violation of that oath while still wearing the uniform means that he used the name of God in vain, the definition of blasphemy.

Get your laws off my body.

This phrase is, of course, typically used when abortion restrictions are discussed. Often it is in the place of constructive debate on common sense restrictions that often parallel similar restrictions on most any activity. We’ll leave aside the completely valid – and absolutely, irrefutably true – argument that an unborn child is a separate and distinct body and that the laws cover it, not the body of the mother. We’ll also leave aside the argument that restraint and responsibility are far better ways to deal with sex before conception than killing the child after conception. While both are valid and true arguments, neither makes my point today.

First and foremost, abortion remains the one activity on which, in many states, no restrictions have been placed. Further, it remains the one activity that the Democratic Party not only refuses to restrict, but argues against even the slightest of restrictions (such as laws calling the murder of a pregnant woman a double homicide). There is no other activity of any sort – save, possibly, breathing, and then only if you don’t count the Clean Air Act – on which Democrats do not endorse some sort of legal restrictions.

Secondly, if the Left followed their own advice, we wouldn’t be talking about draconian restrictions on smoking in one’s own house (Montgomery County, Maryland, for example). We also wouldn’t hear about jurisdictions trying to ban sugary soda in schools, taxing “unhealthy food,” or requiring nutrition labeling on restaurants – where normal people go precisely for the purpose of eating unhealthily. The ObamaCare legislation wouldn’t be requiring people to buy health insurance or submit to government monitoring of their healthcare.

Don’t legislate morality.

This is another popular attitude of the Left, and is usually used to stop any argument against abortion, homosexuality, adultery, pornography, or any of a host of sexual sins that the Left supports, almost without fail. The logical problem here is simple: There exists not a single punitive law that does not enforce some person’s idea of a moral standard. Rephrasing to avoid double negatives: All laws “legislate morality.” And they are necessary to that end because humanity, left to its own devices, is a decidedly immoral species which, when left unfettered by laws and rules, will normally act in its own self-interest: survival first, then pleasure.

Take, for example, laws against murder. One might be tempted to argue that murder is a universally accepted moral wrong, but even this is provably false. Take Muslim terrorists, for example. To them, the murder of the infidel is not simply a moral good, but a moral imperative. Street gang members often take murder as a rite of passage or initiation. Mafiosi kill to advance their own ends, to protect their interests, or to exact revenge on rival gangs. And our entertainment industry lauds and praises these thugs. From the popularity of Mafia movies like the Godfather series and TV shows like the Sopranos, to the real-life support given murders like Mumia Abu Jamal and Stanley “Tookie” Williams, we have a glamorization of a thuggish lifestyle that sees murder as either amoral (neither good nor bad) or morally justified (a good, not a bad). So the so-called “universal” condemnation of murder as intrinsically evil does not exist. Thus, laws that forbid murder are the imposition of a certain code of morality on those who do not agree with that code.

Take another example: Environmental laws. Twenty years ago, no one except a select few whackos had the idea that owning a large, gas-guzzling vehicle was somehow “immoral.” Sure, it was expensive, and fuel efficiency was – and still is – a strong selling point for vehicles. But in the last 10-15 years, the Left has been on a crusade against SUVs, large trucks, and other similar vehicles. Stringent new gas mileage regulations, “greenhouse gas” restrictions, and the like have all been imposed on vehicles of all types. I’ll leave aside the fact that Liberals often don’t drive Toyota Priuses – judging by the number of Obama stickers I’ve seen on vehicles bigger than my full-sized pickup. Recently environmentalists have been citing a moral imperative as the justification for their positions, and using that moral imperative to exclude dissenting views.

Finally, we’ve also heard “moral imperative” used in conjunction with ObamaCare. It’s being called “immoral” that there are people who are without health insurance, and the only “moral” thing to do is to have the government make up the difference, and punish “immoral” insurance companies, and dictate what is to be covered, and use your tax money to insure some welfare recipient against pregnancy.

Diversity is strength.

This little slogan has gained some airplay in the last few weeks in the wake of Major Nidal Hasan’s attack on Fort Hood. Mainly it is used to divert attention from the obvious point that Major Hasan was acting on his extremist Islamist beliefs when he murdered 14 people (including an unborn baby). Leaving aside the most compelling and accurate argument, “No it isn’t,” it’s worth noting that the people who shout it the loudest believe it the least.

As I’ve said before, numerous times, the Left’s definition of Diversity leaves quite a bit to be desired. True, they want to establish cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity, but the diversity of thought is usually crushed. Even liberals understand that there is strength in unity. As such, diverse opinions on abortion, same-sex “marriage,” ObamaCare, gun control, or agreeing with a Republican president are normally not tolerated, especially among the Democratic party. While they claim to want a rainbow of color and creed, they want everyone in lock-step with their beliefs. Anyone who isn’t is “intolerant.”

Dissent is patriotic.

We heard this theme throughout the Bush administration. After George W. Bush narrowly defeated the political progeny of Democrat Golden Boy Bill Clinton – Al Gore – President Bush was persona non grata among the Leftist Elite, far more so than any previous Republican President, including Nixon. Winning in 2004 by a true majority in the popular vote, something that hadn’t happened since his father’s election in 1988, didn’t change the Left’s opinion, and everything President Bush did was wrong, and everything that happened naturally was directly attributable to President Bush’s actions (Hurricane Katrina, for example). The Left took a disrespectful attitude toward a sitting President, not simply disagreeing with him politically, but attacking him personally, often with rude, crass, inaccurate, or even threatening insults. All of this was couched as First-Amendment-protected “dissent” and such “dissent” was touted as one of the founding principles of this country.

Fast-forward to 2009. We are in the midst of a deep recession. There are still two wars going on. We’ve had a terrorist attack on American soil. And we have a President whose staff is made up of political extremists some of whom have been forced out of the administration because they weren’t “fully vetted.” Oh, and this President is both a Democrat and black. Now any dissent with the President’s agenda is proof of racism or evidence that a media outlet (Fox News) is “not a true news organization” or is the PR arm of the Republican Party. Insults of the President are still rude and disrespectful, and a number of people on the Right have insulted President Obama and, in my opinion, shouldn’t. Attacks on the effectiveness or necessity of his agenda, however, should be accepted by all sides. What’s good for the goose, and all that.

Government must not establish religion.

I will leave aside the argument that recognizing God in no way establishes a religion. Instead, I will focus on the religion the Left is attempting to establish. The Left is not simply being secularist. A secularist government simply doesn’t base itself on a religious belief. It does not ignore established moral teachings or the existence of God, particularly on days when God is being publicly recognized, as with the upcoming Christmas season.

What the Left wants is atheism. They want the government to be officially atheist – not recognizing or acknowledging God in any form. All forms of acknowledgment of God are seen as “establishment of Religion” and must be stamped out in order to preserve “freedom from offense.” I cite the example of the cross memorial in California. Years ago, a few veterans erected a cross in the California desert to recognize comrades in arms who had died in war. The cross was erected on what was then private land. The National Park Service took the land under eminent domain, and converted it into a park. A member of the professionally offended saw the cross and because seeing the cross offended him (he is an atheist) he sued to have it removed. Rather than give in, the owners of land adjoining the park offered (and the government accepted) to trade the land in a 5-for-1 deal that would have made the acre around the monument private. The plaintiff sued to stop the land transfer rather than accept that the cross would be allowed to stay up on private land. This sounds less like blocking establishment – what religion is being established as the official State religion by allowing a cross that had been erected privately to stand on public land? – and more like establishing a set of values that explicitly exclude Christian expression.

We must be protected from offense.

Leaving aside the argument that freedom from offense is not in the Constitution, such a statement makes no sense. If we were to be protected from all forms of offense, Conservatives would have a little more of a voice in the matter. Conservatives are offended at least twice as often as Liberals because not only are we offended by much of the Left’s agenda (abortion, pornography, same-sex “marriage”, adultery, affirmative action, high taxes, government spending, etc) we are also offended by the constant expressions of offense from the Left, particularly where the Left is offended by the existence of religion. The difference? We don’t cry about it in the news every day or sue to stop it. Freedom from offense extends only to those people favored by the Left and they are only “protected” from offense by views that do not fall into the Left’s dogma. Thus a black man who is offended by a white man using the word “niggardly” (which means “overly frugal” or “cheap” (as in a person who doesn’t spend enough for quality goods and services)) must be protected. But if a second black man is offended by the first black man’s ignorance and oversensitivity – particularly if the first man sued over the use of the word – the second man is derided as “not black enough” or “not the right kind of black.” In that instance the second man is violating the Leftist view that blacks are to be offended by anything that can even remotely be tied to racism.

The science is settled.

Leaving aside the argument that the science usually being considered “settled” – Darwinist evolution, genetic predisposition to homosexuality, and anthropogenic Global Warming – is not “settled” by any stretch of the imagination, the lack of scientific understanding on the Left is astounding. Aside from the reliance on soft sciences – sciences that, by nature, cannot be used to predict the behavior of a system because of their inherent subjectivity – like Psychology and sociology, when the science doesn’t follow their worldview, they are instantly ready to ignore it or denigrate it as necessary.

Take abortion for example. Even without the moral implications, the Left maintains that an unborn child is merely a collection of cells that can be removed from a woman as can an appendix or a gall bladder with few ill effects. These same people refuse to accept imagery produced by new sonograms that show clear, three-dimensional, real-time images of the unborn child. In fact, groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL actually campaigned against the machines that produce those images. Why? Because the science damages the credibility of the “lump of cells” argument.

Take gay privileges for example. For years it was understood and accepted that homosexuality was a symptom of mental illness. In fact, you could say the science was “settled.” But rather than, for example, allowing an exploration into the potential causes which might allow gays to cope with their deeper problems and perhaps escape the scourge of homosexuality, they call such pronouncements “intolerant” and “bigoted.” The same can be said of studies showing gays dying younger than straights, homosexuality being a major risk factor in AIDS, or tying more serious perversions – like pedophilia – to homosexuality.

Tax-exempt non-profits should be non-political.

This is usually said in a threatening way when a conservative church preaches correct moral teaching on abortion, homosexuality, and so forth. Usually there is a threat that the church has become “too political” and, thus, faces removal of its non-tax status. Leaving aside the argument that such policies directly violate the First Amendment, the Left doesn’t buy into them, anyway.

For example, we have anti-American Muslim Imams who preach killing the infidel, such as the Northern Virginia Imam followed by both Major Hasan and a couple of the 9/11 Hijackers. Any attempt to police what was being said or done in that mosque would be considered an infringement on the Imam’s constitutional rights.  In another example, we have “Christian” preachers like Jeremiah Wright who preach Black Liberation Theology, a brand of political thought disguised as religious philosophy that tends to denigrate both the United States in general and white people in particular. It is these churches that advocate affirmative action, reparations for slavery, and a general climate of distrust and hatred for whites. Again, attempts to police their behavior would be met with charges of violating the free exercise of religion. Finally you have the support the Left lends to political leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton both of whom have the word “Reverend” appended to their names, being duly ordained ministers. Both Jackson and Sharpton have run for President of the United States, and both candidates were supported by people who would turn the IRS against a Catholic Church that preaches against abortion.

We all know the story. You know, the one about how the Pilgrims sailed from England to the “New World,” landed on Plymouth Rock, set up a farming community, and, eventually, with the help of some friendly American Indians, had so successful a harvest that they had a huge feast to celebrate. We all heard it in grade school: the First Thanksgiving. Of course the Thanksgiving holiday wouldn’t be official in the US until President Lincoln declared in 1863 that we should celebrate it on the last Thursday in November. In 1941, President Roosevelt signed a law making it a Federal Holiday on the fourth Thursday of November.

How many of us even pay attention to the word “Thanksgiving?” How many of us realize that the day was set aside by both Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt to allow Americans to give thanks to God for what we have? How many of us actually do that every year, regardless of how difficult the previous year has been?

This year, rather than giving thanks for what I, specifically, have, which hasn’t changed much since last year, I’d like to suggest some ideas for things you should probably be thankful for.

Everyone should be thankful that they are alive. Every day is a gift from God, and any life can end in any moment. Such was discovered by 14 people (including one unborn child) at Fort Hood a month ago.

Everyone in this country should be thankful to be here. Regardless of how bad it looks, regardless of whether you think the last or the current President have utterly botched their job in every conceivable way, the fact is that we live in the greatest country in the world, and anyone who thinks otherwise should prove it and tell me where it’s better.

Everyone who has a family should be thankful for them. Parents, children, siblings, in-laws, and extended family are all important to our lives. A great many people don’t have or have lost portions of their families. They who do have them should cherish them.

Everyone who has a job should be thankful for that job. And as unemployment climbs past 10%, the fewer and fewer who have them should be more and more thankful.

Thanksgiving should be a time of solemn and sincere gratitude for the things you have and the people around you. And the object of that gratitude should be God and none other.

We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing. – President Barack Obama on Fort Hood mass murderer Dr. (MAJ) Nidal Malik Hasan, USA, 7 November, 2009.

They are Americans of every race, faith, and station. They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers. They are descendents of immigrants and immigrants themselves. They reflect the diversity that makes this America. – ibid. on Major Hasan’s victims and the rest of the members of the Uniformed Services.

“We cannot fully know”!? With all due respect, Mr. President, are you really that big an idiot? When a man named Nidal Malik Hasan jumps up in a room full of soldiers, shouts “Allahu Akbar!” – “God is great” in Arabic – and fires 100 rounds of ammunition into the crowd, killing 13 and injuring about 30-40 others, I think we can know fully what drove him to do such a thing. And before the T & D crowd starts whining that I’m being unfair to Muslims or Islam, I’m not. I’m not saying being a Muslim makes you a terrorist. I’m saying being a Muslim who stands up in a crowded room, shouts “Allahu Akbar!” and empties three 30-round magazines makes you a terrorist. I don’t care what his cousins say.

I’ve written nothing on this topic yet for two reasons. One: I haven’t been around a computer enough to pound on the keyboard about it. Two: I wanted more than a name to go on before I started calling Major Hasan an Islamist terrorist. What I had not heard about until yesterday – and I will thank the Washington Examiner (www.washingtonexaminer.com), a free tabloid paper read by people on the subway, for handing it to me – was President Obama’s comments on the incident. 

First the facts. As everyone not in a cave knows, Major Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, apparently shot up a deployment readiness center at Fort Hood, Texas last Thursday. Twelve soldiers and a civilian died and some 30-odd were injured. The 10-minute rampage ended when local police Sergeant Kimberly Munley – herself wounded by Hasan – shot and wounded the terrorist. Hasan is alive and recovering in the hospital as he awaits his arrest and prosecution. As with any story of this nature, the details were sketchy at first, and the media quickly jumped to their own conclusions on what happened and why. MSNBC’s website stated unequivocally that Major Hasan’s motive was that he was upset at his impending deployment. That, of course, was before it came out that (a) Major Hasan is a life-long Muslim; (b) he attended a mosque in the Washington, DC area at the same time and with the same radical imam as two of the 9/11 hijackers; (c) the same radical cleric praised Hasan for his actions and said that Hasan was a model to all Muslims in the US military – i.e. Muslim soldiers should shoot up rooms full of non-Muslim soldiers – calling those who don’t “traitors to their religion”; (d) Hasan, during his schooling, and while in the military,  made presentations equating suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to save their comrades; and (e) Hasan had expressed concerns about fighting “his own people” (i.e. other Muslims) and was dismayed that President Obama hadn’t summarily pulled troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Let’s cut the garbage, here. This isn’t a Tolerance and Diversity issue. This is a Radical Islam issue. We have allowed a man who attended a mosque run by an insane cleric to pin on the rank of a field-grade officer in the US armed forces. That’s the functional equivalent to allowing a Soviet spy into an operational position in the CIA during the Cold War. When we allow the enemy into our national security apparatus, people die. And the people who follow the radical brands of Islam are – by their own words and deeds – our enemies. “Death to America!” The 1979 attack on our Embassy in Teheran. The dozen or so hijackings and bombings throughout the 80s. Mir Aimal Kasi. The bombings of our embassies in Africa. 9/11. Osama bin Laden. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. You get the picture.

That would be bad enough, as would the typical Leftist media response of jumping to the conclusion that Major Hasan’s Muslim background could have nothing to do with his terrorist act. But, two days after the attack, and with plenty of information available, including the fact that the perpetrator was still alive, President Obama goes and talks about how “We can never fully know” why Major Hasan did what he did. That sentence was better left out of that speech. Without it, it wouldn’t appear that President Obama – accused by his more irrational critics of being a closet radical Muslim – was trying to cover up Major Hasan’s motive. And to pile insult on top of injury, President Obama went on to preach about the diversity of the armed forces and the veterans thereof. In context (you can read the full text of the speech here), the diversity comment seemed to be the most important aspect of the military. “Our veterans are a very diverse group. And oh, by the way, they are also brave and patriotic.”

There is some good news on this story. Police Sergeant Munley has survived her wounds (so far). Major Hasan has also survived, and his condition is improving. I call this good news because he’ll live to stand trial. The trial should leave out any doubt as to his motive and the Left wing of the media will be forced to equate his crime to the Islamist terrorist act that it was. Once convicted, Major Hasan will be sentenced to death, I am sure. In addition to 13 counts of premeditated murder and who knows how many “attempts”, at least one of Major Hasan’s victims was a superior officer (one of the dead was a Lieutenant Colonel), and assaulting a superior commissioned officer is itself a potentially capital offense. 

If I were in charge, I’d be awarding Sergeant Munley with the highest military decoration a civilian can earn (which may be the Distinguished Service Cross, one step below the Medal of Honor, but I could be wrong) in addition to any medals she gets from the Police Force. I’d also pin a Purple Heart on the chest of every wounded soldier in that deployment center for wounds received in an engagement with the enemy – an award not without precedent: A few soldiers (including a recruiter) got them for injuries sustained in the Oklahoma City bombing, and several got them for injuries sustained in 9/11 if I recall correctly. Civilians would get the Defense of Freedom medal (the civilian equivalent of the Purple Heart). Furthermore, I would be taking a close look at security clearance and military eligibility questionnaires. Given what we know, I would say adding a line asking the question “Have you ever attended or belonged to a mosque presided over by an imam who preached violence against the United States? If yes, give details,” would be reasonable and prudent. I’d also make such mosques illegal for service members to attend. And if you think I’m being too hard on Muslims, go find me a priest, minister, or rabbi who has preached that committing mass murder of their comrades is an exemplary model for Christian or Jewish soldiers to follow. 

Because we practice freedom of religion in this country, I do not advocate barring Muslims from military service. However, because Radical Islam has made us its enemy, Radical Muslims ought not be allowed into positions where they can affect national security.

NY-23, as it’s being called anymore, basically encompasses the northern tip of the state. It includes the towns of Plattsburgh, Ogdensburg, Potsdam, Watertown, Oswego, Fulton, and Oneida. It’s current the largest of New York’s districts in land area, thus it is the most sparsely populated (All of NY’s districts having a 2000 population of around 654,360). As with most small-town/rural communities, the population generally trends conservative, but according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, it only rates an R+1 (meaning that it voted 1% more Republican than the national average in the last 2 Presidential Elections.) By comparison, the mainly conservative Virginia 1^st District – my home district – is an R+7 and ultra-conservative or ultra-liberal districts have a rating of R or D +20 or more.

So we come to this year’s special election, brought on because President Obama appointed the former Representative, John McHugh (R, NY) to be Secretary of the Army. Because of New York Election Law, the major parties both nominated their candidates by committee, rather than a primary. Dede Scozzafava (R) and Bill Owens (D) were nominated in July and began their campaign.  Doug Hoffman, who had lost the Republican nomination, received the nod from the New York Conservative Party about a month later. In initial polls, Scozzafava had a fair lead over the other two candidates taking between 30 and 35% in three September polls. By Mid-October the polls had swung in favor of Owens primarily because Scozzafava became “indistinguishable” from her Democrat opponent. Scozzafava’s positions on abortion, gay privileges, union card-check, the stimulus, taxes, healthcare, and a host of other issues more resembled President Obama’s positions rather than those of her own party. Senior Republicans, including former Alaska Governor and VP candidate Sarah Palin supported Hoffman, the conservative, in favor of Scozzafava, the very liberal Republican. Scozzafava was supported by, among others, the founder of the Daily Kos, the well known leftist blog website.

After endorsements of Hoffman by major Republican figures, Hoffman’s poll numbers took off and Scozzafava’s plummeted. Hoffman and Owens traded leads in the polls throughout October and Scozzafava’s support continued to wane. Finally, on October 31, 4 days before the election, Republican Scozzafava left the race and supported Democrat Owens, in a final stab at the conservative candidate’s back. On the day of the election, Doug Hoffman, a man who had entered the race a month late, lacked the major-party resources of the other candidates, initially even lacked the major party backing, and was on a three-person ballot as the third party still garnered 45.3% of the vote, losing the election by a mere 3.9%. More to the point, Dede Scozzafava, whose name and party were still on the ballot, took 5.5% of the vote, which, most likely, would have gone to Hoffman, and which, if it had, would have put Hoffman over the top, as Owens won only a plurality of votes, not a majority (49.2%).

The Left has been playing this up as (A) a fracturing of the Republican Party, (B) a Republican defeat because they supported the conservative over the “moderate,” and (C) a sign that the conservatives in the Republican Party won’t accept moderates, and will continue to lose elections as a result. As with most Left-wing analyses, this one is both wrong and obviously a politically motivated spin tactic. How is it wrong, you might ask? Well, I’ll tell you.

First off, rather than showing a fracturing of the Republican party, it’s showing a unity of the people that make up the GOP behind the conservative candidate, not just one with an (R) after her name. The party leadership realized that late and threw their support behind the candidate the people favored. With luck, this will indicate to the party leadership that we, the voters, are tired of Republicans who are difficult to distinguish from Democrats. Here’s a hint, if the Daily Kos, the New York Times, or the Washington Post support a Republican candidate, don’t nominate them.

Secondly, the Republicans did not lose the race because they backed a conservative candidate, they lost the race because they initially nominated a liberal one. Had Hoffman been nominated over Scozzafava, this would never have happened, and either Hoffman would have won the two-man race or, if Scozzafava had run as a third-party, she would have sucked votes off of Owens, not Hoffman, because her views were the same as Owens’s.

Thirdly, the analysis relies on Scozzafava being a moderate. Scozzafava leans left both socially and fiscally. She supports abortion, same-sex “marriage”, union card-check, and the Obama stimulus packages, and has been ambiguous on cap-and-trade. About the only truly conservative position I’ve heard of her taking is being against gun-control, hardly surprising in a mainly rural district. Even Democrats know you don’t win elections being anti-gun in hunter territory.

Fourth is the idea that eschewing what the New York Times calls “moderate” Republicans costs the GOP races. That is simply false. George W. Bush won the Presidency twice because he was a social conservative and wanted to cut taxes. Ronald Reagan won the Presidency twice because he was a social conservative and wanted to cut taxes. George H.W. Bush lost the Presidency because he raised taxes and was too easily swayed by the Democrat congress. Bob Dole and John McCain lost their bids for the Presidency because they were too liberal, not because they were too conservative.

Finally, the analysis ignores the other races around the country. It ignores the fact that executive candidates considered “Taliban-esque” conservatives by some media types won 15-18% landslides in Virginia. It ignores the fact that the Republican candidate won in New Jersey, a usual Democrat stronghold. And it ignores the fact that the people of Maine, the home of Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, voted against same-sex “Marriage” thus proving once again that given the choice, The People will vote against redefining marriage.

The Republican Party should take two things away from Tuesday’s results. 1. They are not invulnerable and nominating RINOs will not work as well as nominating true conservatives. 2. This is an opportunity not to be wasted. Stir up the Conservative base of the party and 2010 will see a major power shift.

President Obama and his allies in Congress are free to ignore the true message the election in New York – and elsewhere – sends: The Left’s platform is losing favor. But they do so at their own peril.

I live in Virginia, so I’m most familiar with the recent campaigns for Governor, Lt. Gov., and Attorney General in the Commonwealth. If you have lived in a vacuum for the last few hours, it’s possible you do not know that Bob McDonnell (R) defeated Creigh Deeds (D) in the bid for Richmond. What you may not know is that McDonnell won by nearly 250,000 votes or roughly 18% (59-41%). Furthermore, McDonnell’s running mates incumbent Lt. Governor Bill Bolling and Attorney General Elect Ken Cuccinelli (both R) also won by similar (if slightly closer) margins. This election gives us the unusual, though not unprecedented circumstance of having the entire Virginia Executive branch all one party.

I’m not going to be one of those who harp on this being an indictment of President Barack Obama’s policies in particular, though there is some truth to that thought. Instead, I’m going to go with the theme that this is an indictment of the Democratic Party in general, and the results in New Jersey, Maine, and, yes, even New York tend to bear that out.

Right now, in most jurisdictions the Democrats cannot win on the issues. Barack Obama did not win the Presidency because of the issues. He won because the incumbent President was unpopular, because his opponent was weak, because the media played up his charisma and celebrity as much as was physically possible, and because he is black. I’ve said it before – and I’m not the only one – a white man with the same credentials as Senator Obama would never have made it past the Iowa caucuses, and even in the unlikely, but not altogether impossible event that he made it to the general election, he would have lost like Walter Mondale.

Perhaps the worst thing that could have happened to Virginia Democrats was the election of Jim Webb over incumbent Senator George Allen, Jr. 3 years ago. Webb, at a time when the Republican Party was on a down cycle, campaigned primarily on allegations of racism and sexism against Allen. Webb won the election and, so, two of the three Democrats tried the same tactic in this year’s election.

Deeds pulled out McDonnell’s Master’s thesis that apparently said that McDonnell believed women in the workplace was a bad idea. The one issue Deeds used was abortion, showing that McDonnell is a strong anti-abortion believer. So Deeds was calling McDonnell a misogynist. 

Cuccinelli’s opponent, Steve Shannon, called Cuccinelli a “bigot” in his ads, and quoted some newspapers stating that Cuccinelli would discriminate against people who didn’t share Cuccinelli’s view of morality. So Shannon was probably calling Cuccinelli a homophobe. Of course, no evidence was ever proffered to support this slur, but it was out there.

And that brings me to my next point. We heard last week about the football player who was suspended by his team for using “gay slurs” in some “Twitter” posts (never mind that the stories that repeated the slurs had to explain what they meant because no one else ever uses them). Of course people are accused in the media of using racial slurs all the time, as well. So I have a proposal. I realize this isn’t going to get any traction because no one actually reads this stuff, but I’ll throw it out there in case Ann Coulter or Mike Adams are bored one day. So here it goes:

Goodness and Decency win again in the battle against the redefinition of marriage. The news, yesterday was that polls generally showed that the people of Maine favored letting a man “marry” a man. This morning, gays everywhere were surprised (again), dismayed (again), and whining (again) that their goal of wrecking the institution of marriage by redefining it out of existence failed yet again. Gay marriage has failed every time it has come up for a vote from the people. Most importantly it fails in votes by the people in places like the People’s Republic of California, and the home state of Olympia Snowe, neither of which are conservative strongholds. In California it didn’t just fail, it didn’t just fail twice, and it didn’t just fail in a constitutional amendment, it was affirmatively voted against. It wasn’t laws allowing same-sex “marriage” that failed referenda (as was the case in Maine), it was laws disallowing same-sex “marriage” that passed.

The people don’t want same-sex “marriage.” Every time they’ve spoken, they’ve repeated that statement. It is only in states where the people have not been allowed to speak where it exists, and in most of those it was imposed by unelected courts, not even legislators.

Supporters of same-sex “marriage” say it is “inevitable.” It is not. Not as long as people continue to understand the consequences of moral relativism and fight these plans to remake society in the image of depraved minds.

I admit to having a prejudice in this case. In fact, it may even rise to the level of bigotry. I loathe sports owners. On the surface, that sounds like an odd thing coming from a solid conservative, but it’s not a case of simply being against management and pro labor. My prejudice also extends to the players’ unions and their bosses. Sports owners have a deserved reputation for being everything the Left hates about business executives. They are usually greedy, anything-for-a-buck, exploit-the-labor-and-the-customer businessmen when it comes to their teams, even if it doesn’t reflect in their other business dealings. Interestingly, many of these businessmen either have traditionally left-wing sources of income (media conglomerates (Former Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner, the Tribune Company, etc.) , trial lawyers (Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos), etc) or support left-wing causes (The owner of the Atlanta Falcons, Arthur Blank, is a big supporter of Planned Parenthood).

Team owners often get a pass from city leadership because of the revenues sports teams bring to cities and their popularity among local voters. Cities will often fund the building of stadiums and arenas to keep teams around, and owners have been known to extort concessions from cities under threat of moving to another area. Some, including the late Robert Irsay, owner of the Baltimore/Indianapolis Colts get the concessions and move anyway (in Irsay’s case, in the middle of the night without even getting approval from the league). Others know that their best chance for revenues is in their current market, but they dress up the team in a big, modern stadium; market it like it’s going out of style; and put a poor product on the field. 

Among the worst of the lot is Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder. Snyder has not – and likely will not, knowing he will be lynched if he does – threatened to move the Redskins out of the DC area. Having said that, Snyder has done some things recently that have been almost as bad. The national sports media has focused on Snyder’s total mismanagement of the team on the field. He is infamous for spending many times market value for sub-par or past-their-prime big-name players. Yes, there have been some rare gems like the late Sean Taylor, LaRon Landry, Chris Horton, London Fletcher, Chris Cooley, and, maybe, Brian Orakpo, but the majority of the players Snyder has signed have been faded stars or anonymous players used to fill anonymous positions (Kicker, Punter, Offensive Line, etc.). His utter neglect of the Offensive Line has been the direct cause of the team’s sometimes mediocre, sometimes putrid performance on the field. But all of that is what the national fan knows.

What local fans in the DC area see is even worse. Aside from wrecking what had once been a premier NFL franchise, Dan Snyder has gone out of his way to alienate Redskin fans. To make a few extra ticket-sale dollars, he has sold tickets to brokers (who pay a premium). Those brokers, in turn, sell the tickets to visiting team fans (rather than people sitting on the legendary Redskins Waiting List) and the result is a home stadium half full with hostile fans. Season-ticket holders who have been unable (or unwilling) to renew because the prices are too high ($175 per ticket per game in the lower bowl) have been sued for breaching their 5-year commitment (cell phone companies just make you pay for the phone). And now his team is playing as poorly as they ever have, and he’s losing customers by the truckload. Is that the sort of company that Rush Limbaugh would like to join?

I am a fan of the Washington Redskins. I have been for almost 30 years. But rooting for Dan Snyder’s Redskins is analogous to living in Barack Obama’s America. My like of my team, like my love of my country, doesn’t diminish just because an idiot is in charge. I can only await the day when there will be a change at the top.

I did a little internet search this morning in an attempt to prove a point. And I succeeded. I searched the name James Pouillon to see if any new information had come out on his story. Pouillon, if you don’t recall, was the anti-abortion activist who was killed a few weeks ago with little media fanfare. I posted my rant on the topic on this blog on 17 September. In the search I did, you had to go four pages deep to find anything more recent than that. What I did notice this time – and missed last time because I didn’t search on his name – was that his son, James M., apparently has been quoted as saying that the elder Pouillon “didn’t care about abortion” but was just a misogynist who “wanted to scream at women.” Of course, this allegation got a fair amount of play in smaller (probably fringe Left) publications and made up about a fifth of my search results.  Interestingly such stories didn’t seem to be in the big media, so one has to wonder how much credibility it has.

Ad hominem attacks – which means, roughly, an attack “against the man” – are common in political discourse. The purpose of attacking the character of an opponent is to deflect his argument without responding to it. It’s an effective political tactic because the masses believe that if the messenger is bad, the message doesn’t matter. President Bush was a target in numerous ad hominem relating to his intelligence – often “proved” by his Texas accent and mispronunciation or misusage of words, or his ties to big oil, or simply calling him (and everyone else in his administration) Nazis. President Obama is no different in that regard. Many on the right have thrown ad hominem attacks at him in (generally futile) attempts to derail his credibility. The biggest problem with attacking the character of either of our last two presidents is that there is enough there for opponents to bring them down on policy alone while leaving character out of it. So in this piece I will refute some of the character attacks on Barack Obama so that the five of you who read it can focus on what he is doing rather than who he is, or isn’t.

Barack Obama is not the antichrist. Stripping away the theological discussions about what the antichrist is or isn't, I don’t believe that Barack Obama is the antichrist. He is not the putative embodiment of evil on earth. He is not Satan, Lucifer, the Devil, the Enemy, or whatever you (personally) call the Supreme Ruler of Hell. There are e-mails going around that indicate that the book of Revelation indicates that Obama is the antichrist, but no such passage (or anything describing the antichrist) exists. (And if you think it does, show me the chapter and verses.) He may follow a preacher who preaches a strange theology (“Black Liberation Theology”); he may denigrate true Christian beliefs on abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, and the like; he may even be as corrupt as Rod Blagoyevich or Bill Clinton (that last is simply a possibility, not an accusation) but he’s not the antichrist.

Barack Obama is not Adolph Hitler, nor is he a Nazi. Yes, his rise to power is based primarily on his celebrity. Yes, his policies indicate that he favors nationalizing the economy. Yes, some of the statements he has made, the people he has associated with, and the people he has hired – even as President – can lead a reasonable person to believe he harbors some racial animosity. But this does not indicate that he intends to actually carry out the systematic extermination of the white race, nor does it prove that he intends to rule the US as a brutal dictatorship and use its might to spread his evil across the world in a search for lebensraum. He has actually tried not to let his racial animosity be his guiding principle, despite letting it slip from time to time (the Cambridge police acted “stupidly”, for example). Recall that Hitler spent much of his time blaming the Jews for Germany’s problems. He was very public about his anti-Semitism, and fed on the general anti-Semitic feelings within Germany at the time, much as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does today. Barack Obama does not do that himself. Yes, he lets his supporters call his opponents racists for opposing him, but he doesn’t give them credibility by acknowledging them.

Barack Obama is not a radical Muslim. I read the refutation of this one in Snopes, but it primarily dealt with things Obama has said about himself. I rarely let one’s own words prove or deny something about them. If Charles Manson said “I’m not a murderer” would that be enough to cast even the slightest amount of doubt in your mind? Having said that, however, there has been little indication that Barack Obama follows wahhabist Islam, as he has been accused. If favoring the Palestinian Authority over Israel is an indication of radical Islam, then just about every Democrat – even a lot of “Jews” – is actually a radical Muslim. Besides that, a radical Muslim would not spend his Sundays in a United Church of Christ church listening to a radical Black Liberation Theology preacher for 20 years. He may have had some Muslim upbringing. His father – who abandoned him – may have been a Muslim. He may have attended elementary school in Indonesia, a major Muslim country. But that doesn’t equate him to Osama bin Laden any more than it makes me, a Catholic, a member of Sinn Fein.

Barack Obama is not occupying the White House in violation of the Constitution. Sure, his policies may violate both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution’s goal of limited Federal government, but so far as any evidence exists, he, himself, is eligible to be President of the United States. There is independent evidence (in the form of newspapers and the like) that show that Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. was born in Hawai’i. Last I checked, Hawai’i is in the United States. Even in the unlikely, but I suppose not altogether impossible, event that there is some merit to the story, proving it is nigh impossible. Until and unless they start fingerprinting every infant at birth to include with the birth certificate – a process that would only help a situation like this as early as 2044 if they started right now – proving that a copy of a US birth certificate is a fake would be difficult at best. Of all the constitutional problems Barack Obama stands to cause in his administration, whether or not he was born in the US is the least of my worries.

Barack Obama does not think there are 58 states. I’ve never played this one up much because it’s so worthless a criticism. This stems from a comment he made on the campaign trail where he said he had been to at least 57 states at one point during the campaign. Ladies and Gentlemen, it was a joke! Maybe it wasn’t all that funny, but it was a joke! It’s like when you tell your coworkers that you were stuck in traffic for a week (a frequent comment where I live). You weren’t, you know you weren’t, your audience knows you weren’t, people who don’t like you know you don’t think you were. He was simply making a point as to how much traveling he’d done recently. I’d have probably made the same joke in his position because a lot of my humor is based on hyperbole.

These and other attacks against Barack Obama’s character only divert attention from his policies, which should be the point of the argument. He has done enough wrong – stimulus packages, Obamacare, the Henry Gates incident, Sonya Sotomayor, etc. – for conservatives to oppose him on ideological grounds. Ad hominem attacks are a waste of time.

Vick was charged with violating 18 USC §371, Conspiracy to commit an offence. The specific offense was traveling in interstate commerce to aid in unlawful activities and to sponsor a dog in an animal fighting venture. The charge stemmed from six years of operating “Bad Newz Kennels,” an illegal interstate dog-fighting ring. While not part of the charges, Vick was accused of killing dogs – often brutally, stealing pet dogs to train the fighting dogs (usually killing the pets), and illegal gambling. In the end, Vick got two years in federal prison and 3 years of post-incarceration supervision. Some said the sentence was fair – a sentiment with which I tend to agree. Others, particularly on the hard Left, said it was too light, and that he should have been punished more severely. I don’t recall anyone really saying the sentence was too harsh – I could be mistaken, though. Since then, Vick was released from prison, having served his sentence, and will be eligible to work at his chosen profession on Sunday.

Burress was charged with criminal possession of a handgun in New York City. The charge stemmed from an incident a year ago when he brought the gun into a night club and, when he took it out of his waistband, the gun fired, grazing Burress in the leg. No one else was injured and Burress was immediately taken to the hospital. It was revealed later that he had had a permit for concealed carry from Florida, which permit expired a few months before the incident. He plead guilty to possession of a handgun, and was sentenced to two years in prison.

What we have here are two widely disparate crimes with a very similar punishment. Vick’s crime was willfully participating in an illegal activity over a number of years. Burress’s crime was carrying a gun in New York City. Vick used his wealth to maintain a dog fighting ring, treated the dogs brutally, and lied about it to authorities, the media, and the NFL’s commissioner. Burress carried a gun in New York City. Vick is alleged to have stolen other people’s animals and used them for training bait. Burress carried a gun in New York City. Vick is alleged to have gambled on the fights and possibly have evaded paying taxes on the winnings. Burress carried a gun in New York City. Both got the same sentence.

My problem with this whole story is this. Michael Vick did something that is patently illegal, never mind disturbing to people with reasonable sensibilities, and got a reasonable sentence for it. Burress did something that is supposed to be legal (bearing arms) under the US Constitution, did something stupid – not bad, not wrong, not reckless, just stupid – with it, luckily did not hurt anyone else, and got precisely the same sentence. I in no way say that Vick’s punishment should have been less, nor do I generally feel it should have been significantly more. I do believe that, particularly given the recent Supreme Court ruling on guns in Washington, DC, Burress’s case could, and possibly should, be a test case for curbing unconstitutional gun control laws. I don’t believe what Burress did was necessarily right or necessarily smart. But it should have been legal, and in any case the punishment does not fit the crime.