Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
Look For The Union Label Topic: Out of Flyover Land
Well there are ALL KINDS of Firsts this year
It seems that Gov Palin or maybe I should call her Sister Palin since I am a member in good standing of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
is
A UNION MEMBER
The first unless I am mistaken to ever be even nominated to this high an office instead of someone from the Bosses
So I rewrote the International Ladies Garment Workers Rally Song in her honor
Boy I would like to get it on youtube LOL
Look for the Union Label When you go to Vote this Year
If you look for the Union Label Then your choice is very clear
Palin's been working real hard Raising 5 kids just like you
So look for the Union Label Vote what's right for the USA
Charity Begins At Home? Topic: Out of Flyover Land
Update: I notice a considerable amount of traffic to this post from Romania,Bucharest, Bucuresti, Craiova, Dolj, Constanta, Curtea De Arges, Valcea, Iasi, Plopeni, Prahova, Resita, Caras-Severin, Alba Iulia, Alba and Cluj
Welcome and Please Leave a Comment? Bun venit ?i A face pe plac la Plecare un Virgul??
The New York Times — which is still capable of being a pretty good newspaper — reports:
John Edwards ended 2004 with a problem: how to keep alive his public profile without the benefit of a presidential campaign that could finance his travels and pay for his political staff.
Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million, came up with a novel solution, creating a nonprofit organization with the stated mission of fighting poverty. The organization, the Center for Promise and Opportunity, raised $1.3 million in 2005, and — unlike a sister charity he created to raise scholarship money for poor students
— the main beneficiary of the center’s fund-raising was Mr. Edwards himself, tax filings show.
A spokesman for Mr. Edwards defended the center yesterday as a legitimate tool against poverty.
The organization became a big part of a shadow political apparatus for Mr. Edwards after his defeat as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004 and before the start of his presidential bid this time around.\
Its officers were members of his political staff, and it helped pay for his nearly constant travel, including to early primary states.
While Mr. Edwards said the organization’s purpose was “making the eradication of poverty the cause of this generation,” its federal filings say it financed “retreats and seminars” with foreign policy experts on Iraq and national security issues. Unlike the scholarship charity, donations to it were not tax deductible, and, significantly, it did not have to disclose its donors — as political action committees and other political fund-raising vehicles do — and there were no limits on the size of individual donations.
So John Edwards has created a Non Profit Org to fight Poverty and Create Jobs for---
Himself and his Staff?
I can just picture him feeding of the generosity of folks who think they are actually helping the poor with their donations.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION NEO-BOLSHEVIK Topic: Out of Flyover Land
Darn and I was JUST getting used to Neo-Con. EURASIA INSIGHT
ARCH-CONSERVATIVE PUNDITS IN RUSSIA CHARACTERIZE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AS "NEO-Bolshevik" Igor Torbakov 9/28/05
Editor's Note: Updated to clarify State Department official's comments on the Active Response Corp.
As Moscow and Washington wrestle for influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus, some of the more conservative political analysts in Russia have generated controversy by citing parallels in the methods and geopolitical goals of the Bush administration and none other than Lenin’s Bolsheviks.
The consensus view in Moscow remains that the Bush administration is the ideological force behind the so-called "color-revolution" phenomenon, in which popular protests led to regime change in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Washington has adamantly denied direct involvement in the revolutionary events, and US officials’ democratization rhetoric has noticeably cooled since the Andijan massacre rocked Uzbekistan in May. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Even so, many Russian policy-makers suspect that Washington is biding its time before trying to foment regime-change elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Attention is currently focused on Azerbaijan, which will hold parliamentary elections on November 6. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Arch-conservative Moscow pundits perceive the Bush administration as guided by an idealistic notion of leading a global democratic revolution. Such aggressive idealism reminds the analysts of the Bolsheviks, who, shortly after staging their coup in 1917, vigorously pursued their fantasy of engineering a global communist revolution. Though polar opposites ideologically, the Bush administration and the Bolsheviks seem to share a zealously held belief in the righteousness of their cause, the Moscow analysts contend.
"The leader of the biggest world power [Bush] has actually turned himself into a champion of the world revolution," political scientist Boris Mezhuyev wrote in a commentary posted recently on the APN.ru website
So Bush is the Champion of Democratization of the Newly emerging Nations who have thrown off the shackles of oppression? Cool, it will be a challenge to paint him with this brush and then defame him. But the supporters of Fascistic Regimes are experts at Double-Think. Most of it by omission.
Notice how Uzbekistan is mentioned? "the Andijan massacre rocked Uzbekistan in May", Now in IRAN they gun demonstrators done regularly, sometimes they even drag the bodies behind jeeps around the City Streets, but you don't find much mention of those outrages outside the Free Iran networks.
This was a strange article to read. I had gotten used to being called Neo-Con and Neo-Fascist but Neo-Bolshevik? That's going to be a stretch. ;-) After thought This is to a great extent consistent with the Past.
Taliban gone, GOOD Bush did it, BAD. Saddam gone, GOOD Bush did it, BAD.
There is another consideration, in some circles Democracy is an ideal that should be practiced in "moderation". There were EU political figures that thought the EU Constitution to be "too important" to leave to a referendum. The masses need to be led by an intellectual elite you see?
What if Europeans started getting the idea that they should be voting on more things, instead of leaving decisions up to the bureaucracy and the intelligentsia? Not GOOD!
But the one thing that strikes me is that maybe someone should point out that Lenin did not INVENT Revolutionary movements? We here in America had a History of such things going back to Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Franklin and Washington to name a few, who did not invent the concept either.
But I guess Neo-Jeffersonian does not have the same Ring as Neo-Bolshevik? ;-)
The Wonderful World Wide Web Topic: Out of Flyover Land
Just recently Tarek Heggy, a man for whom I have the deepest admiration and who I consider one of the Great Minds of our Age posted an Article in Winds of Change
Tarek Heggy: Announcement & Archives by Tarek Heggy at October 9, 2005 03:49 AM I have thoroughly enjoyed writing to this wonderful site "WINDS-OF-CHANGE". However, I will not be posting much during the current academic year, as which I will be (most of the time) on the move.
I have already started by my visit to Erasmus university in the Netherlands where I lectured (on September 24th) at the 1995-2005 MBA & Ph.D Alumni reunion at The Rotterdam School of Management. Next week, I will be in Austria to lecture at The Hayek Institute and Vienna university. After Austria I have a full program that includes 16 lectures at the universities that I have been lecturing at for many years (Princeton, California-Berkely, Columbia, Oxford and King's College of London university). Furthermore, I will be participating in numerous conferences. For instance, on November 17th I will arrive to Jacksonville/Florida on an invitation from the USA former secretary of defense William Cohen to participate in the world future leaders project of The Cohen Group. WINDS-OF-CHANGE readers who might be interested to follow-up with my past archive of writings etc. should go to:
1. http://www.heggy.org posts 250 of my essays in English, French, Arabic, Hebrew & Russian). It also has
my personal CV “Tarek Heggy is one of the most creative and prolific writers in the Arab world. His writings probe the political and social limits and present a refreshing message of self-reliance that challenges the prevailing sense that regional ills are largely made abroad”.
(Professor Shibley Telhami, Head of Al-Sadat Chair, Maryland University , USA).
You will be missed, but I have had your website bookmarked for sometime and will have to be content with perusing the archives.
So one might understand how I felt when I received this email
Dear Dan,
I am sincerely thankful to you for your nice words.
If you want me to provide you with all my future writings, personally, grateful you e-mail to me the address to which I should send my new material.
With my best wishes,
Tarek Heggy
Me the Grandson of a Western Kentucky Sharecropper and the Son of a man who was a 50 cent a day field hand before he joined the Navy.
Only in America and only on the World Wide Web could such a thing happen.
I am in awe of the internet. I have access to the Greatest minds of the Ages at my very fingertips, typing on my keyboard and SOME of them who are alive today even read what I write and write back to ME!
How COOL it that? So again one might NOT be surprised at my reaction to the same Organization that brought us.
Rwanda, The Food For Oil Scandal, the Pedophile Rings in the Congo,
deciding that IT should gain control of this Bastion of Freedom of Information, Freedom of Thought , Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Communication.
Given what I am doing, I am barely off line these days (except when I sleep, and even then my dreams are sometimes wired), so I have been feeling on "en vacance" this weekend in the Santa Ynez Valley, only able to get online in spare moments when I can slip off to the WiFi at the Roasted Bean in beautiful downtown Santa Ynez (two blocks).
But.. cooled down or not... steam came out of my ears this morning when I read (via Glenn) The World Wide Web (of Bureaucrats) in the WSJ. My only quarrel with this excellent and important (to all of us, especially) oped, which opposes proposed United Nations control of the Internet, is that it is understated. "Bureaucrats"? How about "Criminals" - because that is just what many of them are! Can you imagine the conglomeration of vicious corrupt slime who gave us Oil-for-Food governing the Internet? We might as well turn in our laptops. It would be over. I couldn't agree more with the oped's conclusion:
Now it appears some of the prime movers are China and Iran.
While WSIS conferees have agreed to retain language enshrining free speech (despite the disapproval of countries that clearly oppose it) this is not a battle we've comfortably won. Some of the countries clamoring for regulation under the auspices of the U.N.--such as China and Iran--are among the most egregious violators of human rights.
Egregious violators of human rights = running demonstrators down with tanks or shooting them down in the street and dragging their bodies behind jeeps through the City to terrorize the populace.
I say NO. I say we do NOT turn over control of something so vital to the Freedom and Liberty of the World to those who would make decisions on OUR Liberties by means of Powerbroker Deals between Beijing, Brussels and the Persian Gulf.
The Lemming Left Topic: Out of Flyover Land
The Democratic Party seems to be bound and determined to run off the edge of a cliff.
Howard Dean, Moveon.org and other assorted irrational Bush haters, rather than trying to avoid this,seem to be petulantly complaining they are not stampeding fast enough.
Over in Captain's Quarters today there was a post titled, Extremism Will Not Win Elections, it stirred up some thoughts I have been mulling over for some time.
Captain Ed said,"Two leading Democratic analysts conclude that the Howard Dean approach to national politics will prove damaging to Democrats over the long term, and that a return to centrism provides the only realistic way for the opposition to compete for power. The two former Clinton aides claim that celebrating the base may mean more funding, but it alienates the mass numbers from the center needed to defeat Republicans:"
I find myself in agreement here, no matter how pleasant the catharsis is when a Democratic Party Flack, "Gives it to Bush and the Republicans" the manner in which it is being done has been as effective, in my opinion as Br'er Rabbits blows on the Tar Baby. ;-)
"In other words, the DNC picked the worst possible national figure for its chair that they possibly could select. The creation of Mad How and his International ANSWER minions as the Democratic Poster Boy may go down as one of the most inept blunders made by a major party. His vile smears and reckless rhetoric repels the very segment the Democrats sorely need to return to power, and every day he has the DNC as his pulpit, he makes it that much harder for Democrats to win elections.
This report did not make the front page of the Post. One wonders if the DNC will ever bother to read it."
One wonders if the Democratic Party even bothered to read a Poll THEY themselves had done which indicates that while the endless hysterical mudslinging HAS affected the President's approval rating, it has had even MORE effect on the Democratic PARTY'S approval rating! ;-)
A poll on the political mood in the United States conducted by the Democratic Party has alarmed the party at its own loss of popularity. Conducted by the party-affiliated Democracy Corps, the poll indicated 43 percent of voters favored the Republican Party, while 38 percent had positive feelings about Democrats. "Republicans weakened in this poll ... but it shows Democrats weakening more," said Stanley Greenberg, who served as President Clinton's pollster. Greenberg told the Christian Science Monitor he attributes the slippage to voters' perceptions that Democrats have "no core set of convictions or point of view." Fellow strategist James Carville said the war in Iraq and rising fuel prices are affecting party loyalty as well. "The country is just in a foul mood," Carville said. He noted within the same poll, 56 percent of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction. The poll was conducted June 20-26 and queried 1,078 likely voters. The margin of error was pegged at 3 point
Sometimes I hear talk about how the Country has moved to the right and I wonder , has it really?
Or has the Democratic Party just gone off the Left Deep End so far they had no place to go but to the Republican Party?
Third Party runs recently have only elected someone the splinter group LEAST wanted to win.
My dream is that the Democrats go so far to the Left they cease to be a viable political alternative,
At which time the internal tensions of the Republican Tent may cause a split and the formation of a viable Centralist Libertarian based Party.
In some manner replicating the split that created the present Democratic and Republican Parties when the Whigs fell into the black hole of History.
One of the commenter's on CQ had some valid thoughts
scott Perhaps ideally, the country could support three parties; a Left party, a Religious Conservative party, and a Centrist Moderate party. Everything seems to break down into those groups. Unfortunately, our political system is not really workable with more than two parties, which is why, I think, our parties periodically lurch from liberal to conservative while trying to grab hold of the centrist voter."
That is the way I see it too. Third Parties tend to be nonviable except in the Short Term, they can prevent a major Party from achieving it's goals but ONLY by drawing voters away from the Party that is CLOSEST to them in philosophy. Which can result in frustrating outcomes. Nadirites elect Bush and Perot followers elect Clinton.
But what is ALSO true is that Political Parties are not always forever.
This Website has a concise picture of the Political History of our Republic.
Let me give here a quick and sloppy synopsis as I see it.
First came Republican versus Federalist Parties
Then the Federalist Party faded from view while,
Economic growth and rapid territorial expansion caused the Republican faction to change from Jefferson's agrarian ideal. Many Republicans began to adhere to Federalist principles. By 1828, the Republican faction had split into two, fully formed political parties.
They're baaack!
Then we had:
"The Democratic Republican Party, led by Andrew Jackson, was formed. Supporters favored a limited national government and were opposed to an economic aristocracy. Eventually, this party changed its name to the Democratic Party, which is now the oldest political party in the United States."
And
The National Republican Party, led by John Quincy Adams, was formed. Supporters favored strong economic nationalism, much like the former Federalists.
Who faded and morphed into:
As the National Republican Party dissolved, the Whig Party emerged. Led by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, the Whigs supported an expanded national government, increased commercial development, and cautious westward expansion
Notice how Centralized Big Government Politics keeps rearing it's ugly head despite repeated defeats?
In time the Whigs declined and
The Whigs and Free-Soilers joined to form the Republican Party, which strongly supported the abolition of slavery.
One interesting facet of the Whig Party was the it's main reason to be was to oppose an American President, it's major failing was that it tried to be all things to all people who were united solely on their mutual hatred of Andrew Jackson.
opposed to the expansion of slavery into new territories, the Party is not to be confused with the Democratic-Republican party of Thomas Jefferson or the National Republican Party of Henry Clay. In fact, the ideology of the reborn Republican party is seen by some as the successor to the Federalist Party (United States) of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. However, during Jefferson's presidency, he was called a "Republican", but the reference was to the party now known as the Democratic-Republican Party. That party later split into the Democratic Party and the Whig Party. The latter was formed in the winter of 1833-1834 but was defunct by the time of the American Civil War.
The first convention of the U.S. Republican Party was held on July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Michigan. Many of its initial policies were inspired by the Whig Party, which by then was in decline. Many of the early members of the Republican Party came from the Whigs, the Free Soil Party, and American Party. Since its inception, its chief opposition has been the Democratic Party
I find it interesting that the two paradigms in American Politics seems to be Centralized Big Government and Less Government no matter where a Party starts out it will polarize into one of those two modes, depending largely on the position of its opposition.
That seems to be too simple, but even simple things can have their own validity,
It also seems that the longer a Party maintains dominance the more it tends to support Centralized Big Government no matte where it started from philosophically.
What is one of the main complaints of the Republicans today? That they are acting like Tax and Spend Democrats.
Which presents some of us with a frustrating choice.
Support a Tax and Spend Party or a BIGGER Tax and Spend Party, and if we spin off too soon ENSURE that the Bigger Tax and Spend Party comes into power.
Our only hope is that the DNC drives its Party off the edge of the Political Cliff, THEN a New Second Party can spit off from the Present Republican Party.
Something like this has happened twice before in our Nation's History. There is no reason why it cannot happen again.
Prove You're Not A Camel Topic: Out of Flyover Land
I like Russian street humor from the Soviet Era. I like to see Socialism, with it's mask off, as viewed by those who lived/survived under its heel for most of the 20th Century and one of my favorite anekdoty is:
"Don't you know, they are now arresting all camels and castrating them."
"But you're rabbit, not a camel."
"Right, but if they catch you, and cut off your nuts, then prove that you're not a camel!
(This joke relates to the mass arrests of innocent people conducted by the predecessors of what later became known as the KGB. The punch line of this joke, "Prove that you're not a camel," has become a widely used part of the Russian vernacular, being applied to many situations when an innocent person becomes a victim of arbitrary persecutions, purges, layoffs, etc."
What does the above have to do with present conditions? The KGB had a presumption of guilt and by the time one proved if possible that they had made a mistake, which they never did, it was too late to do any good.
Sounds like the Legacy Media doesn't it. If you are a Conservative, Libertarian or Republican figure?
Look at all the hysterical reporting that came out of the first few days of Katrina? What do YOU think the Media and the Democrats wanted to do with Bush and any Republican figure who was in the limelight then?
Of course they DID have better sense than to try anything with the Ragin Cajun, he doesn't have to worry about being re-elected, but after his setting the record straight, "You are Stuck on Stupid" or " That's B.S. It's B.S.," "You need to get on the streets of New Orleans, you can't sit back here and say what you hear from someone else."
Which is the difference between our Society and Real Fascism, you not only have freedom of speech, you have freedom after speech.
The record does seem to indicate that of all the complaints about inadequate performance the Media probably won first prize.
The question remains, was this by incompetence or intent?
In much the same vein, America takes heavy hits in the International Media.
Compare the hysterical coverage of Katrina to Europe a few years back. Does anyone call as much finger pointing and blame casting when about 25,000 people died in a heat wave?
By Ralph Peters FrontPageMagazine.com | July 21, 2004
August will mark the anniversary of the needless death of tens of thousands of innocents, of callous disregard for the widespread suffering of the weak on the part of imperious governments.
No, the anniversary has nothing to do with Iraq: It will have been one year since a heat wave swept Europe, killing more than 25,000 of the elderly and unprotected (15,000 in glorious France alone).
The death toll wrought by nonchalant neglect in Europe last August remains considerably higher than the total number of fatalities in Iraq since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom?friendly, enemy and civilian combined.
The American Left never blinked as the real ?old Europe? perished in the multitudes. There wasn?t a whisper of criticism of those ?more humane? European governments whose apparatchiks refused to interrupt their summer vacations to respond to the mass dying among Europe?s pensioners. Those admirable European health-care systems failed horrendously?yet they remain, of course, the models to which we should aspire (no matter that every European I know prefers private care, if they can afford it).
Meanwhile, another August looms in that Leftist?s fairy-tale world across the Atlantic. What measures have those humane Europeans put in place to protect the elderly against a return of high temperatures? That paragon of virtues, the French government, informed its elderly citizens that they need to figure out where they can go to stay cool.
Now that?s social justice
Or to bring up matters that are current? How much play do you think THIS from !No Pasaran! will get?
Is it any wonder what reputation America has among the European masses when even the History of the last half century is being edited to exclude any positive efforts on our part in that region?
At least Medienkritik keeps track of these things for us, we are not totally bereft of friends there yet.
Our good friend DL recently reminded us of the slow but creeping removal of all things American from German history. He related how surprised he was to see almost no mention of America's role in the Cold War and reunification in an exhibit at the Reichstag in Berlin.
Well, unfortunately, DL shouldn't be surprised. Although it is true that the United States was the indispensable nation for German democracy during and after the Second World War, this sort of slow airbrushing and denial of history is clearly taking its steady course in today's Germany. We need look no further than the Berlin city government's forcible removal of the privately funded Checkpoint Charlie monument. These manifestations of historic denial are hardly surprising in a Germany overrun by anti-American media and politics over the past three years, yet they are profoundly disappointing and disturbing nonetheless.
But despite its slow death, the history of America's sacrifice clearly remains an irritating thorn in the side of many a German media elite. After all, it is exceptionally difficult to forget that the United States took the Fascist murder state that was Germany and turned it into a flourishing democracy and then protected it for decades until the nation united with its depressed Communist half. The result is that many Germans are still fighting with the historic legacy to regain their own claim to the moral high ground and a sense of historic legitimacy. The erasure of America's role in German history goes hand-in-hand with that struggle.
So when your average left-wing German journalist sees an event like the 2000 election or the Iraq war, he or she doesn't care much for the facts or details. There is but one word necessary and appropriate to describe the problems and challenges facing America: DEBACLE! And if that doesn't suffice, there are four additional words that sum everything else up: It's all Bush's fault!
This is our reality according to the French philosopher Andre Glucksmann, in an interview with Germany's left-wing weekly SPIEGEL, defends America against accusations of imperialism:
The mythology of American superiority is used to make the US responsible for everything and to make it guilty for everything. (...)
If generations are being sheltered from any good we have ever done, and only presented with a distorted and biased version of what we are doing now, is it any wonder that America must continually,
I Had A Really Bad Thought Topic: Out of Flyover Land
Suppose we DO spend the 200 to 250 Billion Dollars to rebuild New Orleans.
And THEN the New Madrid Fault pops and the Mississippi River, jumps it's banks and lands smack dab on top of New Orleans.
I mean eye witnesses from the Great Quake report that they had a clear sight of the West Bank of the Mississippi from the East Bank, the land dropped and for a split second the water was suspended in Mid Air. The Mississippi ran backwards for 2 days to fill up Lake Reelfoot.
In all the talk about Sea Surges and being below Sea Level most folks have not thought or do not realize that New Orleans is also BELOW the Mississippi River!
Tourists in Jackson Square delight in sitting on a bench just a few feet above sea level and looking up at the river's traffic floating 11 feet higher. Ships traveling down the Mississippi appear to hover over the city below.
Hurricanes are not the only thing that can cause flooding. Rain can do it too. The Great Flood of 1927 peaked in May of that year and in places, houses 75 MILES from the former river bank, were UNDER water!
Do we need the Port of New Orleans?
No question it is vital to the transportation of Americas grain and thus to the World Food Market.
Do we need an infra-structure and a workforce in place to support the Port? Goes without saying.
Do we need to put New Orleans back the way it was?
Not unless we want to keep rebuilding it.
I mean take a good look at this and tell me if YOU think it is wise to build a major City where it is below the level of the Mississippi, to say nothing of below Sea Level.
The Mississippi and its swollen tributaries reached peak levels in April of 1927 and overflowed their banks. One by one, levees built to contain the river broke, and a wall of water pushed its way across Midwestern farmlands. The flood covered 27,000 square miles, an area about the size of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined. For two long months the water would remain above flood stage, leaving hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes.
I would say the Commisar over at Politburo Diktat thinks about the same. Levee Reconstruction in New Orleans Problematic In the short term, the levees can?t be rebuilt to withstand a Category 3 hurricane. In the long term, New Orleans is sinking in the Gulf. Maybe we should think this over before we spend $200 billion.
For me the most important, the most dangerous concepts which have arisen during this confirmation hearing were--
On the final day of the Roberts hearings, Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois tried one last time: “If you’ve made one point many times over . . . the course of the last three days,” he told the judge, “it is that as a judge you will be loyal and faithful to the process of law, to the rule of law.” But “beyond loyalty to the process of law,” he asked Roberts, “how do you view [the] law when it comes to expanding our personal freedom? . . . That’s what I’ve been asking.”
And so, in various ways, had Durbin’s Democratic colleagues been asking about such matters--ones “beyond loyalty” to the rule of law. In response to Durbin, Roberts stuck to the point he had indeed made “many times over.” Reframing the senator’s question so as to reach the core issue, Roberts said, “Somebody asked me, you know, ‘Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?’ And you obviously want to give an immediate answer. But as you reflect on it, if the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy is going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution. That’s the oath. The oath that a judge takes is not that ‘I’ll look out for particular interests.’ . . . The oath is to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States, and that’s what I would do.
Good intentions can be the most dangerous thing. Actions for the Greater Good can be as dangerous.
The LAW is never supposed to be FOR someone, never biased nor adversarial, lawyers can and must be, but the Law and Judges should never be.
When we cross that line we are no longer governed by Law and the Constitution, but by fiat. I do not care how well intentioned a persons motives are this opens the gate for and oppression because there is NO guarantee that once the Law is perverted to be biased towards one element of Society it cannot be biased towards others. In the end it will be biased towards those who can muster the most power and the FUNDAMENTAL principle of our Nation that ALL rights are the Inalienable attribute of the Individual has been sacrificed to whatever the current political desire is. There can be no other outcome.
In Kelo versus New London the protections of the V Amendment were shattered.
"nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Public use become to "benefit" the Public, there for Eminent Domain may now be used to take one person's property, NOT for the use of the Public, but to turn it over to other private individuals to develop and the increased Tax Revenue will be for the Greater Good of all, but the RIGHTS of an individual are now gone.
But their intentions were caring so I guess that makes this sundering of the rights of the individual all OK.
When McCain-Feingold first reared its ugly head few cared because it only effected the "Rich", not that it seems to have hindered George Soros much, but the public perception was we needed to be protected by undue influence by the "Rich" for the Greater Good as usual.
But what is the reality, what does all this mean? The ACLU and Court Action has decreed that burning the American Flag is protected speech, freedom of expression.
Has anyone ever heard the phrase, "Put your money, where your mouth is."? How can there be any more important speech or expression in a Democracy than supporting a Political Platform or Politician that you believe in?
But you say but=== No, you either BELIEVE in the Constitution and the Rights enumerated or you DON'T.
For me it is that simple. Can there be abuses? Yes there can and they, the abuses will be illegal.
Most of the Nation was willing to give up part of our basic rights of Freedom of Speech, because HEY it was only going to effect the "Rich" not any of us regular people. Right?
Then they came for us
The FEC started thinking that the same statutes should be applied to bloggers. That could even include someone on minimum wage who blogs from a free computer in a library.
But don't worry we are told, they are not going to apply the new interpretations to the "little guy" we are going to have TWO sets of Law in this country?
When they came after us it was different wasn't it?
We NEED men like Judge Roberts on the Supreme Court.
We NEED men who are willing to uphold the Constitution from US.
I tried to illustrate how Kelo versus New London and McCain-Feingold are perversions of our Basic Rights and the Principles this Nation were founded upon.
I doubt there are many who will disagree with me about Kelo versus New London.
For those who still labour under the illusion that McCain-Feingold is still just as long as it is only applied to the "Rich"
I ask this one simple question.
Whatever makes you think that if the Rights of Speech, Assembly and Association of those deemed "Rich" can be sundered so easily and willingly, that YOURS are still intact?
And then they came for us and there was no one left to say anything.
