Get off the couch

This great country -- and I do mean EXCEPTIONAL -- is in the grips of a domestic enemy. Let's leave aside the politically correct platitudes and politeness for a moment and be honest. The left is the enemy to traditional American values of individual freedom, personal liberty and entrepreneurship.

They want to create a Nanny State, where the government runs your life. Health care is a big piece of this puzzle. Next will come the kind of car you drive, the light bulbs you use and which colleges you can go to. They want to tax and control every breath you take.

And make no mistake about it: the left is now firmly and fully in charge of the U.S. government. There is not a single (as in ONE) moderate or conservative Democrat in the U.S. Senate, and very few in the House. The White House is inhabited by Marxist revolutionaries -- and that includes the guy in the Oval Office.

We are being led by radicals.

That's the truth. And Democrats and Independents (and many so-called "Republicans") who voted for "Hope and Change" may feel hoodwinked, but the reality was there for all to see. The President of the United States is a Saul Alinksy operative with radical friends. That doesn't happen by accident.  Americans liked the cut of the guys jib and the fact that decades of race-guilt could be slayed in a single pull of the voting lever, and so the nation took a leap into the great unknown.

Off a precipice, and into an abyss.

And then insult got added to the injury by putting the likes of Al Franken (hey Minnesota -- politics is not really a JOKE!) in the Senate, giving the left a massive majority and the 60 votes needed to ram home big-time change on a purely partisan basis.

And that's really the main message here: this is a President and a Congress that thinks that a straight party-line vote is democracy in action. There was no pretense of bipartisan accommodation or compromise, only a "shove it down your throat" Chicago-style politics. The left is so certain they are right that they simply don't care what YOU think.

Nice, huh?

We are in for a very rough ride. But it isn't hopeless. We can take back the House in 2010 and put Nancy Pelosi out to pasture. We can defeat Harry Reid in Nevada and give him the good old Tom Daschle treatment.

We can change this in 11 months.

But to do so, you have to get OFF THE COUCH.

You have to start giving -- in money, time and energy -- to Republican candidates.  Money is the life's blood of politics, and to win in 2010, conservatives need to raise cash.   And if you can't contribute money, then volunteer for a candidate.  Stuff envelopes. Walk precincts. Host voter meetings in your living room.

We can't be passive. The enemy is organized, zealous and unbelievably vicious.  We must parry their every thrust.

We can't afford to lose this country for another generation. Please do WHATEVER you can. I am working with a Republican Congressional candidate here in Colorado -- Diggs Brown.  He's a very good man and a solid conservative.

Find someone -- anyone -- who you can support running for Congress in a swing district.  That's the way we can change this -- by putting solid conservatives in office in 2010.

We must do more than complain. We must ACT!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Let's make 2010 the year we TAKE BACK THIS GREAT COUNTRY!!

Is Christmas still relevant?

As Christmas comes, reactions abound. Since the fourth century AD, when Roman Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity, church service attendance in Western Civilization is greatest at Christmas and Easter. Prior to Constantine, Christianity was illegal and thus did not attract people who were not deeply committed. Ironically during this period of intense persecution the number of Christians grew at a phenomenal rate, with an organic underground-style network of small home-based churches (much like China has been experiencing since the rule of Mao Zedong). That amazing growth, before Constantine, laid the foundation for Christianity’s widespread acceptance leading to a more organized Christianity.

Yet in many ways organizing Christianity stifled the life-transforming power that grew the earlier organic Church. And in more recent decades the spike in attendance at services for Christmas and Easter has decreased, while critical reactions toward or around these two special Christian days has increased in both number and intensity.

The name CHRISTmas forces most people to consider at some level: Who was Christ and why should his living two-thousand years ago make any difference to us today in our hectic modern life where we are bombarded with ideas trying to answer life’s most basic questions?

Many find this season warm and joyous. Yet others respond from indifference to an outright repulsive reaction to Jesus Christ’s claim to be God, the creator, sustainer and restorer of humanity and the world.

Some reject Biblical moral boundaries, while other rejections are connected to horrific acts done in the name of Christianity, or at least by self-identified Christians. While it is important to acknowledge such acts as horrific, it is just as important to ascertain if such acts are condoned or condemned by Biblical teaching, lest we throw baby Jesus out with the filthy and corrupt bath water.

As Americans, does the Christmas story have anything to do with: our freedom to think and express ideas; our freedom of religion; the equality of people; or even ideas like the size and reach of government?

Clearly the individual rights and freedoms that have long-defined America are not because of where America sits on the globe, but rather they fall directly from a worldview that sees humanity as unique and special and worthy of protection. And Christianity, which teaches that people are created in the image of God and that God came in human form and gave his life to provide a means for every person to have a restored and harmonious relationship with their Creator, puts a value on human life that is arguably much higher than that of any other set of ideas.

Cultures, which have embraced the Biblical value of humanity, have delivered the greatest level of individual liberty. While not all American founders embraced orthodox Christianity, they did embrace the Biblically-based view of human nature and that every person is created equal “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The American experience, just like our own life experience, has had its struggles putting these profound ideas into practice. Yet had these ideas not sprung from a real foundation the American experiment in liberty would have been a futile effort, like every other culture that does not value humanity.

In recent decades some in America have been pushing America away from its foundation, with the result being increased chaos. Chaos has been answered by increasing the size and reach of government, leading to a decrease in personal liberty and making our personal and national future much less secure. We would be wise to look at the results of godless national experiments before we take the leap.

If atheism or any other set of ideas is true then by all means let us live life accordingly, but let us not take that jump without first investigating the idea which arguably has most radically and positively changed the lives of people and civilizations: Biblical Christianity.

Granted Biblical Christianity, unlike most other sets of ideas, does not align well with human logic, where might makes right, or utopia is achieved through personal effort. Does that not suggest that Biblical Christianity is not a human creation, but more likely revelation from our Creator? Even apart from the continual historical and archeological validations of Biblical history, Biblical teaching on human nature, the human condition, and the path to restoration, ring incredibly true with human experience.

Humanity is creative and desires to express that creativity. True faith cannot be forced upon someone. Vast power (control of resources) invites corruption, whether in business, politics, government, or religion. Left unbounded by inner moral guides or external militant guides, people and cultures self-destruct. Incredible transformation and healing does result when people bond with their Creator. Indeed these human experiences align with the Biblical presentation of humanity.

Ideas do have consequences. Ideas that ring true with life experience yield better results for us individually and for cultures. This Christmas, consider investigating genuine Biblical Christianity directly from its source document and resting your future in ideas that ring true and truly transform.

Mark Shepard writes from Vermont, where he formerly served as a state senator.

Do no harm?

The one health care lesson the Congress should have learned in crafting their "reform" bill is the most fundamental tenet of medicine: do no harm.Unfortunately, the Congress is now playing the role of Dr. Kervorkian. So destructive are its politically-motivated machinations that it is in the process of setting back American medicine -- and the economy -- a generation. It may never be fully resuscitated.

And now that Joe Lieberman has lost his minute of sanity -- opposing the public option and the expansion of Medicare -- it seems certain that this colossus of social engineering will get passed in the Senate. It will ultimately reach Obama's desk and will be signed in a lavish "historic" signing ceremony, where it will be hailed as a monumental accomplishment in "bending the health care cost curve" or some such nonsensical lie.

Believe me: the only thing this bill bends is the truth.

Here are some facts to chew on:

-- The true cost of this bill is $2.5 Trillion -- not the $900 billion the CBO will say it is. How does it get away with being three times more expensive than they say it will be? Because the ten year CBO "score" is based on gimmickry: it accounts for ten years of taxes to pay for it, but only provides SIX years of services. The true cost of the next ten years will be in the trillions of dollars as the program becomes "pay as you go" in year 11.

-- The foundation of this plan is to compel -- under the penalty of prison -- people to buy insurance. The 10% of the uninsured in this country who have decided not to spend their money on insurance -- either because they are young and healthy or have decided to take the risk -- will now not have that option. But don't worry -- in the spirit of income redistribution, "other people" will pay for much of it in the form of subsidies. Still, the reality is that the Congress is infusing government into the private lives of people in a way that they never had before. The Nanny state on steroids.

-- The taxes on this will be enormous -- and will hit everyone regardless of age or economic status. Remember that pledge Obama made to not raise taxes on anyone making "less than $250,000 per year"? Fuggedaboutit! Everyone's going to pay on this one -- from new taxes to higher insurance premiums. And that's for starters. When this starts to break the bank, taxes on everything will rise, and you can bet that there are plans for a Value Added Tax and other stealth taxes in the works. Your pocketbook just became a lot thinner!

-- This bill includes command and control facilities run by the Federal Government that will control the private insurance industry, putting new and pernicious controls on coverage and underwriting. At the end of this road, government will be controlling every aspect of the coverage provided, and will be in charge of determining insurance premium rates and coverage levels -- and will, when things get tight, become a "rationing board". It may not be "Death Panels" -- but it will be pretty darn close.

-- The new burden on states to expand Medicaid will create even bigger problems in already-strained state budgets -- amounting to a massive new unfunded mandate. States like California that are already $20 billion in the red will have to come up with another $3 billion or so to cover the new state portion of Medicaid expansion. This will result in -- you guessed it -- new taxes to cover the short-fall.

-- There is nothing in this bill that will restrain medical malpractice liability or the massive cost that the health care tort bar places on medicine. The trial lawyers have gotten the pass that they have bought and paid for. The Democrats in Congress are in their pockets, and thus an important element of truly containing health care costs has been left out of this "historic" reform bill.

-- This bill does nothing to fix the current government health care entitlement, Medicare, which is a giant ponzi scheme that will be insolvent within 1o years.

-- The net effect of this health care bill, the trillion dollar stimulus packages and the vast unfunded entitlements in the current fiscal 2010-2011 budget are a disaster in the making. As the Wall Street Journal points out today in its lead editorial, the Democrats are now pushing for a $2 trillion increase in the federal debt ceiling, so they can not be burdened by any vestige of fiscal restraint:

It's a sign of how deep the fiscal pathologies run in this Congress that $2 trillion will buy the federal government only one year before it has to seek another debt hike—conveniently timed to come after the midterm elections. Since Democrats began running Congress again in 2007, the federal debt limit has climbed by 39%. The new hike will lift the borrowing cap by another 15%.

Our concern is that the Administration and Congress view this debt as a way to force a permanently higher tax base for decades to come. The liberal grand strategy is to use their accidentally large majorities this year to pass new entitlements that start small but will explode in future years. U.S. creditors will then demand higher taxes—taking income taxes back to their pre-Reagan rates and adding a value-added tax too. This would expand federal spending as a share of GDP to as much as 30% from the pre-crisis 20%.

And of course this is the grand design -- to resurrect the pre-Reagan 70% marginal tax rates that will maximally punish wealth creation and success. Remember, this Congress is hostile to profit and capitalism, and would prefer to see a social democratic system ala Sweden, with 90% taxes and massive government programs to support every element of social interaction.

At the end of the day, all of this is being done on a purely partisan, party-line basis. There won't be one Republican voting for any of this. The 55 million people who voted for John McCain have been effectively told "screw you" by a president who campaigned as a "uniter" and as a "post-partisan" leader. What a joke. This is the most partisan president and most divided Congress in history. That this kind of vast social change can be foisted on the public -- 60% who now oppose it -- without a single bipartisan vote is an offense to republican democracy. When Medicare was passed it did so on a largely bipartisan basis -- 24 Republicans voted in favor in 1965. Today we have an even larger rework of the American economy and society and it will be a complete partisan putsch.

And that is typical of the left, which always thinks it knows best. The notion that conservatives might have some good ideas on health care has been scoffed at. Instead, you have a massive experiment in socialism being foisted on the American people by 60 left wing ideologues.

We are being sold down the river in a 2,000 page, $2.5 trillion boondoggle that no one understands -- but that we will be paying for in generations to come.

What's become of the spirit of '81?

Mention the French Riviera and most people will conjure up images of le casino in Monte Carlo, le port in Saint Tropez, la Croisette in Cannes, or la Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Less obvious are visions of Grasse, a small town tucked away in the hinterland, a 30-minute drive north of Nice, and proudly described by the locals as the capital of the French perfume-making industry. From a historical perspective, the town’s claim to fame lies elsewhere, more particularly in François Joseph Paul de Grasse’s decisive participation in the American Revolutionary War against the British along with Comte de Rochambeau, Admiral d’Estaing and Lafayette.

De Grasse, who was born and raised in nearby Bar-sur-Loup, is indeed best remembered in South-Eastern France for defeating the British Fleet in the Battle of Chesapeake in September 1781. De Grasse’s victory in the Bay on board le Ville de Paris that year conclusively cut off supplies from the forces led by General Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, contributed to Cornwallis’s surrender to General Washington’s Continental Army, and ultimately paved the way for British initiatives to negotiate an end to the war and, afterwards, for the adoption by the newly-created United States of America of a Constitution strictly limiting government and uniquely experimenting with individual freedom and responsibility.

As a sign of gratitude for his services during the American Revolutionary War, François Joseph Paul de Grasse was later made a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, the organization founded in 1783 to promote the ideals and fellowship of all those who had gallantly fought for freedom during the war. The original copy of de Grasse’s Cincinnati membership certificate can be seen in the small museum dedicated to the memory of the French admiral in Grasse.

Ominously, the museum was poorly attended when I went there last October. Small wonder. A recent poll conducted in France by IFOP and published in Paris Match on November 5th, 2009 shows that 82% of French people still enthusiastically support Barack Obama’s big-government agenda one year after his election as President of the United States.

Sadly, at least on this side of the Atlantic, the spirit of ’81 as embodied by Comte de Grasse more than two hundred years ago appears to have fatally faded away.

Whose side is Obama on?

What do you get when you cross a leftist presidential administration with a modern media complex intent on furthering its politically-correct vision of America? You get lots of incomprehensible, illogical stupidity.

But, as Charles Krauthammer recently wrote, much of this is not benign stupidity. Much of it is downright dangerous. Like making a decision to close Guantanamo for no good reason -- and without an alternative place to put many of the most dangerous terrorists in the world. Or choosing to re-investigate the CIA for interrogations that were legally sanctioned by the Justice Department at the time they were carried out. Or creating a new and chilling environment that allows a radical Islamist at Fort Hood to contact Al Qaeda and make threatening presentations to other Army doctors without meaningful response. These nonsensical moves -- all in the name of political correctness and left-wing politics -- have already killed people.

How many more will die in the future?

Sadly, I believe it may be many. Now Attorney General Eric Holder has made the incomprehensible decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other al Qaeda planners of 9/11 in a civilian court in lower Manhattan -- near the very site where they perpetrated their act of war against America. Holder's decision came at the same time that he also ruled that the detainee responsible for the USS Cole bombing would face a military commission instead of a civilian trial. If it is good for the Cole bomber, why isn't it good enough for the perpetrators of 9/11?

And herein is the main issue: Obama and Holder don't see the 9/11 attack as an act of war. This reflects the Administration's belief that the kind of terrorism that led to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were essentially law enforcement issues, and should be handled in the normal system of justice that is available to every American -- and with all the rights and protections that go along with it. This is grist, of course, for the ACLU and other left-wing interest groups who want to see the U.S. cease and desist its aggressive tactics against the poor Islamic victims of U.S. imperialism. Holder has just given them a big fat bone: the final death blow to the "war on terror".

As the Wall Street Journal opines today:

Please spare us talk of the "rule of law." If that was the primary consideration, the U.S. already has a judicial process in place. The current special military tribunals were created by the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which was adopted with bipartisan Congressional support after the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision obliged the executive and legislative branches to approve a detailed plan to prosecute the illegal "enemy combatants" captured since 9/11.

Contrary to liberal myth, military tribunals aren't a break with 200-plus years of American jurisprudence. Eight Nazis who snuck into the U.S. in June 1942 were tried by a similar court and most were hanged within two months. Before the Obama Administration stopped all proceedings earlier this year pending yesterday's decision, the tribunals at Gitmo had earned a reputation for fairness and independence.

Oh, if only it were 1942 again -- when Obama's hero, Franklin Roosevelt, was able to move against America's enemies without the glare of the media covering every move. Roosevelt ordered Attorney General Biddle to carry out a swift form of justice at a time when America was at war -- a simple, effective process that protected America. The Germans were caught, tried and hung. No hand-wringing about their treatment as detainees. We understood a central fact: they were the enemy.

So Eric Holder, with the approval of President Obama, has chosen to return the 9/11 terrorists to the site of their crime, and with all the pomp and circumstance that will go with a show trial. F. Lee Bailey might even come out of retirement for this one. Can you imagine the spectacle? The opportunity for a legion of fame-seeking defense attorneys to gum up the works on this for years -- all the while parading this mass murderer in and out of court on a daily basis? How long before the sympathy factor sets in for this poor Muslim fundamentalist who was abused by his father and grew up in a world of American imperialist oppression?

The greater danger, of course, is the chance that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts are set free on procedural grounds for lack of evidence -- or because the defense lawyers put America and its interrogation techniques on trial.

This is a very real possibility -- and one I suspect that the Obama Administration understands well. So why would they take the risk? Is it because it is an opportunity to put a final nail in the coffin of the Bush Administration's "war on terror"? Wouldn't an acquittal on the basis of water-boarding be the ultimate victory for the anti-war left?

And the Journal concludes:

One certain outcome is that an open civilian trial will provide valuable information to terrorists across the world about American methods and intelligence. Precisely because so much other evidence may not be admissable, prosecutors may have to reveal genuine secrets to get a conviction. Osama bin Laden learned a lot from the 1995 prosecution in New York of the "blind cleric" Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman for the first World Trade Center attack. His main tip was that the U.S. considered bin Laden a terrorist co-conspirator, leading him to abandon his hideout in Sudan for Afghanistan.

Terrorists also love a big stage, and none come bigger than New York. Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, made his civilian trial a spectacle. Not even the best judge can entirely stop KSM and others from doing the same. And Mr. Holder has invited grave and needless security risks by tempting jihadists the world over to strike Manhattan while the trial is in session.

Just whose side is Obama on?