Obama considers himself to be a spiritual person and though I don’t at all understand how he can have some of his positions, I don’t make it a point to question anyone else’s faith. In fact, if I were Obama, I can imagine what I’d be praying right now. I’d be praying for my opposition to listen to the suggestions of the pundits who have been influencing the Republican process up to this point in time. Here’s a snippet of what I can imagine Obama is praying:

Grant me this year the serenity to have my message of “change” accepted. Grant not my opponents the courage to change from bad tactics to good ones - or the wisdom to know the difference.

I pray that many of those who oppose me will waste the next four months making fun of my middle name and taking personal shots at my wife. This way I shall be spared from having to give answers for my positions on late-term abortion, domestic oil drilling, and tax increases. In this I take comfort.

May my opponents become so blinded in their dislike of me that they do nothing but verbally attack me - from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same. Let them play rhyming games with my last name. Talk about my former church. Spread unproven rumors. Voice various insults. May they become so focused on attacking me the person that they both lose favor with the public and also forget to challenge me on the issues. Lest the manifold problems with some of my positions be laid bare before all.

I pray that the other side will forsake their first love - the Evangelicals. May they forget them who helped their party to win five of the last seven elections. May they assume that these voters will vote for them no matter what. And if they should ignore this great multitude, may enough of them stay home that I might prevail. Or even, if possible, I pray, may my refusal to ignore these same voters convince some of them to vote for me instead.

May the desires of the other side to win new territory grow so strong that they should forget to protect their own. May their dreams of turning Michigan red be so great that they forget about keeping Georgia and Mississippi from going blue.

I also request that they assume that all black voters will vote for me. May they act on this false belief so that they refuse to even ask for their votes. And may this not only become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but may the perception it causes also alienate many white voters as well.

May they give heed to the advice of the conservative media establishment, whose abode is in states that I shall win handily. May they follow all of their advice in how they choose to engage me, how they choose to campaign and how they choose to complete the other ticket.

And I give many thanks for those in the other side’s establishment and media. Their actions have filled my heart with gladness. They have spared me from facing an opponent who could easily beat me in a debate, who is less than six years older than me but has four times the experience, and who is every bit as charismatic as me but carries less baggage. Yes, they sheltered me from someone who could have given me a serious run for my money in every demographic category. They treated him with spite and even now hurl insults at him. I pray that they are successful in keeping him off the ticket as he makes the other side look pleasing to the eyes of the voters who will decide this election. (Amen!)

May they become so eager to please their media pundits that they pair my honorable opponent with someone with no more experience in government than I. Or someone unknown. Or someone who shall not win in the south. Or a “safe” pick - someone who is beloved by their media and establishment. I pray that my opponent shall pick a partner who will be highly favored by the National Review, the Washington establishment and others who spend less time with their voters than even I do.

And, lastly, I pray that the voters - all voters - trust not in their own research but in what the media suggests. Let them trust what the liberal media says about me and what the conservative media says about how to defeat me. If this happens, I will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.

Amen!

The Values Voter

Podcast Show Notes

Wesley Clark cluelessly attacks John McCain’s executive experience (did he forget who he was supporting.)

Barack Obama delivers a slick speech on patriotism.

A pro-life 527 forms to tell the truth about Obama’s support for infanticide.

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) helps save school vouchers in DC for now.

In Sweden, we now have government regulated birthday invitations.

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The Heller decision has been disdained by many liberal activists as “conservative judicial activism” to sell their favorite meme: That conservatives are big hypocrites. Of course, this is little more than liberal language revisionism, inspired by linguist George Lakoff.

Judicial activism, as the left is defining it, would mean anytime a law passed by the States is overturned by Court, it is judicial activism. Really? What if a law were passed requiring criminal defendants to testify against themselves in court? Would it be judicial activism if the court overturned it? Of course not. There has been a place for judicial review in the process since 1802.

So when does judicial review become judicial activism? I think you can apply two basic standards to the question (and I’m sure some people will add others):

1) Does the decision stick to the issue at hand?

This is a critical point. From Heller, we learn simply that the total ban put in place by the District of Columbia is unconstitutional because the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. The Court doesn’t give an exhaustive list of permissible and impermissible regulations. It does state that this ruling doesn’t mean the insane and felons have a right to keep and bear arms, nor is it addressing banning guns in certain “sensitive locations,” such as schools. Is a reauthorization on the assault weapons ban, gun registration, etc. constitutional under the court’s ruling? We won’t know and we shouldn’t. The court wasn’t considering those issues and shouldn’t take it upon themselves to decide them in advance.

By contrast, an activist Montana Supreme Court ruling not only overturned a law regulating abortion, but advised the legislature not to send them specific other abortion regulations, or a law against assisted suicide, as they would be overturned as well. Pre-emptive judicial review is judicial activism, along with any ruling that goes beyond the scope of what has been argued and placed before the court.

2) Does the Court stick to the law and the Constitution?

In Heller, the court looked at some specific issues. What did the authors of the 2nd Amendment mean? This was the total of the decision. Liberals accuse the court of ignoring the first part of the 2nd Amendment, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” yet the court didn’t ignore it.

The court actually spent many pages on the topic and they designated this part of the Amendment, a “prefatory clause” that explains the reason for the Amendment, but doesn’t limit the right contained in the Amendment’s operative clause granting the right to bear to arms.
This prefatory clause had the following reason for existence, the Court found: “The Anti-federalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army, or a select militia, to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.”

In short, the point is that the right to keep and bear arms was a check on federal usurpation through an armed citizenry. The National Guard has nothing to do with the purpose of the Second Amendment.

Compare this sober reading of the facts to the bizarre ramblings of Justice Harry Blackmunn in the Roe v. Wade decision. Blackmunn’s argument begins by pointing out that American abortion laws had been approved in the past 110 years or so (by the same people who approved of the 14th Amendment) but that ancient pagan religions had no ban on it, that the Hippocratic Oath’s strict rules against abortion were the expression of a Pythagorean ethic, that the AMA had moved towards supporting abortion, along with American Public Health Association. What this has to do with interpreting Constitutional Amendments ratified in American in 1791 and 1868 is beyond the mere mortal, but not the activist judge.

The decision of a good judge reads like he’s interpreting the law, the decision of a bad one reads like he’s discovering it. When Supreme Court Justices concern themselves with laws in Europe, evolving social standards, or the general best policy for society, they’ve gone from interpreting the law to writing the law by fiat.

Want to see what’s behind some of the fuss about Bobby Jindal? At Race42008, Dave G warns that Jindal is “headed down the Huckabee route.” In the course of complaining about the legislative increase, we get down to brass tax about what’s bugging him:

But never fear, Gov. Jindal is not the sort of politician that will back down on all of his principles. Especially when those principles involve religion. Indeed, Jindal has just signed into law a measure that will allow public schools to teach something other than science in science class. Local school boards can now approve “supplemental materials” for schools to include in discussions of evolution. Something tells me those materials won’t involve the scientific method (because if they did, they’d already be there) and will involve lots of concepts that belong in philosophy, theology, and religion classes, not in science class.

With these actions, Gov. Jindal is off to a very Huckabeean start. But that should probably have been anticipated. Jindal was always more of a culture warrior than most of us secular conservatives liked to believe when we saw a non-Caucasian, young, smart conservative who could actually form coherent sentences make his way onto the stage. And he was always less interested in fiscal issues than economic conservatives would have preferred. He voted for the tax-hiking, pork-laden farm bill and against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Meanwhile, he continues to support a ban on abortion with no exceptions, and has written articles on how Catholicism is the true Christianity and the true path to God. If you thought Huckabee’s women-should-submit language was unfairly taken out of context, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

So let’s just say that this skeptic remains especially skeptical of Jindal, who seems at this point to be an economic moderate and hard-right social conservative more in line with the former governor of Arkansas than with the former governor of California. If this trend continues, I suspect that economic conservatives, moderates, and Independents will ensure that a future Jindal presidential campaign has the same fate as Huckabee’s, and once again, a certain segment of the Republican base just won’t be able to figure out why.

First of all, there’s plenty of scientific texts on intelligent design, as well as global warming, and cloning (all of which are covered by the law). How wicked of Bobby Jindal. He wanted kids to be able to see something on Global Warming other than an Inconvenient Truth.

Bobby Jindal broke the unwritten law. Rather than paying lip service to the concerns of social conservatives he actually did something.

Neil Stevens has risen in defense of that most defenseless group, the Club for Growth in regards to their attack on Governor Bobby Jindal:

Hairs shot up on the necks of a great many Republicans. At least, among those who took Governor Mike Huckabee’s side against the organization, Club for Growth’s subdued, objective comments about the recall seemed an implied attack on Jindal. Jindal was The Next Target of the Club For Greed™.

However I saw no such thing. Certainly CfG wasn’t jumping to Jindal’s defense, but they are a single interest group. It’s not their job to get awed at the way he wantonly tears down the corrupt, fascist Kingfish legacy. In fact, if Jindal were to raise the tax burden of his state way up, I’d appreciate it if CfG were to warn us before we go and nominate Governor Jindal in 2016.

Why the posts, though? Soloveichik says that CfG is attempting to follow the news on all the leading prospects for Senator McCain’s running mate, and of course that includes Jindal. CfG is also looking at the economic records of each candidate, just as they did for the Presidential candidates.

I believe it. Governor Jindal does not have much of a record yet. It’s not his fault, but he hasn’t been in office for even a year yet. So naturally, Club for Growth has little to work with in evaluating him, and so when they count the pay hike as a strike against him, they don’t have much else to balance against it. But just the same, they’re not treating this one thing the same as, say, Governor Huckabee’s long record which included multiple substantial tax and spending increases.

One wonders what Huckabee people they’re responding to. As Leon at Red State linked to my piece cross-posted at the Next Right, I’m assuming they mean me.  To quote Robert DeNiro, “I don’t see anyone else here, so you must be talking to me.” 

Anyway with Club for Growth, it’s not what they tell you, It’s what they don’t tell you.

They were correct about Huckabee’s tax and spending increases. What they didn’t tell you is that Huckabee’s veto could be overridden by a majority vote and that he had a Democratic legislature that’s 70-90% Democratic through his entire tenure in office.

They didn’t tell you that there were 2 court rulings that forced additional money to be spent on Education and Medicaid.

I wonder what conservative here could have done better than Huckabee did under those circumstances?

As for Jindal, the idea that his record is short is notable except during his brief time in office, he accomplished a school choice program and introduced and gained passage of a tax cut for business.

His educational accomplishments has been given short shrift, and I’ve seen no mention in recent discussion of his vitally needed business tax cut.

They’ve gone after his Congressional record, but somehow failed to note his 98% anti-pork performance on the 2007 RePork card. Their own report card! And they didn’t bother to mention it when trying to explain that his record was uninspiring among their list. I don’t know, I consider someone with a 98% anti-pork record to be fairly inspiring.

I didn’t come out for Huckabee until after Super Tuesday. But then I began to research this, I became angry. The Club for Growth didn’t lie, but they sure as heck deceived me with incomplete information. They’re doing the same thing with Bobby Jindal.

The nomination of John McCain can be laid at the feet of the Club for Growth whose obsessive compulsive campaign against Mike Huckabee gave John McCain the South Carolina Primary and the nomination. Where we’ll their economic puritanism lead in 2012 or 2016?

I still read the Club for Growth blog and they find stories I use on my blog or website,two or three times a week. I have two currently endorsed CFG candidates, Lt. Governor Sean Parnell and Congressman Paul Braun (R-GA) on my slatecard, along with former CFG candidates, Rep. Bill Sali (R-Idaho) and Michelle Bachmann (R-MN). There’s no denying that CFG does some good work, but their recent antics have caused me to view their statements with a far-more skeptical eye.

Podcast Show Notes

Do we really need to know about comic heroes political affiliations?

Plus, the latest creepy Obama supporter trend: taking his middle name.

Plus Jon Stewart has his Jay Leno moment as he learns to stop worrying and poke fun at Obama like any other politician.

Republicans do a study to conclude that their strategy is not working after losing 3 special elections in traditionally Republican areas.

Richard Daley fights for Chicago’s ineffectual gun ban that puts the lives of citizens in danger.

Canada’s Human Rights Commission surrenders in their attacks on Mark Steyn and Maclean’s Magazine to go after easier pickings.

The bungling incompetence of Arapahoe County, Colorado traumatizes an 8-year old boy and his parents.

San Francisco shows contempt for the troops by banning Junior ROTC.

McCain says Amnesty a priority: today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

The Millionaire exemption gutted as a piece of McCain-Feingold bites the dust and calls into question what type of judges McCain will appoint.

Second Amendment updates from the South and Detroit.

Canadian Government forces kids to be taught homosexual propoganda against the will of parents. (Hat Tip: Political Correctness Watch.)

A dumb global warming solution: banning drive thrus.  (Hat Tip: Wizbang.)

The Vatican encourages Christian involvement in politics.

Homeless people in Texas pay it forward and give generously to help the poor in Africa.

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“We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.”-Benjamin Franklin.

Imagine your city council enacts controversial legislation with no public notice despite city employees telling concerned citizens that before any action was taken, they’d read about it in the paper. Imagine that your city continues to refuse to hold a public hearing despite the uproar and you sue. The judge not only finds against you, but orders you to pay $10,000 in legal fees.

Your city tries to thwart your every effort to get your issue on the ballot, using a long and frivolous legal battle to strain your resources. The State Supreme Court grants you your day at the voting booth. You opt not to ask for attorney’s fees from your city, choosing not to burden taxpayers with the costs of the foolish policy of the people they elected.

Due to the national political situation and voter fatigue brought about by the city’s delaying tactics, you lose your vote at the polls. You accept defeat even though you don’t like it. You move on with your life.

In 2007, in a light turnout election the Mayor is re-elected by a whopping 19.2% of the registered voters in your city.

Now, it’s been fifty months since the ruling requiring you to pay, but the city has never made an attempt to collect, perhaps thinking better of a policy that was widely seen as mean-spirited, and reacting to your gracious move not to demand they pay your fees.

You then receive a letter dated four days prior informing you that there’s a lien on your house and that that you have less than three weeks to produce more than $10,000 or face a government attempt to seize your property to satisfy your debt. You then find out that your city placed a lien on your house four years previously and by the way, didn’t bother to tell you.

Such a nightmare scenario need not be imagined by two conservative activists in the City of Boise.

The City decided to remove a Ten Commandments monument from a Boise City park on the pretext of a threatened lawsuit by fringe hatemonger Fred Phelps. Though there were strong feelings on both sides, and the community wanted to have its say, the city instead tried to avoid controversy by reaching a closed door deal and then putting an item on the agenda that was vague to outsiders. Rather than mentioning a “Ten Commandments Monument” it instead cited it as a “Fraternal Order of Eagles Monument.”

Most people didn’t know what a Fraternal Order of Eagles Monument was and the motion was slipped through by underhanded politicians, who offered nearly 40 years of Boise history up as a sacrifice to a hateful out of state extremist. Mayors of nearby communities did the right thing and told Phelps in slightly more official terms to go jump in the lake.

Reverend Bryan Fischer, a Parks and Recreation Commissioner filed suit against the city, along with pro-life stalwart Brandi Swindell. The case was thrown out of court and the city asked for court costs from its citizens, and was granted more than $10,000, which they did not attempt to collect for four years.

Fischer, Swindell, and hundreds of grassroots activists stood against the capriciousness of Boise Mayor Dave Bieter for 70 days, until, at the end of the March, the city moved the Monument to a local church. Fischer and Swindell proposed a citizen’s initiative to place a new monument in the park. This monument, like the old one, would not be paid for by the city and would also feature Thomas Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom. In the heat of July and August, volunteers worked desperately to collect enough signatures. Many wondered if ragtag volunteers could do it, but they did. The city responded by saying they wouldn’t allow a public vote on the legally qualified initiative.

This led to a two year court battle, and while Fischer and Swindell prevailed, justice delayed was truly justice denied. When the court’s ruling came down, it put a dormant Ten Commandments Issue back in the spotlight in the middle of a hotly contested general election where conservative money and attention was already divided, the conservative turnout was low, and Democratic Congressional Candidate Jim Hansen was running a turnout machine in Boise. Rather than continuing the momentum from the petition drive, the Keep the Commandments Coalition had to start from scratch, with many supporters having left Boise to escape its high taxes. The initiative lost 53-47%.

Life went on for Reverend Fischer and Ms. Swindell until , when they received the first notice they’d ever gotten in regards to the $10,000 in fees from 50 months before. The demand was as arrogant and out of touch as the original actions of the city, which were designed to avoid a lawsuit, but have already landed the city in the midst of at least two.

Who Are These People?

The left has its political activists, people whose only job seems to be to make trouble for taxpayers. Big environmental special interests, big labor, and the ACLU have their claws into every state in the Union. They fund people whose job it is to expand government and take away your freedoms.

They have fewer counterparts on the right for the simple reason that there are no counterweights to teachers’ unions that can coerce away the money of unwilling union members, abortionists who have a vested interest in wholesale slaughter, or big liberal foundations that seek to undermine the very system that allowed the prosperity that makes their existence possible.

Bryan Fischer and Brandi Swindell are some of those rare counterweights. They fight for conservative values every day.

Ms. Swindell has spent the prime of her life traveling the country trying to get the post-Roe generation involved in the pro-life issue. While many people her age are living out HBO and MTV shows, she’s chosen to be a voice for sexual purity and biblical values in a confused time.

She went to Florida to fight for the life of Terri Schaivo. She has stood for traditional values at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games. She fought for conservatives to get a fair shake in the selection of speakers at Boise State University rather than being presented a slate full of nothing but liberal speakers.

In recent months, Swindell has appeared in the newspaper far less, because her work has been so positive. Her long time dream has been to do more than activism: to help women in crisis pregnancy situations, and that’s just what she’s done through her new organization, Stanton Health Care Services. She’s personally gotten involved in the lives of these young women.

Through her involvement in the lives of these women, she became a leader in the fight for Idaho’s landmark law against coercing women into getting abortions that was opposed by the state’s extreme liberals.

Bryan Fischer is a former pastor and Senate chaplain Idaho families couldn’t have a more tireless advocate. After a State Constitutional Amendment banning same sex marriage died in committee in 2004, and failed on the Senate floor in 2005, he led efforts to educate voters about how their Senators had voted leading to a complete reversal of fortune with practically the same Senate in 2006.

Fischer has been out front on nearly every conservative issue you could imagine over the past four years, from discussion of intelligent design and opposing economically harmful legislation on global warming, to decreasing the burden of grocery taxes on Idaho families, to standing for the English language and against illegal immigration, and against Idaho’s star chamber selection process for judicial vacancies. There hasn’t been an issue of concern to conservatives that he hasn’t touched.

Fischer’s daily updates provide a clear conservative view of what’s going on in the world and in our state, which counterbalances the bias of the Idaho Statesman. On top of this, Fischer produces the Gem State Voter Guide (http://www.gemstatevoterguide.com), which is the best example I’ve ever seen of a complete conservative voter guide.

The last time Idahoans for Tax Reform prepared their list of the top 50 conservatives in our State, Fischer ranked 24 and Swindell 30. Then-1st District Congressman, now Governor, Butch Otter ranked 36. They set a powerful example for Conservative Christians in our state.

Making An Example

Why is the Bieter Administration going after them? Governor Otter was elected by only nine points in 2006, and the presumptive Democratic frontrunner for Governor in 2010 is the Mayor of Idaho’s largest city, Dave Bieter.

What it is apparent, both in how it’s trying to collect the judgment and in the request for the judgment in the first place, is that the Bieter Administration has been trying to make examples of political opponents: Oppose Team Dave and they’ll roll over you.

I want you to think for a moment about what that means to grassroots activism. The threat of litigation or a threat to their home will scare some people off from the arena or from taking on powerful people. City Hall is trying to strong arm its opponents into silence.

The Conservative Response

The normal Conservative response would be to wish Ms. Swindell and Reverend Fischer well on getting $10,000 together on their modest income, and to hope someone else takes care of this. Many may wonder, if they don’t live in Idaho, why they should even care.

There’s one very simple reason to care: politicians watch one another. If one politician finds a slick new method of increasing his power, others will duplicate it. Corrupt political bossism is a cancer.

You rarely hear of liberals losing their homes or being forced into crippling debt because of their stances for liberal principles. You do hear of this quite often about conservatives, who find their ideological fellows absent when needed. The conservative movement is full of sunshine soldiers and summer patriots.

In Bryan Fischer and Brandi Swindell, we have two rare individuals who have born the heat of the battle. These people are no summer soldiers, these are no sunshine patriots, and they deserve our support.

At the beginning of America’s Revolution, when the usurpation of government on the rights of the people was most evident in Boston, it would have been easy for other colonies to simply say, “Well, that’s Boston.” However, the cry of the Revolutionary era was, “The cause of Boston is the cause of us all.”

I hope across America, people see the danger of what the Bieter Administration is doing, and that its misuse of legal processes against its own citizens will be denounced. “The cause of Boise is the cause of us all.”

To help:

1) Call the City of Boise and politely and respectfully express your concerns. If you live in Boise, it’s important to remind the city leaders that if the Mayor wants to bring the city together, he should stop trying to punish his political opponents. You can reach the Mayor’s hotline at 208-384-4404.

2) Insure that this matter does not create hardship for these two great conservatives through your support. Any donation will help. If 1,000 people send $10, this will be nearly enough to resolve the issue. You can send checks or money orders made out to the Keep the Commandments Coalition, PO Box 140031, Boise, Idaho 83714.

3) Forward this story on to anyone who might be interested. You may freely distribute the entirety of this particular column through any and all means without any written permission, as long as attribution is given.

4) Pray for Reverend and Mrs. Fischer, as well as Ms. Swindell as they go through this that God’s peace and wisdom will be with them and that they will be granted justice.

Jesus Navarro Montes, accused of killing a U.S. border patrol agent, was set free after a Mexican Judge released him from custody.

Jesus Navarro Montes

Montes rammed Agent Luis Aguilar Jan. 19 near the Imperial Sand Dunes in Imperial County, Calififornia with his Hummer vehicle. Aguilar was attempting to stop two Mexican vehicles from entering the country illegally.

A Mexican judge has released Montes without restrictions because of an “unspecified technicality.”

Border Patrol agents who tirelessly serve our nation are beyond outraged in Mexico’s response and our own nation’s complacency in this matter.

There have been talks of the U.S. supporting Mexican efforts in the war on drugs. We’re talking about billions. Mexican officials are even more corrupt than our own political system. Any legislative member of congress with half a brain will shoot down any such preposterous proposal. You cannot throw money into an already perverse system of justice.

We are beginning to suffer from “Homeland Insecurity.”