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“[A] tribute…is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism, which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt [the Constitution]. In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on one side no local prejudices or attachments no separate views, nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests; so, on another, that the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.” – George Washington
Joseph Farah | Why Materialist ‘ Conservatives’ are Wrong
It’s always surprising to me when I hear people calling themselves “conservatives” or tea party members, but they say only care about “economic issues,” not “social issues.”
First of all, as I’ve explained before, all political issues are “social issues” because they are about people. I suspect what these folks really mean is that they are not concerned about “moral issues.”
But once again, all political issues, whether you’re talking about taxes or welfare or socialized medicine, are “moral issues” — because there is always a right way of doing things and a wrong way of doing things. Morality is about right and wrong. Aren’t those of us opposed to socialized medicine or confiscatory tax policy against those things because they are immoral?
A better label for these so-called “economic conservatives” would be “materialists” — in that their concerns are limited to the material world. However, the real irony is that what we think of as mere “social issues” — like abortion and same-sex marriage — have very real consequences, even on our economy.
Tony Blankley | Senate Storm Warning
In life, generally, honorable people play by the rules. This is particularly true in the United States Senate, which has historically defined itself by its adherence to its unique rules — rather than, say, by its representational or proportional nature. And so, as we enter the confirmation process for Elena Kagan as Supreme Court associate justice, most Republican senators have sincerely expressed their intent to apply the traditional rules of confirmation.
Those rules might be summarized as follows: (1) The president is entitled to an appointee who generally shares his views (i.e., a liberal president is entitled to a liberal justice; a conservative president is entitled to a conservative justice). (2) A nominee should be confirmed if he or she is professionally qualified and of generally good character. (3) The only exception to Rule Two is if the nominee’s views are provably and dangerously outside the mainstream of respectable thought.
By those rules, most people would probably conclude that Ms. Kagan is entitled to confirmation — although I and others would argue that her restricted views on freedom of speech would disqualify her under Rule Three above.
But I want to make a different argument in this column: The current rules are obsolete, having come into being at a time when the federal courts had not yet been consciously politicized. Today, liberal presidents attempt to use their appointments with the intent to systematically undermine — not uphold — the Constitution. And they do so because their vision of an ever-more-statist America is inconsistent with the Constitution’s fundamental purpose: to limit the size and scope of government.
Ben Shapiro | Democrats: Learn to Read
The literacy rate in the United States is 99 percent. That means that only 1 percent of people in the United States above the age of 15 are incapable of reading and writing. Apparently, all of them are members of the Obama administration.
Attorney General Eric Holder admits that he has not read the Arizona immigration law, which requires law enforcement officers to check immigration status upon stopping people based on reasonable suspicion of illegal activity. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano says she hasn’t read the law, either. You can also lump State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley into that group.
That did not stop any of them from opining at length on the Arizona law; Holder called the law “a slippery slope” leading to racial profiling, saying he based that opinion on “television, talking to people who are on the review panel.” Napolitano called the law “bad law enforcement law.” Crowley defended a U.S. diplomat who actually apologized to China for the immigration law — as though American states should apologize for enforcing their borders to a country that routinely excises and sells the internal organs of its political prisoners.
Democrats didn’t bother reading the massive Obamacare law, either, before passing it. The official actuary of the Obama administration didn’t even have time to do a cost analysis of the health care bill before the vote. In fact, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told Americans “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”