The Stafford Voice

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Daniel

Brass Oldies: Part III

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by Thomas Sowell

Politics is not the only place where some pretty brassy statements have been made and repeated so often that some people have accepted these brassy statements as being as good as gold.
       
One of the brassiest of the brass oldies in the law is the notion that the Constitution creates a “wall of separation” between church and state. This false notion has been so widely accepted that people who tell the truth get laughed at and mocked.
       
A recent New York Times piece said that it was “a flub of the first order” when Christine O’Donnell, Republican candidate for senator in Delaware, asked a law school audience “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” According to the New York Times, ?The question draw gasps and laughter” from this audience of professors and law students who are elites-in-waiting.

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Daily Dose

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“Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.” – Thomas Jefferson

Daniel 11:19-21 – Then he shall turn his face toward the fort of his own land: but he shall stumble and fall, and not be found. Then shall stand up in his estate a raiser of taxes in the glory of the kingdom: but within few days he shall be destroyed, neither in anger, nor in battle. And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.

On this day in history:

In 1886, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland.

Election Day: When “We The People” Rule

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by Wayne LaPierre

At Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln distilled the essence of American freedom as “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” In honoring those who gave their all for that unique principle, he pledged it would “not perish from the earth.”

But Lincoln could not have envisioned U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, or Reps. Alcee Hastings and Pete Stark as keepers of that torch.

Today, with the ruling class’s singular arrogance of power exercised from the White House to the halls of Congress, Americans could well see the end of President Lincoln’s vision.

I have never seen anything like the nightmare of “change” the Obama administration and its allies in Congress have brought, or the distortion and dishonesty and outright lies that mark their governing strategy.

Consent of the governed is built around rules and an honorable process beginning with the Constitution. It is built around openness, where ordinary Americans can examine and question both executive and legislative measures. In both houses of Congress that process has historically meant stability, where time is on the side of citizens to study and react to open consideration of legislative action. It is essential to successful grassroots activism.

In writing the original rules of the U.S. Senate, Thomas Jefferson penned a short first section, “The Importance Of Adhering To Rules,” in which he warned, “There should be a rule to go by … It is very material that order, decency and regularity, be preserved in a dignified public body.”

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Brass Oldies: Part II

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by Thomas Sowell

Songs that are “golden oldies” have much less pleasant counterparts in politics– namely, ideas and policies that have failed disastrously in the past but still keep coming back to be advocated and imposed by government. Some people may think these ideas are as good as gold, but brass has often been mistaken for gold by people who don’t look closely enough.
       
One of these brass oldies is the idea that the government can and must reduce unemployment by “creating jobs.” Some people point to the history of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment peaked at 25 percent, as proof that the government cannot simply stand by and do nothing when so many millions of people are out of work.
       
If we are going to look back at history, we need to make sure the history we look at is accurate. First of all, unemployment never hit 25 percent until after– repeat, AFTER– the federal government intervened in the economy.

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Voter Fraud: Open and In your Face

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by Michelle Malkin

Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt. It’s the Democrats’ coping mechanism for midterm election voter fraud. Faced with multiple reports of early voting irregularities and election shenanigans across the country, left-wing groups are playing dumb, deaf and blind. Voter fraud? What voter fraud?

More cunningly, these organizations are seeking to marginalize complaints about election integrity by casting citizen watchdog efforts as racist “scare tactics.” Echoing President Obama’s message to the Democratic faithful on the campaign trail, they are accusing political opponents of suppressing the votes of minorities and the poor. On Tuesday, The New York Times quoted a liberal voting rights advocate, Wendy R. Weiser, wringing her hands over individual Americans taking clean elections seriously:

“Private efforts to police the polls create a real risk of vote suppression, regardless of their intent,” said Weiser, director of the Voting Rights and Elections Project at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “People need to know that any form of discrimination, intimidation or challenge to voters without adequate basis is illegal or improper.”

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Daily Dose

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“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.” – Thomas Paine

1 Peter 2:15-16 – For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as servants of God.

On this day in history:

In 1787, the first of The Federalist Papers were published.

AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and good men must feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth. – Federalist No. 1

Brass Oldies

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by Thomas Sowell

Classic songs from years past are sometimes referred to as “golden oldies.” There are political fallacies that have been around for a long time as well. These might be called brass oldies. It certainly takes a lot of brass to keep repeating fallacies that were refuted long ago.

One of these brass oldies is a phrase that has been a perennial favorite of the left, “tax cuts for the rich.” How long ago was this refuted? More than 80 years ago, the “tax cuts for the rich” argument was refuted, both in theory and in practice, by Andrew Mellon, who was Secretary of the Treasury in the 1920s.

When Mellon took office, there was a large national debt, the economy was stagnating, and tax rates were high, though the tax revenues were still not enough to cover government expenditures. What was Mellon’s prescription for getting out of this mess? A series of major cuts in the tax rates!

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Daily Dose

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“But if we are to be told by a foreign Power … what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek, and have contended hitherto for very little.” – George Washington

Philippians 2:14-15 – Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and pervers nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world.

On this day in history:

In 1825, the newly finished, 363-mile Erie Canal marked its grand opening.

The Left Hates Free Speech – Juan at a Time

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by Ted Nugent

National Public Radio’s firing of commentator Juan Williams is yet another example of how political correctness has poisoned free speech.

Mr. Williams didn’t say anything that the vast majority of Americans wouldn’t say or agree with regarding genuine and well-founded concerns about Muslims on airplanes. Who doesn’t know that Muslim voodoo loons have used or tried to use jets as a means to carry out mass murder and mayhem? It’s the truth, comfortable or not.

Juan Williams, a clear and present left-leaning guy, has now been exposed to the progressive’s anti-free speech grinder machine. Instead of rallying to his to defense as many on the Right and some on the Left have, I have a question for Mr. Williams: How do you like the Left now?

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Mr. Fix-It

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by Oliver North

The Obama administration has replaced an old axiom, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” with one of its own: “If it ain’t broke, fix it till it is.” That’s certainly what the O-Team is doing to the U.S. military.
       
While campaigning for the presidency, then-Sen. Barack Obama repeatedly promised to “end discrimination against gays and lesbians” by the U.S. military’s so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Last October, he told supporters at a Human Rights Campaign dinner here in Washington, “I’m working with the Pentagon, its leadership and the members of the House and Senate on ending this policy. … I will end ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ That’s my commitment to you.”
       
Of course, it’s not a matter of “policy”; it’s the law — and it’s been on the books since 1993. Section 654 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code clearly states: “The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.” Notably, this language became the law of the land — not just “policy” — while American troops were engaged in Somalia.

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