Category Archives: rights

News Flash

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President Barack Obama has some words of cautious wisdom for the Israelis during Hamas’ renewed terrorist rocket assault from Gaza.

Israel has every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory.

If that can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza, that’s preferable.  It’s not just preferable for the people of Gaza.  It’s also preferable for Israelis, because if Israeli troops are in Gaza, they’re much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded.

Here’s a news flash, Ace, in case you’ve missed the data flowing out of that conflict: the Israelis already are at serious risk of incurring “fatalities or being wounded” from those rockets being fired at civilian targets where children live.  That’s the point of Hamas’ fire.  And the purpose of any military establishment: to protect those civilians and their children, even if those military forces risk “incurring fatalities or being wounded.”

Try to keep up.

Progressive Free Speech

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Here’s an example of Progressive free speech.  Todd Starnes, of Fox News, reported last week that two public school teachers are being investigated for posting messages critical of President Barack Obama on social networking sites.

A Rock Hill, SC, junior high math teacher is now on forced-leave because she disparaged, on her personal Facebook page, Obama and his food stamps:

Congrats Obama.  As one of my students sang down the hallway, “We get to keep our food stamps….”  [W]hich I pay for because they can’t budget their money…and really, neither can you.

School officials said that some folks had had their feelings hurt by this personal speech, so the school forced her onto leave and to apologize.  Though, with her having done nothing wrong, I’m at a loss to understand why she apologized.  I also am mystified by the teacher’s union’s silence on the matter.

The school’s spokeswoman said,

Sometimes you just can’t speak out publicly about what you’d personally like to say, about anything….

And she said that with a straight face, too.

A Columbus, OH, high school teacher is in similar hot water.  His evil message:

Congrats to those dependent on government, homosexuals, potheads, JAY-Z fans, non-Christians, non-taxpayers, illegals, communists, Muslims, planned murder clinics, enemies of America, Satan You WON….

Stupid, to be sure, but free speech, in some circles, means being free from having one’s thin skin pricked.

Sovereignty

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Who is sovereign in our country, government or We the People who employ that government?

Progressives like Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (D) seem to think that it’s government.

It’s [having referendums] probably been made a little too easy.  There was a requirement that required 50,000 actual physical signatures.  Because of the Internet that has been so easy to do electronically, that the legislature probably needs to revisit that.

Maryland radio station WBAL chimes in, reporting that:

Critics of the process say that a group of opponents can use the referendum process to overturn legislation they don’t like[.]

Yeah—it’s terrible that a questionable government act should be put to the government’s employer for approval or rejection.  Remember, while it may take a small minority to force the government to submit to the will of its employer, it still takes a majority of that employer to overrule their employee.  And if that majority does so, it’s an entirely appropriate exercise of the People’s sovereign authority.

An Immigration Plan

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House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R, VA) said last week that the Republicans were (finally) ready to take up the question of immigration reform.  President Obama has said (again) that he wants immigration reform to come on the heels of answering the fiscal cliff and tax reform deficiencies.

Immigration reform is a subject on which the Republicans, and we conservatives, have been lagging for too long.  If Boehner and Cantor, et al., are serious, it’s also important that the House take the initiative, and quit bleating about the necessity for the President to lead.  The House led on budgeting, spending, Medicare, and so on for the last two years, and it got them overwhelmingly reelected, even though Progressive obstinacy and partisanship in the Senate and the White House ultimately scotched those efforts.

The best way to seize the initiative after all these years of lagging is to come with a complete proposal—not just vague platitudes and half-formed ideas.  The proposal need not, indeed should not be, cast in concrete, but a complete reform package proposal—one that is well thought out and actually addresses all aspects of immigration (not just the tear-jerking, feel-good bits about “the children”)—will do two critical things.  For one thing, it will take us a long way down the path toward finally fixing this problem.  For the other, it will leave the Democrats either to work with the Republicans to adjust the Republican reform plan or to put forward their own and make them look as though they’re just blowing off another Republican idea for no better reason than that it’s Republican.

I’ve offered one such proposal.  It’s a three-legged stool, and like a stool, all three legs must be implemented together, not one or two at a time.  Those three legs are securing, tightly, our borders; making it easy to cross those borders legally, and finally dealing with the existing population of illegal aliens.  Both Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D, IL) and Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) have good ideas that can serve as seeds for that third leg.

Certainly, any one of those legs will take courage and initiative to get done; doing all three together will require even more courage and initiative.  It’s time for conservatives and for Republicans to step up and show that courage and initiative.

Good News

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There really is some coming out of the election last Tuesday.

Reelecting President Obama notwithstanding, voters validated central conservative tenets:

  • Exit polls demonstrate that by a 51%-43% margin, Americans believe that today’s government already does too much that more properly belongs to the private sector.
  • By a 63%-33% spread, Americans said not to raise taxes as a means of cutting the Federal budget deficit.
  • Concerning the economy, the national debt, and the budget deficit generally, the voters preferred the Republican over the Democrat.
  • Voters also reelected an overwhelmingly conservative and Republican House, thereby explicitly and materially validating the House’s expression of those conservative tenets over the last two years.

There’s more.

In California, Democrats won voter approval to raise the top income tax rate to 13.3%.  More importantly, they also won a legislative supermajority.  California has in its state constitution an amendment requiring a two-thirds majority of both houses of the state’s government in order to raise taxes.  The Democrats have won that two-thirds majority in both houses.

Now we’ll have an object lesson, fresh in our minds at the time of the 2016 elections, about the outcome of Progressive policies implemented wholesale.  California will be that demonstration.  Watch carefully.