Senator Rand Paul gave an interview to National Review about his libertarian approach to Republican policy, with an emphasis on national defense, given his spectacular filibuster of CIA nominee John Brennan over domestic drone strikes.  But he also had some interesting comments on the subject of gay marriage, where he said he wanted to “shake up the Republican position.”

“I’m an old-fashioned traditionalist. I believe in the historic and religious definition of marriage,” said Paul. “That being said, I’m not for eliminating contracts between adults. I think there are ways to make the tax code more neutral, so it doesn’t mention marriage. Then we don’t have to redefine what marriage is; we just don’t have marriage in the tax code.”

The notion of extricating the government from the marriage business altogether has long been advocated by libertarians, and gains new currency among the general Republican population as perception grows that defending traditional marriage is an electorally thankless task.  Social conservatives generally insist upon it, but a good number of otherwise approachable voters, especially young people, favor gay marriage.  It might fairly be said that the culturally-influenced “default” position, for people who don’t really count marriage as a top concern, now favors gay marriage, where 10 or 15 years ago it was almost certainly opposed.  That’s a significant tipping point for any issue: the moment of casual acceptance.  It makes this an issue some Republicans would prefer to quietly table.

On the specific Paul proposals: I’ve always thought it was silly to block simple legal contracts between consenting adults, but I think that can be accomplished without re-defining marriage.  The issue of tax-code treatment is more complex.  I think society has positive reasons to provide incentives for traditional marriage – to put it bluntly, a healthy, independent society needs a lot of long-lasting marriages between men and women, with a sizable percentage of them raising multiple children in stable households.  There just isn’t any substitute for that.  It’s a practical consideration, not a moral or religious judgment.

But I’m also receptive to the argument that the State subsidizes and punishes far too much private behavior.  Not enough people understand that subsidies are penalties for the people who don’t receive them.  If gay couples feel that way about preferential tax treatment granted to married men and women, it could be taken as an encouraging sign of progress.  We should make the tax code “neutral” in countless ways.  I don’t see why marriage should go first, but it definitely shouldn’t be the last.

Beyond these matters, the notion of extracting government from marriage runs into a couple of big problems.  Child custody is an obvious example.  Such matters are already difficult.  They would grow even more so, if the government played no role in certifying legitimate marriages.  The separation of law from marriage, until it becomes entirely a matter between private individuals, is more difficult to accomplish than the lovely libertarian simplicity of the idea implies.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but I don’t think same-sex marriage advocates really want the State to butt out.  Can private individuals be allowed to refuse recognition of a same-sex marriage?  Criticism of the “federalist” approach to marriage, in which each state makes its own laws – the position President Obama supposedly favors, although he currently trembles with the first signs of another “evolution” – holds that it’s not enough to allow gay marriage in one state but not another, because people who get married in states which allow it will inevitably migrate to those which don’t.

There are people on both sides of the gay marriage issue who level this criticism, obviously for opposite reasons.  People who enter the strong, sacred commitment of marriage wish that commitment to be recognized by others, and are dismayed when others deny the validity of their marital bond.  A strong driving force behind the institution of marriage is public acknowledgement.  That’s one reason the vows are celebrated with great ceremony, and consecrated with religious authority.

I’m a supporter of traditional marriage, but I have no doubt the majority of same-sex marriage advocates sincerely desire this recognition, for the same reasons married men and women do.  I find it hard to imagine that the marriage wars will end with a cease-fire in which everyone agrees to keep government power completely out of the picture, allowing individuals to define, declare, and deny the sanctity of marriage in any way they see fit.  To be honest, given the general nature of modern culture, I doubt this would ultimately end with traditionalists retaining the right to verbally deny the validity of gay marriage without being accused of hate crimes, never mind refusing to acknowledge such marriages in any practical sense.  It doesn’t seem like the sort of question any society is likely to settle without some recourse to law and government.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

Mr. Bloomberg is not persuaded. He tweeted, “We believe @nycHealthy has the legal authority and responsibility to tackle causes of the obesity epidemic, which kills 5,000 NYers a year.” The city will appeal.

The trouble is, a fatwa on sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces is not only intrusive, but it doesn’t work. Who will enforce it? Who will say “no” to a customer ordering a second 16-ounce drink? Mr. Bloomberg released a study on Monday linking sugary drinks to the city’s fattest neighborhoods. OK, but did the drinks come with or without chips? And who forced anyone to drink one? What about copycat bans in cities and states across the country? The next step is for the beverage and bottle makers to call their lawyers and line up to sue.

The sugary drink ban could, this being New York we’re talking about, survive on appeal to a higher court. His Nannyhood’s crusade against something sweet takes us back to Prohibition. We all know how that worked out. Though churches across the country were well intentioned, and there were no more stalwart members of the community than the members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League, do we really want our Applebee’s, Shoney’s and 7-Elevens locked down, stormed by do-gooders, or worse, federal revenooers?

Prohibition failed when bootlegging became widespread and organized crime took control of the distribution of booze. Soft drinks, even in 17-ounce cups, are not likely to make a speakeasy as much fun as jugs of rotgut and bathtub gin – assuming the funster survives.

No one disputes that sugar in excess has real health consequences. Good intentions in excess do, too. But hold the toasts in Dr Pepper and Pepsi. His Nannyhood’s sugar ban could return on appeal, and hypocrisy and waste will once more rule the land. Enter someone who looks a lot like Al Capone.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

The Untold History of the United States, by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, weighs in at 750 pages, an elephantine encyclopedia of neo-communist demonology. None of it is “untold” and on every page one hears the sound of a barrel being scraped. David Horowitz rightly called it “unbelievable crap,” but some readers might profit from an examination of the places where the book most needs stool softener and a polygraph test.

This must be the only book endorsed by Bill Maher, Daniel Ellsberg, and Mikhail Gorbachev, which makes sense. The only hero is former vice president Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party candidate for president of the United States in 1948. He’s portrayed here as a kind of American Gorbachev, the only hope to save the United States which, by setting off atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “once again, proved itself unready to provide the kind of leadership a desperate world cried out for.”

The authors tout Wallace’s “Century of the Common Man,” but fail to note that, as one observer put it, Wallace’s Communist backers confused the Common Man with the Comintern. That organization does not appear in the book, which contains material about the USSR, Stalin, Communism and such.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact does appear but consider the treatment of the 1939 alliance that started World War II. It was an “unsavory deal,” Stalin struck with Hitler because he feared a “German-Polish alliance” to attack the USSR. It was actually to divide up Europe and crush the democracies, but that’s how Stalin and his echo-chamber spun it.

True to form, Untold History lists only two atrocities for Stalin, the massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn forest and “having the Red Army stop on the banks of the Vistula while the Germans put down the Warsaw uprising.” Nothing about the genocide noted in the Black Book of Communism and, more recently, Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. The authors even include a photo of Russians mourning Stalin, who at the time of his death in 1953 was about to unleash terror on Soviet Jews, then slandered as “rootless cosmopolitans.”

As Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton noted in The Rosenberg File, American Communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were responsible for giving nuclear weapons to the worst mass murder in history. Here they are only “accused atomic spies.” Stone and Kuznick tout “the legendary Communist-backed Abraham Lincoln Brigade,” but ignore the real story of this Stalinist militia as outlined in Cecil Eby’s Comrades and Commissars.

Stone and Kuznick are not eager to explain what American Stalinists were up to during the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Readers will not learn that they worked in concert with pro-Nazi organizations against the allies, particularly Britain. They picketed the White House and called FDR a “warmonger,” a charge the authors apply to virtually all U.S. Presidents, particularly Reagan, whose chapter is subtitled “Death Squads for Democracy.” No moral equivalence here. In Untold History, the USSR is the peaceful regime.

After World War II the USSR “had no blueprint for postwar Sovietization of Eastern Europe and hoped to maintain friendly and collaborative relations with its wartime allies.” Further, the Soviets “had gone out of their way to guarantee West Berliners’ access to food and coal from the eastern zone or from direct Soviet provisions.” So the heroic Berlin airlift touted in American schools was all for nothing.

The USSR oppressed half or Europe for nearly half a century, smashed reform in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and later invaded Afghanistan. Yet CIA director William Casey’s picture of a “hostile, expansionist USSR” was “an image that didn’t accord with the facts.” And in the1983 the Soviets “mistakenly took a Korean Air Lines passenger jet for a spy plane.”

Thus, the Soviets make “mistakes” and are evaluated by their alleged aspiration for a better world. The United States, on the other hand, commits crimes and is evaluated on the authors’ vision of its record. The USA emerges here as an evil empire eager to spread tyranny and crush the poor by any means necessary. But consider the untold backstory here.

Hollywood leftists, Richard Grenier once observed, charge that America and capitalism are evil – except for their three-picture deal, except for their bank account, except for their Bel-Air mansion, except for their BMW and Mercedes-Benz. So despite JFK, Wall Street, and The Untold History of the United States, Oliver Stone does after all believe in American exceptionalism.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

The former mayor of Detroit, Democrat Kwame Kilpatrick, was convicted on racketeering charges Monday, and could be looking at 20 years in prison.  According to NBC News, “prosecutors said he presided over a breathtaking profit machine by rigging contracts and demanding bribes.”

Kilpatrick was convicted of at least six other criminal counts and acquitted of one, and jurors said they were unable to reach a verdict on two. Kilpatrick was charged with 30 federal crimes. The verdict was still being delivered in federal court in Detroit.

Jurors began deliberating Feb. 18.

Kilpatrick, 42, was charged with bribery, extortion and tax evasion

Prosecutors said that Kilpatrick, a Democrat, steered $83 million in city contracts to Ferguson in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks. They also told jurors that the ex-mayor raided his own nonprofit for personal expenses.

The Washington Post reports that Kilpatrick looked “surprised and puzzled” when the verdict came down, but judging by the Post’s description of the charges, he really shouldn’t have been all that surprised:

Prosecutors said Kilpatrick ran a “private profit machine” out of Detroit’s City Hall. The government presented evidence to show he got a share of the spoils after ensuring that Bobby Ferguson’s excavating company was awarded millions in work from the water department.

Business owners said they were forced to hire Ferguson as a subcontractor or risk losing city contracts. Separately, fundraiser Emma Bell said she gave Kilpatrick more than $200,000 as his personal cut of political donations, pulling cash from her bra during private meetings. A high-ranking aide, Derrick Miller, told jurors that he often was the middle man, passing bribes from others.

Internal Revenue Service agents said Kilpatrick spent $840,000 beyond his mayoral salary.

U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade hailed the verdict and said Kilpatrick was “grabbing money from the citizens he was elected to serve.”

Detroit has been disintegrating while Kilpatrick and his associates used it as a piggy bank.  Confronted with that $840k of spending above his means, his defense attorney claimed Kilpatrick was “often showered with cash gifts from city workers and political supporters during holidays and birthdays.”  Funny, Detroit doesn’t look like the sort of place where prosperous citizens would be blowing their abundant disposable income on gifts to throw at their beloved political leaders.

Kilpatrick is already well on his way to being airbrushed out of the Party – the Huffington Post got through an entire article about him without using the word “Democrat” once – but in happier times he was a young rising star, endorsed by a certain other product of generations-long single-party rule as “doing an outstanding job of gathering together the leadership at every level in Detroit.

Homosexuality cannot be primarily genetic, solar energy is only a dynamo when applied to agriculture, and literacy enriches life only when it slows and deepens thought: these three unimpeachable propositions have all become political heresy in our insane culture.

Cogar leat, as they used to say in Ireland: “A whisper with you.”  Let’s not speak too loudly, or the Attorney General may rule that we pose an imminent threat to national security and deploy a drone.  I have three secrets to tell you about our time’s incredible absurdity.

FIRST ABSURDITY: Homosexuality is Genetically Determined

If people are homosexual because they are born so-i.e., because of their genetic material-and since gay individuals cannot breed because they mate with other gays, then why has their kind not vanished from the face of the earth, like Ice Age oxen in climes that grew too warm?  Officially approved answer: the individuals in question did in fact breed heterosexually throughout yesteryear because they feared to reveal their true proclivity.  Assume that the answer makes sense.  (It doesn’t: stigmatizing agents like playground bullies and Victorian matrons didn’t exist on the primal savanna, and the “gay gene” could hardly have popped up just a few hundred years ago.  The “breeding out” should hence have occurred while our ancestors were still eating ticks off of each other.)  No longer does any significant social pressure exist for gays to remain in the closet. They need no more enter into undesired heterosexual marriages and pass their genetic material on to subsequent generations in a manner repugnant to them.  Therefore, the percentage of gays in the general population must steadily dwindle until its reaches virtual zero.  Genetic conditions do not persist when those who possess them cease to reproduce.

We should expect, then, that whatever social or moral problems are posed by homosexuality will work themselves out now in a few decades, inasmuch as homosexuality itself must vanish if nature is left to run its course.  The situation has an elegant beauty: extend full tolerance to the gay rather than load them with opprobrium, and the challenge they represent to traditional virtue will remove itself without any further action.

Of course, you and I both know (I say in a whisper) that no such thing will happen.  For the most part, homosexuality is a behavioral choice rather than a genetic condition.  (A very, very few people are born with anomalous genitalia: this seems more on the order of a birth defect than an alternative arrangement of chromosomes passed through generations.)  The “gay lifestyle” will therefore persist, and probably even proliferate as our ailing society continues its death spiral.  In our last days, we shall at least have the satisfaction of possessing irrefragable proof that homosexuals are in general bred rather than born; for there can be no other possible explanation of their durability in these free and open times.

SECOND ABSURDITY: The Perversion of the Sun’s Power

Solar energy has been effectively harnessed throughout the history of human civilization-but we have lately turned our backs upon its proper use in order to (as it were) yoke the goose to the plow.  The most essential need for all human beings is food: the sun has always been the primary engine that drives food-production.  Does American society consume too much energy?  By any sane standard, it certainly does.  How, then, might we best use the sun to modify our consumption?  By growing food in our back yards.  Less fuel expended by tractors, trains, and trucks; fewer trips to the grocery store; less energy sacrificed to refrigeration; perhaps liberation from fighting traffic twice a day in pursuit of enough money to buy food, at least for one member of the family… these are only the most obvious savings available purely in terms of oil and electricity.

My own very preliminary experiment in backyard farming has already staggered me with its potential.  I never would have believed that we might one day supply most of the food on our table in this manner: now I see the evidence just in the fertility of the two hundred square feet or so I have tilled.  Think of the implications.  No more need of foodstamps.  No more need to endure intolerable working conditions or else pull up stakes and move to a new city.  No “prepper” nightmare about a world where all the shelves suddenly go bare.  And think, too, of the effects upon our intellectually and spiritually drifting children.  Into their education could be infused useful, “hands-on” lessons about how things grow, and at home they would have chores to do that would quickly inspire in them a sense of responsibility and of pride that they have helped the family to survive.  They would at once learn far more than they do now about “earth science” (which, as currently taught, scarcely seems to have any meaning) and about the natural limitations within which all life must find its place.  They would grow both smarter and wiser: their minds and their spirits would develop in tandem.

Instead, we are heavily invested in maximizing the dependency of individuals upon the collective.  We chase the mirage of solar energy as a means of keeping our cars and our toys operating at their present maniacal rates of consumption; and to sustain the charade, we aid and abet the creation of “cancer villages” in China and Third World nations, where the rare-earth metals needed to coat solar panels leave a deadly spill-over.

This is not a fairly innocent, patently stupid absurdity like Number One: this is criminal.  Our handlers clearly couldn’t care less about the planet or its inhabitants, human or animal.  (For more on the Green Elite’s slaughter of animal life, do a little research into the effects of wind turbines on wild fowl.)  With a little encouragement through general education, individual Americans could be rendered far more independent, healthy, proud, responsible, and content by using the sun’s golden blessings the old-fashioned way.  The official objective, though, is precisely to render the American masses more dependent, sickly, shameless, whiney, and crotchety: hence our present “solar energy” initiatives.

THIRD ABSURDITY: The Digital “Enhancement” of Literacy

Both polarities of the political spectrum laud education as the pre-condition to democracy and the gateway to a more productive future.  So they should.  Yet on Right as well as Left, one also hears that technology holds the key to education’s gate.  Luminaries of East Coast conservatism (a distinctly elitist brand) like George Gilder have long argued that the Internet will create a new era of freedom by affording everyone a platform who chooses to speak up.  The amiable Rush Limbaugh naively praises whatever new iDevice he happens to be playing with while on the air-or critiques it sometimes, but leaves us in no doubt that such technical advances are a triumph of free enterprise.  Meanwhile, adversaries on the Left lobby to have grade schools equipped to the hilt with all the latest hardware.  After all, how could a self-advertised progressive ever be opposed to a hand-held library?  Of course, the potential latent in the Internet to “wire” an entire citizenry, and even an entire planet-dispensing “necessary information” to everyone instantly while also subtly monitoring the browses and exchanges of each individual-must also appeal to zealots of centralization.

The Gilder-Limbaugh crowd and the Orwellian mind-control crowd are both correct, as it happens.  The Internet does allow all of us to post practically anything.  It also and thereby creates a permanent record of personal thought, easily accessed and categorized by anyone who might want to profile us.  The various supportive gismos attendant upon Internet culture are indeed a bonanza for resourceful private-sector developers.  They also open intimate, highly intrusive pathways to marketing which could be used by social engineers just as readily as by sellers of Nike shoes or weight-loss drugs.  In this particular case, the two poles of the political spectrum are pulling together against the mainstream of American society-or, I should say, against the inert remnant of Western culture (an infinitely punier opponent); and unfortunately, our talkative movers and shakers are dragging us all straight over a cliff.

For the bedrock issue to me, as an educator, isn’t even whether our Kindles are flashing ads for toothpaste or for gun control (or for movies that subliminally promote big government and free sex): the premier issue, rather, is simply that high-tech literacy comes too easily to impart intellectual and moral gifts.  What could always be said on behalf of reading and writing before the Internet was that both took time.  Handwriting (or typewriting) a letter or a novel was somewhat arduous.  The composer was therefore forced to think before-and as-he scribbled.  Reading, too, was purely a matter of person-in-chair and words-on-page: a rather colorless scene.  The reader had to provide sights and sounds from his or her own imagination.  This, too, required time.  People immersed in this culture were constantly seeking out quiet and private spaces where they could probe their own depths and seek the connections underlying blunt surfaces.

I still write that way, even at my keyboard; and I still read that way, even off the Net.  Probably most patrons of this site do, as well… but we are a dying breed.  The younger “literates” who follow us thumb out gibberish on their “smart phones” with no more thought than they would scratch an itch.  The documents they create for school or work leave trails of computer-enhanced “trend-speak”-clichés du jour (“I’m there for you”), proverbial relics in full meltdown (“for granted” rendered “for granite”), and even benign idiocy from the invisible correcting pen of Professor Bill Gates (“tonsorial” parsed as “to social” by the word processor).  Furthermore, no casual observer can harbor any doubt that the future holds yet more ease of thought.  Students of tomorrow will “read” with icons and pictures constantly popping up in the margins, and they will compose text by speaking into something like my old wristwatch.  Dumbing down, alas, has a long way to go before it finds the cold black sand of a cultural Mariana Trench.  By then, our computers will no longer even want our dead weight hanging about their artificial necks.

It is absurd that we are laboring so mightily to achieve this self-destruction, and I find it especially annoying that the self-styled Right invests no effort in resisting the descent.  Are we really prepared, we conservatives, to relinquish the riches of the thoughtful, independent individual just so that a succession of Gateses and Jobses can send a few more tsunamis of material prosperity through our moribund culture?  Ask a twenty-something if he even knows what “moribund” means.  He could look it up instantly on his smart phone, of course… but why should he, unless you’re offering him cash for the right answer?  Nothing he reads uses words like that.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

Scholars have filed more than 50 amicus briefs with the Supreme Court urging it to uphold California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). While the media seems intent on ignoring these briefs and hyping the briefs on the other side, the sheer number and quality of the briefs in defense of laws recognizing marriage as the union of a man and a woman is impressive.

Austin Nimocks, Senior Counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, explains the significance:

During the Supreme Court’s 2011-2012 term, an average of only 10 amicus briefs per case were filed. And in the historic landmark case of Roe v. Wade, only 26 total amicus briefs were filed.

By comparison a combined total of 58 amicus briefs were filed in support of Prop 8 and DOMA. The pro-marriage arguments are deep, rich, well-reasoned, common sense- and common good-based, and worthy of serious reflection by the Court and any other American interested in the future of our most important social institution.

Here are just a few of the arguments:

Family law expert Helen Alvare argues that society’s interest in the upbringing of children and marriage’s unique ability to serve that interest explains the government’s involvement in marriage. Tracing the consequences of the past half century’s “retreat from marriage,” and its disparate effects on America’s poor, Alvare argues that redefining marriage to exclude sexual complementarity would cause social harms to increase. The consequences of redefining marriage is the focus of the amicus brief that I filed with my co-authors Robert P. George and Sherif Girgis.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese responds to charges that marriage laws violate legal guarantees of equal protection and argues that same-sex and opposite-sex relationships are not similarly situated:

Given the near-universal view, across different societies and different times, that a principle, if not the principal, purpose of marriage is the channeling of the unique procreative abilities of opposite-sex relationships into a societally beneficial institution, it is clear that same-sex and opposite-sex couples are not similarly situated with respect to that fundamental purpose.

A group of international jurists and academics points out that not until the year 2000 did any political body recognize same-sex unions as marriages, that even today only 12 non-U.S. jurisdictions recognize same-sex unions as marriages, and that “same-sex marriage is not required by international human rights norms”:

The European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the French Constitutional Court, the Italian Constitutional Court, the German Federal Constitutional Court, and the New Zealand Court of Appeal have all rejected the notion that same-sex marriage is a constitutional or human right. (emphasis added)

Indeed, a group of historians and other professors explain the historical consensus that existed prior to the year 2000: “While the procedures and incidents of marriage have varied over time and across cultures, its primary form and legal meaning have remained remarkably constant. … Marriage as an opposite-sex institution is a universal phenomenon.”

A team of social science professors present the scientifically robust data that exists on family structure and child wellbeing.

Indeed, the only studies that were based on large, random, representative samples tended to reveal … significant differences in the outcomes of children raised by parents in a same-sex relationship and those raised by a married biological mother and father. What is clear is that much more study must be done on these questions. But there is no dispute that a biological mother and father provide, on average, an effective and proven environment for raising children. And it is reasonable to conclude that a mother and father function as a complementary parenting unit and that each tends to contribute something unique and beneficial to child development.

Eminent political scientists Leon Kass and Harvey Mansfield caution the Court against accepting politicized science: “Claims that science provides support for constitutionalizing a right to same-sex marriage must necessarily rest on ideology. Ideology may be pervasive in the social sciences, especially when controversial policy issues are at stake, but ideology is not science.”

The Attorneys General for 20 states defend the rational basis of their states’ marriage law and the irrationality of redefining marriage: “No limiting principle for excluding other groupings of individuals.” And 37 scholars of federalism and judicial restraint argue that “[p]rinciples of federalism and judicial restraint urge this Court to exercise caution when considering the expansion of constitutional rights in areas of contentious social dispute.” The laboratories of democracy-not unelected judges-should make marriage policy for the nation.

Several briefs argue that trying to cast gay and lesbian Americans as a “suspect class” rests both on bad science and bad politics. For example, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School chief psychiatrist Dr. Paul McHugh explains the academic research on sexual orientation:

Sexual orientation is neither a “discrete” nor “immutable” characteristic in the legal sense of those terms.… Scholars do not know enough about what sexual orientation is, what causes it, and why and how it sometimes changes for the Court to recognize it as the defining feature of a new suspect class.

A brief from the Concerned Women for America points out that gay and lesbian Americans are hardly a politically powerless class. In fact, they have the President of the United States advocating on their behalf. If marriage policy is to be changed, it ought to be done legislatively.

While the media takes little note of their voices, many Americans who experience same-sex attraction are opposed to redefining marriage. Two separate briefs (here and here) make their case.

Likewise, two additional briefs (here and here) argued that laws defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman are nothing like laws that prevented African-Americans and whites from marrying. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty argues that when courts create rights to same-sex marriage they create new hazards for religious liberty.

Many, many more briefs could be highlighted, and the Alliance Defending Freedom has listed a selection of them here. In the coming days Heritage will spotlight in greater detail these briefs. Marriage matters and the Court should recognize the Constitutional authority of citizens and their elected officials when it comes to making marriage policy.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

Sometimes, when you least expect it, Washington can be surprising.

No, it wasn’t a surprise last week when weather forecasters warned that a mighty blizzard would bury the nation’s capital under a foot of snow, and then rained all day. That’s been going on since the 1970s.

And it wasn’t surprising that an egotistical president would suddenly invite his adversaries to dinner to chew the fat. (Funny how the chief executive will suddenly change his tune when polls show Americans hate his latest policy.)

What surprised all of Washington – even all of America – was a first-term senator taking to the Senate floor for a filibuster: A real, honest to God, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington filibuster, not the milquetoast threat whined by the bloviating cowards who now populate the hallowed chamber.

Yes, a man – a real man – finally walked into the well of the Senate and said, “Nope. No more. Not one inch more, until I’ve had my say. Make yourself comfortable, gentlemen, this is going to take a while.”

But this man, an ophthalmologist mind you, didn’t just read from the phone book (as Sen. Alfonse D’Amato once did). No, this man took the millions watching little old C-SPAN through one of the single greatest and most profound enunciations of the U.S. Constitution – and in a single stroke both slayed the staid Republican old guard in the Senate and vaulted onto the national stage.

His name is Sen. Rand Paul, and he spoke for nearly 13 hours. All because he wanted the answer to a single question: Can America kill an American on American soil with a drone, simply drop a bomb on a citizen they deem a threat, with no judge or jury or protection under the Constitution?

The answer is simple, and just one word: No. The Founders had seen to that (and the document they produced is flush with guarantees that such a thing could never happen, not in the new country they were establishing).

But President No. 44, and especially his oily attorney general, have other ideas. Barack Obama and Eric H. Holder Jr. think the question isn’t cut and dried, isn’t black and white, that there are some shady gray areas, that there really isn’t just one little answer.

Mr. Paul had asked that question to Mr. Holder, who said this in response: “It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws … for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.” He was even more evasive during a Senate hearing, offering long, meandering philosophical answers to the easy query – and never mentioning the Constitution.

Well, that did not sit well with the eye doctor from Kentucky.

“I will speak until I can no longer speak,” the senator said shortly before noon Wednesday. “I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

He wouldn’t yield the floor until nearly midnight. And he would be joined by some new, young bucks of the Republican Party – Sen. Ted Cruz, who read from a letter written by William Barrett Travis, a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army who died at the Alamo (“I shall never surrender or retreat”), and Sen. Marco Rubio, who quoted rapper Jay Z (“It’s funny when seven days can change, it was all good just a week ago”).

Meanwhile, the old bulls, like Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain, were dining with the president at the pricey Jefferson Hotel. Mr. McCain, who gave a thumbs-up sign as he left the soiree, said Mr. Paul should “calm down” and called the filibuster a “political stunt.” For his part, the increasingly irrelevant Mr. Graham slammed the soliloquy as “ridiculous.”

But by mid-day Thursday, the White House sang a whole new tune. No doubt at the order of the president, Mr. Holder wrote a letter to Mr. Paul in which he said: “The answer to the question is no.”

“Under duress and under public humiliation,” Mr. Paul said with a smile, “the White House will respond and do the right thing.”

Yet there was more than just a simple answer to an elementary question. The stand taken by the spry young pups of the Senate, while the fat old dogs dined with the president, proves there are some new pack leaders in town. No longer will a president chew up the Constitution — not as long as we’re here, the alpha pups said. And we don’t need to ask nicely over and over and over — we’ll just stand here, all of us, until the president answers.

So if old dogs really can learn new tricks, they better learn ’em, and quick, ’cuz these new dogs are growling and showing their teeth. And one thing is clear: Their bite is worse than their bark.

• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times and is now editor of the Drudge Report.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

• Pe 5 martie 2013, Biroul Permanent Judetean Vrancea, condus de Costica Neata, a dizolvat Biroul Municipal PDL Focsani, dupa ce cu o zi inainte presedintele acestuia, Nicu Tanase, l-a criticat pe Vasile Blaga la prezentarea Motiunii sale. Semnalul pentru toate filialele din tara este urmatorul: cine indrazneste sa-l critice pe Vasile Blaga este destituit sau nu mai ajunge sa voteze la Conventia Nationala.

• Am cerut, pe 7 martie 2013, Comisiei de Organizare a Conventiei Nationale Extraordinare (COCNE) listele delegatilor care vor veni si vor vota la Conventia Nationala, solicitand functiile lor si datele de contact. In aceeasi zi, am primit listele cu nume ale delegatilor de la 20 de filiale, fara functii si fara date de contact, iar unele liste s-au schimbat deja. Termenul stabilit initial pentru trimiterea de catre filiale a listelor cu delegati a fost 5 martie, dar a fost apoi prelungit pana la 11 martie.  O prelungire cu cel putin doua scopuri:

1. le ofera unora ocazia de a schimba listele cu delegati;
2. ne impiedica sa ne sustinem motiunea chiar in fata celor care trebuie sa si voteze la Conventia Nationala.

De pilda, filiala judeteana Suceava, desi trimisese deja lista cu delegati, a retras-o. Ne intrebam daca o vor modifica in functie de optiunile exprimate de persoanele aflate pe lista delegatilor si constatam, totodata, ca intalnirea de la Suceava nu ne-a pus in contact direct cu delegatii care vor veni efectiv la Conventia Nationala. Din peste 100 de persoane prezente la dezbaterea de la Suceava, numai circa 15 au spus ca sunt si delegati, iar in acest moment nu este sigur ca vor si ramane delegati pana la sfarsitul procedurii.

• Consideram inacceptabila solicitarea unor sume de bani delegatilor, asa cum s-a intamplat la Iasi, acesta fiind un mijloc de presiune pentru a descuraja participarea membrilor PDL care nu vor confirmarea conducerii actuale.

Tinand cont de toate acestea, solicitam urmatoarele conditii minimale pentru o competitie corecta:

1. Cel putin primarul sau primul consilier ales din fiecare localitate sa fie delegati la Conventia Nationala. Diferenta pana la 5.000 de delegati sa fie membri de partid fara functii, pentru ca baza partidului trebuie sa se pronunte.
2. Listele delegatilor depuse la COCNE sa nu poata fi modificate decat in caz de forta majora.
3. Toate buletinele de vot sa fie semnate de cate un reprezentant al fiecarui candidat la presedintia PDL.
4. Cate un reprezentant al fiecarui candidat la presedintia partidului sa fie in comisiile care verifica identitatea delegatilor si le inmaneaza buletinele de vot.
5. Cate un reprezentant al fiecarui candidat la presedintia partidului sa fie la fiecare urna de vot si ulterior sa participe la procesul de numarare a voturilor.
6. Listele complete cu delegatii la Conventia Nationala, cu precizarea functiei acestora si cu datele de contact sa fie puse imediat la dispozitia celor trei candidati la presedintia PDL.

Monica Macovei si sustinatorii Motiunii “Reformistii”

(Bucuresti, 10 martie 2013) – Comunicat de presa

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

Based on the reactions of John McCain and Lindsay Graham to Rand Paul’s filibuster it is fairly obvious that he is afraid of being upstaged on the national scene and losing his influence in the Party as a result.  He is clearly (to use his own terminology) a wacko-bird.

Rand Paul’s filibuster performance on March 6, 2013 really had nothing to do with politics; it was the principle of the thing.  It was about civil rights and the security of citizens doing their daily business without fear of assassination at the unchecked word of a chief executive who may be motivated more by political considerations than by national defense interests.

What Senator Paul was getting at was a vitally important point.  The U.S. Constitution contains certain protections against government excesses that must be enforced or the document becomes meaningless and all of its protections non-existent.  Constitutional limitations are all that protects our citizens against government excesses and without them a tyranny would be a likely rapid result.  Statists find such protections an impediment to their ambitions, but rarely couch their objections in such terms because it is much easier to sell the idea that they are working for the benefit of the people while they do the exact opposite behind the scenes or away from objective press coverage.

There are a fair number of people who seem to have no concerns about government power or potential abuses thereof.  Many of them are government dependents who perceive nothing beyond their next dole check and benefit payment.  Others are simply trusting fools who cannot recognize anything beyond their faith in the current crop of leadership and ignore the fact that the next generation might not be so deserving.  (That is, assuming that the current crop is deserving; a questionable conclusion.)  Then, there are others who see such issues only in terms of who is in power.  They would criticize the other party, but leave the same practices by their own party members alone.  Senator Paul has the right of it.  Right is right and wrong is wrong.  It doesn’t matter who is in power, and the potential for future abuse is real, making future consequences of current errors a matter of extreme importance.

So, where does Senator McCain fit into the equation?  The answer hides within muddied waters.  There are some who suggest that McCain’s experiences as a prisoner in North Vietnam have effected his ability to fight for what it right.  This is possible, but not that likely, in the opinion of this writer.  Senator Paul, interviewed the day after his approximately 13 hour speech suggested that McCain’s actions were based in a mistaken belief that circumstances require the use of „rules of war” within the nation’s boundaries to combat terrorists.  Senator Paul, in contrast, believes that such rules should only be applied in the case of an actual armed attack or situation, which cannot be handled through the use of more conventional law enforcement techniques.  In any event, a citizen not actively involved in military actions at the time they are confronted, should be entitled to his or her constitutional rights; not drumhead justice at the hands of a chief executive operating above the law.

McCain may actually believe that in the rules of war approach, but it is more likely, that he is playing a „go along to get along” game in which he is attempting to maintain his influential position of “leadership” as a senior member of the Senate.  He sees Senator Paul as a threat to the deference and respect that his seniority has brought him.  McCain is one of those old guard Republicans who doesn’t believe that the landscape of the political game has changed.  He denies that he is now facing an adversary who believes in destroying the opposition so that it can achieve single party, authoritarian rule.  Lindsey Graham, who believes that Senator Paul’s question is not worthy of an answer, is equally wrong and has his head stuck just as far in the sand.

To make matters worse, McCain and Graham are probably also unaware that the opposition is fully willing to make use of drone strikes against Americans, not because they are foreign agents or terrorists, but because they are part of the political opposition.  You can bet that in addition to the official Obama „kill list” there is an unofficial one, not available to individuals outside of the inner circle, with names of people to be eliminated if it becomes possible.  You can bet your bottom dollar that Barack Obama would kill any and all effective political opponents if he believed he could get away with it.  McCain and Graham either won’t see it or don’t care; and their jealousy of Rand Paul is in the way of any rational thought or action.

One has to only look at the extent Eric Holder went to in avoiding the question of whether Americans could be killed on their home soil without trial or due process.  Holder exists as Attorney General for only one purpose; to provide cover for Obama’s excesses.  The fact that Senator Ted Cruz pried an answer out of him is a tribute to Cruz’s tenacity, but Senator Paul had been after the same answer for some six weeks.  It took both of them to get the job done.  Holder was trying not to give a straight answer because the real answer in his mind is that the current administration should be able to kill anyone, anywhere, anytime it wants with impunity.  (This sentiment was more or less echoed by comments of Texas Congressman Ted Poe who said that the administration wants to be able to do anything it wants, domestically, without restraint. He also referred to Holder’s refusal to provide documents on the Fast and Furious scandal, demonstrating his contempt for the Legislature.)  Holder knows that admitting to his true beliefs would not pass muster, even in the lapdog press.  Cruz had to force him to deny his own sentiments on the record.  It was a heroic effort.

So, after the fact McCain and Graham condemn Senator Paul’s equally heroic effort to bring attention to where and how the government is stepping on or intending to step on civil rights.  This is tough to do because today’s Democrat Party is purportedly the party of civil rights.  But it isn’t; today it is the party of authoritarianism and will eliminate all constitutional protections if possible, propaganda to the contrary.  Today’s Democrat Party is a few inches short of the old German National Socialist Party.  The only real difference is that instead of Jews, today’s Democrats are after the wealthy, the independent, the traditional and religious; it is a different sort of class warfare, but it is such, none-the-less.  Actions like those of Senator Paul help to awaken Americans to the facts, and move the nation away from a deadly course.  We need more like him.  Senator McCain doesn’t care what happens to the people, as long as he has his senate seat.  The present administration is content to allow him to remain there for the duration because he is ineffective as an opponent.  He poses no threat.  In fact, he may be more of an ally than anything else.

McCain’s time has passed and his opportunity to make a difference is gone.  He doesn’t know what he is talking about while Senator Paul does.  Graham has proven himself a member of the DC power elite who cares nothing about the public.  Paul is not looking to fire up a few libertarian oriented college students; he is looking toward the long-term future of the nation.  McCain completely blew it in 2008 and is now acting like a spoiled and petulant child.  It is time for him to step aside and let some real leaders take charge.

It is time to Stand With Rand

Vezi sursa articolului aici.