Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
Democrat Tim Bishop recently sent an e-mail to his constituents blaming Republicans, although they only hold the House while Democrats hold the Senate and the White House, for being against bipartisanship. So what does Tim Bishop do when the opportunity for bipartisanship presents itself? He cements his far left credentials by voting against it.
You almost have to wonder, why in the world did he run for president? Was he swept up in the ego trip? Was he reading too much into his own press clippings? Did the historic opportunity of being the first real black president, sorry Bill Clinton, in U.S. history overwhelm a careful consideration of what the job entailed?
The bedrock principle of the First Amendment is to protect political speech from government censorship. That is what the Founders intended as a way for the citizens to disagree with their government without fear of reprisal.
In today’s New York Times there is a story about Rick Lazio latching on to the Ground Zero mosque issue as his new campaign theme. The first television ads I have seen regarding his run for governor are about this issue. He is strongly opposed. Okay, but he wants us to elect him governor to do what, exactly? New York has a lot of problems, from a state government that is completely dysfunctional to being broke and since everyone seems to agree that the mosque at Ground Zero is not about the right to build there but about the propriety of building there, what does it have to do with the office of governor?
When he pinch hit for Rudy Giuliani running for the senate against Hillary Clinton, after Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the race with prostate cancer, Mr. Lazio took a similar tack. You probably remember their first debate when Mr. Lazio famously walked across the stage to a startled Mrs. Clinton and asked her to sign his pledge on campaign finance reform. She refused and that was his theme. The problem is that although many people feel our political process is corrupt, when it comes to campaign finance reform, most people don’t care about it. Those who care about it are incumbents, who want to cripple those who run against them. Some of the so called “reforms” have politicians spending so much time chasing $50 donations that they can’t do what they were elected to do. Either that or we can only run multi-millionaire candidates who can spend their own money without limits. (Simple solution: let anyone contribute any amount to any campaign at any time and just post the information on the Internet within 72 hours in a database that is fully searchable. Done.) It only took a little time for the novelty of the debate video to fade and Mr. Lazio had no campaign.
Another challenger in this year’s governor’s race, Carl Paladino, one of the aforementioned millionaires, has been hitting the airwaves more frequently and more effectively than Mr. Lazio. He is not a one trick pony. His first ads hit Andrew Cuomo on being a career politician and that he, Paladino, was a business man who knows how to create jobs. What do we desperately need now? Jobs. What are we sick of? Career politicians, like Mr. Cuomo, who played a role as HUD Secretary in the Clinton administration of feeding the real estate frenzy and the subsequent housing collapse that created the financial crisis.
On the mosque situation, agree or disagree with him but Mr. Paladino says exactly what he will do about it. He will take the property away under Eminent Domain (thanks to the activist judges on the Supreme Court who gave us Kelo v. City of New London) and use the property to create a war memorial. He doesn’t just say he will oppose it he tells us what he will do about it.
In the interest of full disclosure, I contributed to Rick Lazio’s senate run in 2000 and I have no connection with the Paladino campaign. But if Mr. Lazio is serious about defeating Andrew Cuomo for governor, he has to find some issues that not only resonate with the people of New York but that are the responsibility of the governor to address. If not, rather than split the conservative vote, he should step aside and help ride the anti-incumbent wave that Carl Paladino is surfing.
Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan was an aviator in the 1930s. In 1938 he mistakenly flew from New York to Ireland when he was supposed to fly from New York to California, because he claims he misread his compass. It later turned out that he really intended to fly to Ireland but couldn’t get permission.
What’s Hillary’s excuse? As the Obama Administration has called the removal of Honduran President Manuel Zalaya a coup d’etat, more attention is being focused on what the law in Honduras really says. The Congressional Research Service looked into it and had this to say:
“The Supreme Court of Honduras has constitutional and statutory authority to hear cases against the President of the Republic and many other high officers of the State, to adjudicate and enforce judgments, and to request the assistance of the public forces to enforce its rulings.”
—Congressional Research Service, August 2009
So why is Hillary Clinton now attacking the Honduran Supreme Court by pulling the visas of all fifteen members of the court? The U.S. sided with Hugo Chavez and Costa Rica to reach a “negotiated” settlement that would put Zalaya back in the presidency. Honduras said, sorry, that would violate our constitution. He broke the law, we dealt with it according to our constitution, and that’s that.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes in the Wall Street Journal:
The upshot is that the U.S. is trying to force Honduras to violate its own constitution and is also using its international political heft to try to interfere with the country’s independent judiciary.
Hondurans are worried about what this pressure is doing to their country. Mr. Zelaya’s violent supporters are emboldened by the U.S. position. They deface some homes and shops with graffiti and throw stones and home-made bombs into others, and whenever the police try to stop them, they howl about their “human rights.”
When will the apology tour end and we start standing up for liberty and democracy? Is it more important that Hillary have an accomplishment she can brag about than following the rule of law? This administration has so much, so backwards it is hard to keep track of it. They focus all their time and energy doing things they are not constitutionally authorized to do (health care, taking over car companies and banks, funding ACORN), and ignoring their fundamental constitutional duties of foreign policy and national defense. Let’s hope some pressure can be brought to bear on the Obama Administration to back off before Chavez puts a puppet in place.
The statists like dissent if they are dissenting from a conservative view point, as Hillary Clinton explains here:
Hillary Defends Challenging the Administration
But if you stand for liberty and against big government dissent is a very bad thing, as Nancy Pelosi explains:
Nancy Pelosi Hints Town Hall Opposition are Nazis
So if you bash Bush, you are a patriot. If you question Barack Obama, you are a Nazi. So our statist friends only believe the First Amendment applies to them and it is not available to those who oppose them. Turn them in to the White House! Have union goons give them a beat down.
Camerawoman is Hit by SEIU member
In this raw video an SEIU member attacks a man for selling flags that say, “Don’t Tread On Me.”
SEIU Member Attacks a Black Conservative
Does this not sound like Hitler’s brown shirts? his Gestapo? The left who like to throw down, in addition to the race card, the Nazi card look more like Nazis than conservatives ever did.
It now appears that both sides in the Honduran standoff are waiting on the United States to weigh in. Despite those on the left (Chavez, Castro) continuing to push for less involvement by the U.S. in Central and South America so they can step into the void, they are now calling on the United States to take a stand, on their respective sides, of course. Chavez had this to say:
“Do something,” Mr. Chávez had said to reporters. “Obama, do something.” – NY Times, July 12, 2009
Hillary Clinton has joined with Castro and Chavez in calling for the return to power of Manuel Zalaya. But as Mary Anastasia O’Grady reports in today’s Wall Street Journal:
“If there is anything debatable about the crisis it is the question of whether the government can defend the expulsion of the president. In fact it had good reasons for that move and they are worth Mrs. Clinton’s attention if she is interested in defending democracy.”
There’s the rub, if she’s interested. It seems that the Obama administration has an aversion to democracy, once they get in office. When polls in the U.S. show that 68% of the people believe a second stimulus is coming while 60% oppose a second stimulus, that tells you something about their feelings about democracy. Their silence on Iran and their speaking out on Zalaya’s behalf, reinforces that belief. The Obama administration’s goal is to get power, and do whatever they can as quickly as they can to consolidate it. It seems like a page out of any tin pot dictator’s playbook. Chavez could have written it himself.
Now the Obama administration has gone silent on the situation in Honduras. Will they find their voice? Will it be the voice of our Founding Fathers, or Che, Hugo, and Fidel?
