Up until the day of the recent tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, America only had heard about one Arizona Sheriff, namely Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County. He was and is known for his no-nonsense approach to law enforcement. Over many years, he has pursued those who committed crimes and then treated the convicts in a way that only raised objections from bleeding heart liberals, the ACLU and left-leaning groups. He has been re-elected many times since 1992 with overwhelming margins and has to be therefore considered very popular with a majority of people living in his county which includes the City of Phoenix. He has been attacked over the years by his detractors and is almost daily threatened by those that do not agree with his conservative philosophy and law-enforcement practices. Some of the threats have been extremely serious but Sheriff Arpiao has taken them all in stride. He claims, he is just doing his job in accordance with existing laws.

Enter the Sheriff from Pima County, Clarence Dupnik. This county lies to the south of Mariposa County and includes among other places the City of Tucson. He has been a live-long Democrat and has on occasion stated his objections to laws dealing with criminals and the entire issue of illegal immigrants. As an example, he has voiced his opposition to the 2010 Arizona State Law SB 1070 which deals with stronger checks on potential illegals. In fact, he has stated that he would NOT enforce this particular law. When the tragic shooting rampage happened on Saturday, January 8 by a crazy individual, Sheriff Dupnik gave his first public interview several hours later. While he had very little of substance to say about what exactly happened, how many people had died and so on, he started ranting about what he thought caused this criminal to commit this incredulous crime. To the Sheriff, it was the “hateful vitriol” coming from conservative radio shows and other right-wing people who spewed hateful things on a daily basis. This press conference was an embarrassment to the entire country, period! Had it not been connected to such tragic and dreadful incident, his performance before the media would have been worthy of ‘Saturday Night Live’.

This now was followed by all liberals and left-wing extremists in America making equally ludicrous statements and the continued speculation as to how to deal with this right-wing element in America committing these hate inciting speeches. This is in and of itself not surprising if one remembers that the liberals in the media blamed President George W. Bush for everything that went wrong around the world for nearly a decade. But back to the Sheriff from Pima County. He continued for several days talking to a variety of television interviewers freely expressing his personal opinions that the ‘right’ was to blame for this crime. He admitted that his allegations were strictly his opinion and he had no evidence backing up his statements.         What can we conclude from the above? One thing is becoming very clear: If you are conservative you are automatically a potential hater and when are expressing your opinion you are spreading vitriolic hate implying, the left-wing liberals do not do such things!

While Sheriff Arpaio is enforcing the laws on the books, Sheriff Dupnik is objecting to some which he does not like and says so publicly, it’s called selective law-enforcement. While Sheriff Dupnik received praise and thanks from President Obama during a telephone call last week, Sheriff Arpaio is currently investigated by the FBI and the Justice Department for alleged violations of civil rights of illegal aliens in Arizona.

Nothing explains better what is really going in America these days. It is truly amazing that, instead of concentrating on the person who committed this heinous crime and to persecute him to the full extent of the law, Sheriff Dupnik with his ‘out of order’ personal rants is giving the defense of this criminal potential reasons as to why he did it. It is a very sad commentary about America in 2011 and sickening to think that this is acceptable to many people living here.

One thing always comes true over time: There is an end to everything! And so it is, with former California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, his ‘reign’ has ended. But he belongs to the club of those people who in terms of popularity started at the top and ended up at the bottom. When he first appeared on the political landscape in 2003 running for Governor in California, his image from his previous action hero movies was so strong that he was called the ‘governator’. He promised major changes in California politics. A year later, he became the hero at the Republican convention when he referred to the Democrats as ‘girlie men’, the conservatives loved him and there was even talk of changing the U.S. Constitution so that Schwarzenegger (who was born in Austria) could be eligible to run for President of the United States of America.

In 2005, Schwarzenegger placed four propositions on the November election ballot that would have brought about the fundamental changes he had promised had they been approved by the voters in his state. But all four propositions lost by substantial margins and so, he was soundly rebuffed. Recognizing his obvious control over politics in California, he jumped his previous conservative stance and joined the Democrats in their desires. In other words: He transformed into a ‘girlie man’. He became a fighter against the catastrophic consequences of global warming. He also joined the fight for universal health care in California. That resulted in him getting re-elected in 2006 for now he had a greater appeal to Independents and even Democrats.

The years during his second term in office were dominated by budgetary issues in that the State was now running major deficits and could not balance their annual budgets as is constitutionally required in California. Now his self-acclaimed achievements got smaller and smaller and it was reflected in his popularity numbers in the polls, they dropped down to the thirties and eventually ended up at 22 percent, a dismal number for any politician, especially one who had been so popular at the beginning. His conservative base just gave up on him and walked away in disappointment. And it is in fact very sad to see as he now goes on public venues and touts his ‘historic’ achievements, that’s pitiful.

In November 2010, California voters elected his successor Jerry Brown who is getting a third chance at the governorship since he was elected twice to that office in 1974 and 1978. We can easily see what he will do in office: He will do as any solid Democrat has done before: He will blame everything bad on his predecessor. Brown will borrow President Obama’s favorite line: “I inherited a mess!” He has promised not to raise taxes with the minor exception clause: “Unless when it is absolutely necessary.” Guess what, folks, it will not take him two months to come back with that excuse and raise taxes (and fees) on Californians.

But back to Schwarzenegger: One of the last acts during his term in office was the pardon of a few criminals whose sentences he reduced (can you spell ‘cronyism’?) and also the appointment of friends and friends of friends to well-paying Commission assignments. If nothing else, this leaves a very bitter taste in the mouths of a lot of people who believed in him and his conservative virtuous character and voted for him if not twice, at least once. He will go down in history as just another flip-flopping politician whose only distinction to his predecessors was his ’Austrian accent’.

So long, Arnold and whatever you do, do no harm to the American and Californian people, stay out of politics! Enjoy the rest of your life in obscurity, try not to make headlines and offer your personal opinions only into the privacy of your family and the few who still like you.

The year-end tradition of wishing everybody a Happy New Year belongs to the oldest ones in history for all we know. We cannot identify its origin nor when it got started and it really does not matter. The fact remain that we do it anyway, year after year after year after year. But do we ever look back and inquire after-wards how ‘happy’ the new year was. No we do not, after all, there is never enough for reflection.

Without even trying to be approximately accurate, we know that for uncounted millions of people in America (and even many millions more around the world) 2010 was in fact NOT a Happy Year. They lost their jobs or never were employed again, they lost their homes and most of their investments, they became unexpectedly very sick and some even did not survive the past year as a result of it. How many people’s lives were severely changed as a result of traffic accidents or other such misfortunes? The fact is, we do not know the answer to these questions and yet, we are certain that many people wished these folks about a year ago: Happy New Year.

As for the upcoming year, only one thing is certain. Millions if not all the people will wish each other a ‘Happy New Year’ and we wonder how great it would be if it really came to pass for everyone. Yet we know better, don’t we all? The next year will be like any other before in that things will happen in the slightly different way for most people. There will be all kinds of things in the widest possible range for everybody as they live during 2011. Fortunes and misfortunes will happen, life and death in all its variations will occur and before we know it, for those of us who will still be around about 360 or days from now, we will all wish everybody we are with or whom we run into a Happy New Year 2012. This is probably the only thing we can predict with absolute certainty. After all what would be the alternative? Besides, we have to keep up the tradition of saying it, right?

It is in this spirit that we wish you all a Happy New Year 2011!

History has shown us that people will turn towards a higher being when times are bad. The American economy during the past year or two has thrown millions of citizens into long-term unemployment, has caused many people to losing their homes and falling into the direct path of hardship. We have no way of knowing how many more people have turned to God, been asking for his help through prayer and also have turned to others for help. It appears that this change is reflected in a lessening of attacks against Christianity, be it in the media or by openly anti-religious zealots and fanatics. We consider this a positive development for America and are hopeful that it will stay this way for years to come.

As we did two years ago, we like to quote excerpts from a speech recently delivered by Dinesh D’Souza who authored the book: “What’s So Great About Christianity”. He stated “In recent years there has arisen a new atheism that represents a direct attack on Western Christianity. Books such as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great and Sam Harris’ The End Of Faith, all contend that Western society would be better off if we could eradicate from it the last vestiges of Christianity. But Christianity is largely responsible for many of the principles and institutions that even secular people cherish – chief among them equality and liberty.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” he called the proposition “self-evident.” But he did not mean that it is immediately evident. It requires a certain kind of learning. And indeed most cultures throughout history, and even today, reject the proposition. This idea of the preciousness and equal worth of every human being is largely rooted in Christianity. Christians believe that God places infinite value on every human life. Christian salvation does not attach itself to a person’s family or tribe or city. It is an individual matter. And not only are Christians judged at the end of their lives as individuals, but throughout their lives they relate to God on that basis.

This aspect of Christianity had momentous consequences. Jefferson proclaimed that human equality is a gift from God: We are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. Indeed there is no other possible source for them. And Jefferson later wrote that he was not expressing new ideas or principles when he wrote the Declaration, but was rather giving expressions to something that had become settled in the American mind. The idea of freedom is rooted in a respect for the individual. It means the right to express our opinion, the right to choose a career, the right to buy and sell property, the right to our own personal space and the right to live our own life. In return, we are responsible only to respect the rights of others. This is the freedom we are ready to fight for, and we become indignant when it is challenged or taken away. Christianity has played a vital role in the development of this concept of freedom through its doctrine that all human beings are moral agents, created in God’s image, with the ability to be the architects of their own lives.

In sum, the eradication of Christianity – and of organized religion in general -would also mean the gradual extinction of the principles of human dignity. Consider human equality. Why do we hold to it? The Christian idea of equality in God’s eyes is undeniably largely responsible. The attempt to ground respect for equality on a purely secular basis ignores the vital contribution by Christianity to its spread. It is folly to believe that it could survive without the continuing aid of religious belief. If we cherish what is distinctive about Western civilization, then – whatever our religious convictions – we should respect rather than denigrate it Christian roots.”

Common Sense University agrees with this and by celebrating the birth of Christ in a few days, we wish all of you

A Very Merry Christmas

The entire speech by Mr. Dinesh D’Souza as delivered on September 16, 2008, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Colorado Springs can be read in the November 2008 issue of Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College at www.hillsdale.edu. We have stated these excerpts with the permission of Hillsdale College.

Mike Pence is a member of the U.S. House of Representative, elected recently to a sixth term by his constituents in the 6^th District in Indiana. He served as Republican Conference Chairman as well as the House Republican Study Committee. The following is adapted from a speech delivered on the Hillsdale College campus on September 20, 2010. Due to its length, we will reprint this speech in two parts with the following proviso: “This reprint is with the permission from Imprimis, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu.”

The following is the second part of Mike Pence’s speech:

The modern presidency has drifted far from the great strength and illumination of its source: the Constitution as given life by the Declaration of Independence, the greatest political document ever written. The Constitution—terse, sober, and specific—does not, except by implication, address the president’s demeanor. But this we can read in the best qualities of the founding generation, which we would do well to imitate. In the Capitol Rotunda are heroic paintings of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the victory at Saratoga, the victory at Yorktown, and—something seldom seen in history—a general, the leader of an armed rebellion, resigning his commission and surrendering his army to a new democracy. Upon hearing from Benjamin West that George Washington, having won the war and been urged by some to use the army to make himself king, would instead return to his farm, King George III said: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.” He did, and he was.

To aspire to such virtue and self-restraint would in a sense be difficult, but in another sense it should be easy—difficult because it would be demanding and ideal, and easy because it is the right thing to do and the rewards are immediately self-evident.

A president who slights the Constitution is like a rider who hates his horse: he will be thrown, and the nation along with him. The president solemnly swears to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. He does not solemnly swear to ignore, overlook, supplement, or reinterpret it. Other than in a crisis of existence, such as the Civil War, amendment should be the sole means of circumventing the Constitution. For if a president joins the powers of his office to his own willful interpretation, he steps away from a government of laws and toward a government of men.

Is the Constitution a fluctuating and inconstant document, a collection of suggestions whose purpose is to stimulate debate in a future to which the Founders were necessarily blind? Progressives tell us that even the Framers themselves could not reach agreement in its regard. But they did agree upon it. And they wrote it down. And they signed it. And they lived by it. Its words are unchanging and unchangeable except, again, by amendment. There is no allowance for a president to override it according to his supposed superior conception. Why is this good? It is good because the sun will burn out, the Ohio River will flow backwards, and the cow will jump over the moon 10,000 times before any modern president’s conception is superior to that of the Founders of this nation.

Would it be such a great surprise that a good part of the political strife of our times is because one president after another, rather than keeping faith with it, argues with the document he is supposed to live by? This discontent will only be calmed by returning the presidency to the nation’s first principles. The Constitution and the Declaration should be on a president’s mind all the time, as the prism through which the light of all question of governance passes. Though we have—sometimes gradually, sometimes radically—moved away from this, we can move back to it. And who better than the president to restore this wholesome devotion to limited government?

* * *

And as the president returns to the consistent application of the principles in the Constitution, he will also ensure fiscal responsibility and prosperity. Who is better suited, with his executive and veto powers, to carry over the duty of self-restraint and discipline to the idea of fiscal solvency? When the president restrains government spending, leaving room for the American people to enjoy the fruits of their labor, growth is inevitable. As Senator Robert Taft wrote: “Liberty has been the key to our progress in the past and is the key to our progress in the future…. If we can preserve liberty in all its essentials, there is no limit to the future of the American people.”

Whereas the president must be cautious, dutiful, and deferential at home, his character must change abroad. Were he to ask for a primer on how to act in relation to other states, which no holder of the office has needed to this point, and were that primer to be written by the American people, whether of 1776 or 2010, you can be confident that it would contain the following instructions:

You do not bow to kings. Outside our shores, the President of the United States of America bows to no man. When in foreign lands, you do not criticize your own country. You do not argue the case against the United States, but the case for it. You do not apologize to the enemies of the United States. Should you be confused, a country, people, or region that harbors, shelters, supports, encourages, or cheers attacks upon our country or the slaughter of our friends and families are enemies of the United States. And, to repeat, you do not apologize to them.

Closely related to this, and perhaps the least ambiguous of the president’s complex responsibilities, is his duty as commander-in-chief of the military. In this regard there is a very simple rule, unknown to some presidents regardless of party: If, after careful determination, intense stress of soul, and the deepest prayer, you go to war, then, having gone to war, you go to war to win. You do not cast away American lives, or those of the innocent noncombatant enemy, upon a theory, a gambit, or a notion. And if the politics of your own election or of your party intrude upon your decisions for even an instant—there are no words for this.

More commonplace, but hardly less important, are other expectations of the president in this regard. He must not stint on the equipment and provisioning of the armed forces, and if he errs it must be not on the side of scarcity but of surplus. And he must be the guardian of his troops, taking every step to avoid the loss of even a single life.

The American soldier is as precious as the closest of your kin—because he is your kin, and for his sake the president must, in effect, say to the Congress and to the people: ÒI am the Commander-in-Chief. It is my sacred duty to defend the United States, and to give our soldiers what they need to complete the mission and come home safe, whatever the cost.Ó

If, in fulfilling this duty, the president wavers, he will have betrayed his office, for this is not a policy, it is probity. It is written on the blood-soaked ground of Saratoga, Yorktown, Antietam, Cold Harbor, the Marne, Guadalcanal, the Pointe du Hoc, the Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh, Iraq, Afghanistan, and a thousand other places in our history, in lessons repeated over and over again.

* * *

The presidency, a great and complex subject upon which I have only touched, has become symbolic of overreaching. There are many truths that we have been frightened to tell or face. If we run from them, they will catch us with our backs turned and pull us down. Better that we should not flee but rather stop and look them in the eye.

What might our forebears say to us, knowing what they knew, and having done what they did? I have no doubt that they would tell us to channel our passions, speak the truth and do what is right, slowly and with resolution; to work calmly, steadily and without animus or fear; to be like a rock in the tide, let the water tumble about us, and be firm and unashamed in our love of country.

I see us like those in Philadelphia in 1776. Danger all around, but a fresh chapter, ready to begin, uncorrupted, with great possibilities and—inexplicably, perhaps miraculously—the way is clearing ahead. I have never doubted that Providence can appear in history like the sun emerging from behind the clouds, if only as a reward for adherence to first principles. As Winston Churchill said in a speech to Congress on December 26, 1941: “He must indeed have a blind soul who cannot see that some great purpose and design is being worked out here below, of which we have the honor to be the faithful servants.”

As Americans, we inherit what Lincoln in his First Inaugural called “the mystic chords of memory stretching from every patriot grave.” They bind us to the great and the humble, the known and the unknown of Americans past—and if I hear them clearly, what they say is that although we may have strayed, we have not strayed too far to return, for we are their descendants. We can still astound the world with justice, reason and strength. I know this is true, but even if it was not we could not in decency stand down, if only for our debt to history. We owe a debt to those who came before, who did great things, and suffered more than we suffer, and gave more than we give, and pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for us, whom they did not know. For we “drink from wells we did not dig” and are “warmed by fires we did not build,” and so we must be faithful in our time as they were in theirs.

Many great generations are gone, but by the character and memory of their existence they forbid us to despair of the republic. I see them crossing the prairies in the sun and wind. I see their faces looking out from steel mills and coal mines, and immigrant ships crawling into the harbors at dawn. I see them at war, at work and at peace. I see them, long departed, looking into the camera, with hopeful and sad eyes. And I see them embracing their children, who became us. They are our family and our blood, and we cannot desert them. In spirit, all of them come down to all of us, in a connection that, out of love, we cannot betray.

They are silent now and forever, but from the eternal silence of every patriot grave there is yet an echo that says, “It is not too late; keep faith with us, keep faith with God, and do not, do not ever despair of the republic.”

Mike Pence is a member of the U.S. House of Representative, elected recently to a sixth term by his constituents in the 6^th District in Indiana. He served as Republican Conference Chairman as well as the House Republican Study Committee. The following is adapted from a speech delivered on the Hillsdale College campus on September 20, 2010. Due to its length, we will reprint this speech in two parts with the following proviso: “This reprint is with the permission from Imprimis, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu.”

The following is the first part of Mike Pence’s speech:

THE PRESIDENCY is the most visible thread that runs through the tapestry of the American government. More often than not, for good or for ill, it sets the tone for the other branches and spurs the expectations of the people. Its powers are vast and consequential, its requirements impossible for mortals to fulfill without humility and insistent attention to its purpose as set forth in the Constitution of the United States.

Isn’t it amazing, given the great and momentous nature of the office, that those who seek it seldom pause to consider what they are seeking? Rather, unconstrained by principle or reflection, there is a mad rush toward something that, once its powers are seized, the new president can wield as an instrument with which to transform the nation and the people according to his highest aspirations.

But, other than in a crisis of the house divided, the presidency is neither fit nor intended to be such an instrument. When it is made that, the country sustains a wound, and cries out justly and indignantly. And what the nation says is the theme of this address. What it says—informed by its long history, impelled by the laws of nature and nature’s God—is that we as a people are not to be ruled and not to be commanded. It says that the president should never forget this; that he has not risen above us, but is merely one of us, chosen by ballot, dismissed after his term, tasked not to transform and work his will upon us, but to bear the weight of decision and to carry out faithfully the design laid down in the Constitution in accordance with the Declaration of Independence.

* * *

The presidency must adhere to its definition as expressed in the Constitution, and to conduct defined over time and by tradition. While the powers of the office have enlarged, along with those of the legislature and the judiciary, the framework of the government was intended to restrict abuses common to classical empires and to the regal states of the 18th century.

Without proper adherence to the role contemplated in the Constitution for the presidency, the checks and balances in the constitutional plan become weakened. This has been most obvious in recent years when the three branches of government have been subject to the tutelage of a single party. Under either party, presidents have often forgotten that they are intended to restrain the Congress at times, and that the Congress is independent of their desires. And thus fused in unholy unity, the political class has raged forward in a drunken expansion of powers and prerogatives, mistakenly assuming that to exercise power is by default to do good.

Even the simplest among us knows that this is not so. Power is an instrument of fatal consequence. It is confined no more readily than quicksilver, and escapes good intentions as easily as air flows through mesh. Therefore, those who are entrusted with it must educate themselves in self-restraint. A republic is about limitation, and for good reason, because we are mortal and our actions are imperfect.

The tragedy of presidential decision is that even with the best choice, some, perhaps many, will be left behind, and some, perhaps many, may die. Because of this, a true statesman lives continuously with what Churchill called “stress of soul.” He may give to Paul, but only because he robs Peter. And that is why you must always be wary of a president who seems to float upon his own greatness. For all greatness is tempered by mortality, every soul is equal, and distinctions among men cannot be owned; they are on loan from God, who takes them back and evens accounts at the end.

It is a tragedy indeed that new generations taking office attribute failures in governance to insufficient power, and seek more of it. In the judiciary, this has seldom been better expressed than by Justice Thurgood Marshall, who said: “You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.” In the Congress, it presents itself in massive legislation, acts and codes thousands of pages long and so monstrously over-complicated that no human being can read through them—much less understand them, much less apply them justly to a people that increasingly feel like they are no longer being asked, but rather told. Our nation finds itself in the position of a dog whose duty it is not to ask why—because the “why” is too elevated for his nature—but simply to obey.

America is not a dog, and does not require a “because-I-said-so” jurisprudence; or legislators who knit laws of such insulting complexity that they are heavier than chains; or a president who acts like, speaks like, and is received as a king.

The president is not our teacher, our tutor, our guide or ruler. He does not command us; we command him. We serve neither him nor his vision. It is not his job or his prerogative to redefine custom, law, and beliefs; to appropriate industries; to seize the country, as it were, by the shoulders or by the throat so as to impose by force of theatrical charisma his justice upon 300 million others. It is neither his job nor his prerogative to shift the power of decision away from them, and to him and the acolytes of his choosing.

Is my characterization of unprecedented presumption incorrect? Listen to the words of the leader of President Obama’s transition team and perhaps his next chief-of-staff: “It’s important that President-Elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one.” Or, more recently, the latest presidential appointment to avoid confirmation by the Senate—the new head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—who wrote last Friday: “President Obama understands the importance of leveling the playing field again.”

“Take power. . .rule. . .leveling.” Though it is the model now, this has never been and should never again be the model of the presidency or the character of the American president. No one can say this too strongly, and no one can say it enough until it is remedied. We are not subjects; we are citizens. We fought a war so that we do not have to treat even kings like kings, and—if I may remind you—we won that war. Since then, the principle of royalty has, in this country, been inoperative. Who is better suited or more required to exemplify this conviction, in word and deed, than the President of the United States?

* * *

The powers of the presidency are extraordinary and necessarily great, and great presidents treat them sparingly. For example, it is not the president’s job to manipulate the nation’s youth for the sake of his agenda or his party. They are a potent political force when massed by the social network to which they are permanently attached. But if the president has their true interests at heart he will neither flatter them nor let them adore him, for in flattery is condescension and in adoration is direction, and youth is neither seasoned nor tested enough to direct a nation. Nor should it be the president’s business to presume to direct them. It is difficult enough to do right by one’s own children. No one can be the father of a whole continent’s youth.

Is the president, therefore, expected to turn away from this and other easy advantage? Yes. Like Harry Truman, who went to bed before the result on election night, he must know when to withdraw, to hold back, and to forgo attention, publicity, or advantage.

There is no finer, more moving, or more profound understanding of the nature of the presidency and the command of humility placed upon it than that expressed by President Coolidge. He, like Lincoln, lost a child while he was president, a son of sixteen. “The day I became president,” Coolidge wrote, “he had just started to work in a tobacco field. When one of his fellow laborers said to him, ‘If my father was president I would not work in a tobacco field,’ Calvin replied, ‘If my father were your father you would.’” His admiration for the boy was obvious.

Young Calvin contracted blood poisoning from an incident on the South Lawn of the White House. Coolidge wrote, “What might have happened to him under other circumstances we do not know, but if I had not been president. . . .” And then he continued,

“In his suffering he was asking me to make him well. I could not. When he went, the power and glory of the Presidency went with him.”

A sensibility such as this, and not power, is the source of presidential dignity, and must be restored. It depends entirely upon character, self-discipline, and an understanding of the fundamental principles that underlie not only the republic, but life itself. It communicates that the president feels the gravity of his office and is willing to sacrifice himself; that his eye is not upon his own prospects but on the storm of history, through which he must navigate with the specific powers accorded to him and the limitations placed on those powers both by man and by God.

Continued next week . . .

A new controversy has arisen in America. The government has introduced and is in fact executing what is called “Enhancing airport screening procedures and techniques”. The TSA, the Transportation & Safety Administration, a part of the Homeland Security Department is determined to keep America safe by checking the underwear of among others small children, grandmothers and individuals with health conditions that embarrass them. The only person who has publicly declared that she likes it is attorney Gloria Allred. Enough said!

This is a reaction to an incident that happened nearly a year ago when a terrorist from Yemen traveled on a Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.  This Islamist terrorist from Nigeria by the name of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had explosives hidden in his underwear and had planned to ignite them as the plane was flying over parts of Detroit on the landing approach to the airport. His failure to do so can only be attributed to either his stupidity or a malfunction of the explosives in his underpants. A disaster was averted with nobody having anything to do with it. There were no last-second heroes as was the case when so called ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid was overwhelmed by fellow passengers and flight attendants in December 2001 and prevented to set off a bomb in his shoes during a flight from London to the States. The one thing the two incidents had in common was the fact that the terrorists boarded the planes in Europe, they were not on domestic flights within America. We do not know what our Homeland Security Department recommended to the two foreign airport administrations in Amsterdam and London, whether or not they suggested  more diligent airport screening procedures over there; all we know is that they worked feverishly to develop enhanced screening procedures in this country.

We are being told by the government that it is necessary to implement this to keep us safe in America! Until this month, the previous screening procedures did the same thing and not one incident occurred whereby a terrorist was able to get on a domestic flight and blow it up between take-off and landing. Even though our government virtually invited them to try when we declared that so called ‘profiling’ air travelers was not allowed. In other words, an Islamist terrorist could not be pulled out of the line to get a little extra checking, oh no, that was political incorrect and therefore verboten! This procedure is still off limits as far as TSA is concerned.

It is very hard not to become cynical with all this. TSA is not looking for suspects of terrorism, they are just checking every tenth or so person in addition to going through the regular screens. They are being asked to step aside and will be given an additional ‘Full body scan’. If that is objectionable to the passenger, he or she will be frisked by a specially trained TSA employee who can touch that person’s body everywhere. The good news is that the person giving this examination to a passenger will be of the same sex. Men to men, women to women .

It is utterly disgusting to seeing this new procedure being implemented as necessary while the people who want to harm us, the Islamist terrorist, are laughing their heads off in foreign lands all around the globe. They have won! It is that simple! And what have we got, we have lost another part of our constitutionally guaranteed rights to privacy. You want to fly in America, get ready for a very personal and ‘touchy’ experience with a total stranger. And do not be embarrassed, our government says it is necessary to keep us safe!

It is mind boggling to think that after many, many years, the existence of congressional earmarks is in the middle of a new definition process. For as long as we can look back, almost all members of Congress – Senate and House of Representative – have participated in ‘earmarking’ monies in the Federal budgets for special projects in their home districts and states. It was commonly known as “bringing home the bacon”. In and of itself, a folksy expression for making sure that Federal money would flow back into the districts for projects or services the electorate had been promised by their respective Representative. And because they brought home the ‘bacon’, it became  also known by another name as it was called “pork barrel spending”.

So far so good.  Over time, ‘Earmarking’ became a dirty for budget hawks and people in general who felt that the government spent too much money and grew too large. As a result of that, some members of Congress distanced themselves from earmarking and proudly proclaimed that they would not participate in such extra budget spending. Some members even railed against this sort of spending and called for it to stop. The American public in general agreed with that position and expressed their unhappiness over that ‘wasteful’ spending by Congress. Every budget was  over time accompanied with the amounts of earmark spending and its reputation got worse. With the current deficit spending by Congress (with nearly 1.5 trillion dollar deficits every year), this past election saw ‘earmarking’ as a heavy contributor of such deficits and many candidates promised their constituencies that they would not participate in ‘earmarking, period!

With the mid-term election behind us and with many ‘earmark’ opponents winning their respective races, the debate over this budget process has been transferred to Washington D.C. and with that we find out who is for and who is against the continuation of the use of earmarking. And with that comes a new insight into this process. We could be wrong but we believe it was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who two weeks ago stated that earmarking did not add to the annual budgets. He continued that it was simply a matter of specifying certain budget items in specific districts or states; that is was Congress allocating monies for projects instead of letting these monies be doled out by governmental bureaucrats. To make this clearer: Instead of letting the Federal government agencies allocate the funds for what they seemed to be proper and more urgent, a Congressman (for his or her district) or Senator (for his or her state) would determine the allocation of certain funds for specific projects or programs. But it would not constitute extra money to be spend by the Federal government.

Common Sense University has to confess: This is a new one for us! And we now have to ask the question: Did the members of Congress know that? If the answer is YES, they should be recalled for false statements and lying to their constituents! If the answer is NO, they should be recalled for being too dumb to serve in Congress! And if the members of the media did know this, we simply should STOP reading their articles or STOP listening to their statements on television or radio, in other words no longer paying attention to the members of the press/media.

Of course, none of these recommendations of ours will come true but we can dream, can’t we? If nothing at all, we will be following developments on “earmarking” and its process. We also can discuss and talk about this congressional ’turkey’ with family and friends while we celebrate Thanksgiving this year. Happy Thanksgiving!

The mid-term elections are nearly two weeks old and Congress is re-convening for what is known as a lame-duck session. This is considered to be the final phase of what is known as the 111^th Congress. Normally, not much is accomplished by Congress, it is sort of a short couple of weeks before Christmas where some lose-ends are tied up or minor items are corrected or finished.

If there is one thing though this year, it is the issue as to what to do about taxes. The party in charge in Congress, the Democrats decided to kick ‘this can down the road’ and not deal with it before the election for whatever reason and it is now becoming critical.

But first, we must address the language as the terms are incorrect. The current tax rates for income earners have been in place for more than seven years but are falsely called the “Bush tax cuts” and that is wrong. But since Bush bashing by Democrats was in vogue during the past few years, why not tie this one to Bush as if there was something bad or evil about tax cuts. Between 2001 and 2003, Congress enacted tax rate legislation and President George W. Bush signed it into law. Of course, they were tax cuts from prior rates and took millions of previous taxpayers off the hook of paying income taxes among other things. Unfortunately, these new tax rates were not permanent but term-limited, meaning, they will all expire on December 31, 2010 and will increase to the tax rates before 2001/2003.

Therefore, we should not be talking about extending the “Bush tax cuts” but instead, we should be speaking of tax increases for everybody if nothing will be done about them by the end of the year. It was Democrats back then who pushed for this date because they know it is much harder to raise taxes and they generally speaking do not like low tax rates since they would like to spend more money instead of less. President Bush probably agreed to this ‘term-limitation’ of the new tax rates back then because he could figure out that they would at least not change but stay the same while he was in office.

This brings us to today and the possibility of raising taxes for everybody in America since the rates will all go up as of January 1, 2011. So, what to do now, should we extend the current rates or let them elapse resulting in increased taxes for all? The Republicans want to extend the rates for everybody while the Democrats – President Obama and most other Democrats in Congress – want to extend these tax rates only for the middle class. These are people by their definition who make less than $250,000/year. The Democrats want to raise taxes on the so called “rich people”, everybody who earns more than a quarter of a million dollars annually. This has been the debate up to date. The Democrats claim that “we cannot afford the extension of current rates for the rich people” . As if this was their money in the first place. Huge numbers have been flying around as to how much this is. Obama is repeatedly mentioning an amount of $700 billion over the next ten years. What he does not mention is that this is a drop in the bucket when one considers that the Federal budget during those ten years will be approximately forty to forty-five trillion dollars. The 700 billion bucks are at most only 1.75 percent of the overall. But, according to the Democrats: We cannot afford that!!

It will be interesting to see what the outcome of this will be. We here at Common Sense University know one thing: Raising taxes during a recession is bad news and does nothing to get us out of it. But then common sense is a commodity that rarely can be found among politicians and the people we elect to run the country.

The 2010 mid-term elections in the United States of America are history and to some extent they made history. While congressional losses in the first mid-term elections for the party holding the White House are the norm, this year stands out in that the Republicans gained well over sixty seats in the House of Representatives and are taking control of that chamber. In the Senate, the Republicans gained six seats and are still in a minority, however by only a few seats. The gubernatorial elections and state houses saw also tremendous gains for the Republican Party. And yet, some States remain unchanged. A glaring example being California where they elected a very liberal Senator, Barbara Boxer for the fourth time and re-elected Jerry Brown as governor, his third term in that office. California is surely no longer the Golden State but has become the Granola State because it is filled with flakes, fruits and nuts. And they seem to be in a majority.

While the experts and pundits on all sides keep talking about what these election results mean or reflect, the only thing that matters is the shift in the power structure in one branch of government, namely Congress. The Republicans ran against the excessive government spending, the fast increasing debt of the country, the poor economic condition with nearly ten percent unemployment and the overreach by the Democrats by passing massive health care reform. They also benefited with the event of the Tea party movement across this land that helped greatly getting some truly conservative members elected.

The main question today is: What will the Republicans do to change these conditions for the better and also achieving their campaign promises? At the moment we are still in a so called lame-duck period until early January of next year (when the new Congress is sworn in) and there is urgent work to be done before this year ends. The number One issue is what to do about the year-end expiring tax rates for all Americans. While the President and the Democrats are favoring an extension on all rates for income earners below $250,000/year, the Republicans want to extend all tax rates, even for the high-income earners (those ‘evil’ rich people). It will be interesting to see what comes of it, whether there will be a compromise or not. We have to remember that the Democrats still have vast majorities in both houses of Congress until early January and could pretty well do what they want without one single Republican vote.

The time until January 2011 will be spent by the House Republicans getting organized and ready for being in the majority. This will involve Committee assignments, especially chairmanship assignments as well as agreeing on the legislative agenda and setting priorities. We should remember that the current Democrat-controlled Congress did not pass one appropriations bill for the current 2010/2011 fiscal year. This job will most likely fall on the shoulders of the Republicans and it will be their first real test of budget restraint and fiscal responsibility. They had promised to roll back discretionary spending to levels of the 2008 budget and only time will tell how successful they will and can be in convincing the President to agree and sign such legislation.

If we here at Common Sense University may offer a suggestion to the Republicans, it is just one minor thing: Stop talking to the media, instead get your act together so that you can hit the ground running in two months when you take over the House of Representatives. Do not be fooled by the media, they are still overwhelmingly liberal and will never be your friends but instead will do anything to undermine, ridicule and criticize you with anything they can find to do so.