Savage Republican

Yesterday’s Star Tribune featured the following letter from an immigrant to the US.

Letter of the day: The land of opportunity and Gov. Pawlenty, As a recent Honduran immigrant, I am shocked by how little Gov. Tim Pawlenty seems to understand about immigration. While I was lucky enough to obtain a legal status through my husband, many of us, including my own family members, must wait for 10 years or more to get a green card while their application sits backlogged with the federal government. We immigrants work hard. We often come home with broken fingernails and aching backs. We do not complain. In fact, we don’t give up but work harder so that our families will have the same opportunities as people born in this country. We have come here for that opportunity, because in our home countries, we are born poor with little chance to succeed. Pawlenty’s proposal says we are bad for Minnesota and effectively disallows communication with police when needed. If Pawlenty needs other Republicans to look to, he should consult with Sam Brownback, John McCain, Norm Coleman or Orrin Hatch. These U.S. senators have all made recent proposals that strengthen America’s tradition of immigration by addressing border security, employment verification, job security of native U.S. workers and the reality of undocumented families living in the United States.

I.B. St Paul

The letter writer brings up a fair point – the system that is responsible for approving legal immigrants is backlogged. It is going to need to be fixed in order to play an active part in stemming illegal immigration and is a great topic for another day!

However, the letter writer (and the Strib editorial staff) totally missed the point of Governor Pawlenty’s proposal for dealing with the effects of illegal immigration. Just a reminder – the Governor proposed:

Our nation has been built on immigration. It’s an important part of our history and our future. However, illegal immigration is a disservice to those who have come to America legally. Concerns about illegal immigration will erode support for legal immigration. We need an immigration system that is legal, orderly and reasonable.Cities across Minnesota have experienced illegal immigrants involved in drug trafficking, sex crimes, falsifying legal documents and Medicare fraud.That’s why I’m proposing Minnesota stop ignoring this problem and start dealing with it. We can get started by creating an Illegal Immigration Enforcement Team to help enforce the laws we already have.Then we can strengthen our laws and penalties for those who use false identification documents or employ illegal immigrants.

Do you understand the difference dear reader???? The difference I.B. of St Paul is that we are not talking about making things harder for those that come here legally, we are talking about stemming the tide of ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. We are a country of laws I.B. If you want to come into the country legally, welcome. If you break our laws in order to enter the country, know that you are going to go to jail at a minimum and at a maximum you are going to be sent home! It is that simple.

I was reading a selection from Thomas Brewton’s “The View from 1776” (be sure to read “The Unwritten Constitution“) where I have a recent posting. I was thinking about a conversation I had with a very good friend of mine just a few years ago. We were talking about the hard political divisions in the country. We observed the divisions and arguments were much more heated. And I posited the following:
When we were kids 40+ years ago, where did we get our information? TV, radio, newspapers and magazines.
What about 30 years ago? 20 years ago? Same sources.
10 years ago? Well, in 1993 I started listening to a guy that a number of people had asked if I’d heard-Rush Limbaugh. And from there I listened to Jason Lewis. And a few years ago I started listening to AM1280 The Patriot. And we now have another conservative talk radio station (FM100.3 KTLK).
In 1999 I bought my first computer and discovered the internet. And 2 years ago heard of “weblogging”.
And now, early 2006, I no longer listen to the Big 3 on TV or radio. I no longer get all , and truth be told, I get very little of my information from the same MSM sources I did 40, 30, 20 or even 10 years ago.
I can do more research in an hour at 3 a.m. in my living room than I could in a full week in a library 10 years ago. I can communicate with 100’s, 1000’s or more with a few keystrokes.
So, the MSM no longer has a monopoly on information, the truth.
To quote the X Files “The truth is out there!”
We are discovering how the MSM and lefties have lied and deceived us for decades.
And it has the left terrified.
Good.
Very good.

And as I read the quote below from two of the three authors of the Federalist Papers, I now understand why they constrained the Congress to only being able to do what is proscribed in Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution (text ).

Yesterday as I was listening to Michael Medved on AM1280 The Patriot (2-5 p.m.) he was relating how he thought the goverment should be reduced 80%, that the departments of Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Agriculture (to name a few) should all be eliminated. That the ONLY Department that should expand is Defense. And I’m shouting “Go Michael”!!! as I had just said that the Federal Register should be reduced to 20% of it’s current size.
After all, wouldn’t logic dictate the we should reduce or eliminate a thing that is first of all illegal (unConstitutional) , and not expand a thing that doesn’t work and is even counter-productive? Look again at the Hamilton/Madison quote and know why we work from January to July to pay for government .

I’ve repeated many times that when I argue with a lefty, I don’t want to win the argument, I want to win a convert. And I fail, even when I use logic, reason, history,economics (other than the economics of Marx or Keynes), the Bible, the Federalist papers, etc. And why?
Well the first quote is from Hamilton and Madison. The second, that I use, is from Jonathan Swift. Both joined at the intellectual hip:

“In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. … Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” — Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (Federalist No. 55, 15 February 1788) (from http://PatriotPost.US/histdocs/ )

“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into” Swift

As I told my friend the other night “With lefties, their passions determine their logic. I attempt to let logic and reason determine my passion.”

A couple of pieces that came out today that I found to be of interest. First was this from National Review and second was this from CNS News.

What made the second article interesting is that I heard the former speaker was on the Laura Ingraham show this morning talking about the same thing. The audio from this morning can be found here.

“I think it’s very important to understand that this is not just one person doing one bad thing,” Gingrich added, and it isn’t “about lobbyist corruption, either. You can’t have a corrupt lobbyist unless you have a corrupt member [of Congress] or a corrupt staff” involved.”This is a team effort,” Gingrich said to laughter from the audience.”I’ll tell you what this city’s first reaction is going to be,” he stated. Lawmakers will “turn the scandal into lobbyist bashing, so the same system on the Hill that is unhealthy will protect itself by passing a narrowly drawn anti-lobbyist provision while the same people go to the same [Political Action Committee] fundraisers to raise the same money with the same cronies in the same manner.”

That was the part that struck me. That the Hill will do whatever it can to shuffle this “out of sight”. They already did that once when they gave us the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance “reform”. McCain-Feingold didn’t reform a thing. It simple too our ability to give to the candidates of our choice and gave the deep pockets (the 527’s) unlimited access to the power!

“This is a profound problem, not just a surface-level scandal,” Gingrich said. As an example of the unfair advantage wealthy incumbents have in the electoral process, Gingrich referred to New Jersey Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine. “One person spent $100 million to first buy a Senate seat and then buy a governorship while voting for the McCain-Feingold bill to limit every middle-class citizen to $2,500 in an election,” Gingrich said.”There’s something inherently wrong with that,” Gingrich charged.

Both the NRO article and Speaker Gingrich came to the same conclusion:

“DeLay can do his part by forswearing any ambition to return to the leadership until this matter is resolved. It may be necessary for the House Republican Conference to discipline other of its members — we have Rep. Bob Ney (R., Ohio) in particular in mind — as evidence of their involvement with Abramoff dictates. (Of course, it is also possible that Justice-department prosecutors have overreached, and will have a problem establishing that typical Washington influence peddling crossed the line into criminality.) Finally, Republicans should embrace a tough reform package that tightens up on lobbying disclosure and cracks down on the earmarked spending that is bait for corrupting lobbyists. A majority that deserves to stay a majority must demonstrate that it is capable of policing itself.”

“Therefore, Gingrich’s advice to the GOP this year was to return to the strategy that proved so successful 12 years ago. “Republicans should run as reformers who want to make government more effective and return to the concept of the balanced budget,” which Congress accomplished for four years in the 1990s.”

The former speaker is spot on here. As he said on the radio this morning…the base that supports the Republican party is not the people that want ear marks and pork barrell spending. We want smaller government and more personal freedom. He said that the Republican base needs to marshall our disgust at this and force our representatives to bring real reform to the system. We need significant campaign finance reform. In my mind that means repealing McCain Feingold first and foremost! Let’s get the power back in the hands of the people and out of the hands of the special interest groups NOW!

Update – The Wall Street Journal chimes in on the issue today.

We have all been following the tragedy in Tallmansville WVa. I would not wish the pain and the heartache that the families of the trapped miners went through in the last 24 hours on my worst enemy. To be told that your loved ones were alive, only to find out later that they were not, is the cruelest of cruel fates.

While many are talking about blaming the mine for poor working conditions (as well they should) and blaming the mine officials for letting the “false hope” get out (officials didn’t let it get out someone took it upon himself to give the families the unconfirmed word) or blaming the mine officicals for not correcting the reports that anyone had been found alive (a very valid point, although I understand the reason for not doing so), I don’t hear many talking about the press and their role in this sad affair.

Many more talented writers than I have commented on this, but after what happened last night, I can no longer sit silently on the sidelines.

We have heard, time and time again, all the reasons why we should “trust” the legacy media (especially from the print media). We have heard that they have levels of editors, gatekeepers, fact checkers, and that they “know stuff” (link to the actual article is no longer available), blah, blah blah…..

BALONEY! Last night was a shining example of why we should never again trust the legacy media. In the rush to be the first to break a story, someone ran with a partial overheard conversation and told the world (including the very anxious, desperate families) that the remaining 12 miners in Tallmansville were found alive. The soundbytes coming out of WVA tell the story…”an outsider came in and told us….”, “they told us they were coming to the church…” The assembled press went into a flurry of activity to get the word out. The headlines were spectacular – “They’re Alive” trumpted the Indianapolis Star…”Found Alive” said the Denver Post. Similar jubilant headlines graced the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the NY Times. There was only one small problem…no one bothered to ask the rescue command center if this story was accurate! It was only later, after all of the facts had been uncovered by the mine company that we learned the awful truth…all but one were dead, not alive!

The Strib posted this on their website. Their excuse….everyone else was running it so we had to. The last time I tried that “but everyone else was doing it” my father grounded me for a month and asked “If all of your friends jumpped off of a bridge would you do that too?” in admonishing me for not using my head and instead “following the pack”.

We live in a 24 hour news cycle which is good and bad. It is good in that we are no longer slaves to the disinformation that comes out of biased sources like the NY Times and the Star Tribune. However, as we are seeing today, the legacy media’s claims of reliability and factuality are laughable! One local lefty blogger, rightly stated that the reader should beware (when reading blogs), but the caveat needs to apply also to the legacy media. As we have seen today, the legacy media is just as guilty of running with a “rumor” as they accuse the blogosphere of being. How typical of them…..

UPDATE AND BUMP! Captain Ed brought up something I had almost forgotten. Remember the reporting on the “toxic water” in New Orleans and the babies being raped in the Superdome? Brian “St. Paul” Ward over at Fraters Libertas has another great post on why we should not believe what we hear out of the MSM and why. You should read them both.

UPDATE II: This is priceless…..a letter writer to the Star Tribune, in asking about their feeble excuse (running the headline that the miners were alive) says:

Our president and entire military and intelligence community, along with the world’s entire military and intelligence community, came to the same, honest big mistake about weapons of mass destruction. But according to the Star Tribune editorial page and leading Democrats, our president lied about WMDs.
So, did the Star Tribune lie to us about the miners?

M.N. of Chanhassen – thank you for making my day!

This article from today’s Wall Street Journal did not surprise me in the least.

“When educated Americans heap scorn on Christian fundamentalism, they generally do so out of almost total ignorance, having not bothered to know any fundamentalists or put forth any serious effort to learn about their faith. So there is something refreshing about Christine Rosen’s “My Fundamentalist Education.” Ms. Rosen spent her elementary years in the Keswick Christian School in St. Petersburg, Fla.–a school, one assumes, fairly representative of the independent, nondenominational Bible-believing schools that seem to be everywhere these days–and knows whereof she speaks.”

The “educated” class…the ones that think they know and are all that, love to tell the rest of us how we must be “tolerant” of others and that we should not “judge others by external appearances” and then they go and throw their hypocricy out for all to see!

“Keswick mothers, she writes, “were women with home permanents, not salon coiffures, and they wore vinyl mock-croc pumps and polyester-blend dresses from Sears.” Teachers, both male and female, were also partial to polyester. The female musicians who performed at the school smelled of Aqua Net, and the missionaries who came to share their stories invariably had “out-of-date clothes” and “badly cut hair.”

They are also the first one to lecture Christians on being non-judgemental of people whose lifestyle choices are different from their own…

“The “old, disheveled lady” who hosted the club “served stale cookies and tepid Juicy Juice.” This woman also “had the sort of girlish crush on Jesus that only a disappointed spinster who’d spent too many years leading children’s Bible studies could nourish.” She read to the children with her Bible balanced on her knees and her “thick socks rolling down her legs.”

The funny (ironic) thing is that Ms. Rosen claims that her Keswick experience gave her a “profound respect for my fellow human beings”. I would hate to see what she was like if she was being disrespectful.

The sad thing is, you’ll never see a piece like this written about a Buddhist school, or a Wahhibist school or a Shinto school or a Wiccan school. For you see, to people like Ms. Rosen, you are only allowed to disrespect Christians. Because after all, they aren’t real people. If there were “real” people, they would think more along the lines of Ms. Rosen.

As a Christian, I should be upset, but I am not. I fully expect it.

…is death and taxes, right? We may have to rethink that old saw thanks to the Illinois Supreme Court! The Court (in a decision that can be read here) ruled that the Illinois State Income Tax is unconstitutional.

Now I am not a lawyer, so I could be way off here and I may have to send this off to one of the resident MOB lawyers for review, but it seems to me that the gist of the ruling rests (like the original MN CCR bill) on the fact that the statute in question (Public Act 88-669 ) was tied to the wrong kind of bill. The argument was whether the act was (as the state contended) an “Act in relation to governmental regulation” or whether it was (as the court and the defendents contend) passed in violation of the single subject clause of the Illinois Constitution. In other words, it was tied to a bill that it could not be (according to the Illinois Constitution).

Precident has been set. It may not be perfect, it is a start. As my friend (and co-Savage Republican) Amendment X wrote here, high taxes may be the norm, but they don’t have to be. We the people need to step up to the plate and demand that our politicians quit picking our pockets and start governing.

I don’t want to hear ANY tsk-tsks from anyone on the Abramoff “situation”. None! Zero! Nada! Void! The empty set! It is NOT a scandal. It is business as usual. It’s business as has been done for well over 80 years. In D.C. and St. Paul. And every other state capitol. Jack Abramoff is only being accused of and slapped for a form of bribery that’s illegal. All the other forms of bribery (aka campaign contributions) are legal, kind of, depending on McCain/Feingold. Was he trying to buy influence? Absolutely! Just like AARP, NEA, ATLA (Assoc. of Trial Lawyers of America), and myriad others. All contributing to campaigns, all lobbying for influence. And why? As I wrote here it’s because there is influence to be bought. Pure,plain,simple. And why do all these lobbying groups continue to give money to candidates? BECAUSE THEY GET THEIR MONEY’S WORTH!!!! THE FREE MARKET IN CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS! Only insanity (or the government) would dictate giving money to something that yields no results. These groups believe that they do get value for their money. And so the NEA contributes millions of dollars to left wing candidates. Same with the trial lawyers. Same with AARP. And many, many others.Jack Abramoff gave money to Congressmen and Presidential campaigns because he saw value for the dollars. The free market in influence peddling. So, be warned, that your Congressman can and will be bought…legally or illegally.
And this is what happens in a democracy.Our guys vs. their guys. And this is exactly why we were not founded as a democracy. We WERE founded as a constitutional representative republic that was democratically elected. We were not founded as a country where the majority ruled;we were founded a country where the Constitution was supposed to rule. Amendment X (the 10th Amendment, my nom de plume) again was meant to be sure there was no influence to buy.
Oh, and another kick to a sensitive area, as long as we’re talking about bribery? The legal system works only with the absolute truth being told.According to Judge Andrew Napolitano, in his breakout book “Constitutional Chaos ” cites federal statute “Whoever…gives,offers,or promises anything of value to any person for …testimony under oath…shall be fined…or imprisoned for [up to] two years, or both” (his emphasis). He goes on to say that prosecutors from the Attorney General all the way down to the local prosecutor violate this law all the time. They have paid snitches. They offer reduced sentences meaning more years of someone’s life outside prison) in exchange for testimony against others. The Feds have offered Abramoff something of value (more years of his life outside a federal prison) in exchange for his testifying against others. So, to enforce the law, the feds break the law.
Wonderful. The feds break the law to enforce the law against someone who broke the law by buying influence that should not exist according to the Constitution (Amendment X)- meaning that he was trying to buy an illegal substance.
Clear? Good. Cause my head sure hurts.
BTW, here are the 9th and 10th Amendment:

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed

to deny or disparage others retained by the people. (meaning we do have the right to privacy)

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor

prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.(meaning that if it's not written in the Constitution
{for Congress Article 1, section 8}, the Congress just absolutely can not do it. Period!)


So, now you have a brief constitutional lesson.

Know it. Force your President and Congress to practice it (uh,  class: will that mean there will be
a Medicare Prescription Drug Program? Yes or no? Class? Class? And Social Security?
Farm subsidies? EEOC?
If you have any questions, re-read Amendment X and go read article 1 section 8).

And then say goodbye to influence buying, and say hello to liberty.

Today, Governor Pawlenty released the details of his plan to fight criminal activity committed by illegal immigrats in Minnesota. The Governor’s proposal and press release can be found here.

The coverage by our two local newspapers were interesting in their divergence. You can read the PiPress story here and the Strib story here. The PiPress actually reported what was said at the press conference. The Strib, living up to it’s nickname “Pravda on the Mississippi” felt obligated to editorialize in a “news” story.

“According to a widely disputed study issued by the Pawlenty administration last month, illegal immigrants number 80,000 to 85,000 in Minnesota and cost taxpayers up to $188 million a year. The study did not attempt to measure the economic or tax contributions of undocumented aliens, however.”

The only people who seem to have been disputing the study (besides the DFL) have been our friends at the Strib – most vocally Nick Coleman the bloggers best friend. Law enforcement, on the other hand has validated a lot of the claims that were made in the Pawlenty Administrations report.

“Worthington Mayor Alan Oberloh said such an effort would help local police departments. His department estimates that the majority of felony crimes in Worthington are committed by undocumented immigrants.
“If this keeps going like it has, law enforcement will be stymied,” Oberloh said.”

To give the governor credit, he is proposing a couple of new ideas that should help law enforcement. The one thing that I know my friends on the right are going to have problems with is the proposal (as if it is something new) to fine employers that hire illegal immigrants! Shouldn’t we be doing that already????

Bravo Governor Pawlenty, for tackling a tough issue going into the campaign season. I know that this could not have been an easy choice, but it was necessary!