Their Lives, Fortunes, and sacred Honor

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Get that, folks? Your rights derive, not from the whims of a King or legislature but from your being a Child of God.

These rights are what are known as "negative rights", which essentially means the right to be left alone unless you encroach upon the rights of another.

Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States is found the concept of "positive rights".

You have no more claim on my income than I have on yours, no more right to the "obscene profits" of a particular industry than I have on the proceeds of your 401K.

232 years later, the Republic is at risk.

Imperiled by Jihadist savages who wish to see it immolated but also weakened by a constant effort by many within to infantilize each of us, to reduce us to children in need of being rescued by their "superior", "enlightened" instincts.

America is exceptional.

Americans are exceptional.

We must not allow ourselves to become Oprah-fied, flaccid little whiners.

Whatever problems we now face are best faced as men, not children.

The Jihadists must be conquered on the battlefield, not in the courtroom.

Our energy woes must be addressed by utilizing our own resources and by the innovation of risk takers who will rightly profit from their foresight, not by punishing "evil" oil companies.

Our dragging economy cannot be kick started by stealing from the "rich".

Americans are not babies, we are exceptional and we must remain so.

For, if America, as originally cast from the crucible of 1776, dies, Civilization goes with it.

Please God, continue to bless and keep America.

Tony Kennedy, UK Style

Sharia law SHOULD be used in Britain, says UK's top judge

The most senior judge in England yesterday gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.

He declared: 'Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.'

In his speech at an East London mosque, Lord Phillips signalled approval of sharia principles as long as punishments - and divorce rulings - complied with the law of the land.

But his remarks, which back the informal sharia courts operated by numerous mosques, provoked a barrage of criticism.

Lawyers warned that family and marital disputes settled by sharia could disadvantage women or the vulnerable.

Tories said that legal equality must be respected and that rulings incompatible with English law should never be enforceable.

Lord Phillips spoke five months after Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams suggested Islamic law could govern marital law, financial transactions and arbitration in disputes.

The Lord Chief Justice said yesterday of the Archbishop's views: 'It was not very radical to advocate embracing sharia law in the context of family disputes'.

He added there is 'widespread misunderstanding as to the nature of sharia law'.

...

-more-

232 years ago, our Founders risked everything to ensure that they would continue to enjoy the rights once guaranteed to them as Englishmen.

Today, it is unclear if Englishmen even wish to preserve such rights for themselves.

Sharia is antithetical to the principles of the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence.

Sadly, it seems too many of our "leaders" are too flaccid to call a spade a spade.

How long till London burns?

Unfit For Command, 2008

Obama sparks controversy with Iraq comments

By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

FARGO, North Dakota (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama waded into controversy on Thursday over his plans to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq, first saying he might "refine" his views but later declaring his stance had remained unchanged for more than a year.

Obama was forced to call reporters back for a second news conference in Fargo, North Dakota, after he initially left open the possibility of revising his 16-month timetable for pulling U.S. combat forces from Iraq.

"Let me be as clear as I can be. I intend to end this war. My first day in office I will bring the joint chiefs of staff in and I will give them a new mission and that is to end this war," Obama told reporters in his second news conference.

...

-more-

Once again, amateur hour.

Tempted by common sense but pulled back to incoherence for fear of agitating the kids at MoveOn.whine.

The goal, Senator Obama, is not to end the war.

It is to win the war.

Or is that not your goal?

Actually, given the aid and comfort the Senator's party has given to the savage enemy, we wonder ...

Obama, Econoramus

Obama promises 'bottom-up' economic growth

June 19, 2008

FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Democrat Barack Obama told union leaders Thursday that he will pursue economic policies that benefits workers if elected president, but he also will seek input from corporate leaders.

‘‘The economy is not working the way it should be, and that’s going to be the goal of an Obama presidency — to make sure we’ve got bottom-up economic growth instead of the kind of tired, worn-out, trickle-down ideologies we’ve been seeing for so many years,’’ Obama said as he gathered with about three dozen leaders in a Capitol Hill hotel. Reporters were allowed in to cover his opening remarks.

...

-more-

There's so much in these remarks that requires rebuttal, but the 4th season of "The Odd Couple" awaits so we'll address the most egregious bit of flapdoodle:

" ... make sure we’ve got bottom-up economic growth ... "

Bottom-up economic growth?!

What exactly does that mean?

People decide they want jobs and, mirabile visu, they appear?

To paraphrase Frasier Crane: What color is the sky in Obama's world?

The "tired, worn-out, trickle-down ideologies" Obama calumnies have sentenced America to 25 years of growth with only two short and shallow recessions since the Reagan tax cuts went into full effect.

"Working families" have stuff their counterparts in 1979 could never have imagined possessing.

And how should the economy be "working"?

The economy is 300 million people making decisions based on self-interest.

Obama knows how this should work?

Hubris is one of the most unbecoming of vices, especially from someone with so little knowledge of a topic.

Only a person who's never worked in the private sector could believe in a "bottom-up" economy.

Amateur hour.

Boumediene for kids

Court quashes dad's grounding of 12-year-old daughter

A father plans to appeal after a Quebec court ruled that he didn't have the right to punish his 12-year-old daughter by barring her from a school trip.

Quebec Superior Court Judge Suzanne Tessier ruled Friday that the girl should be allowed to attend the three-day trip within Quebec this week.

Initially, the father forbade his daughter from going online after the Grade 6 student posted photos on a dating site, the Globe and Mail reported in its Thursday edition.

The girl's parents are divorced, and after she had an alleged row with her stepmother, her father barred her from going on a school trip to mark the class's graduation from elementary school, the newspaper reported.

"When he said, 'OK, it's final. You're not going,' she smacked the door, left and went to live with her mother," the father's lawyer, Kim Beaudoin, told CBC News.

Last Wednesday, the father received a motion petitioning the court to overturn the punishment.

-more-

Here's a father trying to avoid becoming a grandparent at a young age -- chances are he also forbids her to dress like a tramp -- meting out exactly the sort of punishment all of us past a certain age received once or twice.

In steps some know-it-all judge and, voila, this budding Britney is on her way to Quebec.

Hopefully she doesn't return in a family way.

Maybe there's a place for Hillary in the Canadian judiciary.

Simply amazing.

Baby steps for McCain

Sen. John McCain called yesterday for an end to the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, offering an aggressive response to high gasoline prices and immediately drawing the ire of environmental groups that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has courted for months.

The move is aimed at easing voter anger over rising energy prices by freeing states to open vast stretches of the country's coastline to oil exploration. In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly 80 percent said soaring prices at the pump are causing them financial hardship, the highest in surveys this decade.

"We must embark on a national mission to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil," McCain told reporters yesterday. In a speech today, he plans to add that "we have untapped oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. . . . It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions."

-more-

We've scratched our heads bloody over McCain's reluctance to jump on this issue where the "Drill Now" position is a clear boon to the GOP.

Perhaps he will soon visit that pristine vacation tourist hotspot at ANWR, admit he was wrong, and take the sensible position on drilling there.

Baby steps, followed, predictably, by baby talk:

Representatives of several environmental groups criticized him for backing an idea they said would endanger the nation's most environmentally sensitive waters.

"It's disappointing that Senator McCain is clinging to the failed energy policies of the past," said Tiernan Sittenfeld, legislative director for the League of Conservation Voters.

...

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama joined the criticism, calling the idea of lifting the ban the wrong answer to out-of-control energy prices. "John McCain's plan to simply drill our way out of our energy crisis is the same misguided approach backed by President Bush that has failed our families for too long and only serves to benefit the big oil companies," Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said.

-more-

Someone please educate us here: How can a policy NOT in place be characterized as "failed"?

Isn't the no drill, no nuke policy what has truly "failed" America's benighted "families" at the oil spigot?

As for alternative energy sources -- the free market will provide them (this development will enrage insect rights types) far before Government does.

The ethanol fetish has truly been a "failure", driving food prices up as it diverts corn and the foods it helps produce away from the World's dinner table.

And could the disloyal opposition PLEASE end it with this "failed" nonsense.

You'd think people who congratulate themselves on their superior intelligence could make their points without resorting to focus group-tested buzzwords and catchphrases or at least admit that the Great Society "failed" -- miserably, no less -- America's poor?

Our kingdom for a statesman!

Unfit For Command, 2008

Mr. Obama issued a statement calling the decision “a rejection of the Bush administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantánamo” that he said was “yet another failed policy supported by John McCain.”

“This is an important step,” he said of the ruling, “toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy.”

-more-

Let us get this straight: a policy that keeps un-uniformed ILLEGAL enemy combatants from appealling to screwball judges like Anthony Kennedy for the exercise of a right ensured to AMERICANS and others apprehended and imprisoned by our LEGAL system, a policy that has prevented these savages from returning to the battlefield to kill AMERICANS is a failed policy?

We shudder to think what Obama would have considered a successful policy.

These are not prisoners in the county pokey awaiting trial for mopery.

They are soldiers in a WAR, a war against Civilization.

Were this child-like lack of understanding not coming from a man who could -- perish the thought -- become Commander in Chief of the Free World it would be funnier than the Doobie Brother's double episode of "What's Happening"!

Except in this case it's "Which Doobie you be?" followed by the explosion of a dynamite cumberbun and dead servicemen.


This reminds us that the nominee's puerile notion of the ideal Supreme Court Justice is equally fatuous, expressed here in blathering Oprah-esque fashion:

"We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

-more-

The Boumediene debacle certainly illustrates Justice Kennedy's penchant for empathy -- for Jihadists.

Happy Father's Day ...

... to all fathers and all boys lucky enough to have a father.

Big kudos to the architects of the "Great" Society for ensuring that so many boys grew up fatherless.

The Fatal Conceit kills.