The left-wing architects of the subprime mortgage collapse have yet to be called to account.

Much has already been written about the possibly criminal conduct of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who relentlessly gamed the political system to clear the way for their friends at government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make billions at the expense of taxpayers, but very little has been written about the role that their liberal friends and allies in the private and nonprofit sectors played in bringing the U.S. economy to its knees.

Funded by huckster John Paulson and predatory lending kingpins Herb & Marion Sandler (who also gave generously to ACORN through the years), the inappropriately named Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) laid the foundation for the current financial crisis.

The media seems barely to have noticed that CRL’s puppet, Eric Stein, is now leading the Obama administration’s push to Sovietize the American banking system. Stein, who is now the U.S. Treasury’s deputy secretary for consumer protection, was previously a vice president at CRL.

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Today, in 121, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was born. His Meditations are still a must read.

Picture this, a 40 year old guy who rides motocross on the weekends with his kids, loves rock music, hangs out with the Romney sons, speaks fluent Spanish, votes as a rock solid conservative in the Nevada Legislature and is now running for the US Senate to take on Harry Reid.

Meet the future of the Republican Party.

For years the Republican Party has said it needs to change, become more “real”, more “hip”—while sticking strong to its solid conservative roots. If Republicans want that change to happen, they need to find the right candidates to make it happen.

The US Senate race in Nevada has found such a candidate. Chad Christensen. For 8 years Chad has served in the Nevada State Legislature and he has a voting record that is as conservative as it gets. If you haven’t heard of Chad it’s because he entered this race after he saw that the other candidates either had no record to speak of, didn’t win elections, or they just were not connecting with Nevada voters. There’s something to be said for a fresh face in this race.

Oh, and he drives a truck. A “Dump Reid, Vote Chad Dump Truck.”

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April 15^th – Tax Day – inspired protests across the nation.  Demonstrators rallied for smaller government, lower taxes, and liberty.  They want government off their backs.  They demanded it, in fact, and they are demanding that the Republican Party delivers it.  The majority of the conservative movement is uniting around these central tenets of conservatism, which would typically bode well for the upcoming primaries and general elections.  A handful of social conservative leaders, however, are reacting to this development with fear, and they are pushing back in ways that could cost conservatives dearly on Election Day.

While most social conservatives wisely believe the best way to protect our nation’s values is to keep the corrupting influence of government as far from our values as possible, a few social conservative leaders want to use big government to promote and enforce social values policies.  These leaders advocate for expansion of government to achieve their aims, and they are not happy with the ascendancy of limited government conservatism.  “There’s a libertarian streak in the tea party movement that concerns me as a cultural conservative,” Bryan Fischer, director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association, recently told Politico.  Family Research Council President Tony Perkins expressed similar concerns to Politico as well.

In this political atmosphere, groups like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family (Focus declined a request for comment) now find themselves more likely to be laying off staff than significantly influencing the direction of the Republican Party.  In their weakened state, these groups are now threatening to take their ball and go home.  As was reported in this space a couple of weeks ago, Tony Perkins has lashed out against conservatives.  Perkins called former House Majority Leader and current FreedomWorks director Dick Armey and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist “liars” for implying that conservatives want less big government in the social arena.  Perkins has further stated that he is advising Family Research Council members to stop donating to the Republican National Committee.

The latest salvo was reported in the Washington Post – on Tax Day, no less.  Per the article, “conservative groups” [(i.e., Focus on the Family (link)] are demanding that the GOP fight in Congress to ban online poker.  They are even demanding that this effort be undertaken as an official party position.  This effort includes even scorched-earth policies, such as distributing a memo within Congress reminding everyone of the Jack Abramoff scandal…the very scandal that started the GOP’s fall from power!

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“People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.”

Brooks Atkinson

It is trite to say that things often are not what they seem, but sometimes they are so much “not what they seem” that discovery creates in the newly informed, initial disbelief.  This disbelief will sometimes be followed by shock and then outrage and then inertia resulting from a general disgust.   That is why it is so immensely encouraging to this activist, that so many patriots are rising up to “take responsibility for what they know.”  Hopefully, enough readers will latch onto this issue and take action both nationally and locally to head of a bad combination of injustices that hurt our neighbors individually and all of us in the end.  The issue is modern indentured servitude that supports a ponzi scheme to on the backs of young tradesmen that is doomed to collapse.

The Wall Street Journal opined Wednesday in an article entitled “Crony Contracts” that  “There’s almost a direct correlation these days between the Obama Administration’s complaints about “special interests” and its own fealty to such interests. Consider its latest decree that federal contractors must be union shops.”  While fealty to unions is a troubling issue to many, what underlies the fealty is much more sinister.

To the casual observer, Democrat attempts to steer all federal construction work to union contractors is the same as Republicans rewarding non-union contractors.  The Republican position is in fact, that all workers get a shot to work as long as their employer proffers the lowest, best bid without regard to union status.  Clinton first wrote the executive order to steer federal construction work to union contractors.  Bush reversed the policy, and Obama has reinstated it.  What most people never see is the true motive behind this policy of reserving public work for union members only using the union-only PLA.

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A federal court of appeals overturned Clinton-appointee Judge Nina Gershon’s ruling that claimed the government had the right and responsibility to fund ACORN.

Thank God, in light of the latest antics from ACORN Chief Organizer Berth Lewis.  While applauding the Young Democratic Socialists, she said, “Any group that says, ‘I’m young, I’m Democratic, and I’m a socialist,’ is all right with me.”

I’m glad the real socialists, with the ear of our government, are finally standing up to be counted.

The Tea Parties, which Lewis called a “bowel movement,” are bringing America into a phase that will surpass Jim Crow, McCarthism and the Japanese internment camps of World War II.

This woman, who has overseen an organization and employees accused and/or convicted of voter registration fraud in well over a dozen states, has no shame.

Lewis’ actions, both past and present, show why her organization isn’t worthy of our hard-earned tax dollars.

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Rush Limbaugh and a few other radio hosts have made it a center piece of the attack against President Obama, the Tea Partiers have often put such sentiment on their protest signs, and the conservative chattering classes have been abuzz with the question: does Barack Obama want to destroy the United States?

The only real answer is “yes, but…” Yes he does, but only if it’s your ox being gored. Yes he does but there is more to it than that. And if it’s someone else’s veritable Oxen the answer might still be “yes, but…”

Conservative radio host Michael Medved, for one, emphatically denies that Obama wants to “destroy the country.” Medved employs the conventional logic that a politician that wants to be re-elected would not want to destroy the very nation that he has been elected to lead. That would make sense if only Obama were a conventional politician and if only Obama himself hadn’t told ABC News, “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.” That very sentence straight from this president’s own mouth seems to shoot full of holes Medved’s conventional logic.

Still, in a way, Medved has stumbled upon a certain amount of truth no matter how small. The problem is that what we really have here is a misunderstanding of concepts. The fact is, following his straight down the line, left-wing, anti-American, radical ideology, Obama does want to destroy the U.S.A. as it is now. But in his mind he is not trying to destroy America simply because he wants utter destruction and devastation to be the only outcome. You see, mere destruction isn’t his end goal as those on the right fear. In his left-wing ideology, he thinks after America’s fall he and his left-wing comrades will be building a new and better U.S.A. Where real Americans see destruction and the end of everything, the leftists see a re-birth to a better and, in their eyes, more moral America. He and his left-wing friends see the U.S. as a Phoenix rising from the ashes of the bad old days.

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Today, in 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published their paper describing the double helix model of DNA. The world would never be the same.

Molly Norris has declared May 20th “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day,” in defense of Matt Stone and Trey Parker.  All freedom-loving Americans should get behind this.  While initially I thought it was an ironic joke that South Park was censoring everything related to Mohammed in their last episode, obviously we have seen over the last few days that against the creators’ will, Comedy Central cowered in the face of a thinly veiled Muslim threat.

In fact, submission, the definition of Islam, is the apt word to describe Comedy Central’s cowardice.

The bottom line is that the First Amendment guarantees free speech including criticism of all peoples.  We are an equal opportunity offense country.  To censor ourselves to avoid upsetting a certain group (in a cartoon no less) is un-American.

It is especially egregious because it represents dhimmitude.  We are sacrificing our law and our heritage to Sharia. The law of our land is the Constitution and beyond that the natural law granted to us by our divine creator.

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From the Associated Press:

Regulators shut down the bank owned by Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias’ family on Friday, setting up an expected but daunting challenge in his bid to keep President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat in Democratic hands.

Broadway Bank, which was heavy into real estate loans and lost $75 million last year, had been given until Monday to raise about $85 million in new capital, but the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced at the close of business Friday that Broadway was among four banks, all in Illinois, that had failed.

Giannoulias, 34, worked at the bank as a senior loan officer until he ran for treasurer four years ago. He has tried to take some of the political and public relations sting out of a collapse, acknowledging the bank was likely to fail but blaming the bad economy. He also said it was financially healthy when he left four years ago.

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Coinciding with Earth Day, a group of teenagers launched a new program called GreenMyParents, which seeks to “help young people teach their peers and parents how to work together to help the economy, earn money at home, and save the planet through simple, everyday actions.”  Looking for ways to help their families save money while protecting the environment are laudable goals, but I have some concerns.  I don’t want to insult these kids by assuming that they are just puppets of any other organization, but they should be aware of the fact that many will seek to use their organization to advance their agenda.

These kids should be commended for designing a program that relies on persuasion and free choice.  All too often, environmental groups have sought to circumvent public opinion and free choice by appealing to governmental force.  Mandates on personal behavior and restrictions on liberty are not how people should seek to affect change in a democratic society. I hope they will stay focused on their model of persuasion and stay away from politicized issues like cap-and-trade.

While wading into the issue of personal choices, I also hope they will stop and consider some of the trade-offs adults have to make.  It is easy to condemn their parents for wasteful behavior while they are still too young to have to be responsible for things like safeguarding a family.  For instance, in a write-up by the New York Times, it was suggested that the group would advise “washing in cold water, walking or biking to school/work and kicking the bottled-water habit,” as ways to save money and help the environment.  Walking or biking to school might save both money and reduce pollution, but it also exposes children to greater risk of violence or kidnapping.  These are the types of things that responsible adults have to consider.

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At a time when the American taxpayer is on the hook for trillions in current and future federal spending—when the Congressional Budget Office warns that the current rate of federal spending is “unsustainable”—liberal Democrats in Congress have earmarked over $68 million of taxpayer dollars for a Boston shrine to the late Senator Edward Kennedy.

In a detailed report, the Boston Herald describes the planned Edward M. Kennedy Institute as a “temple for Ted Kennedy built with pork.”

According to their account, congressional Democrats—especially Massachusetts senators John Kerry and Edward Markey—have been cramming earmarks for the project into various government funding bills. The Herald found that Kerry and Markey even intend to siphon $28.9 million of the institute’s funding from the Defense Department budget, with almost $19 million of that amount already signed into law.

Why do they think taxpayers should be paying for this shrine? A statement from a Kerry spokesman declared that the institute will bring “knowledge and good citizenship to thousands of young people.”

This has raised the ire of taxpayer watchdog groups. “If the Kennedy family wants to honor the senator, they should find a way to fund it themselves,” David E. Williams of Citizens Against Government Waste told the newspaper. Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense agreed that “this could be independently funded and doesn’t need to be getting taxpayer dollars.”

Indeed.

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“After a great amount of my own thought, hearing opinions from many of you, and holding them up against my own criteria—I recommend that Anna Burger not only temporarily—but then permanently—become the 10th President and first woman to lead our union.”

That’s what outgoing SEIU President Andy Stern requested in his April 16th letter to the International Executive Board of SEIU, as he named Anna Burger as his preferred successor.

But locals from New York, Los Angeles, Oregon, and Washington State, as well as Canada, all lined up behind Mary Kay Henry tonight to commit their votes.  According to Politico’s Ben Smith,

“It’s done,” an SEIU insider emailed moments ago.

Tonight’s development comes only days after Anna Burger’s plea to the International Executive Board:

“During my 38 years in SEIU, I’ve held every position but one and now I’m asking for your support… to be the next International President.”

However, building tensions between locals across the country that saw Stern as a divisive figure, too politically entrenched and connected to the DC complex, have left the union itself divided.  Some have seen Mary Kay Henry as a more uniting force that might break the national union away from the chains of the DC operations and bring the power of the locals back to the members again and keep the peace amongst other locals. Others (including me) speculate that she’ll infuse new life into those very DC operations and could possibly even accelerate some activities; she apparently has fewer enemies than Stern or Burger did.  As Politico reports,

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Today, in 1916, Irish Republicans launched the Easter Rising, intended to drive the British out of Ireland. It failed.

(Happy Anniversary John and Alana!)

From the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court has turned down ACORN’s request for help in its lawsuit claiming Congress was wrong to shut off the activist group’s federal funding.

The high court on Friday refused to throw out a decision by the federal appellate court in New York City. That court had decided to freeze a judge’s determination that Congress acted unconstitutionally in yanking the group’s funding.

ACORN, which bills itself as an advocate for low-income and minority home buyers and residents, has drastically cut its operations since losing its funding.

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It’s highly unusual for The Wall Street Journal to be gulled into ignoring the most important part of an issue in favor of chasing a rabbit down a random trail. But it has apparently fallen prey to what is at stake in the Air Force’s acquisition of a tanker aircraft to replace the Eisenhower-era KC-135s, which have flown far past their useful life.   The Journal, like too many others, apparently believes it’s a question of protectionism versus open competition.

A Thursday Wall Street Journal editorial rightly bashes Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wa) for his attempt to bully US defense contractors out of partnering with EADS, the European Aerospace and Defense Systems company which is still trying to sell its Airbus 330 to the US Air Force as a replacement for the KC-135s.

There is no more urgently-needed new aircraft for all our armed services.  As then Air Force Chief of Staff John Jumper told me in a 2005 interview, “We are a global air and space power because of these tankers.  He added, “The first thing that happened in any contingency is that you put the ‘tanker bridge’ up there. We deploy tankers to places such as Spain, Hawaii, Guam and their sole purpose is to get large numbers halfway across the world without stopping.”

In short, no tankers, no superpower.  And the aged KC-135s are no longer capable of meeting the mission requirements imposed by Iraq, Afghanistan and our other international defense needs.

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As Democrats continue to up the volume on their deceptive campaign to pass a new government takeover and bailout bill for bit Wall Street Banks, apparently there is some nervousness about the pressure Democrats are directing at the two Republican Senators from Maine. The mystery group Committee for Truth in Politics is back up on the air in the Pine Tree State with an ad opposing the Big Bank Bailout.

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Looking for evidence that the Financial Reform legislation pending before the Senate is a power grab and not an effort at “reforming the system?” Look no further than the man Washington insiders believe would head the proposed “Consumer Financial Protection Agency” should the bill become law.

Eric Stein.

Remember the name. He is deputy assistant secretary for consumer protection at the Treasury Department. He was also a key player in the Center for Responsible Lending — a front group funded by billionaire John Paulson who worked with Goldman Sachs to package mortgages into securities.

In the house of cards that was the mortgage securities market — Stein was the Jack of spades. While Paulson was the bag man for the CRL operation, Stein was it’s hatchet man. Stein harassed and threatened banks into making bad loans. Paulson primed the pump and Stein fueled the fire.

Stein promoted policies that, in his words, encourages other lenders to make suststainable loans to borrowers with blemished credit.” In other words, they would buy loans from banks to make such loans Then the loan would be kicked up to Fannie Mae. Paulson got rich. Taxpayers got bilked.

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Liberals love to perpetuate the stereotype that “liberal” judges rule in favor of minorities, the poor, and the little guy (Good Things), while “conservative” judges rule in favor of evil corporations, police departments, and white males (Bad Things). This parallels the stereotype that Democrat politicians help the criminally accused and the working man while Republican politicians help evil corporations and police departments.

The White House and their allies are already trying to push these long-ingrained stereotypes in preparation for this summer’s upcoming Supreme Court confirmation battle to replace Justice Stevens’ seat. Like most stereotypes, however, they are not true.

Republican Supreme Court appointees have long-stood against heinous racial discrimination. For example, President Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, appointed Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone justice to dissent in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883) and Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896); these cases permitted segregation and “separate but equal” discrimination. President Herbert Hoover, a Republican, appointed Justice Owen Roberts (full disclosure: a fellow Penn and Daily Pennsylvanian alumnus), the lone Republican appointee on the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 213 (1944), a case where six Democrat-appointed justices ruled that the Constitution permitted the government to forcibly herd U.S. citizens of a particular ethnicity into concentration camps. Justice Roberts’ vigorous dissent said that “convicting a citizen as a punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, [solely] based on his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States” was a “clear violation of Constitutional rights.” Interestingly, the liberals preferred “assembly area” as the euphemism for these concentration or internment camps.

Even Justice Stevens, whom the media now calls a “liberal lion,” did not stand up for the “little guy” nor his First , Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights as much as “conservative” justices like Justices Scalia and Thomas did.

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