Samuel Adams, writing in a letter to James Warren in February of 1779, said, “If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved.” Our nation needs to heed these words and continue to remain informed and engaged. The tragedy of the Arizona shootings by a sick human being has provided Mr. Obama and his supporters a wall shielding the past two years of abusing power and ignoring the will of the people.  A call for civil discourse is no more than code for “moving on” and not challenging the bad legislation that was forced on the American people by single party rule. The people must recognize this and keep the 112^th Congress focused on repealing legislation that threatens our liberty, regardless of how civil the discourse.

Obama Care is more than another expensive entitlement program that will bankrupt our nation and put future generations under heavy financial risk, it changes the fundamental view of the role of government in the lives of the American people.  This legislation places the most private aspects of a citizen’s life and liberty into the hands of the government.  The over reach of the law is far more that its constitutionally challenging provisions for forced purchases of insurance and potential for rationing, it legislates a dominant position for a central authority over the well- being and eventually the actual existence of the individual.

There was no civil discourse when this law was being debated.  Mr. Obama himself, in referring to the outcry of the American people at town hall meetings with their elected representatives during the summer of 2009, said. “The people should just shut up!” Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House during the debate, proclaimed, “We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it.” The American people were called “Nazis” and “dangerous” and worse.  All the American people were doing was simply demanding that their government follow their will. The people were ignored. Now, those who committed the atrocity want us to forget what happened and simply move on all in the name of civil discourse in honor of those slain by a criminally insane individual.

The only way to properly honor the victims of the Arizona shooting is to do what they were doing at the time of that terrible event – engage in the political process and demand that our elected representatives understand what the people want and to legislate based on that understanding.

Repealing Obama Care and replacing it with free market solutions to lowering the costs of health insurance is only one legislative correction necessary.  Focusing on the run away authority of unelected agency heads and commission members, as well as the unconstitutional regulations they have been writing for the past two years is also a necessary corrective step for the 112^th Congress.

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On September 23, 1779 in the midst of one of the bloodiest engagements in naval history, John Paul Jones was struggling against the forty-four gun Royal Navy frigate Serapis and although his own vessel was burning and sinking, Jones would not accept the British demand for surrender.  Instead Jones declared, “I have not yet begun to fight.” Little more than three hours later, the Serapis surrendered and Jones took command.

The voice of the American people was heard this November 2^nd for the first time in the past two years.  The Republican Party regained control of the House of Representatives, picking up a historic sixty seats and possibly sixty-five or more seats as final votes are tallied.  Six Senate seats were gained by Republicans with another two seats possible as close contests are resolved, further diminishing Democratic political power.  The Grand Old Party (GOP) also gained a net eight governorships and nineteen State legislatures changed over from Democratic to Republican control.

In the final days leading up to the election and in the hours immediately following, the President began to call for compromise.  Really?  After taking the oath of office in January of 2009, Mr. Obama declared, “Elections have consequences and we won!” He then led his fellow Democrats on an eighteen month assault against Republicans in Congress and against the will of the American people, pushing his left-of-center agenda.  Just before this week’s election he said the Republicans can come along but, “They need to sit in the back.” He also publically referred to his opponents as “Enemies.”

Now he wants compromise, but the only compromise that the American people clearly want is for the President and the Democrats to move off their agenda and come to them.

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On November 2, 2010, California voters will decide whether or not to legalize marijuana.

If passed, Proposition 19 would control marijuana like alcohol, allowing adults 21 years of age and over to possess up to an ounce of pot for personal consumption and grow marijuana at a private residence in a space of up to 25 square feet. The initiative would also allow local governments to tax and regulate the commercial cultivation, transport, and sale of marijuana.

In order to get a handle on the debate surrounding. Prop 19, we spoke to both supporters and opponents of the initiative.

So what do you think? Should Californians legalize marijuana?

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I am not personally acquainted with John Boehner, though I laid eyes on him once. I do not really know Eric Cantor either – though we met in passing in April, 2009 when I was in DC promoting my book Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift. And I have never met Paul Ryan or Mike Pence.

Moreover, I am strongly inclined to fear that they will betray us in the aftermath of November. The Republicans in Congress do have a track record, after all. If the Democrats have a propensity for adding new social programs, their opponents have a no less powerful aptitude for voting to pay for them. It was not for nothing that Bob Dole was once derided as “the tax-collector of the welfare state.”

Like a man about to embark on a second marriage, I am nonetheless inclined to let hope triumph over experience and to entertain the possibility that this time it might be different. When a Democratic pundit such as The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus charges that the Republican opposition to Obama is “irresponsible,” it really does give one hope.

The event that caused Marcus to rise up in high dudgeon was a speech that John Boehner delivered in Cleveland on Tuesday, in which he attacked the latest “stimulus” bill, called for President Obama to submit to Congress “an agressive spending reduction package,” warned against allowing tax increases to take effect that would fall heavily on small businesses, pressed for an immediate repeal of the healthcare bill provision requiring businesses to issue a 1099 every time that they spent $600 or more, and called for the President to fire Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers. Twelve times, Marcus lamented, Boehner used the phrase “job-killing” – “as in ‘job-killing tax hikes,’ ‘job-killing bills,’ ‘job-killing agenda,’ ‘job-killing federal regulations.’” This is, she charged, “bumper-sticker politics, not a real economic plan.”

Boehner’s speech was shocking, indeed. It might lead one to think that we are in the middle of an election campaign and that the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives is intent on distilling for the voters what the party that controls both houses of Congress and the Presidency has most egregiously done wrong. It might be taken to suggest that he intends to offer voters a choice, not an echo; and though Boehner’s speech was not a plan, it does suggest that he has one.

Ruth Marcus is thoughtful and often worth reading, but when it comes to economics she is completely out of her depth.

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On the national level it seems as if the Unions have changed priorities. No longer is their primary objective to protect the rights of their own rank and file, their objectives has moved into politics and selling the progressive and/or Marxist agenda. Hence their support of many of the Administrations policies such as Obamacare, the auto bailout and the financial regulation bill in some cases (such as Obamcare) over  the objections of their membership.

Fresh from their recent wins, the unions are moving into building the base of Marxist, Communist and progressive voters, as evidenced by the AFL/CIO joining a get out the vote effort run by United for Peace and Justice, an origination established to promote an agenda which is both socialist and anti-war.

The announcement the AFL-CIO move was made in People’s World a magazine for the Marxist and Communist movements in the United Sates:

The AFL-CIO executive committee voted unanimously this morning to join One Nation, Working Together, a new national coalition of labor and civil rights groups that has as its purpose to “reorder America’s priorities by investing in the nation’s most valuable resource – its people.”

The labor, civil rights, environmental, faith and other organizations that have formed the new coalition intend to replace unemployment and economic crisis faced by the country’s majority with “nothing less than a future of shared prosperity for all our people,” the AFL-CIO said in a statement after it voted to join One Nation.

“None of us alone have been able to achieve our priorities,” said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO.

One Nation’s first official act as a coalition will be a march on Washington on Oct. 2, which unions say will energize an army of tens of thousands who will return to their neighborhoods, churches, schools and voting booths to prevent a Republican takeover of Congress in November and begin building a new permanent coalition to fight for a progressive agenda.

The AFL-CIO joins groups such as The NAACP, SEIU 1199, Green for All, National Council of La Raza, US Student Association, and the Center for Community Change in the One Nation, Working Together effort.

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The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor. -Ronald Reagan

Website World Net Daily (WND) has decided to drop conservative pundit and author, Ann Coulter as the keynote speaker for its “Taking America Back National Conference” next month, because of her plan to be the keynote speaker at “Homocon,” an event put together by GOProud the first genuinely conservative group for gay Republicans (Coulter’s column will still be carried by the site).

According to Joseph Farah, the Editor-in-Chief of Chief of WND, the reason for dis-inviting Ms Coulter from the WND conference (and their rejection of GOProud) is the Gay organization’s support of same-sex marriage and military service for open homosexuals.  If Farah took the time to look at GOProud’s  web site he would have seen that those issues are not the group’s priorities. GOProud describes its goals as:

GOProud is an organization that is committed to a traditional conservative agenda that emphasizes limited government, individual liberty, free markets and a confident foreign policy.

In other words they are more conservative than most of the Republicans in office today. But it doesn’t seem that those conservative goals are not important to WND’s Joseph Farah as you can see by this exchange with Ms Coulter:

Asked by Farah why she was speaking to GOProud, Coulter said: “They hired me to give a speech, so I’m giving a speech. I do it all the time.”

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Alan Grayson.  How did this clown get elected?  Even Democrats are asking themselves that.

The man who delighted in claiming Republicans want the sick to die to save the taxpayers money, was so proud of his obnoxiousness that he started a website to celebrate himself, www.congressmanwithguts.com.

No sooner did his self promotion tour get off the ground before his mouth got some more attention, calling one of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s aids a “K Street whore.”  After 24 hours of defending the outrageously out-of-bounds slur, and after pretty candid criticism from his fellow Democrats, Mr. Manners finally apologized.

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