There is a lot of content to process, but in the meantime, we bring you these two preview clips.

In the first clip, we ask Representative Schakowsky about recent claims on NRO that she has been an active Socialist.

Yet as I document in detail in Radical-in-Chief, the Midwest Academy’s leadership, including Jan Schakowsky, really was socialist. [emphasis added]

In the second clip, we ask Congresswoman Schakowsky if she thinks CodePink should be investigated for its role in the Hamas Flotilla.

Let’s just say, mum’s the word:

The Native Hawaiian bill, a long time priority of Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI), would set up a race based government of “indigenous, native people of Hawaii.”  Opponents argue that this bill is unconstitutional and unwise.  National Review Online sounded the alarm bells today and sources on Capitol Hill confirmed to Big Government that a version of the Native Hawaiian Bill may end up in the Defense Appropriations bill. 

According to NROnline:

The Hill rumor is that Democrats plan to attach Akaka to the Department of Defense funding bill before this session ends — basically, sneaking it in at a busy, contentious time of year to avoid full debate.

The bill would create a race based government to solicit federal monies and create programs to benefit individuals who fit the definition of “Native Hawaiian.”  A United States Office for Native Hawaiian Relations would be created to negotiate a special political and legal relationship between Native Hawaiians and the United States.  The supporters of this bill argue that Native Hawaiians are similar to an Indian tribe and they should be declared a sovereign entity so they can negotiate benefits from the U.S. government.  The fact of the matter is that Hawaii was a kingdom with a monarch before becoming a state, unlike American Indian Tribes.  Furthermore, the Tribes recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs are not racially exclusive and the Native Hawaiian government would be race based.

Many in Hawaii are concerned that they would be unconstitutionally excluded from the new governing entity, because they will not racially qualify to participate.  The Supreme Court case, Rice v. Cayetano (2000), declared unconstitutional a state sponsored vote in Hawaii, limited to individuals who could prove Native Hawaiian decent, to a board overseeing Native Hawaiian issues.  There was a strict racial classification and an individual who was deemed not racially eligible to vote challenged the constitutionality of the vote under the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.  He won.  Many of the same constitutional concerns apply to the Akaka Bill and a court may deem this bill unconstitutional when there is a determination of the qualifications to participate in the new Native Hawaiian Government.

Many Native Hawaiians have lost faith in the governing entity, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), to represent the will of Native Hawaiians.  OHA will become the defacto governing entity of Native Hawaiians and they seem more interested in lobbying for more and more federal money as the solution to all of the problems in the Native Hawaiian community.  Some Native Hawaiians don’t want federal monies, because they don’t want to give far away Washington, D.C. more and more control over lands in Hawaii.  There are Hawaiians who object on the grounds that they would be racially excluded from the new governing entity, even though they have lived their whole lives in Hawaii.

This is yet another example of politicians in Washington, D.C. trying to pull a fast one.  For those who have a distaste for big government, like me, this is yet further evidence that politicians are pushing unpopular and potentially unconstitutional ideas in the hope that you are not paying attention.

Late today, Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, released the following statement:

I have never suggested that the Akaka Native Hawaiian Recognition Bill be passed and adopted as part of the defense appropriations process.  I don’t know where this nonsensical suggestion originated.  The Akaka Bill for the past many years has been considered under what we call the regular order.  It has had hours upon hours of hearings, many, many revisions and amendments and has gone through the scrutiny of three administrations.  We have had hearings in Washington and in Hawaii.  It is not a measure that has been shepherded in the dark of the night. It has been fully transparent.

Transparency and pressure may have backed off the supporters of this bill, yet one should not be confident that some version of the Native Hawaiian Bill will be put into the Defense Appropriations Bill until they read the bill.

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

– Thomas Paine, The Crisis, December 23, 1776

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”

– Esther 4:14

These are interesting times. Under President Obama and the most liberal Congress since 1965, the United States government is expected to borrow a trillion dollars per year for the next decade while the size and power of our federal government will grow at the expense of our liberties. 

In this environment, Democrats in Congress are working on a bill to give President Obama emergency control of the Internet (S.773) which would permit the President to seize control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.  Meanwhile, the President has appointed Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  Prof. Sunstein support controls on free speech on the Internet.  He views the Web as a Wild Wild West that needs taming and wants new laws to corral wayward bloggers. His book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (not to be confused with Noodge) urges employing the force of government to make us all better persons (“New Soviet Man” anyone?).  In his latest work, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, the Harvard professor, now top Information apparatchik, worries about “…institutions (being) harmed by the rapid spread of damaging falsehoods via the Internet.” 

Of course, one man’s “falsehoods” might be another man’s facts.  Czar Sunstein’s extreme concern likely grows out of his acute understanding that our postmodern President simply speaks reality into existence; words are reality in the Obama White House.

Into this breach come the bloggers.  There are about 120 million blogs today.  Many of them are political, most are not.  

America’s political bloggers trace their heritage, their place in the body politic, to the Colonial era.  Most of today’s political bloggers would have been quite comfortable defying the British Stamp Act of 1765, were they around 244 years ago.  The Stamp Act was designed to impose government content control on the then 23 newspapers which served about two million Colonialists.  Not one Colonial newspaper bought the properly stamped paper.  In fact, the political content of the papers increased, to the alarm of the British authorities. On the eve of the Revolution, there were 31 papers in the Colonies, by the time of the Constitution’s ratification, there were 92, and by 1835, there were 1,200 newspapers serving 15 million Americans. 

Political bloggers became a force to be reckoned with in 2002 with Sen. Trent Lott’s comments on Sen. Strom Thurmond and again in 2004, when Little Green Footballs took down Dan Rather and Mary Mapes (ironically, Mapes writes for the Huffington Post now) over CBS’ airing of forged Air National Guard documents purporting to show that President George W. Bush avoided service in Vietnam.

With many blogs attracting more readers than daily newspapers while newspaper circulation plummets and experienced journalists are being laid off, we can see why Professor Czar Sunstein is worried – no longer do like-minded liberals in the major media have a lock on what passes for truth in the news. (This brings to mind the cynical critique of the former Soviet Union’s main papers, Tass (News) and Pravda (Truth) “Ni pravda Tass. Ni tass Pravda.” “There is no truth in Tass and there is no news in Pravda.”)

There’s a certain urgency in today’s blogosphere – an understanding that we are at a critical juncture in our nation’s history.  Conservative bloggers, mostly unpaid – concerned moms, talented lawyers, activist students – are acting as a potent counterforce against the attempted rapid remaking of America under Pres. Obama’s direction.  As such, today’s bloggers are the most visible manifestation of the Conservative Movement.  And this, as the Republican Party largely tracks aimlessly in opposition to President Obama, but without any apparent objective, other than to regain power for power’s sake in numb repetition of the errors of 2006 and 2008.

Were Thomas Paine and Alexander Hamilton (Publius) around today, they would surely be blogging right alongside the likes of the paid and unpaid authors of NRO’s The Corner, Michelle Malkin, RedState, Hot Air, Big Government, Big Hollywood, Flopping Aces, Infidels are Cool, Riehl World View, Red County, Ace of Spades HQ, Flashreport, Right Wing News, and many others.

Let the blogs bloom, for they have come for such a time as this.