My Personal Rants, Raves, and Ramblings

Politico: So rather than renting an apartment in Washington, Rep. Jason Chaffetz will join the ranks of members who sleep in their offices at night and shower each morning in the House gym. He will take his suits to the House dry cleaner and will bundle together his “socks and undies” to take home every weekend to be washed.

Police said the sport utility vehicle, was going more than 120 miles per hour when it slammed into a bridge support.

A home school legal advocate is disturbed by the recent actions of a social worker in Florida.

According to Kris Klicka of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), a social worker in Miami, Florida, overstepped the boundary of law when she demanded to interview a home schooler's children. He says the social worker showed up at the family's home when the father was at work -- and out of fear and intimidation, the mother let the social worker into the home to interview her children, even though the worker neither had a warrant nor would disclose why she was there.

The social worker -- according to HSLDA -- then partially stripped the children and searched them, but found nothing.

During the ordeal, the mother called Klicka for legal advice. Klicka was able to talk with the social worker and inform her that she was violating federal law.

"[E]very family needs to realize that the Constitution of the United States has a Fourth Amendment that states that no one from the government can enter a home unless they have a warrant [that has been] signed by a judge," Klicka explains. "And the judge cannot sign it unless there is probable cause -- and most of the time these social workers do not have probable cause or credible evidence."

Klicka says the family is considering a civil rights lawsuit alleging the social worker broke the law by (1) entering the home and interviewing the children through intimidation; (2) not letting the family know the allegations at the initial visit; and (3) interviewing children whom the allegations did not concern.

"I find myself in a lonely position. While many states and local governments are lining up for a bailout from Congress, I went to Washington recently to oppose such bailouts. I may be the only governor to do so.

But I suspect I'm not entirely alone, as there are a lot of taxpayers who aren't pleased with Christmas coming early for politicians. And I hope these taxpayers make their voices heard before Democrats load up the next bailout train for states with budget deficits.

Several questions led me to oppose bailing out the states. They are worth asking, even if you supported bailing out Wall Street.

Who bails out the "bail-outor"?

Washington is short on cash these days and will borrow every dime of the $150 billion to $300 billion for the "stimulus" bill now being worked on. Federal appetites may know no bounds. But the federal government's ability to borrow is not limitless. Already, our nation's unfunded liabilities total $52 trillion -- about $450,000 per household. There's something very strange about issuing debt to solve a problem caused by too much debt.

Do you now have to be a financial "bad boy" to win?

Community bankers tell me that they are now at a competitive disadvantage for being careful about who to lend to, because others that were less disciplined will get a federal bailout. This is also true for states. Those that have been fiscally responsible will pay for or lose out to the big spenders. California increased spending 95% over the past 10 years (federal spending went up 71% over the same period). To bail out California now seems unfair to fiscally prudent states.

Was the economist Herb Stein wrong when he said that if something cannot go on forever, it won't?

Medicaid grew 9.5% annually over the past 10 years. That's unsustainable. But if Congress opens the checkbook now, there will be no reform."

"Dig It. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!"

In a new afterword to his 2001 book, Bill Ayers, former leader of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground, describes President-elect Barack Obama as a “family friend” and denies he wished his group had set off more bombs in the 1960s.

Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, adds few new details about his relationship with Obama in the afterword to Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist. The book is being reissued this month.

“We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign,” he writes.

Ukraine is no stranger to political turmoil. And extraordinary scenes in parliament suggest things could be going from bad to worse.

Scuffles and fistfights broke out as the chamber in Kiev voted to sack its speaker, a close ally of Ukraine’s President.

The Republican Party will file federal lawsuits Thursday seeking to overthrow the McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance regulations, Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. "Mike" Duncan revealed Wednesday night at a private dinner with the nation's Republican governors.

The move is considered a slap in the face of the Republican Party's failed 2008 presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was dramatically outspent by Democrat Barack Obama, and of President Bush, who signed McCain-Feingold into law in 2002.

Mr. Duncan said one suit will be filed in the District of Columbia to strike down the soft-money ban that is the central tenet of the McCain-Feingold Act — formally known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. "Soft money" is largely unrestricted contributions from wealthy individuals, corporations and labor unions.

The second suit will be in a Louisiana federal court to strike down the limits under the law Mr. McCain co-sponsored with Sen. Russ Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat, that control coordination between parties and their candidates.

"Now, in the last seven years we've had the highest corporate profit, ever in American history! Highest corporate profit! We've had the highest productivity. The American worker has produced more per person than at any time. But it hasn't been shared, and that's the problem! Because we've been guided by a Republican administration, who believes in this simplistic notion, that people who have wealth are entitled to keep it. And they have an antipathy towards the means of redistributing wealth. And they may be able to sustain that for a while, but it doesn't work in the long run."

“I think women have established a role that is new to America’s eyes,” she told me. “And I think if you want us to play infantry, why not afford us an opportunity to become infantry ... so I definitely think it’s time for a change, a big change.”

“It’s the longest few seconds before you pull the trigger, seems like it’s all in slow-mo,” 27-year-old Shannon Morgan, a former Army Specialist in Iraq, told me in an interview. “But you just got to keep telling yourself it’s either you or them.”

“American needs to know what’s going on over there, that we are over there and we are doing this,” she says in the film. “Doing the exact same thing as males are doing now.”

The Pentagon has since made Lioness an official program and now trains women to operate combat weapons but still bans them from direct combat roles.

“They need to be able to use women in this way and they will probably need to in future conflicts,” said Meg McLagan, the film’s other co-director/producer.

Link:

WASHINGTON — Georgia Congressman Paul Broun Tuesday backed away from comparing the policies of President-elect Obama to those of Hitler or a Marxist dictator.

After stirring a controversy that was grabbing national attention, the Republican lawmaker from Athens apologized for making such references.

“I regret putting it that way,” Broun told WGAC radio in Augusta. “I apologize to anyone who has taken offense at that.”

"The point I tried to make is that he is extremely liberal, he has promoted a lot of socialistic ideas, and it just makes me concerned,” Broun said Tuesday.

County Republican chairman James Box of Clarke county, which is in Broun’s district, also defended his congressman’s earlier comments.

“President-elect Obama has a background — and some of his statements he’s made — that lead many of us to believe that he has very socialist orientations,” Box, 77, said, adding that the national press has not examined the incoming president vigorously enough.

“I wouldn’t say he’s going to be a Hitler, but what Paul Broun says is that he has a potential for being a Hitler.”

AUGUSTA - U.S. Rep. Paul Broun attacked president-elect Barack Obama's agenda as "Marxist" and derided fellow Republicans for abandoning conservative principles Friday during his first speech since he was re-elected in Georgia's 10th Congressional District.

"In my opinion, we've elected a Marxist to be president of the United States," Broun, R-Athens, said during a luncheon of the Martinez-Evans Rotary Club at the Doubletree Hotel.

WASHINGTON — A Republican congressman from Georgia is calling President-elect Obama a Marxist and warning that he might be planning to form a Gestapo-like security force so he can rule as a dictator.

Two-term Rep. Paul Broun of Athens cited a July speech that has circulated on the Internet in which Obama called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

Broun said he was not fear mongering but wants to warn people that the nation could be going down that path.

He's been a body-builder, a movie star and leader of the most populous state in the US. But could Arnold Schwarzenegger, now nearing the end of his days as California's governor, be offered a place at Barack Obama's side in Washington?

Speculation is swirling that Schwarzenegger will be offered the role of energy czar in the incoming Obama administration. There has been Beltway chatter about the prospect ever since he was named as a contender for the job by the authoritative politico.com website.

"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist Professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets."

"Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature ... If the next centennial does not find us a great nation...it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces."

"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers. "

"I have one great political idea... The best expression of it, I have found in the Bible. It is in substance, 'Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people' [Proverbs 14:34]. This constitutes my politics - the negative and positive of my politics, and the whole of my politics... I feel it my duty to do all in my power to infuse this idea into the public mind, that it may speedily be recognized and practiced upon by our people."

"...the time has come that Christians must vote for honest men, and take consistent ground in politics, or the Lord will curse them. They must be honest men themselves, and instead of voting for a man because he belongs to their party, Bank or Anti-Bank, Jackson or Anti-Jackson, they must find out whether he is honest and upright, and fit to be trusted."

So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. - Barack Obama

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." - Barack Obama, July 2008