Today's exhibit A comes from the mayors of Chicago and Philadelphia -- two of the most perpetually far-left and far-gone municipal governments in the nation.  Mayor Daley of Chicago has been trying to eradicate the 2nd Amendment rights of that city's citizens for a long time despite being defeated continually in the courts.   Now, in a move that can truly and un-rhetorically be described as un-American, Daley is appealing for a "redress against the gun industry" to the World Court in the Netherlands!   Let's say that again:  a US city mayor is appealing to an international court to help destroy a US Constitutional right.   His ally in ignorance is Philadelphia Mayor Nutter, leader of a city that recently saw 6 policemen murdered in 18 months by repeat offenders.   Nutter's claim that, "I have a First Amendment right not to be shot" is a joke -- and he's the butt of it.

The alarming thing here is not that two mayors of two cities that have been controlled by the left for decades are blaming decades of unabated violent crime in their cities on guns instead of criminals.   The troubling part is that they, like others of their party in Congress and the White House, are openly flouting the Constitutional rights of each American -- and doing so with a smile.   I'd suggest these people read the Constitution, especially the parts clearly stating that the rights described in it ARE NOT given by the government, but are indeed endowed to US citizens by our creator.   And, we citizens have the right, indeed the obligation, to undo any government that tries to deny our liberties from us.  Be warned.

What has happened in this country with the first year of the BO / Pelosi / Reid debacle is reason enough to remember the damage they have done come November.  But tonight I am speaking of the despicable case of the Lockerbie bomber.  Remember him?  The convicted Libyan terrorist who blew hundreds of innocents out of the sky decades ago, jailed only recently, then freed by Scottland on "humanitarian" grounds because his death was imminent and welcomed home by Kadaffi as a hero, just celebrated his 58th birthday.   Over 5 months after doctors said he would be dead, he celebrated his miraculous recovery with family, friends, and government officials.

Just because the story has lapsed from main-stream news coverage, we must not forget.   The forces of evil are celebrating today and the souls of long-departed victims and their families are screaming for justice.    We should remember the failure of the human justice system and take solace in the fact that the ultimate judge of us all will someday render justice.

Take a trip in time back to the Clinton administration -- a time when the government interfered with an industry that nobody likes but everybody needs in the name of "social justice".   As the economy and the real-estate market enjoyed a boom, some in Congress thought it was a good idea to "share the wealth" by forcing / strongly encouraging banks to drop mortgage qualification standards.  The result, banks ignored their risk management obligations, gave mortgages to people who could not afford them, and triggered a near meltdown of our entire economic system just a couple of years ago.   The banks got the blame.  The government got to take most of them over, at our expense.

Now, in the midst of the long, slow, and uncertain recovery from this near disaster, many leaders of this country seem determined to steer the car back towards the cliff.   The BO administration, which has spent the better part of its time vilifying the health insurance industry -- one that nobody likes, but everybody needs -- is poised to pass legislation that will essentially destroy it.  How?  By manipulating the process of risk management that is a fundamental component of how health insurance -- in fact, any insurance -- works.   Everyone agrees that insurance companies denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and dropping sick policy holders is bad, but these are all tenets of underwriting -- the type of risk management an insurance company must do in order to survive and keep making those obscene profits of 2% - 3%.   BO keeps saying that we can keep our current insurance company if we like it, but he fails to explain how they will stay in business to serve customers when the government is setting the rules of the game.   Everyone also agrees that the rapid growth in the cost of insurance premiums for individuals and businesses alike is unsustainable.  But I fail to understand how BO's plan will bring down these costs.  Government regulation in any business drives up cost.  And the fact is, health insurance is already one of the most regulated industries, with state and federal laws governing many of their practices and inhibiting competition.  

What BO, Pelosi and Reid are pushing is an expansion of the welfare state, plain and simple.  The last time liberals tried to "spread the wealth around" the result was near disaster, and a large bill we taxpayers will bear for decades.   If history repeats during tomorrow's vote, all of our tomorrows will look a lot like our recent yesterdays.

If you watched the network news coverage, you would have heard Beck's clip calling-out the problems of the Republican Party and though that was the focus of his speech.   Funny isn't it how, when Beck goes after BO, he is a wacko that the media mocks with misquotes.   But when he critiques the GOP, it is worthy of national news coverage.

What the media didn't cover, of course, was the rest of the speech in which Beck detailed his perspective on the ills of this nation as only he can.   Chief among these issues:  the decline in personal responsibility that is being fed by the expansion of government -- a death spiral of failed progressive philosophy that is eroding our country.   Beck is thriving not just because he is entertaining, but because he articulates in plain-speak the core ills of this nation that run much deeper than party politics.

If the lame-stream media would ever realize this and cover him honestly, perhaps they could avoid their own steady decline into irrelevance.

Critics have had plenty of time to deride our presence here using vagaries and political rhetoric.  So, here's a quick reminder of what our troops are fighting against.   The Taliban, an ultra-extreme Islamic group, abused the people of Afghanistan, removing their freedoms, and inflicting their backward laws upon them.  The Taliban routinely executed people publicly for violating these laws -- including many women who had the audacity to show their faces or be seen with men in public.   And, the Taliban harbored Bin Laden and Al Queda for years while they planned and executed terrorist attacks all over the world, including 9/11.   The cynics who forget why we fight, or cannot clearly see the end objective, need to consider the consequences of millions of people being plunged back into the dark ages after they were so close to the light.  

For our Marines, there is even greater clarity.  For those in the hell storm and misery of war, discussions of politics and ideology are privileges they don't enjoy at the moment, but are gifts they bestow upon us and the people of Afghanistan.   As they brave bullets and bombs, they do so not only for their brothers in arms, but for strangers now alive as well as unborn generations.   And in that effort, they take their place in a long line of Marines over the years that have done the same.  To paraphrase the divinely-inspired quote: "There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for another."  

Thank you, Marines.  We love you, too. 

The truth is much different and needs to be heard.  The War on Terror is the most unconventional of wars, with enemies that are unique to no country, absolute in their resolve, and proven willing killers of innocent people.
Such a war simply cannot be won by soldiers on front lines because front lines are becoming less relevant.   This war needs the dedicated service men and women of the CIA.  They are the ones who do the hard and usually unknown work of intelligence gathering and sometimes the quick-strike force needed to dispatch killers to their supposed paradise.  According to this article, the CIA did just that last month -- a fitting response to the attack on their own by a Taliban double-agent.   So, to our brave agents in the field, please know there are people that know the truth of what you do everyday and are glad you do it so well.   Good luck sending more Al Qaeda employees to hell.

This whole incident has exposed the absurdity of modern race relations; a political game cloaked in a moral struggle.   The fact that the left for years has jumped on every real and perceived incident of racism coming from the right, grinding the careers and lives of many decent people into the ground, and now proclaims one of their own innocent in the face of similar comments, proves the existence of the racism business.   Pros like Rev Al and Jesse Jackson have profited and gained power for years by flaming the fires of hatred and division.   They have no interest in the true betterment of African Americans.  They want people to fear saying the wrong thing and being accused of racism.  The reaction of these guys and their political colleagues on the left shines the light of reason on the ridiculous games they continue to play to the detriment of this country.  Until then, there will be no honest dialogue on the topic of race in America.

Watch this interview today with DHS Secretary Napolitano and see if you feel, as do I, that she and the administration are trying to make excuses for an inexcusable incident.   First, she lauds the face that "everything went according to clockwork" after the incident happened -- AFTER being the critical word.  The BEFORE is the critical part, with the failure to spot and screen a person who was on a terrorist watch list.  So while Ms. Napolitano pats the responders on the back, she and the entire intelligence network should be screaming for answers as to why this KNOWN threat was only stopped from blowing hundreds of humans from the sky by a faulty detonator and the quick action of a heroic passenger.

To futher infuriate, she and Press Secretay Gibbs both went on to cite numerous times that the watch list is composed of over 500,000 names -- implying that somehow the very size of the list renders it too large to be of value.  I am no expert on terrorism or security technology, but I have a modicum of experience with business databases and lists.  As such, I know for a fact that modern computers used by commercial businesses can search through a list of this size and find an individual record in seconds, if not minutes.   To think that the DHS, TSA, and FBI cannot do the same to plane passengers is bunk that Gibbs and Napolitano should be ashamed for slinging.  Their obvious ignorance of facts and very real threats smacks of the same ineptitude displayed thus far by the BO administration.

With the first terrorist attack since 9/11 happening in Texas just weeks ago, one that could have been anticipated if available data on the suspect was recognized and acted upon, our collective patience for further pathetic repsonses to threats should be zero.   Once again, I feel the need to state the obvious gained from my experience over years in business and marketing:  Profiling works, whether you are trying to find customers or killers.  Stop searching grandmas and start searching young men of middle eastern and African descent or nationality, especially those already on TERROR WATCH LISTS!   Political correctness in American needs to be killed before it kills more Americans.

I just finished watching his "report" on the Castle Doctrine -- the recent law, passed now in most states in the union, that protects a citizens right to defend himself and his or her property with deadly force.  Dan's report essentially consisted of around 5 stories of extreme cases where the law was taken to the extreme and criminals were shot and killed while fleeing.   Such examples were used to support Dan's point that the law is leading to vigilante justice and anarchy in the streets.   Of course, there was plenty of commentary from smart folks at Harvard that attributed passage of such laws to our new paranoid ,post 9/11 culture.  The most comical comment:  "If you exercise the right to use deadly force in self-defense, you have to prove that your fear is reasonable."  I'll remember to stop and consider that the next timee a burglar is heading up the stairs to my bedroom. 

Let this non-Harvard educated correct them.  Yes, many of us are concerned for our safey after 9/11.  But we are even more concerned about being killed by local criminals that have no qualms about killing police offers.  And if we are lucky enough to turn the tables, we get to look forward to prosecution by twisted attorneys, and persecution by criminal-loving left-wingers in the media.   The only good comment on this program came from the female former head of the NRA responsible for the first Castle Law passing in Florida.   She reminded Dan that people thought that they already had the protections bestowed in the Castle Doctrine, when in fact they did not.  This new law is providing clarity, not adding to confusion.   Nobody wants to shoot shoplifters as Dan suggests.   What we do want is for the laws to protect the people who react to preserve their lives, rather than those who initiate the chain of events that brings danger to all.  

Not once in this program did Dan ever actually define what the law states in full.  And not once did Dan cite examples where citizens acted properly within the new law (I've read about many).   Selecting facts to fit your position is not news.  It is "advocacy journalism" at best, but more like propaganda.   Perhaps if Dan understood this, he'd still have his job at CBS. 

So, in light of today's critically important, Republican-sponsored bill to regulate the vital process of college football playoffs, I openly offer my scorn to Rep. Joe Barton (R) and all those of both parties (including BO) that supported this utter waste of taxpayers' time.  I understand many Americans are passionate about college football but, like steroids in baseball, we should not invite goverment expansion into a private enterprise -- especially one that has absolutely no bearing on the economic health or national security of this nation.   All of you "representatives" at all levels of government had better wake up fast:   stop wasting our time or we will make sure you have plenty of free time come next election.

His statement is so idiotic that it doesn't deserve the energy expenditure of my fingers to finish typing this.   But let me just add a little history lesson for Reid and his factually-challenged friends:  Lincoln was a Republican.   Most of the slave-supporting southerners were Democrats.  Mr. Reid has no shame and no brains either.