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THE FOUNDATION: TAXATION

“Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.”  — Thomas Jefferson

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

“’We’re all Keynesians now.’ So famously declared Richard Nixon back in 1971, in what we thought was a different economic era. But after [recent events], we’re not sure what decade we’re in. With Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and President Bush both endorsing temporary tax cuts and more federal spending as ‘fiscal stimulus,’ an inflation-adjusted version of Jimmy Carter’s $50 rebate can’t be far behind. Appearing before Congress, Mr. Bernanke told Democrats what he thought they wanted to hear. The former academic economist blessed a ‘fiscal stimulus package,’ as long as it is ‘explicitly temporary.’ How new federal spending can be ‘temporary,’ he didn’t say, as if a dollar collected in taxes or borrowed and then spent can be recalled. The ‘temporary’ line was thus a dagger aimed directly at the heart of Mr. Bush’s desire to make his tax cuts permanent. The Fed chief did aver that, ‘Again, I’m not taking a view one way or the other on the desirability of those long-term tax cuts being made permanent.’ But of course refusing to endorse something is itself a point of view — a point Democrats were already joyfully repeating... Instead, Mr. Bernanke embraced the explicit Keynesian notion that the government should write checks to ‘low and moderate income people,’ who will spend it quickly and thus lift consumer demand... We’re all for putting more money in the hands of the poor and moderate earners, especially via stronger economic growth that will give them better paying jobs. But the $250 or $500 one-time rebate check they may now receive has to come from somewhere. The feds will pay for it either by taxing or borrowing from someone else, and those people will have that much less to spend or invest themselves. We are thus supposed to believe it is ‘stimulating’ to take money from one pocket and hand it to another.”  — The Wall Street Journal

INSIGHT

“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”  — Judge Gideon Tucker

“What is euphemistically called government-corporate ‘partnership’ is just government coercion, political favoritism, collectivist industrial policy, and old-fashioned federal boondoggles nicely wrapped up in a bright-colored ribbon. It doesn’t work.”  — Ronald Reagan

“Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it... It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.”  — Virginia Woolf

“English experience indicates that when two political parties agree about something, it is generally wrong.”  — G. K. Chesterton

“What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.”  — Aristotle

UPRIGHT

“Conservatism, quite simply, is a mess these days. Conservative attitudes are changing. Or, more accurately, the attitudes of people who call themselves conservatives are changing.”  — Jonah Goldberg Break “Meanwhile, Republicans can still grasp the standard of enduring principles that built and sustained the Reagan coalition. Most Americans still favor smaller, smarter government, oppose higher taxes, embrace traditional values and, above all, want safety and security for themselves and their country. On these sturdy foundations, the Reagan coalition can yet be restored.”  — Robert Caldwell

“Our war has one of the lowest fatality rates of any war ever, and, when they get so low that even Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid temporarily give up the quagmire bleating, [The New York] Times invents bogus stories to suggest that the few veterans lucky enough to make it out of Iraq alive are ticking time-bombs ready to explode across every Main Street in the land.”  — Mark Steyn

“I consider all three of [the leading Democrat candidates] to be anti-military, tax-raising, left-wing flyweights who would bury this country in entitlements while essentially ignoring Islamic fascism.”  — Burt Prelutsky

“The Clintons have a record of lawless and ruthless corruption that goes back not only to their White House days in the 1990s but even back to their time in the governors’ mansion in Arkansas... It may not be emotionally satisfying to vote for the lesser of two evils but a lot depends on how bad the worse evil is. Nobody running on the Republican ticket is as dangerous as the Clintons.”  — Thomas Sowell
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“Newsweek reports that top Democrats have been pleading with [Bill] Clinton to tone it down to keep from diminishing himself. Good luck. If the dignity of the office meant so little to him, why should the dignity of the former office restrain him at all? It is the misfortune of the Democrats that the most talented politician of his generation happens to be a man-child.”  — Rich Lowry

Our latin motto is Veritas Vos Liberabit, ’the truth will set you free,’ taken from the words of Jesus in John 8:31-32. These great items testify that truth is freedom! -- PatriotShop.US

DEZINFORMATSIA

Getting it right: “I think the Hillary appeal has always been somewhat about a mix of toughness and sympathy for her. Let’s not forget, and I’ll be brutal, the reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around. That’s how she got to be Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it; she didn’t win on her merits...”  — MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who, under pressure from the Left, later apologized for getting it right Break “Sometimes I think that Bill Clinton ought to be put in the Nutty Old Geezer Club along with Andrew Young for some of the dumb things he’s said lately.”  — Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on “The Chris Matthews Show”

Good question: “Do you feel at times you’re taking on two candidates at once?”  — ABC’s Robin Roberts to Barack Obama

No hint of irony: “What I have always particularly found fascinating and admirable about [Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama] is the fact that they are both sui generis — true individuals who transcend received notions about what a black or female candidate should be.”  — New York Times columnist Judith Warner **“That’s right — she finds it ‘fascinating’ that Obama and Mrs. Clinton don’t fit racial or sexual stereotypes.”  — James Taranto

Don’t know much about economics: “Reaganomics failed... The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans.”  — former Enron advisor Paul Krugman

On “stimulus”: “So can the President and Congress reach a deal to boost the economy and even if they do may it be too little too late? — NBC’s Matt Lauer

That’s the spirit!: ”It’ll probably happen. This is the same boogeyman fearmongering garbage we’ve had from the Bush administration for the last five years... We’ll probably be attacked again...[T]his country will survive, too. It isn’t the terrorists that are going to take this country down. We’re doing a good job of that all by ourselves.“ — CNN’s Jack Cafferty

Newspulper Headlines: Breaking News From 1992: ”Clinton Unveils Plan to Stimulate Economy“ — MSNBC.com Break ”Bush to Propose Plan to Stimulate Economy“ — (Minneapolis) Star Tribune

Breaking News From 28000 B.C.: ”Smelly Caveman Worries Nursing Home Staff“ — United Press International

There’s No Reason for Such Name-Calling: ”Search and Rescue, Sheriff Butt Heads“ — Lewiston (Idaho) Tribune

Wouldn’t an iPod Have Been Cheaper?: ”Brain Surgery Lets Woman Listen to Music“ — Associated Press

News You Can Use: ”Never, Never Spit Gasoline While Smoking“ — Associated Press

Bottom Stories of the Day: ”Teacher Who Spanked Girls Wants His Job Back“ — St. Maries (Idaho) Gazette Record Break ”New Zealand Man Arrested for Driving Lawnmower While Drunk“ — Associated Press (Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)
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THE DEMO-GOGUES

Marxism 101: ”If you go back and look at our history, we were most successful when we had that balance between an effective, vigorous government and a dynamic, appropriately regulated market, and we have systematically diminished the role and the responsibility of our government, and we have watched our market become imbalanced.“ — Hillary Clinton

From the Purveyors of Classism: ”There might be some exemptions, but once people are making over $200,000 to $250,000, they can afford to pay a little more in payroll tax.“ — Barack Obama with his novel plan for Social Security — more taxes on the ”rich“ Break ”It’s shocking that there is such a continuing political pressure to lower tax rates on the wealthy, when so much of what we look back on now with nostalgia and pride was at a time when those who were well off were paying a significantly higher percentage of their income.“ — Hillary Clinton

Defiant: ”Oh, I’m in the race. I’m in the race for the long-term. Got my butt kicked and now I’m going to get up in spite. Going to fight for all the things that I care about — and those causes have not gone away and haven’t changed.“ — John Edwards, that other guy running for the Democrat nomination

Which Clinton is running for president?: ”Well, I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes.“ — Barack Obama **Neither can we.

Does Bill Clinton deserve the title of ”first black president“?: ”I have to say that, I would have to investigate more of Bill’s dancing abilities and some of this other stuff before I accurately judge whether he was in fact a brother.“ — Barack Obama

It’s all about Reagan: ”Ronald Reagan, the man who busted unions, the man who did everything in his power to destroy the organized-labor movement, the man who created a tax structure that favored the richest Americans against middle class and working families... [Reagan also] was destructive to the environment by removing a lot of the regulation that existed. I would never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change.“ — John Edwards

VILLAGE IDIOTS

Fighting the culture of life: ”We remain alarmed that, 35 years after Roe v. Wade, so many abortion providers continue to be out of reach to many American women, especially those in rural and underserved communities.“ — Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America Break ”What happened when Roe v. Wade was handed down was that unwanted children are basically at a much greater risk for being born into the circumstances where they’re more likely to lead a criminal life. Not every unwanted child by a long stretch, but typically... It’s good to know what forces work in society, if for no other reason than to keep doing the right thing.“ — author Stephen Dubner, for whom the ”right thing“ is to continue aborting babies

Run Ralph, Run: ”I’ll decide in about a month. What I’m deciding on right now is whether we can get enough volunteers, enough financial resources to overcome the huge ballot access obstacles, which you don’t experience here in Canada, but which are the worst in the Western world in the United States.“ — perpetual Green candidate Ralph Nader

Truly an embarrassment: ”The Democratic Party is so blessed. We have an embarrassment of riches in Hillary, in Barack and in John Edwards. I wouldn’t be unhappy if any of them were in the White House.“  — economist, author and commentator Julianne Malveaux

From the Village Glitterati: ”People have turned my political ideas into a clichè, but that is superficial. I’m a dramatist who is interested in people, and I have empathy for Bush as a human being, much the same as I did for Castro, Nixon, Jim Morrison, Jim Garrison and Alexander the Great... I want a fair, true portrait of the man.“ — filmmaker Oliver Stone on planning a new flick on President Bush
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SHORT CUTS

”Any Republican voters who aren’t disgusted with the primary process to date haven’t paid enough attention to it.“ — Jed Babbin Break ”Dear Republicans: “Please do one-tenth as much research before casting a vote in a presidential election as you do before buying a new car.”  — Ann Coulter

“As one who was never terribly enamored of Hillary Clinton’s personality to start with, I grudgingly admit to enjoying her recent near-tears transformation. Plenty of critics concede her rarely seen emotion was heartfelt, but also that it was due to the 20-hour-day rigors of the campaign trail, making her perhaps the only candidate ever to win the New Hampshire primary because she needed a nap. Still, it was refreshing to watch her punch through the icy crust of her own phoniness, so that the molten core of artificiality could gush forth.”  — Matt Labash

“Clinton’s clanking, wheezing political jalopy, blowing its gaskets and stripping its lug nuts, has moved on from faulting Obama for a kindergarten essay (in which he supposedly revealed a presidential ambition that was unseemly around the teeter-totter) to accusing him of wanting to be reasonable, even likable. Is there nothing the [Clintons] will not stoop to?”  — George Will

“Psychology Today published a study Thursday of the likes and dislikes of schoolchildren in America, which revealed that most children hate clowns. It’s not just the children who hate clowns. Why do you think Congress has such low approval ratings?”  — Argus Hamilton

Jay Leno: Voters are starting to warm up to Hillary Clinton. You what that means. This may be the best proof yet for global warming. Hillary is starting to thaw. ... John Edwards keeps coming in third, but he says he’s not worried about it. He now says he doesn’t believe there are two Americas. He now thinks there are three. And he’s going to keep looking for the one that wants him to be president. ... There was a big Democratic debate the other night, and NBC would not allow Dennis Kucinich into the debate because his poll numbers were not high enough. How ironic is that — NBC saying your ratings are too low. ... It cost me 65 bucks to fill up my car today. Remember when 65 bucks would buy you a large latte at Starbucks?

Veritas vos Liberabit — Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families — especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)