The Patriot Post Chronicle 3-24-2010

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 3-24-2010
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. ... It is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable -- and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!" --Patrick Henry

Upright
With the stroke of a pen...

"A terrible thing happened to America on Sunday, March 21, 2010. The country took its biggest step ever down a road diametrically opposed to its original intent of keeping the state small so that the individual can be free and great." --columnist Dennis Prager

"If there is anything good to say about Democrat control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, it's that their extraordinarily brazen, heavy-handed acts have aroused a level of constitutional interest among the American people that has been dormant for far too long." --economist Walter E. Williams

"The fact that we conservatives were able to fend off this health-care monster for so long is amazing. But the reality is, until true constitutional conservatives recapture Congress, the growth of government and the incineration of liberty will only continue apace." --radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham

"Often the politicians who talk about health care the most believe in the Hippocratic Oath the least. Barack Obama falls into this category. He promises that his health care plan will protect the weak and vulnerable. This would be a little bit more credible if his policies weren't already killing and exploiting them." --columnist George Neumayr

"As America's teetering tower of unkeepable promises grows, so does the weight of government, in taxes and mandates that limit investments and discourage job creation. America's dynamism, and hence upward social mobility, will slow, as the economy becomes what the party of government wants it to be -- increasingly dependent on government-created demand." --columnist George Will

"On health care, [Obama's] most alluring promises will soon be discredited, as costs, premiums and the number of uninsured (in the near term) remain high. To paraphrase Colin Powell, if you reform it, you own it, and all the discontents with the health-care system will now adhere to Democrats. A more cautious and shrewd leader would avoid making easily falsifiable representations or putting himself on the hook in this way. Not Obama. On health care, he's immoderate in his substance, his risk-taking and his rhetoric. He's all in, and he doesn't care." --National Review editor Rich Lowry

Editorial Exegesis

"Idaho requires its attorney general to sue the feds if ObamaCare passes while Virginia, the cradle of liberty, heads the line of states in front of the federal courtroom. Somewhere Patrick Henry is smiling. As the second coming of King George III seeks to impose the leftist mandate of national health insurance on the unwilling American people, the states are once again in revolt. This time they're unwilling to be the colonies of an imperial federal government determined to spend and tax us into bankruptcy while treating the Constitution as if it were bird cage liner. Is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they risked being hanged by the British crown because they said we shouldn't be taxed without representation? Well, we have representation, and they care not about the people they represent. ... Not amused is Idaho, the latest state to jump into the fray last Wednesday, with Gov. C.L. 'Butch' Otter signing into law a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance. 'The ivory tower folks will tell you, 'No, they're not going anywhere,' Otter told reporters. 'But I'll tell you what, you got 36 states; that's a critical mass. That's a constitutional mass.' Otter shares the belief that nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is a mandate to buy health insurance or anything else. ... He believes in the 10th Amendment, in states' rights as defined in the Constitution. All powers not specifically given to the federal government belong to the states and to the people. Mandating health insurance is not one of them. Some would say these states are stepping on Superman's cape, that federal law trumps state law. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli says that's true only when the federal law has some basis in the Constitution and is not in itself unconstitutional." --Investor's Business Daily

Insight

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." --author and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." --British statesman and political thinker Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

"The function of the true state is to impose the minimum restrictions and safeguard the maximum liberties of the people, and it never regards the person as a thing." --German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Dezinformatsia

Chains: "As of today, it is the law of the land that every man, woman and child in America will have health care coverage." --ABC's Dianne Sawyer, who would have more accurately said "nearly every American will be forced to have health insurance"

Let the gloating begin: "Yes, we did. Finally, President Obama can use those words. The passage of health-care reform provided the first piece of incontestable evidence that Washington has changed. Congress is, indeed, capable of carrying through fundamental social reform. No longer will the United States be the outlier among wealthy nations in leaving so many of its citizens without basic health coverage." --Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr.

Legacy writing: "Historians will see this health care bill as a masterfully crafted piece of legislation." --Jonathan Chait of the New Republic

Historic bullying: "Democrats are using words like 'historic' to describe the sweeping overhaul that was approved, but Republicans are saying the bill does not reflect the will of most Americans." --NBC's Meredith Vieira (Not to mention the Constitution -- no really, don't mention it.)

Historic propaganda: "So this is incredible social transformation, but this will be put to the test in terms of whether [BO] can actually go out and campaign on this and win the argument. He may have won the vote but he hasn't yet won the argument and the president knows that. So he's gonna be spending yet more political capital trying to turn around public opinion." --NBC's David Gregory

Heaven forbid: "In many ways, President Barack Obama has run up against a Republican iron curtain in his attempts to get the country moving again. This has been painfully on display almost daily during the long health care debate when the Republicans have strived in unison to defeat Obama's reform proposals, despite the president's accommodating concessions." --White House press corpse reporter Helen Thomas (What concessions?)

What's in a name? "I just don't believe in these ridiculous names, what's communism and what's socialism. People probably can't even spell communism and socialism, much less identify it." --Cartoon News Network commentator Roland Martin