The Patriot Post Chronicle 5-19-2010

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 5-19-2010
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust." --James Madison

Editorial Exegesis
Tea Party candidate Rand Paul won in Kentucky

"The establishment of both political parties took another pounding last night, as candidates anointed by the powers that be lost their primary races in convincing fashion. The ideological polarization we spied in Utah two weeks ago was on display again in Pennsylvania and Kentucky, while the GOP House campaign committee suffered its third embarrassment in a year. The most satisfying outcome across all parties and ideologies was arguably Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak's comfortable victory over Democrat turned Republican turned Democrat Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Senate primary. In defeating the 80-year-old Mr. Specter, voters showed there is at least some limit to partisan opportunism and thus committed an act of political hygiene. Mr. Specter fled the GOP last year when it became clear he would lose a Republican primary to former Congressman Pat Toomey, and he promptly switched positions on everything from union 'card check' to health care. Mr. Sestak ran by claiming to be the more authentic Democrat, despite President Obama's embrace of Mr. Specter, at least as long as the President needed him for the 60th health-care vote. In crunch time in the primary, the White House decided to sit this one out. One disloyal act is repaid in kind. ... Perhaps the evening's most intriguing result was the landslide victory by eye doctor Rand Paul in the Kentucky GOP Senate primary. He defeated Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who was the favorite of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Mr. Paul is the son of libertarian Republican Ron Paul and is a favorite of the tea party movement. Mr. Paul's national security views aren't ours, but this year domestic policies are dominant and in his remarks last night he sounded mainstream themes on taxes, spending and reducing the size of government. His challenge going into the fall will be to maintain the fervor of his tea party supporters while winning over independents and enough conservative Democrats to keep the seat for the GOP. The larger and most welcome story is that voters are saying they want to replace the current crowd in Washington. We say pour it on." --The Wall Street Journal

Upright

"We've come to take our government back. This movement, this Tea Party movement, is a message to Washington that we're unhappy and we want things done differently." --Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul

"By socializing the consequences of Greece's misgovernment, Europe has become the world's leading producer of a toxic product -- moral hazard. The dishonesty and indiscipline of a nation with 2.6 percent of the eurozone's economic product have moved nations with the other 97.4 percent -- and the United States and the International Monetary Fund -- to say, essentially: The consequences of such vices cannot be quarantined, so we are all hostages to one another and hence no nation will be allowed to sink beneath the weight of its recklessness. Recklessness will proliferate." --columnist George Will

"You might think that Europe's economic turmoil would inject a note of urgency into America's budget debate. After all, high government deficits and debt are the roots of Europe's problems, and these same problems afflict the United States. But no. Most Americans, starting with the nation's political leaders, dismiss what's happening in Europe as a continental drama with little relevance to them." --columnist Robert Samuelson

"If you want to watch someone squirm, take a look at the two-minute videotape of Attorney General Eric Holder dodging Republican Rep. Lamar Smith's question whether 'radical Islam' motivated the Times Square bomber. Holder, who last year called America 'a nation of cowards' for refusing to talk frankly about race, plainly didn't want to say what is plain to everyone else, that Faisal Shahzad, back from five months in Waziristan, launched his terror attack because of his Islamist beliefs." --political analyst Michael Barone

"Why are Manhattan officials bowing to demands by a group called the American Society for Muslim Advancement to open -- on of all days, Sept. 11, 2011 -- a 13-story shrine to Islam in the shadow of the beautiful skyscrapers terrorists turned to ashes in the name of Islam? Why aren't they suggesting they do their Islamic 'advancement' someplace else? ... Aren't officials at least curious why these supposedly 'patriotic' Muslim activists named their planned $100 million mosque after the Great Mosque of Cordoba -- a legacy of Muslim Spain representing the zenith of Islamic dominance? There may be nothing to it -- except that a radical Islamic school in Virginia, raided by the feds after 9/11, also goes by that name. Cordoba University's founder was recently named an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror case. Symbolism is not lost on such jihadists." --Investor's Business Daily

Insight

"The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature -- a type nowhere at present existing." --British author and economist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." --American science fiction writer Robert Heinlein (1907-1988 )

"The less government we have the better -- the fewer laws and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual." --American author Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Dezinformatsia

Broken record syndrome: "We'd be better positioned to deal with the current emergency if so much money hadn't been squandered on tax cuts for the rich and an unfunded war. But we still entered the crisis in much better shape than the Greeks. ... Bear in mind that the drive to cut taxes largely benefited a small minority of Americans: 39 percent of the benefits of making the Bush tax cuts permanent would go to the richest 1 percent of the population." --New York Times' columnist and former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, who neglects to mention that, according to The New York Times, 1 percent of the population pays more in taxes than the bottom 95 percent

Directionally challenged: "When she worked for the Clinton administration, Ms. Kagan asked the president to support a ban on all abortions of viable fetuses except when the mother's health was at risk. And some analysts have used that example to show that she may actually shift the Court to the right, compared with Justice Stevens." --CBS's Maggie Rodriguez (We're sure it will be difficult to distinguish between Kagan's beliefs and those of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.)