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« on: March 14, 2011, 12:13:21 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Brief 3-14-2011
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation
"We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again." --George Washington
Japan Crisis Escalates
More than 10,000 Japanese citizens are estimated dead in the wake of Friday's tsunami. Prime Minister Naoto Kan told the nation Sunday that the earthquake and tsunami represent the biggest crisis to face the country since the end of World War II.
Complicating matters greatly, Japan's nuclear crisis has escalated as authorities attempt to mitigate the threat of multiple potential reactor meltdowns. The cooling system at a sixth reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 plants has now failed, and one meltdown is occurring. Some 200,000 people have been evacuated and the evacuation zones are being widened.
Read more from Mark Alexander and comment here1
Political Futures
"Now gasoline costs more than $4 a gallon in many places in California, and averages more than $3.50 nationwide. In response, the Obama administration is reportedly considering tapping into the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase supplies and drive down high prices brought on by a recovering world economy and unrest in the oil-rich Middle East. Yet the reserve depot was not designed to alleviate periodic gas-price spikes, but to ensure our very survival during a global catastrophe that might result in a cutoff of most petroleum imports from overseas. There are now more than 700 million barrels of stored oil in the reserve. In times of near-Armageddon, even that huge supply would provide for all of the nation's oil needs for only a single month. It would make up for all imported oil cutoffs for only two months. So how is it wise to tap this critical but finite reserve -- especially when the current administration had prohibited new oil and gas production in large parts of the Gulf of Mexico and the western United States? The administration certainly will not reconsider new drilling in oil-rich areas in Alaska or elsewhere off the American coasts. The message to Americans seems to be that it is OK to consume old oil stockpiled by previous generations (the reserve was begun in 1975), but quite wrong to drill for new oil to be used by the present generation." --historian Victor Davis Hanson2
Opinion in Brief
"The scandal is not that House Committee on Homeland Security chairman Peter King (R., N.Y.) [held] hearings on 'The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response.' The scandal is that they have been so long in coming. The Department of Homeland Security was created in direct response to an act of Islamic terror, an act perpetrated by radical Muslims who lived and worked, planned and plotted inside the United States. Post-9/11, the threat of homegrown jihad is as great or greater. ... A search of the Homeland Security hearings in the 111th yields not one mention of Islamism or jihad. So the cries of religious persecution from groups like CAIR and their allies on the left badly miss the point: It isn't that we have cast a discriminatory eye toward Islam, but that excessive concern with the pieties of multicultural relativism has prevented us from being sufficiently critical of Islamism. A problem cannot be dealt with that is not first faced foursquarely, and, to appropriate a phrase, we have for too long been a nation of cowards when it comes to addressing jihadist radicalism between our shores. Representative King's hearings make an honest first effort to do that." --National Review3 editors
Re: The Left
"For many on the Left the real fear is that for the first times in their lives they would have to find a job in the private sector they so vilify. Therefore the real interest of these radicals [regarding Wisconsin] is not the so-called denial of the 'right' to collective bargaining but that by eliminating compulsory union dues ... a major source of funding for their groups will be eliminated. ... The Left, despite their protestations that they always have the best interests of the people at heart, have only their own interests at heart. It is their individual income stream and their massive egos which must be fed, and there is not enough private funding to do so. Therefore it must come from the public coffers whether directly from government programs or indirectly through compulsory public sector union dues. It has taken a national and various state financial crises to pull back the curtain so the American public can view the corruption and greed in the full light of day. The Left ... will not go gently into that good night; but no longer will they operate with such impunity as their influence wanes and funds dry-up." --columnist Steve McCann4
Liberty
"If you can't read the Constitution, or the Declaration, or The Federalist Papers, you won't understand their essential concepts or why they represent so much wisdom. When even our elite colleges and universities aren't teaching the next generation the basic concepts of the American republic like federalism or the difference between Thomas Jefferson and Karl Marx, it ought to be obvious that American public education is failing American democracy. ... A generation that is not taught to recognize the irreconcilable differences represented by the Declaration of Independence and the Communist Manifesto, between Madison and Marx, the Federalist Papers and Rules for Radicals is doomed to be ruled, not to rule. Individual liberty will not long survive in a republic of civic dunces." --Washington Examiner editorial page editor Mark Tapscott5
Government
"There is a distinct group of Americans who bear a large burden for today's runaway government. You ask, 'Who are they?' It's the so-called 'greatest generation.' When those Americans were born, federal spending as a percentage of GDP was about 3 percent, as it was from 1787 to 1920 except during war. No one denies the sacrifices made and the true greatness of a generation of Americans who suffered through our worst depression, conquered the meanest tyrants during World War II and later managed to produce a level of wealth and prosperity heretofore unknown to mankind. But this generation of Americans also laid the political foundation for the greatest betrayal of our nation's core founding principle: limited federal government exercising only constitutionally enumerated powers. It was on their watch that the foundation was laid for today's massive federal spending that tops 25 percent of GDP. A good part of that generation is still alive. Before they depart, they might do their share to help us have a federal government exercising only constitutionally enumerated powers." --economist Walter E. Williams6
Faith & Family
"It was never an easy relationship. For a while, though, the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] and the Obama administration managed to live together. Then the administration walked out, leaving DOMA to fend for herself. There's no point asking why. We know why -- the president's core supporters refuse to recognize what centuries of tradition and common sense tell us, and what voters and lawmakers confirmed in 1996 -- that marriage is between one man and one woman. The question is, what's next for this act scorned? ... Its validity and constitutionality are beyond question. Yet the administration, by walking away from DOMA, is rejecting this. In effect, it's saying, 'Congress, you think the laws you pass on behalf of your constituents deserve a defense in court? Not unless we agree with them. Voters, you think marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman? You're bigoted and irrational.' ... DOMA deserves better than the half-hearted defense it has been getting so far." --Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner7
The Gipper
"Let's ensure that the federal government never again legislates against the family and the home. ... But let us make certain that the family is always at the center of the public policy process, not just in this administration but in future -- all future administrations." --Ronald Reagan8
Culture
"[Last] week, a sting video shows NPR Foundation President Ron Schiller (no relation) saying that tea party activists were 'seriously racist' and telling two purported Muslim program underwriters that there aren't enough 'non-Zionist' news organizations. Vivian Schiller and Ron Schiller both have been forced to resign. But, with a new, large Republican majority in the House of Representatives, NPR leaders could hardly have done a better job of persuading Congress to zero out public radio funding. ... Much if not all of NPR's programming already attracts thinly (and irritatingly) disguised advertising. I'm sure the NPR demographic is one many other advertisers would like to target. At the same time, the case for government support of public broadcasting is far weaker than it was in the 1960s and 1970s, when there was far less variety in broadcasting and more reason to doubt that public radio could come up with a commercially viable product." --columnist Michael Barone9 |
