Before disabusing readers of Drive-By Media-driven notions that moderate Democrats and extremist Republicans actually exist [portions of this column originally appeared as, generally, "Moderate Democrats and Extremist Republicans don't exist" at Modern Conservative, as well as Examiner.com and Many Faces of Barack.] in the modern world, let this Gamecock’s announcement of his Modern Conservative dawn (debut) also crow of what modernized this former liberal Democrat into a proud Reaganite.

DeVine Law will conclude with suggestions of how social conservatives and libertarians must strongly ally themselves to prevent the de-modernization of these United States.

Pre-modern conservatives lost elections

From the 1950s debut of William F. Buckley’s National Review magazine and Whittaker Chambers‘ publication of his “Witness” autobiography; through the Barry Goldwater and Gerald Ford defeats in the 60s and 70s, the only Republican bright spots were Richard Nixon’s electoral victories, which were basically devoid of any conservative policy triumphs.

The most conservative events before the 1981 Dawn of the Modern Conservative Era, were President John F. Kennedy’s recovery-inducing supply-side income tax rate cuts and blockade of Russian missile-laden Cuba.

Fortunately, America was able to survive and prosper in the pre-modern era due to many shared conservative values among the members of both, then moderate, parties. That circumstance basically ended when Lee Harvey Oswald’s magic bullets found their mark in 1963.

The left took over the world’s oldest political party while the still-moderate Grand Old Party eventually secured tennis court passes from Speaker Tip O’Neil, but were unable to prevent the betrayal of the Hmong, South Vietnamese and the kicking of the black man out the house so Uncle Sam could be daddy.

Then came Reagan, Newt and Rush

Modern conservatism has incorporated all, and I mean all, that was good about classic liberalism, whether it be President Ronald Reagan’s acceptance of the “safety net for the truly needy”; Martin Luther King’s content of character mantle; or the liberty to retain most of the fruits of one’s labor so as to maximize happiness pursuits.

Unapologetic and unabashed conservatism wins every time it’s tried. I know, for, as a county chairman, delegate, and activist in the Democratic Party during the 80s and 90s, I waved good-bye to national security, pro-life democrats wracked by the failed policies of the filibuster-proof Democratic Party majority James Earl Carter years, as they joined the Gipper and saved America and the World from inflation-caused economic disaster and the Red menace.

But it wouldn’t be until my 2001 move from trial lawyer to corporate work/column writing and from Spartanburg to Atlanta that my conservative epiphany would be made manifest.

After 5000 years, conservatives have reached some conclusions

Unshackled by the parochial concerns in my hometown, and educated for 12 years by Rush Limbaugh’s EIB network, this former JFK Democrat proclaimed himself a Modern Conservative before September 11, 2001. After all, I had:

• Always called the Soviet empire, evil;
• Experienced the fruits of supply-side throughout the Reagan recovery, including the Newt-induced continuation during the Clinton years; and was
• Repulsed by the Borking of Judges Robert and Clarence.

I eschewed the failed policies of Democrats from 1964-2000, including those of President Bill Clinton before the 1994 Rush/Gingrich revolution; was repelled by merely bombing Afghanistan night watchmen after the 1998 African embassy bombings while seducing near-minor interns; and favored George W. Bush’s tax cuts to McCain’s crooked-talk and Gore’s multiple personalities.

One of my favorite quotes of William F. Buckley from his Firing Line PBS talk show, was that one of the main differences between liberals and conservatives is that “after 5000 years of human history, conservatives have reached some conclusions.”

After 38 years, DeVine Law reached those same conclusions.

Then came the ObamaDem assault on all things exceptional about America

I, like Charles Krauthammer in the latest National Review cover story (dead-tree magazine only), don’t mind self-identifying as a “neo-con”, given my support for a robust and aggressive foreign policy that liberates Grenadas and makes Iraqs into Connecticuts after removing evil regimes that threaten American security. I see national security conservative as a synonymous label.

I usually self-identify as a social conservative, though, due to the ubiquity of false stereotypes in the media and even within the conservative movement, and because this country was founded upon Judeo-Christian values that are under assault, and have been since the 60s.

But in truth, conservatism is most aptly defined economically by a preference for as small a government as we can stand, for whenever we hand over responsibilities to the government, we necessarily give up a portion of our Liberty.

Conservatives and Americans of all stripes that still share a love of Liberty and a belief in American exceptionalism, now face an unprecedented threat to our liberty that requires that we all ally ourselves electorally behind a force that can not just arrest the advance of ObamaDem socialism (much as Reagan with Boll weevils and Newt with a triangulator), but that can REVERSE it.

For that one must coalesce in ONE PARTY in a filibuster-proof Senate, strong majority House of Representatives and the White House. It begins in Election 2010.

The loss of Liberty will not be reversed by a third party nor by a coalition of Republicans and Blue Dawg Democrats

You dreamers of a new third-party GOP rising from Whig ashes, wake up. Ain’t gonna happen.

Dreamers that Blue Dawgs in the Senate (There is only 1-8 real blue dawgs in the joke of a House, so we skip it.) will continue to protect us from high energy taxes via Cap and Trade and a Public Option, wake up.

For ObamaDems and Bernankes that are destroying the U.S. dollar with trillions in non-stimuli (that passed the blue dawg House and Senate btw) as we speak, don’t you know the lessons of Louisiana (Landriue) Purchase II, will not be lost on Nelsons, Bayhs and Lincolns. Start the bidding at $300M.

And abortions will be banned to give some dems cover. But don’t worry, you can count on one hand, the number of abortions that won’t happen because of that. Its a non-issue the dems will use to get socialism writ large as we all thank God that “only” 49,000,000 more abortions will be had in the next 26 years as since 1973’s Roe v. Wade, rather than the 49,000,004 that would be had if government paid for them. Not even enough lives saved to put 5 basketball players on the court, but I digress.

But what of Independent Democrat Senator Joe ‘don’t need no stinkin’ public option’ Lieberman? The ObamaDems will find nomenclature and devices to satisfy Joe. I hope he proves me wrong, and I certainly admire his career-long hawkish national security defense stances and his moral voice against Bill Clinton, but somehow I think a provision protecting the insurance industry (See stronger mandate threats of imprisonment if you don’t get the Colonial Life rider?) will be inserted that will re-write what “public” and “options” mean in Merriam-Webster.

Bottom line: We face permanent deconstruction of America if WE THE PEOPLE don’t reverse, and I mean REVERSE (not just stop further advances) the policies put in place by ObamaDems before the 2010 election.

The GOP is the ONLY vehicle to save America short of a Revolution

And given the action against the Navy Seals and the KSM trial, I think the ObamaDems are perfectly capable of instigating a revolution. In fact, one could argue that Obama already fired on Fort Sumter equivalents.

I said all the above, in part, to say this to my social conservative friends

In some cases, in order to win super, filibuster-proof majorities in Congress, we will have to support economic conservatives that are libertarian on social issues. Do the math.

But not to worry, most social policy is made at the state and local level or the courts, and as of now, we have a 5-4 majority on most social issues. Yes, on abortion, we need another vote, but let’s cross that bridge in 2012 by retaining the pro-life plank, pro-traditional marriage plank, federalism advocacy; and nominate only a pro-life presidential nominee.

But conservatives can re-take the GOP only with libertarian help, and an appeal to federalism is the ticket to satisfy both sides. I don’t think this media and Frum-Brooks supposed schism is actually very real, and don’t think social conservatives will have to compromise on this matter very often. But let us embrace the John Stossel’s of the world who share our abhorrence of the far left meddlers that would take away all of our liberty unless we reverse this slouching towards Gomorrah, NOW!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Dick Morris echoes Gamecock’s 2006 crowing of the Myth of Moderate Democrats

The man who saved Bill Clinton from the far left of the Democratic Party but who was unable to get him to carpet bomb Osama bin Laden’s lair, wrote this week of the myth of the moderate Democrat. Naturally, this author of the 2006, Drawl and that’s all: The Myth of the Moderate Southern Democrat in D.C., was intrigued by the echo.

Dick Morris wrote mostly of a more specialized version of the rot of the party Andrew Jackson made famous, with his description of the Pelosi cloakroom bargaining for the right of her “blue dawg” subjects to vote against socialized medicine, so long as the bill could be passed to the Senate.

My three year old column was compelled by my experiences of:

• The disconnect between the election years’ rhetoric of MSM and self-described “moderates” like House member John Spratt and Senator Ernest Hollings of my Palmetto State home;
• The voting records of nearly all (the very few exceptions, see Alabama’s Parker Griffith, prove the rule) Democrats as compared to nearly all Republicans, including their most liberal;
• The Democratic Party’s unpatriotic launch of the “Bush-lied Era” after 911; and
• The musings of the most famous moderate Democrat of the all.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

I do not deny that in many, if not most ways, Bill Clinton’s presidency was a success. I give much credit to Bubba’s Southern-learned pragmatism, but most of the credit must go to the Reagan slayings of inflation and the USSR, as well as his wealth-producing tax and regulation cuts.

This elephant’s ears haven’t forgotten the DNC, supposed moderate, Donkey-in-Chief’s broken middle class tax cut promise; Justices Breyer and Ginsburg; missile technology to China; and the pardoning of FALN terrorists during his last days.

Our Oscar Wilde side is also still repelled by the disconnect between the picture of what WJC did after Newt weilded the Speaker’s gavel, and what he has said walking the earth like a 21st century Dorian Gray, from his:

1. 2003 praise of Iran as the foreign nation’s government most akin to his values;
2. Conversion to the pagan religion of man-made global warming scare merchant-in-chief;
3. Recent admission from the signer of the Defense of Marriage Act under the Gingrich guillotine that he was “always for gay marriage”;
4. The womanizer-in-chief’s recent public utterance characterizing small-government tea party advocates as gay orgy “tea baggers”; and
5. The public airing of his cynical permanent campaign ideology (shared by President Obama and the late communist Saul Alinsky) admonishing congressional democrats to “pass anything” so they can claim political victory since, after all, they can amend it later.

And that is the best “moderate” the Democrats have?

Yes, it is.

My former party is vile and wrong. It is a vampire that needs a stake driven through its heart in the sunlight. The closest it gets to being killed is usually by the Carter and Obama-like suicides induced by the re-education of mostly non-political independents and duped useful idiot Democrats in the failings of liberal economic and domestic policies as well as the aggression-inviting weakness all Democrats exude to enemies abroad.

I refer to conservatives that vote for Democrats by Lenin’s “useful idiot” term because, given that the left has made Democratic Party its home base for 60+ years, and given their takeover since 1963 (and especially since 2001), any vote for a “D’, empowers the left from the time of their first vote for a Jack Ass speaker to their procedural votes to ram through non-stimuli.

Modern conservatives must disabuse themselves of the notion that there is not a dimes worth of difference between the parties.

My last calculation found a $1.4 trillion difference between ObamaDems’ first budget and George W. Bush’s worst. It is ObamaDems that want to hike energy taxes on the poor and middle class; usurp your right to choose health insurance; and retreat from defending our Liberty abroad.

The policies of the ObamaDems are extreme by any objective, substantive measure, against nearly any American government from George Washington through George W. Bush.

And if our only hope to keep the City Shining on the Hill are so-called Blue Dawgs, then just go ahead and turn off the lights. I have every confidence that Bayh, Nelsons and Lincolns will let me down again. In fact, the only time I have ever had any expectations met by a Democrat of any kind since 1963 or by a Blue Dog, ever, it has been by this one:

Yet, it is Republicans that always get called “extremists”

Extremists have never held sway in the GOP. Ever. Oh DeVine, you may say, but what about Nixon’s “southern strategy” and those religious right “nuts.”

The Republican Party was born to oppose slavery; was prevented from granting civil rights to Blacks by the Democratic Party for decades after the Civil War; and voted in greater numbers than LBJ’s democrats for the 1964-5 civil and voting rights acts.

Nixon sought votes in the South? Who knew? Yes, former segregationist, mostly southern democrats bolted the Democratic Party in the 60s and 70s, but they never got the first quid pro quo in terms of legislation, judges or policies from the Party of Lincoln.

Most Americans disapprove of abortion as birth control and a majority self-describe as pro-life.

Modern conservatives will only enjoy a governing majority that can turn back ObamaDem socialism by allying themselves with social conservatives. We win with the Reagan-Rush message. We lose with the McCains and Rockefeller country clubbers whose wives and daughters forget to take the pill.

But then, are moderate Republicans of any use?

Yes, but only if they are followers and/or joiners on conservatives’ terms. If moderates lead the GOP, the nation is pulled to the left. The liberals already have a party. Its called the Democratic Party, and as we have seen, it is controlled by the real extremists of any substantial numbers, i.e. leftists.

Moderates, by definition, don’t stand for much of anything, and so are drawn into parochial and institutional concerns, rather than the national interests on substance.

Hence, the supposed “need” to pass something. The use of the anti-conservative mantra that to do “nothing” is unacceptable. The bringing home of the pork. The “need” to reach across the aisle and find a compromise solution. You know, the kind that solve no problem; actually makes the problem worse; but does allow for “maverick” re-election campaigns.

But, given that the northeastern United States continue to enjoy statehood status despite my “reverse-Secession” call for returning them to territorial status and requiring that they pass some Constitution Amendments to rejoin the Union, we must abide the presence of a certain number of moderates after they defeat conservatives in primaries.

We must win a majority in the House and a filibuster-proof super-majority in the Senate if we are to actually reverse the century-long trend to the left that has us slouching towards Gomorrah.

And then there are the “appropriators” that Redstate’s pilgrim describes as under the “moderate” label. I invite that persistent cuss to expound on that sub-category for our enlightenment.

[Portions of this column originally appeared in my debut column with Modern Conservative dot com.]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

[Part one of Mike DeVine's report on Fox Business Channel's, John Stossel's speech last week at Atlanta's Emory University Law School may be reviewed here.]

No more Emmys for you

John Stossel made a name for himself at ABC as the nation’s best consumer affairs reporter. Last Wednesday, before his “Bashing Business” lecture at Emory Law School’s Tull Auditorium, John Stossel was introduced as a six-time Emmy award winner.

After describing his metamorphosis from big government liberal to free market libertarian, Stossel advised the audience that he won no more Emmys when he started defending private business. He thinks that the fact that market competition actually protects consumers more than government is just too counter-intuitive for too many people in an affluent society that take wealth creation for granted.

DeVine Law agrees, but during a conversation with Atlanta’s guest, we both also agreed that possibly the best hope for a political education in the incompetence of Big Government is taking place as we speak, courtesy of the ObamaDems.

Americans don’t like meddlers

Your humble rooster greeted Stossel as a conservative fan, and even after he described his radical libertarianism (favors abortion on demand; same-sex marriage and drug legalization), we still welcome his philosophy with open arms as his consistency in opposition to government meddling in the affairs of adults, is quite impressive.

No, DeVine Law is still a pro-life defender of marriage who favors a go slow approach on surrendering in the Drug War, and would a oppose such libertarian GOP primary candidates who face strong conservatives that share Stossel’s pure conservative economic views.

But we can’t build a governing majority at the federal level without libertarians, and Stossel is as good an advocate for the free market in economics as one can find. Stossel recently on the Health Care Bill now before Congress:

The 1,990-page bill is breathtaking in its bone-headed audacity. The notion that a small group of politicians can know enough to design something so complex and so personal is astounding. That they were advised by “experts” means nothing since no one is expert enough to do that. There are too many trade-offs faced by unique individuals with infinitely varying needs.

Government cannot do simple things efficiently. The bureaucrats struggle to count votes correctly. They give subsidized loans to “homeowners” who turn out to be 4-year-olds. Yet congressmen want government to manage our medicine and insurance.

Competition is a “discovery procedure,” Nobel-prize-winning economist F. A. Hayek taught. Through the competitive market process, we producers and consumers constantly learn things that force us to adjust our behavior if we are to succeed. Central planners fail for two reasons:

First, knowledge about supply, demand, individual preferences and resource availability is scattered — much of it never articulated — throughout society. It is not concentrated in a database where a group of planners can access it.

Second, this “data” is dynamic: It changes without notice.

No matter how honorable the central planners’ intentions, they will fail because they cannot know the needs and wishes of 300 million different people. And if they somehow did know their needs, they wouldn’t know them tomorrow.

His opposition to “meddlers” reminds of what I consider the sine qua non discourse on same at Hillbilly Politics:

We all know at least one person who meddles in everybody else’s business… and we hate them. There are any number of reasons why we hate them but the most frequent answer to such a question as why is we are adults, not children, and can handle our own lives just fine without interference…

So what does that have to do with politics, you ask?

Simply, if we hate that kind of interference in our daily lives, why did a majority of Americans elect to office a bunch of meddling mothers and mothers-in-law?

* You can’t stimulate the economy by restricting it. If you’re lucky you merely maintain the status quo. If you’re unlucky, as is usually the case, the meddlers make things worse. Propping up failing businesses that didn’t tend to the business of business, aka customer service, only closes the window of opportunity for others to do it better. Entrepreneurship languishes in limbo in this case.

* You can’t replace existing energy with energy that hasn’t been developed yet and you can’t force it by restricting the use of existing energy resources…

You can read all of StephC’s essay here.

After that, check out John Stossel’s 2006 bestseller, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel - Why Everything You Know is Wrong (now in paperback).

Liberals prefer to pass new laws when existing laws are more than adequate

One of the most prescient points that Stossel made in Atlanta last week, that was also made by Bob Barr of the AJC, echoes something I discerned about liberals long ago, when in my trial lawyer heyday. Someone would commit a crime or someone would be hurt at work or by a product and the liberal (and, to be fair, not a small number of Republicans in legislatures) knee-jerk response would be to pass a new law to “solve the problem.”

No matter that the “problem” is us. Since Eve bit the apple or, to be more specific, since Cain slew Abel, man has killed, stolen, and been negligent. Moses gave us the Ten Commandments and England gave us the Common Law, and there hasn’t been much improvement on them over the past 3000 years.

But that doesn’t stop leftist Utopians from thinking they can meddle with Titanic deck chairs and make man perfect, and it surely doesn’t stop politicians from the goal of being seen as “doing something” in order to keep the cushy job that requires them to hold their hands out like beggars 24/7 365.

The (Bob) Barr Code:

At a recent Commerce Committee hearing, during which concerns were raised about the constitutionality of such legislation, and about the principle of “federalism,” Rockefeller proudly proclaimed his constitutional disinterest thus — “I don’t really give a hoot about states’ rights or federal rights on this one. I care about results.” The “results” include another nail in the coffin of constitutional governance in the United States.

Meddlers will never cease, so neither must we small government conservatives and libertarians. Let us reason together at the federal level and compete over social issues at the state level.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

DeVine Law thinks it’s about time

Gamecock had long called for Martin Luther King, Jr.-style (with all due respect also to Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi) non-violent, civil disobedience in oil drilling even before ObamaDems took over D.C. with economic policies that prevent We the People from bailing ourselves out of this Great Recession.

Now, religious and social conservatives see a potential Liberty-destroying menace from the American left with respect to many other issues, given the losses of free speech rights in Canada and Europe at the hands of ObamaDems’ ideological allies.

The bases for civil disobedience are the threat of the enactment of unjust laws and/or the existence of unjust laws; failure to repeal or prevent the enactment of same via normal political and legal processes; the willingness of movement members to accept the punishment for the breaking of duly and legally enacted laws; and the existence of a political culture that is receptive to moral persuasion.

Gandhi and MLK would have been mowed down by Nazis or Communists in Germany, Cuba or the Soviet Union. Their successes were predicated on the fact that the Judeo-Christian values of the British in India and the Americans in America could be used to shame them into changing their ways. Both did.

Now comes my fellow Southern Baptists, including Dr. Richard Land joining other prominent Christian clergy and others with the Manhattan Declaration (get full text here):

Drafted by Dr. Robert George, Dr. Timothy George and Chuck Colson and signed by more than 125 Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical Christian leaders, the Manhattan Declaration was made public today following a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington.

Excerpts from the declaration include:

“We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.”

“We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral.”

“We will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriage or the equivalent or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.”

One of the great dangers of much of the gay rights activists agenda, especially including hate crimes, civil unions and same-sex marriage laws are that they could invite activist court decisions (if the enacted laws by their express terms don’t impinge rights directly) that could impinge the rights of political religious free speech under the First Amendment with the threat of imprisonment.

Like most conservatives, I oppose hate crimes laws on the merits as they unnecessarily confuse the ordinary general criminal intent or mens re required for deprivations of liberty via due process, with an inquiry into motives and specific intent that are either wholly irrelevant or best left for consideration in the sentencing phase. Moreover, such laws inevitably devalue the seriousness of harm to and the lives of individual members of groups not protected by hate crime laws and threatens one’s very right to conscience, i.e. think certain thoughts.

People do have the right to hate, whether we like it or not, and unless one’s speech reaches the level of “fighting words” or “incitement to imminent violence”, traditionally very strict legal standards, then one should have the right to express such hate. Moreover, from what we have seen in Canada and Europe, the hate crimes laws punish expressions that merely object to certain activities that do not rise to the level of hatred of individuals or groups.

Hate the sin and not the sinner comes to mind.

The threat of the above is also present with the enactment of civil union laws that require a determination of one’s sexual “orientation”, as courts may deem such laws as placing the imprimatur of government approval of sexual activity outside of traditional marriage and thus threaten the right of parents to have their values inculcated and affirmed, or at least not directly contradicted, by local schools.

These kinds of problems are why the Founders favored maximizing happiness pursuits through the recognition of only individual rights, as opposed to factions or group rights that impinge on the rights of others and for the like-minded to congregate together geographically and exercise power over traditionally local affairs, at the local level, and not impose said values on all of the people.

DeVine Law will sign the Manhattan Declaration.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Strict Constructionism is civilization’s friend when applied to the U.S. Constitution and the Bible. Not so when applied to the Koran and other authoritative writings of Islam.

The latter fact is a major factor in the rise of Islamist terror, as the plain and obvious meaning of the actual words of Allah in the Koran lend credibility to those the extremists in the Muslim and Arab worlds and at the same time put peace-loving Muslims on the defensive. It appears that the only thing that reverses their respective roles in their homeland is when a liberty loving Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States is provoked to defend America, and post-regime change, empowers those that have “re-interpreted” Islam’s admonitions of “jihad”.

It appears that when American power kills enough of those that are actually faithful to the words of the book shared my all Muslims as Holy, the “reformationists” choose soccer and pizza over burka-garbed teen suicide pizza-parlor bombing as sport.

Three Blind Mice and/or See, Hear and Speak no Evil Monkeys?

Since 911 concentrated this Baptist mind, I have long contended that one can’t be a good Muslim and a good American, that is, if the actual words of the Book matter to you. For instance, consider these passages from a column that suggests that those who deny the clear import of the words are “Still Willfully Blind”:

At his blog today, Andrew Bostom, a scholar of jihadism, cites the following passage from “Reliance of the Traveler,” a widely distributed manual of Islamic law produced by al-Azhar University in Egypt, the most authoritative interpreters of theology and sharia jurisprudence in Sunni Islam, the dominant tradition among the world’s Muslims:

Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and, is etymologically derived from the word, mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion [of Islam]…The scriptural basis for jihad is such Koranic verses as “Fighting is prescribed for you” (Koran 2:216); “Slay them wherever you find them” (Koran 4:89); “Fight the idolators utterly” (Koran 9:36); and such hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] as the one related by (Sahih) Bukhari and (Sahih) Muslim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: “I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform the prayer, and pay zakat. If they say it, they have saved their blood and possessions from me, except for the rights of Islam over them. And the final reckoning is with Allah”; and the hadith by (Sahih) Muslim, “To go forth in the morning or evening to fight in the path of Allah is better than the whole world and everything in it.”

As Dr. Bostom points out, the first hadith referred to in the passage — the one in which Mohammed explains that Allah has commanded the Muslims to fight non-Muslims — was cited by Nidal Hasan in slide 43 of the June 7, 2007 presentation that Jonah discusses in his excellent column today.

How long will the Three Blind Mice of moderate Muslims, the political left (see liberals and Democrats) and our Commander in Chief keep their hands over their eyes and ears and refuse to speak of evil by its name? Must Hyde Park in Chicago of Honolulu be vaporized before the Apologizer-and-Inappropriate-Bower-before-Potentates-and-Emperors-in-Chief gets reality?

The ’see no evil’ face of Barack and the left

It is these same leftist mice and monkeys that spew a political correctness (see cowardly liars) of violent tendency equivalence between the Koran and the Bible; Christianity and Islam; and Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh. The blindness required for such dismissive scoffing would render Stevie Wonder 20/20, as once has to ignore the actual words of the respective holy books; travel back centuries to find Christian church leaders justifying anything approaching justification for murder; ignore the disconnect between what authorities within the respective churches say and don’t say about individuals’ self-justifications for murders vs the position of the respective churches (Christian church leaders and neatly ALL Christians denounce all murder and especially including forced conversion based murder or infidel extermination. Islams leaders are mostly mute); and the exponentially large disparity in the numbers of victims.

In fact, when the left cites those non-Muslim terrorists that they say prove equivalence with Islam, they really help prove my point as the exceptions prove the rule. All they have are the OKC bombing, a few (2-3 incidents since 1973) of abortion clinic bombings and 1-2 murders of abortionists, with victims numbering less than 200. All this despite the fact that a majority of Americans are pro-life. The non-violence of the pro-lifers is self defining.

What of the numbers of victims of Islam, in the name of Islam, with mostly cricket chirps in protests from Mosques? 3000 on 911. Thousands of others since since Sirhan Sirhan gunned down RFK in 1968. Billions spent by the peace-loving to defend against terror. Israel under constant siege and the threat of extermination by Iran’s Mullahs in search of the end of time.

The Books

But DeVine Law, why so much emphasis on the words of the Koran, and how about those village genocides in the Old Testament? After all, look at all those years before the latter half of the 20th century when the Arab and Muslim worlds were mostly benign?

I could mention that America was born partly due to the refusal of Americans to pay tribute to Barbary Pirates (see Islamist terrorists). I could mention that the oil to fuel terror was not discovered in the Muslim world until well into the 20th Century. I could bring up the Cold War between two superpowers that kept the Islamists at bay (but at too high a price given the exponential evils and slaughter of Communism).

I do thank God that most Muslims eschew the real Prophet Muhammad and the actual words of the Koran in favor of a “reformed” Islam that makes kill mean pray and holy war mean strive to do right. Thank God for blind mice, up to a point.

But words matter, both in Holy Books and Constitutions. Men are flawed. Men have, at times twisted the words of the Bible to justify heinous acts. Yes, the numbers of religiously justified heinous acts are dwarfed by the numbers killed by godless Kaiserism, Hitlerism, Fascism, Socialism and Communism, throughout history. But one murder is one too many, no matter the justification, and given the civilization-essentials provided by faith, and especially the Judeo-Christian version, it is quite dangerous for the truth to be transmogrified.

The fact is that the actual words of the Bible, Old and New Testaments, are not only the eternal, spiritual soul-saving truth for believers, they also form the basis for the principles that have made Western Civilization the tolerant and prosperous miracle of history that it is.

No admonitions to murder in the Bible

Nowhere in the Bible will you find admonitions from God or anyone else to prospectively kill. You will find some history of past admonitions at particular times and places in the OT. Moreover, nowhere in the Bible will you find any calls to convert or be killed.

The Koran can make no such claim. For this reason, Islam will always be a danger. Words matter.

So, we conservatives, who properly insist that contracts of all kinds, from home mortgages, up to including Constitutions, be interpreted by the plain meaning and intent of the actual words, must pray that Muslims choose the equivalent of “activist judges” to call black, white for us to have peace.

The better alternative, of course, would be for them to convert to a Book whose strict construction produces peace. Let us pray. But in the meantime, I would be willing that some of our liberal friends that have re-written the US Constitution to justify abortion and the Bible to justify Government loving my neighbor with my money, apply the same logic to the Koran and make jihad mean scoring Goal in the World Cup.

God bless.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

DeVine Law Gamecock was in his element at Emory Law School on Wednesday night as one of conservatives’ favorite reporters in the Drive-By Media spoke to a nearly full Tull Auditorium.

John Stossel, famous for consumer horror stories for years at ABC, spoke mostly about his transition from liberal to libertarian at the event, co-sponsored by The Federalist Society.

We will be filing a more extensive summary, this weekend, of Stossel’s “Bashing Business” lecture and our interchanges; his latest book (”Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: WHY EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG“); and how his brand of libertarianism is essential element in building a conservative majority to turn back big government usurpations of liberty.

Suffice to say for now that the newest host of a prime time show on Fox Business Channel showed a lot of moxie in taking on our irresponsible legal culture in the belly of the legal beast at Emory.

The main point of his talk were how his consumer reporting over the years led him to understand that the free market is a better protector of consumers than big government, even as regards the regulation of legal drugs, and that his defense of private business causes the Left to hate him despite his very libertarian and liberal views on social issues.

Stossel is nothing if not consistent, and we mentioned that his recent column calling out presumptuous meddlers in the House of Representatives echoes StephC’s “Meddlers” columns at Hillbilly Politics and here at Redstate.

More later…this weekend, here and on my Examiner blog below…

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Lanny Davis, former Clinton White House Counsel and, more importantly, a Friend of Bill since he became good friends with Hillary and the former President at Yale, refutes the Obama Administration “coup d’etat” narrative on Honduras and demands that the upcoming elections be honored. The former First Lady and current Secretary of State would do well to heed Lawyer Davis’ advice with respect to:

The Way Forward in Honduras

For months Honduras has faced a political crisis. In June, its president, Manuel Zelaya, attempted to subvert the country’s constitution and was removed from office. He has since pushed to return to power, called the current president—Robert Micheletti—illegitimate, and has cast a shadow over presidential elections to be held at the end of this month.

On Oct. 30, it appeared the crisis might come to a close when representatives of Mr. Zelaya signed an agreement with representatives of Mr. Micheletti to create a reconciliation government to oversee the country until the next president is seated (among other provisions). But in recent days, that agreement—known as the Tegucigalpa/San Jose Accord—fell apart.

It’s more accurate to say Mr. Zelaya moved to destroy the accord. It called for him to propose members of the reconciliation government by Nov. 5, and it also gave Honduras’s Congress the right to vote whether to reinstate him as president. But Mr. Zelaya refused to make his appointments, even while Mr. Micheletti proposed his appointments on time. On Friday, Mr. Zelaya declared the accord null and void before Congress could vote on whether to restore him to power. Interestingly, he had insisted on adding the congressional vote to the agreement, so his decision to blow up the process before the vote is an indication that even he realizes he would lose a vote in a Congress controlled by his liberal party.

If there is to be a resolution to this crisis, it will likely only come if the Obama administration (which helped both sides hammer out the accord), leaders in the U.S. Congress, and the Organization of American States (OAS) make sure that Mr. Zelaya does not get away with breaking his word.

Democrat Davis is generous to the Obama Administration in refraining form stating obvious criticisms that are the import of his argument, that is, that:

The bottom line is that a deal is a deal. The U.S. government needs to insist on the implementation of the accord and endorse the results of the Nov. 29 presidential elections as verified by international monitors. Once that happens, Mr. Zelaya will be irrelevant, a footnote as a president who thought he was above the constitution.

And then, on Jan. 27, a new president will be sworn into office in Honduras. That will restore to normalcy the proud little constitutional republic that has always been a loyal and reliable friend of the United States.

Mr. Davis, an attorney at the Washington D.C. office of McDermott, Will & Emery, is a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and represents the Honduran Latin American Business Council.

Lanny’s understated criticism is an even greater indictment of Obama as an enemy of the Rule of Law and Liberty. He echoes our previous admonitions with regard to the fact that there was no coup d’etat in Honduras.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ The Minority Report’s Live Wire

Don’t hold your breath tonight waiting to hear a tough question to Obama from Fox News Channel’s Major Garrett

The main theme of this latest installment of “Foghorn Leghorns“, or getting our legs around Drive-by Media fog“, is the overall lack of journalistic curiosity, especially as pertains to running interference for President Barack Obama and his fellow democrats.

But, upon hearing of a planned partial lifting of the Obama Adminstration’s thuggish boycott of questions from Fox News tonight during a press conference in China, I deemed in necessary to also lower the foggy expectations of FNC fans that Obama will finally get asked a tough question and to review the actual “leghorn” performance of the only non-in-the-tank-for-liberals network as judged on the merits and as against their famous “fair and balanced” motto.

AJC’s best, birth certificates, Lou Dobbs and the credibility of the President of the United States

The “inspiration” for this column originated with a column by Jim Galloway, one of the best political reporters in Georgia. The “Political Insider” for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution “covered” the recent signing of a letter to President Obama requesting that he release a copy of his actual birth certificate, by Congressional Republicans, especially including Nathan Deal, who represents Gainesville, Ga., and has announced his candidacy for the 2010 Governor’s race in the Peach State.

Deal, like me, believes that Obama is a U.S. citizen. I have written DeVine Law analyses of the Constitution’s ”natural born” requirement for the Presidency, that convince me that so long as one parent (Obama’s mother) is a U.S. citizen at the time of one’s birth, then one is natural born, even if the place of birth is outside the United States.

Unlike Deal, I would not have raised the issue of the continued secrecy of Obama’s original birth certificate, but the drive-by media get no such pass, especially when Galloway’s story misleads his readers by diverting attention to assurances from “Republican” state officials that Obama was born in Hawaii and the release of a “certificate of birth” attesting to same.

Galloway fails to mention that the “certificate of birth” is state prepared document “based on” the actual original birth certificate. Shoddy journalism at best. Intentional subterfuge at worst. Not to mention the complete lack of curiosity as to why Obama would not release an actual copy of the original?

Is his father listed? If not, why not? And could it be that a non-Kenyan father is listed?

Galloway, the AJC and most of the drive-bys care about as much about that as they did his pre-election: associations with Rev. Wright of his G-D America church and terrorist political ally Bill Ayers (also the ghost-writer of the Marxist Dreams of his Father book); numerous statements deriding the Constitution, its framers and the Founders; and his numerous statements seeking high energy prices and bankrupting the coal industry.

Coincidentally this week, Lou Dobbs, the only member of the MSM interested in the juxtaposition of Obama’s honesty and the refusal to release his birth certificate, was released from his news reporting duties with CNN. Yes, I said news reporting. It is not an “opinion” to ask that the man with his finger on the nukes come clean for the anal exam regularly given Alaska Governors.

The abdication of responsible press coverage of those that would be the Chief Executive of our national government and Commander in Chief of the armed forces that defend us, is a clear and present danger to the continuing exceptionalism of these United States.

Think the issue of Obama’s trustworthiness and associations may have been relevant now AJC, after enduring the rushed stimulus passage lies? The attempted rush to cram socialized medicine and high energy taxes via cap and trade down our throats, especially after discovering Obama’s lies prior to the rush as regards the ability to keep current coverage and the 10-year and running cooling of the Earth?

The man-child bows before potentates and emperors that surely must be aghast that the freedom of the world is in a man’s hands that would bow so low before them that he gets shoe polish on his forehead. Were the liberal eyes so glazed over that they couldn’t see the stupidity of a fellow Ivy Leaguer that pats Queen Elizabeth on the back, refuses to give the French First Lady a peck on the cheek, and otherwise botches every state event he participates in.

At least he’s not a cowboy….

Chris Wallace & Bill Clinton and Major Garrett/Bill O’Reilly & Obama ‘08

Enter Fox News, fair and balanced. Guess they never heard the saying that the “Fair” only comes in October. Instead, Fox seems to accept the definition of “fair” as meaning accepting all arguments of the New York Times and the Democratic Party as legitimate and worthy of equal time.

Balance? I’m still looking for that too. Remember all the anticipation of the Chris Wallace interview of Bill Clinton? Yes, Chris got under Bill’s skin with a vague 911 question, that the walking Picture of Dorian Gray used to jab knees and make a scene. The question wasn’t tough.

Bill is “smart” to know that since he waited so long for an interview with a supposed non-sycophant, that the questions would mainly be vacuous “what do you think of” current events questions, rather than questions about pre-911 IRS records of political opponents; missile technology to China or his 2003 praise of Iran’s “democratic” political system. Luckily, the former president recently volunteered some “admissions” that we will cover in a story tomorrow, but I digress.

Remember the anticipation of Obama’s debut on The Factor? I do. It was dud as bad as when Jesse Jackson finally came in after years of being called a shake down artist by cable news’ ratings leader. You see, if you come on O’Reilly’s show, you have proven you are a “stand-up” guy and get treated with kid gloves.

Same was true for Major Garrett’s assignment to cover Obama’s “historic campaign”. The only people on FNC that covered the NEWS that really mattered before the Dem Party foisted Little Lord Obamalroy on America were Sean Hannity and pre-interview O’Reilly. Major asked horse-race questions that bored me to sleep.

Tonight, expect the same as Obama pulls a Clinton with a ten-minute pre-Christmas gift spot for Fox, in a setting that will compel the small minds of fair and balanced to ask some stale question about China and the dollar.

You see, it would be “unfair and unbalanced” to remind Obama of his policy dump the Saturday night after Joe Wilson called him a liar about citizenship verification requirements for health care, when Obama issued a statement demanding that the very verifications he lied and said were already in the bill, be put in. 

Just wouldn’t be cool, especially of you want another 10 minutes with the Messiah before the next Summer Olympics if you were to ask him about the COBRA-hole in the safety net; pitchfork threats against bank CEOs; or golfing while Americas die in Afghanistan waiting for him to appease Move On.org.

God help them if they ask him what Rev. Wright thought about Gates-gate; New Black panther thugs getting charges dropped; his lawyer-client years with ACORN or the name listed as “father” on his original birth certificate.

MSM runs interference for liberals and Democrats

Another curious story a recent issue of the dead-tree MSM in Atlanta declared:

Georgia Dems who voted against health bill fear costs — and potentially, constituents

Really? It seemed to me that the one’s in real fear of their constituents are the four democrats the AJC failed to list that voted for ObamaCare.

The examples of foghorn leghorns are an endless cornucopia, but this rooster must rest before tomorrow’s dawn-announcing duties on the dual myths of the existence of moderate Democrats and extremist Republicans.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

False claims of race-baiting have no place in civilized society

Nor on the front page of Race42012

It is with great sadness that I am compelled to write this column defending Erick Erickson of Redstate.com against false charges of “pulling the race card”; “race-baiting”; and of being a “race pimp.”

Those are fighting words where I come from, and so, after following the Biblical step-by-step approach to resolve this matter; firstly, directly with the perpetrator of the offense, Kristofer Lorelli; and secondly, by an appeal to R412’s Powers that Be; and then delaying the matter further after receiving a communication from the perpetrator that indicated direct communications would be forthcoming more than 48 hours ago, which direct communications were not forthcoming, despite the provision of my cell phone, I can no longer have the defamations continue to go unchallenged.

I felt it my duty, as one of the four original contributing front page writers at Race42008.com to issue a rebuttal. I don’t issue apologies for things I don’t do. The apology is owed by Lorelli.

The series of events started when R412’s Matthew Miller re-published a video from a website created by Rich Heffley, a close confidant of Florida’s moderate Republican Governor, Charlie Crist and produced in the offices of the Republican Party of Florida. Miller’s blog smartly explains the obvious racial attack implications against Marco Rubio, Crist’s opponent in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate.

Erick Erickson merely re-re-published the video from RACE42012.com, along with some obviously sarcastic comments akin to those used by our own Matthew Miller, to highlight the obvious race-baiting against the conservative Rubio, in order to further expose Heffley and the Crist campaign for playing the race card.

The GOP has been regularly and falsely accused of racism and playing the race card for over 40 years, when it is the Democrats whose whole program is based on racial politics.

Racism is evil. Appealing to racism is evil.

Matthew Miller and Erick Erickson do humanity, Americans in general, and conservative Republicans in particular, a great service in calling out those, especially within the GOP (We must police our own, especially when the Dems and Drive-by media consider us to be racists merely by being conservatives and Republicans.) who appeal to racism or who allow ambiguity to reign with such appeals so as to garner some benefit electorally.

All Crist has to do is utterly denounce the subject video attacking Rubio and his pal Heffley; and disassociate himself from the latter.

Crist has not done so.

I am confident in this because surely our good colleague here at R412, Lorelli, would have mentioned such significant events advancing the story in his blog attacking our Redstate conservative colleague? Wouldn’t he? Or, if such revelations had occurred after I raised the issue in private communications, surely they would have been made known to me by now so as to prevent this poor DeVine substitute for what should have been a direct apology from Lorelli to Erickson, or from the Powers that Be, if Lorelli remained obstinate?

Falsely charging someone with racism and/or race-baiting is evil. The use of the term “race-pimp” is vile when improperly applied. Lorelli did a vile and evil thing here. I found this quite shocking coming from a person whose work I had so often admired.

But words matter. It is best to remain silent than engage in such reckless defamations.

It is especially telling that there is no attempt in Lorelli’s piece to explain away the substance of the video. Rather, we are told the race and religion of the women to whom Crist and his associate are married. It is a regular tactic of the left to claim immunity from racism due to such irrelevant information.

And just as neither Crist’s nor anyone else’s familial racial and religious affiliations give him or them license to engage in vile behavior, neither does a good reputation excuse Lorelli’s behavior.

I do not know if Lorelli works for the Crist campaign (or is merely a rabid supporter), but, given his prior work at R412, can think of no other reasons that would cause him to risk his own reputation with such a lame defense of Crist and such a vile and unwarranted attack on a prominent conservative on a sister conservative website.

Erick, you were owed an apology from Lorelli. I failed to secure it. In fact, I failed, despite numerous attempts, to even get him to engage on the subject.

But I cannot let false charges of racism go unrebutted, whether they be against you or Rush Limbaugh. And especially since you have run such a tight ship at Redstate disallowing the mere appearance of racism, twice at my request insisting on the editing out of questionable material on the subject. For that sir, and many other reasons, you are one of my heroes in the conservative movement and as a Southern Christian gentleman.

God bless you in your work.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

This will also be published @ Redstate.com.

The institution of marriage vs. housing/employment discrimination and hate crime legislation

From the category of headlines the Drive-by media has conditioned us to deem unfathomable comes this from the AP:

Mormons back gay rights in Salt Lake City

It looked like a stunning reversal: the same church that helped defeat gay marriage in California standing with gay-rights activists on an anti-discrimination law in its own backyard.

On Tuesday night, after a series of clandestine meetings between local gay-rights backers and Mormons in Salt Lake City, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced it would support proposed city laws that would prohibit discrimination against gays in housing and employment.

The ordinances passed and history was made: It marked the first time the Salt Lake City-based church had supported gay-rights legislation.

The Mormon church — which continues to suffer a backlash over its support last year of Proposition 8, the measure banning gay marriage in California — emphasized that its latest position in no way contradicts its teachings on homosexuality…

It is not a reversal, even if it is a bit stunning.

There is absolutely no contradiction between protecting individuals from housing and employment discrimination as opposed to maintaining the 5000 year old definition of the, civilization creating and preserving, institution of marriage. [Although, I do think that Maine's recent referenda that vetoed an act of the legislature legalizing same-sex marriage did violate small "r" republican principles.]

I and most conservatives (especially including social conservatives) do not favor any government imprimatur of approval for any sexual behavior outside traditional marriage. Moreover, conservatives generally favor that rights protected by the constitution be of the individual variety, rather than group rights, especially those of a “mutable” variety such as what one Delores one’s particular “orientations” to be, as opposed to the immutable characteristics of race and gender/sex.

But, we do favor prohibitions of discrimination based on religion/free speech, so in that sense people of faith could justify the Salt Lake City ordinance as prohibiting mind control. One can believe anything one wishes and still expect to be able to rent property and get a job one is otherwise qualified for. Of course, if the particular beliefs and/or speech rise to the level of advocacy that interferes with the workplace environment and/or property owners’ maintenance of a habitable environment for families, then one could distinguish.

We particularly like to avoid such group distinctions when one would seek to mete out civil penalties and criminal punishments for free speech against certain behaviors or seek to diminish the value of the lives of certain groups by making it a more serious crime to harm people in other groups, especially when accompanied by a requirement to determine an “intent to hate”.

The criminal law has functioned quite nicely for 500+ years as passed down from the Common Law of England with the only intent being that of the men rea, criminal intent to harm, no matter the particular reason.

DeVine Law (pictured) is not sure he favors the particular discrimination law passed in Salt Lake City. We are sure that Mormons are not contradictory in opposing same-sex marriage and that their is nothing “intolerant” about such opposition. We find the most intolerance on the left, many of whom seek to make it a crime, via hate crime laws, discrimination and marriage laws, to make it a crime to advocate the traditional values of chastity, etc found in the Bible.

We also think discrimination laws are better tailored to behaviors and not orientations, and so would not deem it “intolerant” to oppose the Salt Lake City law. But we haven’t made our judgment yet on whether we favor it.

Still thinking and more later…

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

In the wake of the Fort Hood Massacre and the “11th hour” state of the American economy and Liberty at home and abroad generally, one column honoring veterans on the occasion of the November 11th national holiday was not enough.

In our three previous columns concerning the treasonous murders (now at 14 counting the unborn child of one of the victims) perpetrated by Major Malik Ali Hasan, we primarily addressed the deadly political correctness (cowardly lying) that causes Democrats in Congress to fear asking Census form completers if they are U.S. citizens and allows known, overt, enemies of the USA to serve in its armed forces.

We suggested that November 11, 2009 mark the day We the People declare war against the PC-Police. Since yesterday, we also have considered other matters related to honoring vets, especially including:

• The contrast between the Obama Administration’s dismissal of suspicions against Hasan last spring with then Attorney General John Ashcroft’s post-911 round-up of Muslim/Arab country visa-overstays
• Obama’s treatment of the military as dependent children victims rather than congratulating their great Victory in Iraq
• Obama’s (and Hillary’s) refusal to honor the veterans that won the Cold War and made the de-construction of the Berlin Wall possible twenty years ago last Monday, including the absence of any utterance acknowledging the role of President Ronald Reagan
• The refusal of the ObamaDems to do anything for the general welfare of returning vets other than stimulate government growthulus to remove quality health care alternatives to the sorry state of VA hospitals.

President George W. Bush: “John, don’t let this happen again.”

Attorney General Ashcroft heeded his Commander-in-Chief’s words and America’s homeland was kept safe for over eight years. The Bush Administration suffered the slings and arrows of many democrats and the Drive-by media for “profiling” more than 900 illegal aliens that had overstayed their visas.

The same liberals and media that accuse conservatives of wanting to round-up the one-tenth of the population of Mexico that lives in the Lower Forty-Eight during the immigration reform debate years after 911, apparently preferred a round-up of tens of millions rather than any discriminating judgment of likely threats in the hundreds, the day after 911.

I have no doubt that the homeland security measures; enhanced interrogations of captured terrorists; removal of the Taliban and al Qaida’s safe haven nation-state in Afghanistan; and taking the fight to the enemy generally, and terrorist state supporter/war ceasefire abrogator in Iraq, all were critical elements in keeping us safe under Bush.

But I doubt that any act is more responsible for planned preventing follow-up attacks soon after 911 than Bush/Ashcroft’s defiance of the PC-police in getting the 900 off the Fruited Plain forthwith.

Victory in Iraq/Iraq as Connecticut

Iraq is poised to have elections again…..ho hum? Yes, isn’t it wonderful that this isn’t news! Neither are city council elections in Bridgeport.

We have won a great victory for democratic republicanism in the Middle East. The sectarian parties decrease, while the secular parties increase. President Bush’s vision of an alternative to Islamist extremism and/or totalitarian despotism has been made real by the armed forces of the United States and the lovers of freedom in the lands of Babylon.

Yet, our President speaks only of ending a war, not victory. He used to speak of “taking care of the troops” as if their reason for existence is to take care of us. He wants to bring them home to take care of them? Yet, when they get home, his FBI investigates a jihadist threat in their midst and lets the threat remain. He not only doesn’t take care of them, as promised. He is a danger to them, even in forts in the Lone Star State.

We must honor our vets and commons sense by killing the PC-police under all 50 stars and even the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

Merkel’s back-handed compliment to Gorby/Reagan’s War

President Obama was the only Western leader that refused German leader Angela Merkel’s invitation to attend the 20th anniversary celebration of the bringing down of the Berlin Wall. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added insult to injury by failing to mention Ronald Reagan’s role in the events that led to removal of that communist stain on the landscape of Europe.

I was pleasantly surprised with Merkel’s “thanks” to the former Soviet jail-keeper of millions, Mikhail Gorbachev, though, when she said:

“You made this possible — you courageously let things happen, and that was much more than we could expect.”

Sounds like a slap in the face to me, when you would expect a leader to “not let” (see KILL instead) people bring down a wall imprisoning millions of innocent people. She thanks Gorby for not slaughtering innocent people. Heck, where’s Hasan’s congratulations for such courage? He was peaceful that day as well, but like Gorby (whose hands were already bloodied in Afghanistan, Hasan would get red stains later, but I digress.

The real courageous people responsible for the bringing down (I do not say the mere “fall” of the wall, as that word fits into the fake history of the left that it was “inevitable” that the wall would come down of its own weight) the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain across all of Europe were the veterans of the armed forces of the United States that liberated Western Europe in WWII (under FDR) and later South Korea; fought in Vietnam; and other wise put their lives on the line under the direction of containment policy Presidents Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford and even Carter (more later) and under the direction of the only leader on Earth that sought to defeat the USSR (and did), Ronald Reagan.

The truth would set even Obama free, if he would only acknowledge it, and begin the healing of this land, and I would suggest he start with Peter Schweitzer’s “Reagan’s War”. That book recounts Reagan’s lifelong war against communism’s slavery of half the globe beginning with his heroic placement of his life on the line in 1940s-50s Hollywood against an attempted takeover of the unions by communists.

There were commie union organizer bullets with Reagan’s name on it. He broke the picket line anyway; much as he defied violent hippies at Berkeley in the 1960s; weathered Hinckley’s shots in the early 1980s and the violent nuclear freeze proponents and intermediate range missiles in Europe in the mid-80s.

Schweitzer documents Reagan’s “we win, you lose” plan formulated in the 1950’s and its precise implementation over the objections of nearly everyone in the 1980s; Lech Walesa and Polish Square re-namings in the 1990s along with various East German congratulations for bringing the wall down.

The book cites Kremlin diaries and tapes that credit Reagan’s military build-up; public calling out of the Soviet Empire as evil; and especially his refusal to drop Star Wars at Reykjavik as being responsible for the end of the USSR.

Contrary to leftist Democratic Party fiction, the fall of communism was not inevitable. The USSR was stronger in 1981 when Reagan took office than at any time in their history, save for before and immediately after WWII. The cuts in defense under LBJ, Nixon and Carter left Gorby with superiority in land-based missiles and troops on the move on three continents.

Reagan turned all that back by rejecting the mere containment/military equivalence policies he always saw as immorally sentencing two billion people to perpetual slavery for a policy of military superiority; confrontation and economic competition. He devised the plan in the 50s, implemented it in the 80s and saw it come to fruition in the 90s.

Obama could honor the vets that achieved the above and include his liberal hero Jimmy Carter, whose greatest act as President was to arm the Afghan resistance that led to the only Russian military defeat in history. I do find Schweitzer’s conclusion that Carter’s motivation was more personal than strategic, having kissed Brezhnev and trusted him, much as he had Iran’s Ayatollah. It is this personal way that too many democrats look at the world that makes them so feckless, weak and dangerous in foreign affairs. Not holding breath on this one, but maybe the economic facts of life could change the other major trait, which is that:

Dems don’t double dip care about jobs

Months ago President Obama floated a trial balloon that would have increased medical costs for veterans, while paying the bills for illegals. The balloon busted before even Fox News could bang the drum to try and get the see and hear no evil drive-by media monkeys and dems and indies still in denial to see the product of Rev Wright and Bill Ayers.

I think most Americans see Obama more for what he is now after Gates-gate and his Fort Hood 911. They were already starting to see the ObamaDems for what they are with the rush to pass a stimulus that only saved and created government jobs We the People have to fund thru taxes or inflation.

Does Obama care if former and retiring vets have jobs? What about their children and grandchildren? What about the 20% of We the People that are under- or unemployed? No signs yet, as documented by The Detroit News:

Americans are angry with Washington as much for what it isn’t doing as what it is. What it isn’t doing the most is paying attention to the still-raging economic disaster.

Last week’s job numbers show unemployment nationally bumping past 10 percent and surpassing 15 percent in Michigan. Unemployment keeps climbing, even though President Barack Obama and Congress nine months ago committed $787 billion to creating jobs.

Since then, neither the White House nor Congress has spent a minute honestly analyzing whether the stimulus program is accomplishing its goal, and if not, what other approaches might work. Instead, the administration is spinning dismal economic reports into positive news, allowing both it and Congress to ignore the economy while they pursue their ideological ends.

But while the economy tops every list of public concerns, job creation is not the hot topic in Washington. In fact, Democratic leaders, obsessed with reworking America, have proved more than willing to sacrifice precious jobs during the worst economic climate in a half-century.

It ought to infuriate anyone who’s lost a job, can’t find a job, is worried about his job or lives in a community ravaged by a lack of jobs that Congress devotes nearly all of its energy to arguing about health care. The promise of health care reform was not what got Democrats elected. Voters tossed Republicans on their fannies for ruining the economy, not because they didn’t enact wildly expensive social programs.

Read it all via link above…

Americans are angry and scared of the faltering economy that seems destined for a double dip and a President that assumes all whites are racist and no Muslims are terrorists, despite obvious evidence to the contrary over the past 40 years, and specifically over the past 4 months and 4 days.

We know what creates job. We saw Coolidge, JFK, Reagan, Clinton-Gingrich and Bush43 do it. Cut taxes and regulations and let Americans bail themselves out.

If Obama doesn’t start honoring veterans, as well as America generally, he will receive a dishonorable discharge after only 4 years.

Wouldn’t it be nice if on Thanksgiving Day would could thank God Obama finally got his mind right? Yes, but not holding breath and still counting pennies for a turkey wing.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Today’s national holiday honoring America’s military vets began as a celebration of the Armistice-signing end of The Great War on the “the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” in 1918. Less than two years earlier, President Woodrow Wilson sent America’s finest “over there” to save Western Civilization from freedom’s enemies.

But when even our armed forces are so paralyzed by a leftist-inspired “politically correct” American culture that they can’t remove an obvious threat to their own troops, own their own base, and in Texas for God’s sake, I wonder if Liberty itself is in its 11th hour.

We now know that those with the power to remove Major Nidal Hasan for access to our troops were aware of his seditious statements and behavior, including and not limited to: showing a Power Point call for jihad to other medical professionals in the Army; numerous expressions of opposition to America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and sympathy for the call for Muslims to unite against us; his collaboration with an an Imam that inspired three of the 911-hijackers; and numerous e-mail contacts with a known recruiter for al Qaida.

American security agencies investigated the killer of 13 and wounder of more than 50 at Fort Hood and did nothing. It appears that some of the investigations may have been conducted and concluded before the Empathizer-with-Islamists-in-Chief was inaugurated last January. We know that many of Hasan’s threatening actions took place as long ago as 2007, so this PC problem is endemic in the culture and so not necessarily correctable by the presence or absence of a war hawk in the White House.

How many pro-jihad sermons could Hasan have preached to shocked doctors and RNs before his commanding officers would discharge him from his duty to protect Americans from the Islamist terrorists to whom he adheres. Do we simply allow traitors to operate openly rather than risk being called a racist? How many must die for this idiocy.

The term political correctness was first coined by the founder of the evil empire, whose defeat we celebrated two days ago on the 20th anniversary of the Destruction (It didn’t merely “fall” of its own weight) of the Berlin Wall. Vladimir Lenin considered controlling the language to be a necessary predicate to enslaving the masses with Marxism. Lenin also considered lying to be a valid tactic to further the communist faith.

A better term for PC, as Dennis Prager stated on his radio show this week, is: lying cowards.

Lying cowards cry racism and bigotry when it does not exist.

Moreover, the lying cowards in the Drive-by media and on the left want to divert attention from the religious and treasonous aspect of the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 911 (more killed and wounded at the hands of Hasan than via Anthrax or the D.C sniper, who was executed yesterday in Virginia). They want to characterize the killing as “insane” or an “act of passion”, as if that excuses or diminishes the venality of the killings or has any relevance to the failures of our military and national security leaders to take actions to remove his threat from his fellow troops.

What matters is that otherwise intelligent people acted like fools, ignoring the obvious with glazed-over eyes looks and fearing the lying cowards that could call them a bigot more than they feared the likelihood that an obvious enemy of the nation they serve would one day levy war against them.

Which do they fear more today? How many innocent civilians and/or veterans in forts, trade centers or pentagons must die before enough Americans muster the courage to declare war on the PC lying cowards that turn our mental judgments to mush.

Or, has affluence and sloth produced a people too weak to wake up before we go the way of Rome?

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

The Constitution guarantees states a “republican” form of government. Republics make law via legislatures, not by judicial fiat or the mob rule of pure democracy.

Conservatives like me, applauded California’s referenda reversing its Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage creation.

We admonished same-sex marriage supporters to exercise their free speech rights in the arena of ideas. They did so in Maine, successfully lobbying the Pine Tree State into enacting a same-sex marriage law, only to be rebuffed by a public referenda law that strips the constitutional republican bark off Maine’s pine tree.

This conservative supports traditional marriage as the exclusive version, but I also love the rule of law and the finality necessary for it to be respected. Maine’s referenda as veto invites legislatures to abdicate their accountability and prevents legal finality, much like Roe v. Wade’s judicial fiat.

[This column originally appeared as part of a "Pro & Con" feature on page A11 of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday, November 8, 2009. If a link becomes available, it will provided here.]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Massive outpouring of adulation for Reagan at the time of his death and funeral shamed most Leftist Democrats and Drive-by media into sharing credit with Reagan for the fall of the Evil Empire. But with President Barack Obama barely noting the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, his fellow ideologues re-write history by lauding the Communist leader whose head Reagan placed on the ash heap of actual history.

When a communist Oswald snuffed out JFK, the anti-anti-communists in the Democratic Party completed their takeover of the party; snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam; nominated and elected a bemoaner of our “inordinate fear of communism”; appeased communists in Nicaragua; and, publicly and surreptitiously aided and abetted the Soviet-desired nuclear freeze and opposition to intermediate missiles in Europe.

Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II defeated Mikhail Gorbachev anyway. I do recall that Walter Mondale issued a tough statement and Mickael Dukakis rode in a tank along the way to feign toughness they didn’t believe in.

We saw a repeat of this typical aggression-inviting, weak on defense posture from the Democratic Party over the past decade after their 911-inspired support for the Iraq War didn’t result in a new Connecticut in the Middle East within 72 hours of the Shock and Awe. Democrats celebrated the prevention of homeland attacks after 911 by launching the “Bushlied Era” and feigned toughness on the Afghan theater and finding Osama bin Laden.

I knew the Democrats were faking it all along.

They never met an enemy since November 22, 1963 that they wouldn’t appease and never sought to claim credit for the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall before June 5, 2004, i.e. the day Ronald Wilson Reagan died.

I recall the obvious shock in the press that all their efforts to brand Reagan an affable dunce racist, the Reagan years an orgy of greed and the fall of communism as inevitable had failed when they saw the massive outpouring of love from the overwhelming majority of Americans for their fallen hero.

I’ll never forget that only after Reagan’s funeral did I hear Democrats laud Reagan for his efforts to defeat the Evil Empire and to claim shared credit.

And so, I am not shocked to see the latest Democratic Party President to dither while our troops languish in Afghanistan; refuse an invitation to celebrate the fall of an empire inspired by the same dreams of his own Marxist father; and hold out a standing invitation to meet, without pre-conditions, to a Holocaust-denying, Islamist terrorist evil empire in Iran.

Could it be that this same leftist mentality, enabled by the Democratic Party for so long, is responsible for allowing a subversive terrorist to remain a Major in the U.S. Army for years?

We think so.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Administration policies pit America against freedom fighters at home and abroad as President prefers spotlight shining on him, rather than Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill

Five moments define the Reagan Presidency for me, with the greatest of them (1) occurring on November 9, 1989, when freedom-loving East and West Berliners tore down (video of the fall) the symbol of Communist tyrannical oppression, some ten months after the Gipper’s Farewell address.

Yet, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, that Republican Ronald Reagan challenged Gorbachev to tear down (2), America’s Democrat Chief Executive refused an invitation from Germany’s unified leader to commemorate the moment that ended the mass imprisonment of half the globe by adherents of the socialist ideology of Karl Marx.

President Reagan famously dubbed the prison run by its warden, the Soviet Union warden, an “evil empire” in a 1983 speech to Evangelicals (3) in which he also demanded the Judicial wall of separation be torn down, between We the People and laws protecting innocent life in and out of the womb.

The fourth moment that best defines Reagan’s Morning in America years was the dark cloud of Ted Kennedy-led Democrats trashing Judge Robert Bork, the man Reagan chose to tear down that judicial wall behind which five lawyers still stand behind too often to usurp our right to self government with Politburo-like impositions from “experts” that know best. The Democrats showed how vile they are in that episode. The contrast with Reagan is stark and informative.

Our 40th President also rejected the Marxian, liberal economic view of history by citing Whittaker Chamber’s in the Forward Letter to his Children in “Witness”:

It is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Ye shall be as gods.” It is the great alternative faith of mankind.

Reagan believed that the first step on the F.A. Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” is putting one’s faith in Man’s expertise rather than accepting God’s wisdom.

But quite possibly, the moment that best defines Reagan’s Liberty-loving message, was his first (5):

” In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”

The crisis present in 1981 at the time of President Reagan’s First Inaugural Address was the, then, worst American economic crisis since the Great Depression. This week we learned that unemployment in the current Great Recession topped 10% for the first time since the Carter Recession that Reagan inherited.

Barack Obama and most of the elected officials and other leaders of the Democratic Party, i.e. ObamaDems, are old enough to remember that the 80s recession ended, followed by a 25-year recovery the likes of which the world had never seen; when Reagan killed inflation and bolstered the dollar with a steady money supply and tore down the tax and government regulatory walls that were preventing the liberty-driven creations of wealth and other happiness pursuits. They know that a Newt “GOP revolution” Gingrich-inspired President Bill Clinton declared the “Era of Big Government” over with capital gains tax cuts, free trade and welfare reform to keep the Reagan Recovery going.

Dems don’t care

Yet, ObamaDems, seemingly an unnatural species of humans not particularly enamored of prosperity (see Dems don’t Care), are about the business of destroying the dollar with deficit spending triple the worst in our history and Federal reserve out of control; and, incredibly, re-building the same high tax and massive regulation walls that led to the present crisis, as well as the one Reagan inherited 29 years ago. (And if you try and scale that wall, Obama sends out the pitchforks!)

As my Boortzian Stone Mountain Conservative non-political observer, best described ObamaDems in July: They want us to surrender!

What led to this housing bubble/credit crunch caused recession if not Democratic Party implemented (and protected by Senate filibusters in the Bush years) market regulations requiring banks to accept mortgages from families that couldn’t afford them, and then guaranteeing them with tax payer funds?

But it appears that Obama and his “never let a crisis go waste” Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acolytes prefer crises that allow them to present government as the “solution”. Because their solution is not economic prosperity for all. rather, it is economic dependency on them, for all. After all, they are the experts.

ObamaDems refuse to let We the People bail ourselves out!

So, it shouldn’t be surprising that Barack Hussein Obama alienates Iran’s freedom-fighters trapped inside the Mullah’s walls of religious oppression; or Jews having to wall themselves away from Islamists and the Palestinian death cult, featuring adolescent suicide bombers of proud parents. It shouldn’t be surprising that Obama wants judges that have “empathy” rather than respect for Constitutions.

ObamaDems crave power and craven power requires walls to repel the non-acquiescence of Liberty.

The brick and mortar for the building of the Berlin Wall and Iron Curtains are bread-driven crises. Just ask Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Then read the Dreams of Obama’s father.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Has political correctness turned U.S. military bases into free speech, gun-free zones?

Before we address why an apparent anti-American subversive who frequently spoke in support of Muslim solidarity in jihad against the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq and, yet, was allowed to remain an officer in the U.S. military, DeVine Law Layman has a question for those with experience on military bases and any JAG officers within hearing of this rooster and Michael Ledeen’s voice:

Gun Control on Military Bases (?)
Lots of folks have wondered why there weren’t more soldiers with guns at Ft. Hood, and I’m one of them. Our younger Marine is home for the weekend from The Basic School at Quantico, and Barbara and I asked him if there were Marines with guns on the base. There are. Lots of them. And they move around all the time, checking places where Marines congregate, from classrooms to outdoor obstacle courses and parade fields and barracks. Apparently it occurred to the base commander some time ago that it was a bad idea to leave his men and women unprotected. (emphasis added?

Why would it take four long minutes to take down a mass murderer surrounded by hundreds of military officers on a U.S. military base? This is not the kind of competence and efficiency we are used to witnessing when our armed forces face the enemy off base? A spokesman for Fort Hood kept repeating that “they don’t carry guns in their home neighborhood”. What did he mean?

This incident reminds me of the Massacre in Blacksburg, made possible by Virginia Tech’s gun-free zone invitation to killers. What gives at Fort Hood? I’m asking.

So traumatized by racial epithets that he remains for eight long years?

DeVine Law sees the formation of a not guilty by reason of insanity or “fighting words” defense for Nidal Malik Hasan emerging with family members’ and others’ alleged recollections of complaints from the killer about his traumatizing endurance of racial epithets beginning soon after September 11, 2009.

This reminds of Anita Hill’s last hour allegations of actionable “sexual harassment” against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomasduring his nomination hearing. Ms. Hill was so traumatized by a supposed “pubic hair Coke can” joke that she followed him from job to job for as many years as Hasan kept drawing a check from a U.S. Army he loathed.

DeVine Law has another question for those with experience in the Armed Forces of the United States:

Is it hard to remove obviously dangerous, subversive members of the military from the non-subversive members? Are brigs still in use?

On the same day of the Fort Hood Massacre, Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted down a Republican proposal to include the following question on Census forms: Are you a U.S. citizen?

Has the same kind of political correctness that controls the ObamaDems of the Democratic Party, now disarm our Armed Forces from protecting themselves?

Serious questions.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Leadership, not race, will decide Atlanta mayoral run-off

The dead-tree drive-by media in Atlanta, as predicted here and here, has beaten the racial drum incessantly since Mary Norwood (46%) failed to garner the required 50% plus one votes to avoid a December 1 run-off against runner-up Kasim Reed (36%).

The latest insult to Atlanta voters cites MSM polls showing a strong inclination for people to vote for those of their own race. Who knew? I would remind folks that the AJC’s pre-Election Day polls had Norwood winning outright with Reed 20 points behind in her dust.

I’ll bet that polls would also show that most Atlantans prefer Democrats of any color and that Republicans resent being trashed by a former Republican depending on them for votes. But for the media to report on such matters would require “journalists” to avert their gaze from skin pigmentation.

Media that thinks Jim Crow still rules Dixie needs to eat crow

How fascinating do they find the variations on “one-drop” rules for legal marriages under Jim Crow? I wish they would join us in the 21st Century of Shirley Franklin’s landslide re-election victory four years ago. Maybe they missed that election in which white and black voted for color-blind leadership.

If the media would get over their obsession with black and white, they would also note that neither Reed nor Norwood have once appealed to voters based on racial solidarity. In fact, they have both explicitly denounced a Clark-Atlanta university appeal to same and have both stressed issues and leadership abilities in this race.

The AJC might also look at its own poll and note that the margin of victory on Election day was less than the percentages of assumed racial voting and that we can expect, based on their own poll, that from 15-25% of voters will vote across racial lines.

Racial culture has changed but media still projects their own racism

It used to be the case many black city majority elections, that the winner had to appeal to race. Any such appeals today would most certainly ensure defeat if one candidate so indulged while the other stayed on the high ground the drive-by media ignores.

I continue to remain convinced that much of the drive-by media projects their own racism onto We the People, assuming we share their monochromatic view of the world. They still live under Jim Crow and I only hope one day they are made to eat crow.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Headline you never see: Republicans block census citizenship question

Another you never see: Democrats block Census citizenship question.

The reason you never see the first question as an MSM news headline is that Republicans don’t object to asking the people being counted to determine the apportionment of the political power in this country among the States, the following question on a census form:

“Are you a U.S. citizen?”

The reason you never see the second question as a headline is that when Democrats, voting in the Democratic Party-controlled U.S. Senate, make it illegal to ask such an obviously relevant question, their PC-police allies in the Drive-by media, acting as an “accessory after the fact”, takes the Fifth, and refuses to name the Democratic actors in the original crime with the generic headline:

“Senate blocks census US-citizenship question”

“Senate”?

Are the Democrats proud of their vote or not and are we also not permitted to ask them questions not on a census form?

Given the vile excuse for journalism most Americans depend on, is it any wonder that so many have yet to discern the stark differences between the parties on economics, common sense immigration policies, defending the country and law and order in general.

So many members of the “World’s Oldest Political Party” are either: simply unaware of how many of their representatives simply do not share their values (and work to directly undermine their values with their votes in Congress) as opposed to the conservative acts they put on during campaigns; or, are in denial. I realize now that I was in denial about that party until I left it in 2000, but I digress.

Even Barack Obama gave the wink and nod to the far left while purposefully sounding conservative in the campaign, but the champion frauds can usually be identified today as “Blue Dawgs”. Not one of 60, too Yellow to ask a simple question, Dawgs in the Senate turned blue enough not to cower to the PC police and lobby for illegal immigration.

I haven’t heard the President asked his position on this question. But does anyone really wonder? The Rule of Law means nothing to some dogs, no matter the color.

And just hearing of all the alleged eye and ear witnesses to radical anti-American statements made by the Muslim-convert shooter before today’s shooting at Fort Hood, it is obvious that the PC-police are hazardous to the health of the United States military and America itself.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

The 9.8% of Americans that are unemployed and the 90.2% that are either employed or have given up looking, are told that the Great Recession is over. Don’t believe a word of it or find a new word to describe the trouble we are in as a nation.

I wrote last year that no matter who was elected President that we, as a people, would have our character tested to the nth degree by the economic consequences of the Fannie Mae-Dem Congress/Fed weak dollar era of the past 10 years, as well as the private and public debt run up over the last 25 years.

I expected the recession to get this bad for this long and worse, and I expected a filibuster-proof Dem Congress (that started sending investors on strike when they took over Congress in 2007 with the promise of more regulations and higher taxes, all with the votes of Senator Barack Obama) combined with a left wing Dem President (whose father’s dreams were Marxist) to make things worse.

I was right, but, partially because I don’t expect ObamaDems to have a supply-side epiphany and give up the socialist Utopian dream any time soon, I must express my support for a number of measures they have advocated or discussed  that pertain to the economy and the Reagan-described safety net for the truly needy, as well as a number of foreign policy moves that deserve all Americans’ support.

It would have been nice if the Stimulus bill had been more than safety net relief and government growthulus. I would have favored a mass shovel-ready public works bill, but the ObamaDems chose instead to save and create state and federal bureaucrat jobs instead with the public works plan consisting mainly of signs that announce potholes are being filled by the Recovery Act. Nice signs. It appears that most of the puny funds for actual public works were delayed until the Summer of ‘10 (and election year). Go figure.

But, during times of recession and depression, the safety net does need shoring up, and for that reason, and to keep money flowing in the economy to keep a pulse going, I do favor:

1. Extension of unemployment benefits;
2. Extension of COBRA health insurance subsidies for those that have involuntarily lost their jobs through no fault of their own and need to continue health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions;
3. Extension of the Home-buyer tax credit (with the proviso that no one be allowed a credit larger than their total federal tax bill, inclusive of FICA), which Georgia’s Junior Senator, Johnny Isakson (R-GA) has championed; and
4. Small business lending initiative.

I understand the problems caused by Fannie/Freddie coercion of bad loans, but don’t see a tax credit (Conservatives are still for tax reductions, right? And you do note my proviso above?) unaccompanied by lowered credit standards and federal guarantees as in any way a continuation of same.

I would note that I oppose a separate program of mortgage conciliation that does seek to save homes for those that can’t afford them. Thankfully, that program has done very little and has the left wing of the Dem Party angry with Obama.

I would also note that I am not one of those that is angry at banks for not making lots of loans to businesses just now, despite TARP. The reason for the lack of loans is the bad economy and the dim prospects for profits from which loans could be paid back.

For the record, this Reaganite supply-sider favors supply side income, cap gains and estate tax cuts; as well as regulation cuts that would allow expanded oil and natural gas exploration and oil refinery and nuclear power plant building. But, I don’t expect that even those policies would lift the economy in a meteoric way until people save awhile and re-build their wealth before taking new risks. Which is an argument for, not against, Obama’s small business loan initiative.

We need to support the few things ObamaDems propose that will stimulate the economy, so I do.

And in the mostly embarrassing and disgraceful foreign policy wasteland of betrayals to freedom and rule of law-loving Honduras, Eastern Europe and Iranian dissidents we do see two bright spots: Pakistan is fighting the Taliban/al Qaida on their own initiative and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repudiated the Palestinian refusal to negotiate with Israel until they ceased all third bedroom additions to houses with newborn babies on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Yes, we know that Obama still deems such improvements to be “illegal”, but we are happy Prime Minister Bebe Netanyahu got a quarter.

Tomorrow, DeVine Law Gamecock returns to the column topic cornucopia of bad ObamaDem policies!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson
Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

The racists in this drama are the media

No matter how incessantly the Drive-by media talks about white and black voters, the change in the relative fortunes of frontrunner Mary Norwood and runner-up Kasim Reed is about leadership qualities, and not the relative pigmentation of their skins.

Less than 48 hours ago, polls showed Mary Norwood might be able to garner 50% plus one vote and succeed Shirley Franklin as Mayor of Atlanta. Then the only poll that matters reared its head (Norwood 46%, Reed 36%), and it turns out that many Northern Atlanta voters in mostly Republican areas came in less enthusiastically than expected for their supposed Buckhead champion. She now faces a run-off against surging Kasim Reed.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is already peddling the racist line that is par for the course that has them regularly referred to as the Urinal-Constipation.

Don’t believe a word of it.

This conservative Republican knows better, which is why I announced my support for Reed yesterday.

Mary Norwood blew it by being equivocal about her Republican past. Mary must have forgotten that conservative Republicans are proud to be so, and proud of the candidates they have supported at least beginning with Ronald Reagan. Mary Norwood also must have forgotten that most all voters appreciate strength, leadership and honesty in an executive leader.

Kasim Reed did not forget this. He knows who he is, what he stands for, and is proud of it. Bravo!

I left the Democratic Party nine years ago last summer, and so I have major problems with many of the positions of Reed, and Norwood for that matter, given her apparent liberal conversion in the 90s. But liberal/conservative doesn’t matter that much the more local the race, and Reed is conservative on all the right issues for the City of Atlanta.

Mary Norwood’s only chance, if she has one, is to come clean on her past and turn out more of her supporters in the run-off than Reed.

But no matter who wins this race, Atlanta’s reputation matters most to me, and I don’t trust the simplistic, operationally racist, Drive-by media to be able to look past the skin color of the voters and the candidates. It makes me wonder if the purveyors of the racism charge are projecting their own racism, or that of their own institutions, onto others.
 

Atlantans can, have and will, and they see major differences between Reed and Norwood under their respective skins. Let’s let the coverage and conduct of this race leading to the run-off be an indictment of the racist media, and not Atlanta.

Atlantans are too busy for that kind of hate. After all, we have a city to run.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.