President Stands Up to Runaway Judge

Did you hear about the judge in Michigan, the one who said that the president doesn’t have the power to spy on our enemies in times of war, even though congress granted him that power, and the constitution is explicit about it?

Well, I wouldn’t get worked up over it. That is, this is going to get overturned. It will because the decision is baseless and indefensible.

I hope that the congress begins to act to remove these nutcases from the bench. They can do far too much damage between now and retirement, and we can’t risk any more decisions like this.

Oh yeah, and anyone who dares claim I don’t have a right to criticize judges, I refer you to the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

And anyone who says congress has no right to remove judges from the bench, I refer you to the relevant sections of the same document.

The Most Important Races are Independent

As you may well know, the ballot you will receive in just a few short weeks will have democrat races, republican races, and the independent races. To vote in the Democrat or Republican primary, you must declare yourself as a member of that party, and you cannot vote for candidates from the other party in those partisan races.

But for the independent races, you can vote for whomever you wish.

The most important races on the primary ballot happen to be independent.

Don’t get me wrong, when the people of Washington State wrote their constitution, they provided for a government of checks and balances, with the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Each branch has power over the other, and each is checked in their powers. Arguably, the most powerful branch is the legislative. However, with a runaway judiciary, the other two branches become moot.

The Washington State judge races have been traditionally liberal-slanting. This is because Democrats are better at getting people to vote in the primaries. (Republicans are far less willing to vote for someone they don’t know.) The net result is that we either end up with one liberal candidate in the Fall, or worse, a choice between liberal and more liberal judges.

The problem with liberal judges is that they don’t read the law and the constitution the same way the people do. We look at those documents, think they mean what they say, and follow them precisely. They feel they have the right to interpret the documents, add in a few sentimentalities of their own, and allow for a progressive slant.

I’ll cite three instances.

In the one, the supreme court decided that if you assaulted someone and killed them, then you obviously didn’t commit murder unless it can be proved that you wanted to kill them. This meant that hundreds if not thousands of murderers are set free into our public. Right now, they are probably wandering the streets. The law was quite clear in the matter—killing someone is murder if it is done by assault. The legislature, thankfully, turned around and almost immediately passed a law telling the Supreme Court that they were wrong and that the law really said what they said it said.

In the other, the Supreme Court allowed a government agency to exercise imminent domain (the taking of property by force, with compensation) and sell it to private entities. Practically, what happened is that the government took property to build a monorail, and then sold that property to someone else to build whatever they wanted. This is obviously wrong, and we were reassured after the Kelso decision that our constitution was quite clear on this matter. It turns out that our constitution was; our judges weren’t.

Yet another example needs to be mentioned. When the issue of homosexual marriage–banned explicitly by law, voted into law by the people, no less–appeared before the court, 4 out of 5 of the judges decided that the law was stupid and the people were wrong. Is this the kind of supreme court we want, one that hears the voice of the people through the polls, and then ignores it?

I don’t know about you, but I was told that the powers of government don’t come from a document—they come from the people themselves. The document, the constitution, is merely our contract with our government. “This is what you can do,” we said, “and this is what you can’t.” To have the Supreme Court justices stand up and defy the will of the people is as absurd as having your employees defy the stockholders and members of the board.

We simply cannot let our ballots fall into the trash can this year. We must vote in the judicial races, and we must vote for conservative candidates who will read the law as it was written, and judge righteously.

What Happens When You Rely on Them

John Kerry’s bold plan to win the war on terror was to call a meeting with France and to discuss how we can win the war on terror without fighting it in the first place.

We now have evidence of what happens when you rely on the international community to solve sovereign problems.

Israel retaliated against the invasion of her sovereign territory, the murder of her soldiers, as well as their capture, by waging a war against the aggressors. The terms of victory were plain: complete disarmament and disbanding of Hizbollah. It was a pretty straightforward fight.

Israel, when left on her on, could probably have done the job relatively quickly and relatively harmlessly. After all, despite initial reports to the contrary, they were waging a fairly clean war, even by modern standards.

Granted, Israel didn’t expect Hizbollah to have anti-tank rockets and to have the training that they did. Still, Israel was making some serious work of Hizbollah with a 10-1 kill ratio and the land under their control by way of aerial siege.

However, the international community decided it had seen enough. Perhaps they could do a better job of accomplishing those goals, with a lot less blood. France led the charge to broker a ceasefire so that they could send troops to the area to stop the fighting, hopefully disarm Hizbollah, and keep Israel from fighting a war that would tax her. In the end, they succeeded. That is, they succeeded in getting a deal.

Today, when the nations met to discuss how many troops to dedicate to the task, France decided it would only send a nominal contingency of engineers and officers. How in the world France is going to disarm Hizbollah with officers and engineers I don’t know. Perhaps their mere presence is enough to send the terrorists running in fear. (NOT!)

But this is the story of the UN and the internation community. Wherever they set their hand to effect peace, we get more bloodshed than before. Remember why Israel had left Lebanon in the first place? UN resolution 1559, which required both Israel and Hizbollah to leave. What is going to be different about the next resolution? No matter how obediently Israel obeys, those who thwart UN resolutions pay no price, and even gain the support of the UN it seems.

We cannot rely on the UN to fight our wars anymore than Israel can. If Israel wants security, they have to buy it with their own bullets and blood, because the French certainly aren’t willing to shed a tear for them. The same goes for us. When push comes to shove, we had better be willing to shove no matter how loudly France protests.

Democrats Win Another Battle Against the Enemy

Democrats have won another battle against the enemy.

The only problem is that they think the enemy is President George W. Bush.

This time the Democrats have convinced a federal judge to prevent President Bush from spying on foreign terrorists making foreign calls. Of course, Democrats label these kinds of calls “domestic”, insinuating that if a call crosses an international border, it is somehow domestic. (Remind me to ask my telephone company why they are charging me foreign rates for calls to South Korea…)

The funny thing is that the Democrats are running around telling people we are less safe than we were before President Bush came to office. One the one hand, they are right. Before President Bush came to office, we were allowed to take enemy combatants as prisoner of war, track the movement of foreign money between our enemies, and listen to their phone calls. Now, none of that is possible, thanks to activist judges and newspapers that have taken up a hobby of publishing state secrets.

It makes you wish for the good ol’ days, don’t you, when a man could spy on, capture, and shoot state enemies and be celebrated for it. Nowadays, the Democrats have turned this war around until we are giving our enemies better treatment than our criminals.

Do you still believe them?

Reuters, affectionately labelled “Al Reuters” for their pro-radical Islamist take on all issues, has proven to be, quite frankly, a fraud.

How in the world could these photographs, so obviously faked, pass by so many editor’s eyes and still get a green light? If anything, this shows how corrupt they have become.

But more importantly, they have also refused to address the obvious staging of photographs, the equivalent of Jayson Blair-style “making things up”. This is a far more serious crime, a crime known in common circles as “lying”.

My question to you is: Do you still believe them? Do you still read Reuters or AP and believe the photographs and stories?

And the follow-up is, If you do believe them, what would it take to convince you that they have been consistently dishonest? Perhaps something like this?

“Let My People Go”

Moses spoke these words to the most powerful nation on the earth at the time. If you remember the context, Moses was speaking for the Lord. His people were the Israelites. And the Pharoah had enslaved them.

I don’t wish to get overly sentimental or religious in this post. But I do wish to emphasize a few points about the Jews or Israelites.

First, go read Isaiah 49. This is a powerful chapter of not only redemption but of the redemption of the state of Israel. The Lord is quite clear that he “owns” Israel and no one will ever be allowed to enslave them.

We argue, philosophically, that men are naturally free. Then so are the Jews. We argue that men have a right to bear arms, to speak, to govern themselves. Then so are the Jews.

As the “international community” meets to decide the fate of the Jews, let us remember that they are our equals, not superiror, not inferior. If we are a Christian nation, then let us ask ourselves, shall we follow the Golden Rule as taught by our Savior? Shall we do unto others as we would have them do unto us?

Suppose it was not Israel but the USA fighting for its very survival. Rockets, thousands of them, rain down upon our cities daily. Our peace is devastated. Our children lay dead and dying in our streets. What could we have done more to effect peace? What more could we have sacrificed to our enemies in the name of normalized relations?

The Americans, in such a condition, will no doubt gladly fight a war they did not want to fight. They will fight until the enemy has surrendered unconditionally. They will fight, killing anything that is a support to the enemy and a hindrance to our people.

We will create firestorms in their cities. We will drop nuclear weapons on their industrial centers. We will wage a war where prisoners will not be taken. We will fight, fight, fight, determined to obtain complete victory or utter defeat.

This is the American zeal for freedom. We crave freedom more than we crave life. Patrick Henry spoke not for himself but for millions of Americans when he demanded liberty or death. We do the same when we see our liberty challenged.

In such a condition, what would we expect Israel to do for us? Would we want them to ask us to stop fighting so powerfully? Would we want them to stand in our way, draw arbitrary lines in time and space that the enemy can take shelter behind? Would we want them to train the armies of the country we are invading? Of course not!

Then why do we do so now to Israel!

We can stand as Pharaoh, looking over the people of Israel, considering them inferior and barely worthy of being slaves. We can shake our fist at the heavens and curse the God that granted them land and military strength. We can move to hurt Israel, to deprive them of life, liberty, of the freedom to defend one’s life, family, and property. We can reneg our contracts on a whim, turning our will back and forth like leaves tossed in the wind.

What will be the result? The ruin of our empire. We will return defeated, forlorn, depressed. That is the result of all wars waged against a people exerting their right to life and liberty.

Or we can stand firm, declare the Israelis as equals, not superior or inferior. We can grant them the same rights we grant ourselves, the right to pursue life vigorously, to secure their borders, to establish peace in their country. We can cheer as their Moses challenges the Pharaoh whose heart was as hard as rock.

I stand by Israel. Israel is not our friend because of who they are, but because of what they are. They are our friend because they understand what liberty is after being cast off and humiliated for most of their history. They are our friends because they are exerting the same rights we exerted, resorting to military force only when absolutely necessary, patiently begging for peace as long as possible.

I am praying that the “international community” will let these people go, defend themselves, and complete the task at hand. I am praying because should we find ourselves in their shoes, I would wish the same for myself.

People’s Oil?

I was listening to KVI yesterday evening. There was the host, interviewing a self-proclaimed expert on the oil industry.

The expert used a phrase that I can’t get out of my mind. He was referring to a contract that the oil companies had made with our nation. He said that the people granted them the right to refine the oil for a healthy profit in exchange for cheap fuel.

Now, I doubt anyone can find a copy of this contract anywhere. The fact is it doesn’t exist. The problem isn’t that, though. The problem is that he referred to the “people’s oil”.

My highly tuned ears immediately signalled the red flag of communism. After all, only a communist would believe such a farce as the “people’s oil”.

If it is the people’s oil, how did they come to own it? When did the people buy it? Whom did they buy it from? Which party represents the people–the local, state, or federal governments? If so, what provision in their constitution allows them to negotiate rights to their oil?

I thought back down to the basic level. Where does oil come from? The ground. Who owns it? Whoever owns the ground above it. The owners of the ground either allow people to come and extract the oil for a fee, or extract it themselves. In the case of the oil companies, they traded, fair and square, either for the ground itself or for the rights to extract oil with the owners of that ground.

Now, the federal government does own several vast tracts of land. Underneath that land there is apparently some oil. And I am sure that in some areas, certain oil companies have negotiated with the federal government to extract that oil, for a fee and within certain parameters.

But the federal government is not the people. It cannot be. The reason is simple. The people created the federal government and set the parameters by which it is permitted to operate. This is all documented very clearly in the constitution, where it starts with “We the people…do ordain…this Constitution…” Certainly, if the federal government were the people, or at least representative of the people in this matter, then it would be listed in that constitution. But it is not.

Sure, there are parameters for “imminent domain”, whereby the federal government can take land from individuals under certain conditions. But there is no right or inherent ownership that the government, nor the people, have of individual people’s property. In fact, the constitution is quite clear that nobody can have their property taken without due process!

So where then is the people’s oil? It is nowhere to be found. The people have no such thing. Individuals do. Corporations do. And the federal government may as well. But the people, as a whole, do not.

By the way, let the oil companies make obscene profits. We have no right to limit anyone’s profit anymore than we have the right to take away their property.

Sen. Cantwell Can’t Get Along

Let’s look at the facts.
She has been in the senate for 6 years, yet has little to show for it.

She has never reached across the aisle. Sen. Frist’s recent attempts to draft a bill that would help Washington State was rebuffed by her. This is a typical reaction from her. If there is an “R” anywhere near the issue, she always takes the opposite side.
She has a reputation for treating her staff poorly.

She has to buy out her own party members with cash to get their support.
Folks, they are going to have to put a lot of lipstick on this candidate to make her look halfway presentable to voters.

McGavick’s chances are looking better every day.

Democratic Party Now Officially Moonbat Party

Now that Sen. Lieberman has been driven out of the Democratic Party, it is now safe to call the party the party of the moonbats.

I have to say, I disagree with Lieberman on most issues. The one issue we agree on, for the most part, is the one issue that is most critical though. I don’t think Lieberman can expect to get elected as a Republican. That’s not because he isn’t an upright citizen willing to defend his views no matter what the cost. It is because he simply agrees more with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.

Why in the world would the Democratic Party oust a fine member like Lieberman? I have a few ideas.

First, the obvious reason is that Lieberman supports the War on Terror. Democrats do not support the war, preferring instead to surrender to the terrorists and say sorry for ever trying to kill them. Oops, did I say the “t” word? I meant “freedom-fighter”.

Second, Sen. Lieberman refuses to jump on the attack-America-first bandwagon. Whenever we hear stories from Iraq about war atrocities in Iraq, we have to endure the harping or Democrat harpies screeching about how bad America is. When the facts turn out and the American military is exonerated, why, the harpies don’t even stop singing their song. Sen. Lieberman has been careful not to tarnish the polish of our military men. He understands that “honor” isn’t something that you can invent on a whim.

Third, Sen. Lieberman is a Jew. I do not understand why, but the moonbats have become openly Anti-Semitic. In Seattle, we see Jewish women gunned down, and the left seems perfectly ok with that. When the prosecutor announces he is going to prosecute the full extent of the law against the terrorist who did the act, they wonder what the excitement is all about. But halfway across the world, when a terrorist gets blown to pieces by two five-hundred pound bombs, we see Democrats getting depressed. I won’t repeat the Anti-Semitism I am seeing in the blogosphere. Frankly, it frightens me because I thought we had learned what blatant hatred of a race can make men do. Let it be known that the Democratic Party is increasingly the party of the radical Islamists who wish to see Israel wiped off the map.

Fourth, Lieberman was honest. He had real moral authority. He stood up for what was right in his view, even when he stood alone. That is something the Democrats no longer tolerate. Give them a leader with morality and gravitas, and they will feed him to the vultures, cursing his name and spitting on his grave. Give them a leader who can’t tell the truth, and they celebrate the “nuance” that he has command of. The Democratic party has become the party of wickedness and corruption. Name any issue, and they stand opposite to morality and ethics.

If this is the new Democratic Party, I pray for its destruction. Should we ever elect another Democratic majority, I am not sure what the consequences will be.

As for Lieberman, I will take him over any other elected Democrat any day of the week.

The Price of Peace

Let’s suppose a man approaches you, asking for money for your security. “I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe if you don’t pay the protection fee,” he says.

If you go ahead and pay the man, will you get peace? Of course not. The man now has you snared. You have to keep paying, or pay more when he demands it, for fear of physical harm. This is not peace. This is subjugation. You have become a slave to that man.

What if you did the exact opposite. You refused to pay, promising the man that any harm he does to you will be returned. “If you try to kill me, I will kill you first.” You make good on your promise, taking the time to purchase a deadly weapon and training in how to properly use it. There are inevitably three results that can occur from such an action.

Perhaps the man will move on, and leave you alone. You are, after all, not an easy target. Or perhaps he will test your challenge. If he does that, you will either die or he will die. That is, if he is willing to push the conflict all the way.

In the first case, you have bought true peace. You are not a slave to the man. In the second case, where you die defending your property, you have also obtained peace. You can walk with a clear conscience, knowing that what you did was right. The man still has no power over you. In the final case, you have eliminated a threat to the peace of everyone. Not only have you obtained peace for yourself (a dead man threatens no one), but you have obtained it for a great many other people.

The price of true peace, therefore, is the willingness to fight for peace. Until we are willing to die trying to secure peace for ourselves, we cannot have peace. We will always be manipulated by those who would subjugate you.

This is what the war on terror is all about. There is a very large group of people making an offer: Submit to our will, and you will have peace. You can take that offer and become their slaves, quite literally, or you can challenge them with violence. We already know that these people will not back down, even when they are faced with miniscule chances. We must be willing to take the fight to a higher level than they will. Either they will back down and refuse to fight, or they will die trying.

What is that higher level? The terrorists, after all, are willing to kill innocent women and children, sacrificing their own lives if necessary, to obtain their goal. What more can we offer than that? The sad fact is, nothing. These are a people willing to go all the way to death, taking as many people as possible with them. We must oblige them. I mean, we must allow them to kill themselves while minimizing civilian casualties, of course.

We have such a battlefield in Iraq. I believe Iraq was an opportunity that the Bush administration took on because it would serve three purposes: (1) eliminate an enemy of the US, (2) establish a power in the region that can influence its neighbors for the good and be an example for what is possible, and (3) attract all the terrorists in the world to fight our elite unites in the field of combat by striking at the very heart of the Middle East.

As long as we have troops in Iraq, there will be terrorists tempted to come to Iraq and fight them in the field of battle. As long as they come, we should accept their offer to meet in combat and dispatch them with all haste and prejudice. When the terrorists begin to decrease in number (which they are, rapidly), then we will know we have drained the world of terrorists willing to fight and die for their cause.

Make no mistake, Israel’s and the US’s strategy in this war is to draw the terrorists out of hiding, to encourage them to lift their guns and bombs against troops not civilians, and to kill them in combat. As we are beginning to understand the awesome price of peace, we are also willing to make the down payment.