Politics

There’s been some chatter about the separation of church and state. Christine O’Donnell was correct; the doctrine does not appear in the Constitution. And perhaps the best evidence against those who argue it’s there but you can’t see it is the fact that Congress still opens its sessions with a prayer.

But let’s pretend the students at the Widener Law School and the revisionists who preach that the separation is one of the highest the laws of the land are correct. Assume church and state are distinct spheres which must not overlap.

Then the simplest answer to contain and control expansive government is to expand the territory of religion. When church and state both claim to control some area of our culture and activities, the Constitution says religion wins. It says, “Congress shall make no law…”

I came across a couple of leftoid videos today. Separately, they were kind of funny. Together, it suggests there will be trouble after the election.

In the first, a parade of clichés establishes that anyone resistant to the progressive agenda is heartless or stupid:

And in the second, we see how our enlightened guardians would prefer to handle dissent:

The world’s largest windfarm has just opened in the U.K. For all the tingles this must give to greenies and various other anti-human factions, in economic terms, it is tilting at windmills:

[taking] courses of action that are based on misinterpreted or misapplied heroic, romantic, or idealistic justifications.

An article in the U.K. Telegraph lays out the silliness hidden behind this particular mega-project:

If Progressives want to know what Sarah Palin feels like to the Right, the answer is Erin Brockovich.

Quoted from: Cobb

I was taught that the U.S. Consitution provides a system of checks and balances for the three branches of government. Congress can have its laws repealed by the Judiciary, and the Executive can be denied funding by the Congress, just for a couple of top-of-my-head examples.

The system may still be in the text, but the branches of government have decided they can interpret the Constitution as they desire. The system depends on a somewhat adversarial relationship between the branches. If all three are in basic agreement, Federal power is not checked and the whole structure goes out of balance.

And it really doesn’t matter that different political parties and factions have more weight in different branches. They’ll surely find things to argue about, but in a broader view all the big factions have a vested interest in bigger government. Constitutional limits are not vigorously enforced.

Tam’s watching reruns:

So the gaffe-prone alpha male Texan with a controversial service record, view of the government as benevolent rescuer at home, and an aggressive foreign policy is out, and has been replaced with the skinny, cigarette-smoking, paranoid political apparatchik who promised us peace with honor and is obsessed with the enemies out to destroy him.

Next time we recast this series, the writers will probably eliminate the cigarettes. And that is the only part I like.

Last week’s peaking hullabaloo over the Koranflagration and the Hamasque prompted Maxed Out Mama to step outside of her usual economic territory:

[B]y making, quite literally, a federal case of it, they have all conveyed the global message that rioting, burning, stabbing and any other type of barbaric Islamic behavior justify the suspension of the US Constitution when it comes to Muslims. In short, very prominent members of our executive are attempting to, de facto, suspend the constitution in such a way that it must inevitably have given the greatest surge of joy to violent Islamic factions since 9/11.

In 2003, Osama bin Laden wrote:

An iconic image of global warming, a polar bear adrift on a chunk of melting ice, published by Science magazine to accompany a letter from 255 scientists complaining about the attacks on their credibility, was a fake. This kind of visual storytelling is nothing new:

Remember the image of the bear struggling in the waves circulated by an environmental group awhile back? The waves were from the prop wash of the helicopter overhead.

The enemy of big government is self-government.

Quoted from: Thaddeus McCotter

Via: Maggie’s Farm

The Federal government is broke. Minnesota government and the City of Minneapolis can’t be broke in the same way because they lack the ability to run perpetual deficits. But I say they’re functionally broke because of their inability to set spending priorities. There’s always enough for fun projects. $30 million here, $7.7 million there, and yet there’s not enough money to keep up the roads or pay firefighters.

Anyone who works to provide a core government service is always first on the budget chopping block.

Cobb reflects:

The collapse of the WTC helped remind us how deeply we can suffer and still stand. Anybody that consumes drama, especially the vulgar and petty drama of our pop entertainment culture, needs a kick in the teeth every blue moon. That's what we got, and how. And when we got it, a lot of us were reminded - I know that I was - that war is always with us. War is always with us.

Over the past weeks I have been arguing that we are at war. Not the war that this date brings to mind, but between the factions in the United States. I am surprised by the resistance I found to my use of that word: “war”.

Over the transom came a video about a painting titled The Forgotten Man. I can’t show the picture to you; you’ll have to go to the artist’s website.

The painting is interesting enough, and the artist has clearly done some study to decide who to depict. All the Presidents are there, along with many other people. The site has an interesting interactive component (which is why I can’t copy it). Go look and poke around. You will learn something.

I learned of a man called Fisher Ames. Ames was a member of the First Congress, representing a part of Massachusetts. He was also a noted orator and

The minister planning to burn Korans tomorrow may not be the crackpot we all thought he was. Or, at least he’s a wily crackpot.

After dominating the news and chatter for the week leading up to September 11th, Reverend Jones says he’ll call off the bonfire if the Muslims move their new mosque away from the WTC site:

Jones also said he is scheduled to travel to New York on Friday night for a still unscheduled meeting with the imam in charge of the Islamic center planned near ground zero. The meeting, Jones had said, was part of what convinced him to halt the planned burning.

Jones said the meeting was promised Thursday by local Florida imam Mohammad Musri, who also told him the Islamic center would be moved in exchange for the burning being called off.

One of the Chicago Boyz, with a nom de blog of Lexington Green, figured out what Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally was all about:

Beck is building solidarity and cultural confidence in America, its Constitution, its military heritage, its freedom. This is a vision that is despised by the people who have long held the commanding heights of the culture. But is obviously alive and kicking.

Beck is creating positive themes of unity and patriotism and freedom and independence which are above mere political or policy choices, but not irrelevant to them. Political and policy choices rest on a foundation of philosophy, culture, self-image, ideals, religion. Change the foundation, and the rest will flow from that.

Another instance of the failed promise of a post-racial America under President Barry “The Mutt” Obama:

After an emotional meeting Thursday night where neighbors split along racial lines over whether an off-leash dog site should be built at Martin Luther King Memorial Park in south Minneapolis, the Park Board president said other options should be sought.

…much of the debate centered on whether the dog park would dishonor King, the slain civil rights leader.

It’s just an amenity in a City park, not a political statement. And dogs set the standard for judging each other not by the color of their fur, but by the content of their…um, “character”.

The administrator of the premier bicycling bulletin board in Minneapolis is calling it quits:

Candidates endorsed by Sarah Palin have won two-thirds of the time. A little more than half of those winners were non-establishment or Tea Party candidates.

Somewhere in disussions about the power of Sarahcuda, I caught this comment, worthy of a Snark Award:

I can see November from my house!

It is important to keep in mind that almost all the elections where Palin’s horse won were primaries. The dynamic is different when it is a Democrat against a Republican. People still tend to vote for the team instead of the candidate.

But I can’t help but grin when I think of all the leftoids who tried to dismiss Palin as a rube who’s 15 minutes expired two years ago.

Last night the current President took credit for executing a plan devised under the previous President to transfer control of Iraq to Iraqis. He did not mention that the 50,000 troops still in country have the same weapons and take the same risks as the day before, that “the end of combat operations” is an adjustment of administrative label instead of a marked shift in situation.

Barry also did not utter the word “win”. He did manage to say “victory” once, in a non-specific sense:

In an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners and the strength of our own nation.

Remember, the problem isn't the Democrats, and the solution isn't the Republicans.

Quoted from: Borepatch

Something else you’re not being reminded in arguments about the Hamasque (and in the broader non-dialog concerning the people of Antijudea):

According to the Arab American Institute, the breakdown of religious affiliation among Arab Americans is as follows:

• 63% Christian