We report, you decide:

First, quoting myself:

I’d rather have 30 Senators I can rely on than 60 Senators who are in it for themselves…

Now, Senator DeMint (R-SC):

I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs.

Or is it that great minds think alike? Or perhaps that there’s room for one more rock solid conservative Republican in the Senate? For now, I’ll just congratulate Senator DeMint on the sheer brilliance of his remark.

Lies. Lies. Lies.

“That wasn’t me,” President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One.

It actually was him – and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years – who shaped a budget so out of balance.

And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.

Sad.

With the departure of Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) from the ranks of the GOP there is now a chance for some clarity in America’s political debate. Democrats are officially waxing lyrical in their new-found love for Specter while initial GOP comment runs from “good riddance” to “we’re screwed”. The “good riddance” crowd have long been irked by the way Specter routinely undercuts GOP conservatism, always at the worst possible moment. The “we’re screwed” group feels that unless the GOP can appeal to the Arlen Specter’s of America, we haven’t a chance of winning. For myself, I’m generally in the “good riddance” camp, but not out of some latent frustration with Specter. I’m glad he’s gone because he is one of those who keeps the GOP from expanding its base.

Huh? Yes, expanding its base. You see, what Specter has done is leave the GOP because in his cowardly and unprincipled vote in favor of Obama’s spendulus, he revealed himself – once and for all – as a creature of the powerful, rather than a tribune of the people. The regular folks of the GOP base just weren’t going to have it anymore.

Liberals are crowing that Specter was forced out because of conservative Christians being bigots – and some conservatives are following this line. But Specter was going to be crushed in the GOP primary not because Christian conservatives were upset over his social liberalism, but because when the chips were down, Specter opted to help the powerful rather than stand for the people. It is political barnacles like Specter who allow the Democrats to paint the GOP as fundamentally no different from the Democrats and, also, keep politics down in the sewer, thus turning off millions of potential voters who just don’t see how their vote can make a difference. After all, what really is the difference between Arlen Specter and Ted Kennedy? Specter out means we can start having a GOP which stands firmly for principle – a party which no longer compromises core beliefs just to retain a seat or two.

The powerful, it must be kept in mind, can’t stand regular folks. They don’t mind poor people – such people can be used as political pawns and, also, allow powerful people to use tax dollars to assuage their guilt for being so rich while some are so poor. But us folks who are just work-a-day Americans – we’re just an annoyance. We take our religion seriously. We really believe that family is important. We really love America. We really honor the troops. We really insist upon secure borders. We really want our enemies defeated. We really don’t care what people in France and Germany say about us. We laugh at the foibles of the rich. We demand that the poor pull their weight. It was a rather cynical move by McCain to pick Sarah Palin – he wanted a VP who could wow the base. He got that, but as it turns out he also picked one of us…and that made the powerful go ballistic. What we need is more Palin, less Specter in the party. We need more tribunes of the people, less creatures of the powerful.

If the GOP wants to win, the way to do it is to be for the people against the powerful. Why were we even for a moment thinking that Specter was with us and worthy of our volunteers and our donations? What in heck were we thinking? We are the party of the people – the average American, outside the beltway and in direct and vigorous opposition to the mentality of government-knows-best. What is Arlen Specter but a cheerleader for what we consider all that is wrong with American government? Hey, more power to him – he’s got what he’s got and he’s free to do as he wishes. But we’re fools if we want to keep any particular person in office merely because they have an R after their name. We want people who will fight and fight and fight – never giving in for a moment to the various political expediencies which always mean that the well-connected get the gold mine, and we get the shaft.

Suppose we kept Specter and he wound up the 51st GOP Senator in 2011. What good would that do us? Do you think he wouldn’t betray us in a moment in order to curry favor with his fellow power elites in DC? I’d rather have 30 Senators I can rely on than 60 Senators who are in it for themselves (of course, I’d prefer 60 I can rely on…and we’ll get that, if we do this right). Our best bet is to shed anyone in the GOP who feels that people in DC know what is best – no rancor towards them; we just have a different worldview. This isn’t really a conservative/liberal thing – though, of course, conservatives do tend to be more understanding of the dangers of government power. This is an American thing – those Tea Party protesters were probably in their majority conservative, but none of those rallies were conservative. They were American, to the core – and that is what the GOP will have to be, if we want to win.

Who runs America? Right now it is collection of liberals in government and their clients in business, unions, education and other special interests. Whatever they might say about helping the people, they are really all about helping themselves. They are powerful – they control not just the government but, largely, the courts, the media, the institutions of higher education and all of those “commanding heights” of our society which allow them to drumbeat their worldview into the public mind. They are running this – and they are running us. It is time we started running them – running them out of town, running them to ground…running them ragged.

With eyes clear, hearts firm and no longer encumbered by political deadweight like Specter, it is now our chance to firmly capture the GOP and then go on to win the power we need to remake America in to what the Founder’s intended – a democratic republic of strong, independent people.

An ancient rightwing extremist:

Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it. – Pericles

From Frank J over at IMAO:

Since torture doesn’t work but waterboarding did work on KSM, doesn’t that prove that waterboarding isn’t torture?

Discuss.

According to the latest report, federal officials not only know that the Air Force One double flyover would cause panic, but they threatened local officials with federal sanctions if word ever got out.

Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and Air Force One to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public.

In a memo obtained by CBS 2 HD the Federal Aviation Administration’s James Johnston said the agency was aware of “the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes” in an around New York City. But they demanded total secrecy from the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI and even the mayor’s office and threatened federal sanctions if the secret got out.

“To say that it should not be made public knowing that it might scare people it’s just confounding,” Sen. Charles Schumer said. “It’s what gives Washington and government a bad name. It’s sheer stupidity.”

Stupidity is right. That pretty much the describes the Obama administration perfectly.

Human Events learned a little while ago that Arlen Specter was going to announce his intention to switch parties.

Politico has his statement:

I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

Since then, I have traveled the state, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion. It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.

I have decided to run for reelection in 2010 in the Democratic primary.

Specter has been at odds with the Republican enough to make his explanation sound legit, but I think the real reason for his departure was the fact he was polling way behind GOP primary challenger Pat Toomey.

I am not gonna shed any tears over Specter. It is time to get behind Toomey. Follow @ToomeyForSenate and become a fan on Facebook.

UPDATE: Specter said earlier this year he wouldn’t switch to maintain check and balances… just goes to show you he’s doing this for political survival…

Kathy Ireland speaks for the unborn:

It’s no secret that the majority of Hollywood stars are strong advocates for a woman’s right to choose whether or not she wants to terminate a pregnancy, however former “Sports Illustrated” supermodel-turned-entrepreneur-turned-author Kathy Ireland has gone against the grain of the glitterati and spoken out against abortion.

“My entire life I was pro-choice — who was I to tell another woman what she could or couldn’t do with her body? But when I was 18, I became a Christian and I dove into the medical books, I dove into science,” Ireland told Tarts while promoting her insightful new book “Real Solutions for Busy Mom: Your Guide to Success and Sanity.”

“What I read was astounding and I learned that at the moment of conception a new life comes into being. The complete genetic blueprint is there, the DNA is determined, the blood type is determined, the sex is determined, the unique set of fingerprints that nobody has had or ever will have is already there.”

However Ireland admitted that she did everything she could to avoid becoming a believer in pro-life.

“I called Planned Parenthood and begged them to give me their best argument and all they could come up with that it is really just a clump of cells and if you get it early enough it doesn’t even look like a baby. Well, we’re all clumps of cells and the unborn does not look like a baby the same way the baby does not look like a teenager, a teenager does not look like a senior citizen. That unborn baby looks exactly the way human beings are supposed to look at that stage of development. It doesn’t suddenly become a human being at a certain point in time,” Ireland argued. “I’ve also asked leading scientists across our country to please show me some shred of evidence that the unborn is not a human being. I didn’t want to be pro-life, but this is not a woman’s rights issue but a human rights issue.”

An honest woman took a good, long look at the issue and came to the only rational conclusion – to be pro-life. I’m pro-life, at bottom, as part of my Christian faith – but one can be the most ardent atheist and if one thinks the matter all the way through, pro-life is the only valid position. And thus my view that people who are “pro-choice” are people who haven’t thought the matter through. A smaller subset of these people are actually, functionally pro-abortion…they’ve thought the matter through, but guilt haunts them and cowardice prevents them from facing the matter squarely.

As I’ve said before, abortion is the enemy of hope; it is a final solution to a temporary condition. Elective abortion is something which has no basis in rationality, no basis in morality and no basis in medicine. That we’ve fallen for this monstrous idea shows how weak we truly are, and why for centuries the wise have instructed us to carefully adhere to received morality…not because they thought themselves smarter than the rest of us, but because they knew that overall human experience is smarter than any one person. We know that the worldview which accepts abortion is a worldview of despair – and as we see in Europe, the world view of slow suicide for nations.

We can turn back – to progress on this issue requires that we turn back. That we go back to a time when we held firmly to the concept that each human life is inherently valuable. If we do that, we will have done the largest and most important part of restoring our sad, tired civilization to decency.

If they actually go ahead with their witch-hunt of Bush Administration officials:

..The administration should tread carefully, since it is about to embark on something nefarious that could tear apart the country…

…Prior to President Obama, Americans did not go in for this sort of thing, because we knew where it led.

Politics and conditions change. What a conservative administration does at a time of national crisis to protect the public may subsequently, in the calm of an eighth consecutive year of safety, seem in retrospect illiberal to a new liberal government.

Dwight Eisenhower did not open hearings to pave the way for indictment of federal officials of the Roosevelt administration or California lawyers working for Gov. Earl Warren, who in concert planned and carried out the forced internment of American citizens into camps. Much less did he bring Truman & Co. up on charges of using nuclear weapons to incinerate Japanese civilians.

Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge did not seek indictment of Woodrow Wilson’s Justice Department, which did everything from strengthening segregation to jailing war critics and helping foster the odious vigilantes of the American Protective League. No subsequent administration tried to arrest Lincoln’s Cabinet members for signing off on the suspension of habeas corpus after Fort Sumter — unconstitutional decrees that eventually would mean some 15,000 Americans were held without charges for indeterminate length.

President Obama would not a want a putative President Palin to begin hearings on who ordered the targeted executions of two suspected Somali pirates, taken out in the middle of protracted negotiations. He would not wish a President Sanford one day to indict those Obama officials who approved the assassination-by-Predator-missile of suspected terrorists and their families in Pakistan — without habeas corpus, Miranda rights, or avenues of appeal. He would not enjoy a future President Giuliani’s bringing indictments of Obama officials over the NSA’s exceeding its allotted e-mail intercepts, or the CIA’s conducting overseas renditions of suspected terrorists without providing them the benefits of U.S. law.

President Obama, presumptively, will also not want to spark off the second American Civil War but at the end of this road is just that. I was watching a bit of O’Reilly and his opinion is that the left is trying to make conservatism odious in order to gain political advantage. There is that, but such a theory leaves out the plain fact that leftists hate, with a white-hot passion, anyone who doesn’t toe the leftwing line. One only has to see the way leftists smear people who become apostates of the left to see that, deep in their being, is a desire to lacerate, to maim, to utterly destroy those who oppose them. Whatever else may be assisting the motivation to prosecute Bush Administration figures, the primary impulse comes from hatred and a desire for revenge.

The left, of course, is a political minority. It has functional control of the United States at the moment because the President and the Speaker are both leftists…but while most Democrats are liberal, they are not of that hard left view which turns people into poor, twisted creatures capable of cruelty on a grand scale. Most liberals are kind of like Joe Lieberman…most leftists are like Jeremiah Wright. The problem with our liberals is that they long ago fell for the nonsense (started by the left) that liberals have no enemies on the left. Leftists use this to co-opt liberals and, when the can, destroy liberalism…but no matter how many times it happens, liberals seem to melt when some neo-Stalinist on the make starts mouthing words about social justice. But will liberals go down this road with the left?

It is to be doubted that Joe Lieberman will go along with such things – heck, just the rank anti-Semitism of the left is enough to turn off someone like Lieberman. But are there enough liberals with the sense and the courage to, in the end, stand fast against this leftwing attempt to destroy conservatism? To stand fast, that is, against what can easily spark an armed civil war in this nation? That will remain to be seen. I hope it ends up like that – with the left over-reaching and then getting smacked down by liberal and conservative patriots who won’t have anything to do with this wickedness.

I also hope that at least some on the left come to realize that however much they hate us, it isn’t worth it to try and criminalize us. It is, to use the leftwing mantra, time to “move on”. Enjoy the power you’ve won leftists. Attempt to implement as much of your leftist agenda as you can. Work diligently to thwart conservatism’s return to power…but don’t try to prosecute the Bush Administration. We really won’t stand for it – not for a moment.

You get boneheaded publicity stunts like this:

A jumbo jet being chased by a F-16 fighter jets buzzed Lower Manhattan this morning, panicking New Yorkers, many of whom were forced to evacuate their office buildings.

It was not a terrorist attack, however, but a photo opportunity for Air Force One, sources told the Post.

President Obama was in Washington at the time, but the low-flying 747 circling the Statue of Liberty was one of the planes used as Air Force One, sources said.

The NYPD and the city were notified of the planned flight, but did not share that information with Mayor Bloomberg and other New Yorkers, many of whom said they were terrified.

From a psychological perspective, this was a cruel and twisted joke. Many New Yorkers still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental disorder whereby sights, sounds and/or smells can re-trigger fight-or-flight responses associated with a past traumatic event.

But remember, ladies and gents, according to the mental giants gnats, i.e., Obama & the rest of the teenagers with credit cards (a/k/a-the democrat-controlled Congress), 9/11 never happened. It’s not even a war on terror anymore. It is a memory to be stuffed and snuffed; so I’m sure that quiz-kid Obama never thought twice about allowing this sophomoric stunt to occur.

There is a White House official who fell on the sword, but you can bet that His Arrogance and Pompancy, Barack Hussein Obama, will never apologize personally for re-traumatizing New Yorkers.

In the words of Bugs Bunny…

What a maroon.