The American Standard Bearer

The elder statesman of modern conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr., who always makes a well reasoned and compelling argument, wrote recently that the refusal by the Bush administration to give up the war in Iraq may be leading inevitably to the collapse of the Republican Party. No doubt, the prospect has Democrats dancing a jig. While Buckley, in the final analysis, is almost certainly correct, Democrats should pause before succumbing to uncontrolled fits of ecstasy.

It’s no secret that the Republican Party is in the throes of a monumental upheaval, but the root causes predate our current troubles in Iraq. The core of the problem has more to do with the abandonment of rank-and-file conservatives by cynical and self-serving Republican politicians, including the President himself who, for example, has always been an open-borders advocate and only recently taken to the pretense of being tough on illegal immigration.

But the Democrats are having serious troubles of their own, with far-left activists now controlling a large section of the purse-strings, driving centrists away from the party towards the independent category. The Dems don’t like to think about it, let alone admit it, but the conservative movement isn’t losing ground and stands ready to expand it’s ranks if serious conservative candidates, such as Fred Thompson, should emerge.

Mul-ti-lin-gual: using or able to use several languages especially with equal fluency. – Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Defending her incredibly cynical tactic of turning on a bad Southern accent when speaking to primarily Black audiences, Hillary Clinton told a South Carolina audience, “I think America is ready for a multilingual president.”

Obviously, her definition of “multilingual” misses the mark – she’s not speaking different languages. She’s just speaking English to selected audiences in a way that would end a career if spoken by a Republican.

It’s hard to believe that anyone running for President of the United States would be so openly and unashamedly dishonest, but then again, Hillary learned from the best.

Maniacal leftist and actor Alec Baldwin, in an effort to bond with his 11-year-old daughter, left this message on her answering machine: Listen. No wonder she doesn’t want to pick up the phone.

Listening to Baldwin’s pathetic rant, it strikes me that there is one similarity to the recorded ramblings of Cho Seung-Hui, the brutal thug who murdered 32 classmates at Virginia Tech. Not that Baldwin can be classified as a deranged psycopathic killer (just the garden variety psycopath), but both Baldwin and Seung-Hui are so completely self-absorbed that the diatribe boils down to simply, what was done to them that forced them to behave so bizzarely.

The Daily Herald, a newspaper covering central Utah, ran an editorial today that makes a great point.

Air Force veteran Howard Capito was ordered to remove an American flag by the self-loathing Americans at his condo association – that is, until someone pointed out that a new federal law prohibits them from taking that action.

The point of the editorial is that federal law aside, Capito should be protected by the First Amendment and I agree. Since the Supreme Court found that American flag burning activities carried out by self-loathing Americans are constitutionally protected under the First Amendment as freedom of “expression,” shouldn’t the expression of flying the flag be equally protected?

Of course it should, but don’t expect help from the defenders of tyranny at the ACLU.

Democrat Presidential candidates are scrambling to denounce today’s Supreme Court decision upholding a law passed by Congress in 2003 banning the partial birth abortion procedure. But this is one time that bowing to pressure from groups like the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood might prove to be problematic with voters.

Unlike more routine abortion procedures, the gruesome realities of late-term abortion are not hidden inside the mother’s womb. In addition, the claim that partial birth abortions may be neccessary in cases where there are “serious threats to the health of individual women,” as candidate John Edwards said today, is plainly false. In order for the partial birth abortion procedure to be performed, the mother must first endure the trauma of labor and childbirth before the baby is snuffed. If childbirth didn’t injure or kill the mother, why will it improve her health to then kill the baby?

With so much information readily available online or on cable television about the development of the baby in the womb, the pro-abortion folks can no longer get away with terms like “fetus” or “unviable tissue mass.” We can all see babies with fingers, toes and beating hearts just weeks after conception on the National Geographic channel.

The Supreme Court did the right thing to take the politics out of this particular debate and Democrat candidates who don’t do the same may find that they have given a lot of fringe voters a reason not to vote for them.

In Virginia, they have horses. And in North Carolina, they have the horse’s ass.

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Once again, the Democrat Party has sustained injuries from friendly fire. The out-of-control left fringes, in their zeal to pile on Don Imus, have closed down a favorite venue for many Democrat candidates, such as Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut who announced his Presidential aspirations on Imus’ show.

Writing for ABC News, Terry Moran makes the ridiculous but predictable case that the damage done by a single nasty comment directed at the Rutgers women’s basketball team is far worse than the damage done the Duke lacrosse players wrongly accused of rape. I say predictable because it’s embarassingly obvious that Moran and his idiot cronies on the left are motivated entirely by envious hatred of rich white males. Now that the Duke students have been exonerated, the leftist minions like Moran are now busily accusing them of being, well, rich white males.

The surprising thing about the Imus debacle is that the left mounted such a fierce onslaught against one of their own. My guess is that the left fringe entirely failed to recognize that Imus was more friend than foe.

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine is critical condition after the SUV he was riding in crashed yesterday. While we all wish him a full and speedy recovery, it should not be overlooked that if he were a conservative, he would almost certainly have walked away unscathed.

You see, he was not wearing a seat belt. In fact, he was not wearing a seat belt while sitting next to a New Jersey State Trooper. It’s bad enough that the Governor willfully violates state law on a regular basis, but to refuse to buckle up, as every other citizen of the Garden State is required to do, in the presence of a law enforcement officer is a classic leftist response to law.

Conservatives are much more likely to obey all laws out of the simple recognition that laws apply to everyone and that the rule of law is basic to our freedoms. Leftists, on the other hand, look at laws as a form of crowd control – a way to keep the proletariat in line.

Corzine evidently believes that such mundane matters as seat belt laws don’t apply to him, which is the only possible explanation for his arrogant refusal to obey the law. He has unfortunately found out the hard way why we have these laws in the first place.

Fox News’ Bill O’Rielly has turned a national spotlight on Virginia Beach, Virginia, following the dispicable murders of two teenage girls at the hands of illegal immigrant Alfredo Ramos. Ramos was driving in a drunken stupor when he slammed into the rear of the girls’ car while they were stopped at a light. As it turns out, Ramos had been arrested for drunk driving on three seperate occasions prior to the murder, so the question becomes, why was he still in the U.S. and why was he still driving.

The answer is that he was still in the U.S. because, as O’Rielly claims, Virginia Beach is a sanctuary city, and he was still driving because a little-known but key component of sanctuary policy is that illegals are not prosecuted for misdemeanors and even some felonies. The claim by Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf that her city is not a sanctuary city is somewhat deceitful. There has been no official public declaration as other cities have done, but the police have been directed to take a “hands-off” stance towards illegals. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of cities across the country that have adopted the same hands-off policies as Virginia Beach.

Here in Utah, for example, Salt Lake City and Provo have officially declared themselves sanctuary cities, but pretty much every other city in Utah adheres to the same policies. In Park City, illegals who are apprehended for criminal activity are routinely released with not so much as a slap on the wrist. The local paper recently reported that police stopped a vehicle containing three illegals and that the officer spotted marijuana and a hand gun on the driver’s floor. All three were released on the spot, a consideration that ordinary citizens would not get.

The real danger of sanctuary policies is that they give illegals a free pass to conduct all sorts of criminal activity knowing they will not face the same penalties as you or I.

John Edwards, the guy who degraded the noble vocation of ambulance-chasing by invoking the ghost of a dead child, making millions for himself in the process, is now degrading average Americans, using his wife as his mouthpiece.

Elizabeth Edwards lashed out at North Carolinian Monty Johnson, who has the bad fortune to live across the street from the Edwards home and fitness complex, for not meeting the Edwards’ high standards for landscaping. The problem it seems, at least according to Edwards, is that Johnson is a “rabid, rabid Republican.” Never mind that Johnson has lived there all his life and the Edwards family are the newcomers.

Other problems the Edwards’ have with Johnson include gun ownership, which almost certainly puts them on the outs with Virginia Senator Jim Webb. Says Edwards, “I don’t want my kids anywhere near some guy who, when he doesn’t like somebody, the first thing he does is pull a gun out. It scares the business out of me.”

Interestingly enough, that’s a very similar sentiment that many Americans, myself included, might express if the Edwards’ moved in next door: “I don’t want my kids anywhere near some guy who, when he doesn’t like somebody, the first thing he does is file a law suit. It scares the business out of me.”