Supreme Court Bars Oldest Legal Document From Being Displayed At Courthouses

While sitting in a court room that featured an engraving of Moses holding the Ten Commandments, the Supreme Court, in yet another 5-4 decision, decided that other courthouses in the United States were not allowed to display the world's oldest legal document. Why, because the Commandments are associated with religion and in this country, anything having to do with religion must be removed from sight.

They said that putting up the Ten Commandments in a courtroom establishes religion. Of course, they didn't specify which religion. Surely it isn't Catholicism or any mainline Protestant denomination, since they are all free from the Law. Maybe it is Judaism. Who knows?

Well at least they didn't bar the display in all public places.

Flag Burning Amendment Is A Bad Idea

Any American who burns the flag is revealing themselves to be an ungrateful idiot, and I believe that person should be taken to the woodshed and given an old fashioned whipping. Regardless of how I feel about that person though, Americans have the constitutional right to act like idiots. I realize that flag burning makes some of you angry. It makes me angry too. But the right to protest and speak out against the government should never be taken away. You see, a flag burning amendment is not about flag burning as much is it is about liberty. I opposed a flag burning amendment during Bush 41's presidency. I felt that Bush demogogued the issue in order to get re-elected. The two Senators who are sponsoring this amendment are doing the same. They know that it has no chance of passing, but they need the good publicity that comes from looking patriotic. But as much as it is unpatriotic to burn a flag, it is even more unpatriotic to ban a persons right to burn a flag. We must preserve a person's right to protest, even if their protest is offensive. If we do not preserve that basic liberty, we might as well have never won our independence.

Repeal the 17th Amendment

Back during the debate concerning the constitutional option to end judicial filibusters, a few Senators suggested that the constitutional option would change the Senate forever. I don't know about you, but I considered that to be a good thing. The US Senate is a toilet. Senators do not serve their constituents, they serve the special interest groups who send them on those nice vacations and donate millions to their campaign funds. At one time though, they actually represented the states. Yes before what was supposed to be a "democratic reform", Senators were actually accountable to the state legislatures that sent them to Washington. Of course the Seventeenth Amendment changed all of that. In a comment to one of his recent posts, Blake of Nashville Files stated that he supported the repeal of the 17th amendment. I agree. I would love to see power return to the states, which is where it belongs. Then maybe the Senate won't be the toilet that it currently is.

Roy Moore Is An Absolute Disgrace

Luna's Tunes tipped me off to this article about former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore and his possible political aspirations.
I am a Christian and a conservative who is also from Alabama and I do not like Roy Moore. I don't like the way he has used the Ten Commandments as a springboard to a political career. He was just a local judge in Etowah County, Alabama who had the Ten Commandments on his wall. He could have made a valid argument for keeping it there on the basis that the Commandments are historically a legal document. He didn't though. He went on this populist binge of religiosity and used his showmanship to get elected Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He didn't stop there. He had to go and pull another publicity stunt and put a monument of the Commandments in the supreme court building. Once again, rather than using the legal document argument, which has merit, he went on another rampage of religiosity. Ironically William Pryor, who was attorney general at the time, was the one who enforced the court order and removed the Ten Commandments monument. You all remember Pryor. He is one of the judges the Democrats recently filibustered because he supposedly put his personal beliefs above the law.
So thanks to his religiosity, Moore has risen from a small town judge to the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, to a best selling author. Speaking as a conservative, and also a Christian, Roy Moore is a disgrace and an embarrassment to both of those terms.

I believe the Ten Commandments should be hung on the wall of a courtroom just like any other legal document. But Roy Moore never made that argument. If he had made that argument, he may have won and retained the right to post the Commandments in his courtroom. But obviously having the Ten Commandments on the wall didn't mean as much to Moore as becoming a demagogue and writing a book, because rather than making that argument, he made a bunch of crazy statements that proved liberals worst fears about us Christians. I know a lot of you out there probably think that Moore is a great guy and a great Christian, but trust me on this folks. I am a Southern Baptist conservative from Alabama and I am telling you that Roy Moore is in it for Roy Moore. I studied these types of southern demagogues in college and I am telling you, this guy is not a conservative. He is nothing but a rabble rousing populist out to make himself famous.

Christianity And The Welfare State

I have written several posts about the traditional relationship between politics and religion in the United States here, here, and here. I have rightly pointed out that the words "separation of church and state" do not appear in the constitution and that the constitution merely prohibits Congress from establishing a state church or restricting religious freedom. It is very much impossible to keep religion out of government because religion is a part of our culture. Even Congress opens every session with a prayer, given by a chaplain paid with public money. Many in the Democratic Party often accuse conservatives like Bill Frist of violating the mythical separation of church and state by showing up in a church and appealing to religious people. But we all know those accusations are just politics, because when it comes to justifying the welfare state that the Democratic party has used to create their constituency, the Democrats seem to have no problem mixing religion and politics. Roger Banks has written an excellent commentary on the subject of the Democratic party and their use of Christianity to further their agenda, which is to create an underclass of people and keep them dependent on the government. Here are a couple of excerpts but I highly suggest you read the whole article.

Failed presidential candidate John Kerry, for example, persists in appealing to the New Testament's book of James. "Faith without works is dead," Kerry intones, suggesting that "works" here includes the works of lawmakers as they spend other people's money. n a similar fashion, Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, is wont to quote the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus teaches that "[i]nasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Pelosi says doing unto the least means raising more taxes for entitlement programs. Even DNC Chairman Howard Dean, who kicked off Bush's second term with "I hate Republicans," recently accused the ones he hates of violating the biblical command to "love thy neighbor as thyself"

Personally, I have never understood the virtue in the idea of an extremely rich person like John Kerry telling a working person like me that he is a better man than the other candidate because he believes in taking money from one group of people and giving it to another. Would it not say more of his character if he was to convince his wife to liquidate all of her assets and give the money to the poor? Remember Jesus told the rich man that he should sell everything he owned and give it to the poor. He didn't tell the rich man to keep all of his wealth and then convince the Romans to tax the heck out of everyone else so that the supposedly poor could keep both of their vehicles, air conditioning, cable television, computer, and high speed internet access.

Also, is all of this so called "help" really doing anybody any good. Think about it. Say you have an adult son whom you love so much that you are willing to give him anything he needs. You provide him with a place to live for as long as he wants to live there. You give him all of the food he wants. Since you have so much and he has so little, you also give him a little cash to spend. Since this adult child has always had his needs provided, he never develops any skills, he never gets an education, and because of this he never develops any self respect. By keeping him dependent on your aid and taking away any incentive for him to better himself, have you really helped him. Did you really show him love of God? No you did not.

Is Healthcare A Right And Should Government Provide It

I was really disappointed that there was not more response to this post concerning Steve Gill's proposal to "save" TennCare. I began to think that John Brown and I were the only two people left in the United States who believed that healthcare was not a right that should be provided by the government. In hopes that we are not the only cold hearted conservatives in the world, I decided to post this poll. Please respond so that I won't have to post a bunch of fake responses in order to keep myself from looking bad.


Update: More at Nashville Files, and Nashville Is Talking.
Also, Sharon Cobb has a near carbon copy of this poll that she posted a day after I posted this poll. Check the results of her poll and you will notice quite a difference. Of course she did word the question a little differently. I guess that not only shows her slant, but also mine.

Congressman Sensenbrenner, You Are An Embarrassment/ Legalize It

Hat Tip: Nashville Files

What has happened to the party of Milton Friedman, and the party of William F. Buckley? The same big government Republican who gave us that awful Orwellian piece of legislation called the Real ID Act, has now decided to try and push through an even more bizarre piece of legislation that will make it a crime not to snitch on someone who is violating a drug law. Of course Congress is currently in the process of meddling into the drug testing policies of professional sports, who last time I checked were not owned by Uncle Sam. It is quite apparent that Congress is out of control.

Sensenbrenner wants to punish people who do not report a drug crime with a jail term of at least two years. Has he been to a prison lately? If so, he would have seen an overcrowded mess full of nonviolent drug offenders. So I guess he wants to make it even more overcrowded in the penitentiary? With more people in prisons, you can expect more taxes to pay for their detainment. So this is what we sent Republicans to Washington for?

If I see someone smoking crack or smoking a joint, I am not going to report it because I could care less what people do with their money. The idea of criminalizing the act of destroying oneself is idiocy in my opinion. Can someone please tell me why we are still spending federal, state, and local dollars on this so called war on drugs? Just like poverty has won the war on poverty, drugs appear to have won the war on drugs. It doesn't make any sense to incarcerate someone for getting high. Think about all of the people walking around who have used an illegal substance at some time in their life. Imagine how many convicted felons we would have in this country if everyone who had tried drugs like cocaine (including George Bush) had also been caught and arrested.

One of my conservative heroes is William F. Buckley. One of the best issues of National Review was an issue devoted to the cause of drug legalization. In that 1996 publication, Buckley cited the following statistics: 75 billion dollars worth of public money is spent on the "war on drugs", and this problem is responsible for 50 percent of the people in jail. He also pointed out how there seems to be no remedy to this plague. That was written in 1996. I don't have today's statistics, but I can promise you that nine more years of us waging the war on drugs have not improved the situation. In fact, I am quite confident that the problem is much worse.

Another one of my conservative heroes, and the man who provides the basis for my ideas on economic freedom, is Milton Friedman. In an open letter written to former Drug Czar William Bennett in 1989, Milton Friedman correctly stated, "The path you propose of more police, of more jails, use of the military in foreign countries, harsh penalties for drug users, and a whole panoply of repressive measures can only make a bad situation worse. The drug war cannot be won by those tactics without undermining the human liberty and individual freedom that you and I cherish." Friedman wrote those words in 1989. Fast forward to 2005 and you will see that he was absolutely correct. All of that restriction on freedom and incarceration of people who make bad choices has not helped the problem, it has only made it worse. Once again, it sounds like big government has had the same success in the war on drugs as it has had in the war on poverty.

We Americans need to re-think our approach to the problem of drug abuse. Do we really want our sons and daughters locked up for making bad choices? Why can we not leave people alone and let them do what they want to? The last thing we need is legislation that forces people to report a crime which is already an infringement on personal liberty. I am really disappointed with the so-called conservatives that we worked so hard to send to Washington. Call me a wacko-libertarian, but our current Congress just doesn't seem that conservative to me.

This Christian Says No To Funding Faith Based Groups

I can't help but laugh every time the liberal media calls George Bush the most conservative president ever. George Bush is not a conservative. He is a neo-conservative, which basically is just a bizarro world liberal. You see George Bush does not believe in the old Reagan saying "that government is not the solution, government is the problem." He actually agrees with the liberals on the role of the federal government in solving the nations problems. The only difference is he disagrees with their methods. It is like the liberals are finally getting a taste of their own big government medicine. Bush is right in discontinuing those useless Great Society programs that congress consistently threw money at for the last 40 years. He is also right to point out that the only groups who have had any success at helping people have been faith based groups. However he is wrong to try and give government money to those groups. Not only is it wrong from the perspective of where government money should be spent, but it is also bad for the potential recipients of these funds. You see a government handout is a means of government control. Uncle Sam gets you dependent on his money and then he ends up telling you some things that he would like to see you do differently. You may resist his suggestions, but if you don't go along with what he wants, you can kiss that money you have become dependent on goodbye. A prime example is federal highway money and the way the federal government has manipulated states laws with the threat of taking that money away. As a Christian, I would not want my organization taking money from the federal government. No, I still like freedom and I certainly don't want the federal government telling me that I can't teach something as simple and true as "the only way to the Father is through Jesus Christ." The Faith Based Initiative was and still is a terrible idea. Didn't we send a Republican to Washington to stop the growth of government?

Walter Williams Knows How Not To Be Poor

Sometimes the answers to the problems of society are way to simple for liberals to figure out. Think about the "Great Society" or the "War on Poverty" that effectively created a class of poor people in this country and a natural constituency for the Democratic Party. Here we are, billions of dollars after we delcared war on poverty and it appears that poverty has won. Maybe some of these bleeding heart liberals who enjoy taxing people that work so that they can give that money to people who do not, should listen to Professor Walter Williams. Here are some of his suggestions about how not to be poor:

"Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior. If you graduate from high school today with a B or C average, in most places in our country there's a low-cost or financially assisted post-high-school education program available to increase your skills."

He goes on to shoot down the old "I can't make it because I am black" bunch of BS with these statements:

"How much does racial discrimination explain? So far as black poverty is concerned, I'd say little or nothing, which is not to say that every vestige of racial discrimination has been eliminated. But let's pose a few questions. Is it racial discrimination that stops black students from studying and completing high school? Is it racial discrimination that's responsible for the 68 percent illegitimacy rate among blacks? The 1999 Bureau of Census report might raise another racial discrimination question. Among black households that included a married couple, over 50 percent were middle class earning above $50,000, and 26 percent earned more than $75,000. How in the world did these black families manage not to be poor? Did America's racists cut them some slack?"

America is a lovely place and while there is still racism in this country, there is much more opportunity for people of all races than there has ever been. If Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton really cared about black people, they would echo what Williams says. Sadly though, most people who consider themselves black leaders, are not leaders at all. A leader tells his audience something that they do not want to hear, but need to hear. A demagogue is quite different. That person just stirs up the crowd with a bunch of rhetoric which helps nobody but themselves. Jesse and Al are a couple of demagogues and as long as their message is being heard, the illegitimacy rate and the unemployment rate in the black community will always be high. As long as black people are convinced that society owes them something, they will never have anything. Some of you may be reading this and saying "I can't believe he went there." I realize that some of you make take offense at a white boy speaking on this issue, but it is the truth and it is about time somebody had the courage to speak it.

Hat tip: Q and O Blog

Colored, Black, African-American. It's Hard To Keep Up With The PC Police These Days

While recently reading an article about the first black president, William Jefferson Clinton, I became a little bugged by his usage of the term, African-American. I thought to myself, if Bill Clinton is the first black president and we are now supposed to call black people African-American, why do we not call Clinton the first African-American president? Blacks in this country have undergone a number of name changes over the years. Most of the old photographs and video of the segregated south show signs with the words "whites only" and "colored" written on them. Now that really did not make sense. Colored could have meant anything. Of course we all know that colored meant black, but it still seemed like a stupid label. Later on, it became acceptable to use the term black to describe someone of African descent. Although it is not politically correct today to call someone black, most black people are alright with it. In fact, they are quite proud to be black. But where did the term African-American come from, and when did it become politically correct to hyphenate someone who is a natural born American citizen? I can understand why a first generation African immigrant would call himself African-American, but it just seems wrong to hyphenate a group of people who were born in this country and are as equal in it as anybody else. What is so odd, is that many black people in America are not even 50% African descent. Although I am one quarter Italian, you would not call me Italian-American would you? Yet you would call the very European looking Vanessa Williams, African American. And what about Tiger Woods? Why does he still get to be called African-American? Wouldn’t it be just as correct to label him an Asian American?

The term Native-American is another one that doesn’t make sense to me. Is not everyone who was born in the North American continent a Native American? That would also make Tiger Woods a Native American, in addition to being an African-American and an Asian-American. You say that the term Native American is reserved to those who belong to the tribes that inhabited this land before the evil Europeans came along, but are those people actually native to this continent? Did their ancestors not cross the Bering Straight a few thousand years ago?

Forgive me for all of this foolishness, but it just seems silly that we have to label people like we do. Why don’t we just end all of this nonsense and stop using all of these labels? America is most definitely a melting pot. Regardless of what skin color you are, or where your parents came from, we are all equally American. I love the story of how Bear Bryant used USC running back Sam Cunningham to integrate Southeastern football. After Cunningham had run all over Bama’s “skinny white boys”, the Bear brought Cunningham into the Alabama locker room and said, “this is a football player”. He didn’t say, “This is a really good black football player”. He said, “This is a football player”. Later in the 70’s, when Bryant's team was fully integrated, a sportswriter asked him how many black players he had on the team. The Bear said, “ We don’t have any black players, we only have football players”. Why can’t we just call people American? I still think everyone should be proud of their culture and try to preserve it to a certain extent, but in the end, we are all American, regardless of race or culture. I am sorry, but you will never hear me identify an American with a hyphen. I will just stick to terms like black, white, and American. I guess that makes me politically incorrect. Oh well.

This Weeks Quote - Happy Mothers Day, Mama

"A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts." - Washington Irving (1783-1859)

That quote really sums up the kind of mother I have. Regardless of what I have done or the mistakes I have made, my mother has always been there for me. My father died when I was ten and my mother did the very best she could to raise me, but to quote Merle Haggard, "in spite of all my Sunday learning, toward the bad I kept on turning".
She loved me through it all though and she spent many nights on her knees crying out to God, not knowing if I was ever going to come home or not. My wife just became a mother about three months ago and I have told her many times that there is no title on earth more esteemed than the title of Mother. I believe that too. That is because I had such a good mother. I love you, Mama. Thank you.

My son Frank and I 

What Did the Founders Say About Religion? They Have Their Quotes, I Have Mine

For all of you who read this post yesterday and disagreed, please read this and this. Here are a few excerpts.

Signer of the Constitution, James Wilson: Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and the moral sense, forms an essential part of both.

Original Chief-Justice U. S. Supreme Court, An Author of the Federalist Papers, John Jay. [It is] the duty of all wise, free, and virtuous governments to countenance and encourage virtue and religion.

President Thomas Jefferson: No nation has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example.

Signer of the Constitution, Abraham Baldwin: free government. . . . can only be happy when the public principle and opinions are properly directed. . . . by religion and education. It should therefore be among the first objects of those who wish well to the national prosperity to encourage and support the principles of religion and morality.

Founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn: [I]t is impossible that any people of government should ever prosper, where men render not unto God, that which is God's, as well as to Caesar, that which is Caesar's.

Signer of the Declaration of Independence and President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson: I concur with the author in considering the moral precepts of Jesus as more pure, correct, and sublime than those of ancient philosophers.

John Adams: [I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.

Signer of Declaration of Independence, Governor of Massachusetts, John Hancock: Sensible of the importance of Christian piety and virtue to the order and happiness of a state, I cannot but earnestly commend to you every measure for their support and encouragement. . . . [T]he very existence of the republics . . . depend much upon the public institutions of religion.

Here are a couple more for your reading pleasure.

• The first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, declared: "Americans should select, and prefer, Christians as their rulers."

• Patrick Henry, one of the Founding Fathers, said: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly, or too often, that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

• James Madison, the fourth president, made the following statement: We have staked the whole of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

Churchill Is A Nut But...............

Lately, the blogs have really been piling it on about the nutty professor in Colorado, Ward Churchill and his despicable remarks. I have purposely stayed away from this discussion. While the statements themselves appall me just like they do everyone else, I was a little torn over what should be done about this anti-American academic. There is no doubt that the first amendment protects his right to say whatever crazy and hateful things he wants to without being arrested. However, as Newt Gingrich points out, that does not mean that the state of Colorado has to pay him for his left wing hatred. Still, I do not think it would be prudent to start firing professors for making political statements, no matter how bizarre they seem to be. It just sets a bad precedent. I believe in freedom of thoughts and ideas, no matter how crazy they are. What would we say if the left were trying to get a professor fired for saying nice things about the Confederacy? What if they tried to get Glenn Reynolds fired for what he posts on his web log? It may sound like a lopsided comparison but we have to apply the same principles for everyone. We must be consistent in all matters related to our freedom. I was really shocked that the French banned religious head scarves last year. The idea of the EU banning Nazi symbols is also shocking to most Americans, although we despise German fascism. In America, we do not quiet those we disagree with. It is not our custom. No matter how much we despise the message, America has always protected the messenger. So we have to let this guy keep talking, even though we would like to take him out to the woodshed and give him a good old whipping. One thing that I have always wondered about guys like Churchill, Noam Chomsky, and all of the other people who think America is evil and Americans are bad, is why they continue to live here. These guys hate us just like Castro hates us, yet they still choose to live in the United States. It just seems that if America was so bad, they would leave. Maybe, they could go to some workers paradise like Cuba or maybe China.

Abortion Is Black Genocide

Over the past few weeks I have used my blog to rant about the "unholy alliance" between black religious and political leaders and the pro-abortion, pro-ACLU (anti-Christian-liberal-union), poverty pimping Democratic Party. Of course, any discussion of these self-serving charlatans who care nothing about improving the lives of black Americans must always include the Reverend Jesse "Shakedown" Jackson. What is most "unholy" is Jackson's support of the genocide of millions of black children born in the United States every year. There was a time however, that Jackson was actually on the right side of this issue. Jackson once made the statement, "Abortion is black genocide, What happens to the mind of a person and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience?" Obviously, taking that position did not work out for him very well financially or politically because as we all know he now supports the unlimited murder of millions of black children every year. CNSNews.com has an outstanding article on this subject. The statistics are startling. For every five black American women who get pregnant, three get an abortion. The poverty pimps who have anointed themselves leaders in the black community should be ashamed of themselves.

Now Their Even Playing The Race Card In Social Security Fight.

Democrats love to go on television and speak about Republican fear tactics while the very survival of their party is dependent on scaring people. They scare old people, they scare black people, and they scare all lower income people with class warfare. Although they have already had enormous success scaring old people in regards to the Bush Social Security reform plan, they have still found it necessary to now scare black people. Yes, they have somehow figured out a way to play the race card on this issue. I know it seems ridiculous but private accounts are a racist idea. At least that is what the Congressional Black caucus says. What will they come up with next? I am sure that reforming the tax system is also racist. Also the war on terror, it has got to be racist. Is tort reform racist? Probably so according to the liberals in Congress who call themselves the Congressional Black caucus. When is somebody in a position of authority going to stand up to these "poverty pimps", whose very existence depends on fear?

my wife and I 

the falls 

My beautiful wife and I