Apply The Abraham Lincoln Rule
Filed under: Courts, Elections, Health Care, Immigration, International Reflections, International War, National Party Politics, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism, U.S. Economics, Unions, United States at War
When it comes to beating Obama in the 2012 presidential election Republican candidates should apply the Abraham Lincoln rule: Give up every single argument of your opponent with which you agree and beat him up mercilessly on those with which you disagree.
I realize that it is difficult for a Republican candidate to agree with President Obama on anything but the truth is there is an area of agreement which no Republican candidate can deny. When it comes to national security President Obama has adopted the George W. Bush doctrine and then some. He refuses to abandon the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq recognizing their strategic national security value by placing American boots on the necks of al-Queda operatives located throughout the Middle East. American military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq provides our armed forces the ability to fix the enemy while we kill their leadership by Special Forces or drone attacks. The killing of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki are recent examples of this successful strategy. President Obama has kept open the prison at Guantanamo and treats its prisoners as enemy combatants and therefore will try them in military tribunals. He has signed an even stronger amended Patriot Act. And the Justice Department has kept the heat on domestic terrorist organizations. In effect the Obama administration gets an A+ on National Security.
By recognizing this fact and thereby applying the Abraham Lincoln rule, a Republican presidential candidate will have a clear field to beat the hell out of the Obama administration for its oversized and systematic failures in matters economic, energy, environmental and everything else it has deemed to touch.
Bewitched by Caylee Anthony
The trial of Casey Anthony is now behind us and Americans can take pride in a criminal justice system that seeks justice for the accused and not the victim.
For the last three years Americans have been riveted upon the unusual disappearance and death of a 3 year old child, Caylee Anthony. Suspicion by the police was immediately focused upon her mother, Casey Anthony. During Caylee’s disappearance but before Caylee’s body was discovered Casey Anthony went out partying. When interrogated by the police she revealed herself to be an inveterate liar that rose what at first was a suspicion to the level of a murderer. She was indicted and was tried for 1st degree murder. After a lengthy trial Casey Anthony was acquitted on the charges of murder, manslaughter, and aggravated child abuse, but found guilty of lying to police. She was sentenced to 4 years in jail but will be released on July 13th for time served and good behavior. Too many Americans are shocked and outraged at this outcome. Caylee was in the custody of her mother immediately before her disappearance and death. There is no evidence of her being kidnapped. Americans strongly suspect that the answer to Caylee’s disappearance and death is known by Casey Anthony. But the American system of criminal justice requires more than suspicion, more than clear and convincing evidence to find that a person has committed a crime. It requires a conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt which the prosecutor was unable to deliver to the jury. The American system of criminal justice is based on the theory that it is better to allow the guilty to go free than the innocent to be found guilty. We are not a retributive society. And instead of outrage expressed by some as to the result of this case most Americans understand that our laws and particularly our criminal laws are good and just.
You Can’t Remember, We Can’t Forget.
Filed under: Courts, International Reflections, International War, Presidential Watch, United States at War
The case of Sirhan Sirhan, Robert F. Kennedy’s convicted assassin, will be presented to a California parole board. Sirhan says he can’t remember a thing. The nation can’t seem to forget.
Robert F. Kennedy, former Attorney General serving under the administration of his brother President John Kennedy, and while running for president of the U.S. was fatally shot 43 years ago by Sirhan Sirhan. Sirhan was a Christian Palestinian, illegal alien, who blurted out when arrested at the scene of the attack “I did it for my country.” He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. The State of California allows for parole even for those serving life sentences. One of the standards for parole in California is that the applicant has accepted responsibility for the crime he committed and expresses adequate remorse. If you can’t remember doing the crime it’s fairly impossible to do either. So it’s pretty cut and dry that Sirhan will remain in prison until his death.
Forty-three years ago we were fighting the Vietnam War and it was tearing the country apart. Kennedy was running in the Democratic primary against the then sitting President Lyndon B. Johnson who started the war and continued to support it even while most Americans concluded that it was a lost cause. By 1968, the year Kennedy was shot, 3 years after the war began approximately 20,000 soldiers had already been killed. There was hardly a speech during the primary campaign that Kennedy didn’t demand that America get the hell out that war and right now. On June 4, 1968 having won the presidential primary in California against President Johnson and while leaving the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles where his last challenging words in his victory speech were “And now on to Chicago!” he was assassinated.
Today we are left with the consequences of that brutal attack: By the end of the war in 1975 the American people believed and believe even to this day that America lost that war and that the additional 37,000 soldiers who died, died for no reason whatsoever. It was a war from which America never quite recovered and is reflected in the hesitancy of every single president since then, including President Obama, in sending our troops abroad to defend our sovereignty and national security even when we have been overwhelming attacked on our own shores or threatened militarily by tin horn dictators. Sirhan, an illegal alien, voted with his pistol in behalf of millions of Americans. Today 43 years later Sirhan Sirhan cannot remember a thing about that fateful day. But we Americans do and hang our heads in deep, unbearable and disconsolate sadness.
The Rights Of Egyptians And Americans
Filed under: Courts, Elections, Health Care, International Reflections, National Party Politics, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary
It is a tale of two countries. While the institutions of one country are incapable of addressing the pressing demands of its people for freedom, the institutions of another are so strong that one Federal judge in some remote part of the country has the power to overturn the most comprehensive and consequential legislation passed by Congress in nearly a century.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
Today perhaps as many as a million people will peacefully converge in Cairo, Egypt to demand that its president resign from office because he has abused his power. The president has remained in office under an emergency decree, which he established, for 30 years which removed the power of the institution of the judiciary, among others, established to protect the people from his abuse.
Yesterday, in this country, a Federal judge found in favor of 26 states that the Federal government abused its power by demanding that the people shall forever be mandated to purchase health insurance in clear violation of our Constitution. Because our institutions are so strong there is little need for the people to enter into the streets. However they do just that, every once in while I suppose just to show that they can. Not only are we blessed with strong institutions but we trust them to carry out what all Americans have agreed to abide by and with respect to our representatives to uphold, the Constitution of the United States.. Notwithstanding that Americans generally agree that our federal government is one of limited, enumerated powers – there are those that seem to hold that there are no limits at all on what the federal government can do as long as it is justified on some alleged humanitarian basis. Our president, President Obama is clearly one these people.
As our televisions and internet announce to us the struggle of a people nearly half a world away to free themselves of an oppressive and autocratic tyrant here in this country the people struggle to make certain that our government remains in our control, restricted by our institutions, and yes even if the President of the United States disagrees with us. Our Constitution does not begin with the words, “I, the President of the United States…” but rather with “We the People of the United States.” And so shall it be.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
How Well Do You Know The U.S. Constitution?
Filed under: Courts, Local Party Politics, National Party Politics, Social Commentary
So, during her last debate, Christine O’Donnell, Republican candidate for Senate in the State of Delaware blurted out in response to a question, “Where in the Constitution does is say ‘separation of church and state’?” and Progressives all over the country started laughing. Well, boys and girls, where in the Constitution does it say “separation of church and state?” It doesn’t.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
For Progressives the U.S. Constitution has always been an impediment to their stated principals: a large and overarching government which provides numerous social benefits at the expense of individual liberty. That’s what the current election is all about and why the Tea Party movement, which supports limited government, fiscal conservatism and individual liberty has acquired such an influence over its outcome. So for Progressives to react risibly to Ms. O’Donnell’s statement about the Constitution, a document which they consider seriously flawed is truly ironic.
Unlike our President, I am not a professor of Constitutional Law. But I am an American and I take the reading of the U.S. Constitution very seriously. If Ms. O’Donnell asked rather, “Where in the Constitution does it say ‘freedom of speech’ or ‘the right [to] peaceably assemble’ or ‘the right [to] bear arms’” I would be forced to join the Progressives in their criticism. However I wouldn’t be laughing, I would be concerned that a Tea Party candidate didn’t know some fundamental facts about our beloved Constitution.
But there is nothing in our Constitution that refers to the separation of church and state. That concept is one that the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted into the First Amendment of the Constitution in 1878 in Reynolds v. U.S. almost 90 years after the Constitution was ratified by the States. In that case the court adopted the phrase, “separation of church and state” upon referring to a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists in 1802 wherein he stated that the establishment clause and the free exercise clause as found in the First Amendment which refer to religion build “a wall of separation between church and state.” The U.S. Supreme Court has been visiting this matter ever since even as recently as 2002 when it addressed the question of the Pledge of Allegiance. So Ms. O’Donnell is not technically right she is absolutely right And as for the Progressives they should stay out of subject for which they have little if any credibility.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
Restrained Judicial Role, What Roger Thinks of Obama’s New Justice Appointee
Filed under: Courts, National Party Politics, Presidential Watch
Obama’s new Supreme Court Justice appointee will support a restrained judicial role in War and National security or there will be a miserable two more years for President Obama.
War and National Security should be the only test that Obama need apply when choosing a Supreme Court nominee.
I look forward to your comments below.
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