For a wonder, we have a politician who is finally standing up for God, and the Christian heritage of this nation.

Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kerns (State District 84) is sponsoring the following proclamation, reproduced from Jonathan Turley’s (www.jonathanturley.org) web site:

WHEREAS, we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis; and

WHEREAS, this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery; and

WHEREAS, alarmed that the Government of the United States of America is forsaking
the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built; and

WHEREAS, grieved that the Office of the president of these United States has refused
to uphold the long held tradition of past presidents in giving recognition to our National Day of Prayer; and

WHEREAS, deeply disturbed that the Office of the president of these United States
disregards the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives by proclaiming an entire month to an immoral behavior;

OKLAHOMA CITIZEN’S PROCLAMATION FOR MORALITY

We the People of Oklahoma, Invoking the guidance of Almighty God, in order to secure and perpetuate the blessing of Liberty; to secure just and rightful Government; to promote our mutual Welfare and Happiness, do establish this proclamation and call upon the people of the great State of Oklahoma, and our fellow Patriots in these United States of America who look to the Lord for guidance, to acknowledge the need for a national awakening of righteousness in our land.

WHEREAS, “It is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand” (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by Religion and Morality” (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, “Our Constitution was made only for a Moral and Religious people” (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government…but upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God” (James Madison); and

WHEREAS, “Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God (Benjamin Franklin); and

WHEREAS, “God who gave us life gave us liberty and can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God” (Thomas Jefferson); and

WHEREAS, “Whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of Religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state” (Joseph Story); and

WHEREAS, “We hold sacred the rights of conscience, and promise to the people…the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion” (Roger Sherman); and

WHEREAS, “This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians” (Patrick Henry); and

WHEREAS, “When you…exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed upon your mind that God commands you to choose just men who will rule in the fear of God” (Noah Webster); and

WHEREAS, “The principles of genuine Liberty and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible” (Noah Webster); and

WHEREAS, the people of Oklahoma have a strong tradition of reliance upon the Creator of the Universe; and thought secure when we have removed

WHEREAS, we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis; and

WHEREAS, this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery; and

WHEREAS, alarmed that the Government of the United States of America is forsaking the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built; and

WHEREAS, grieved that the Office of the president of these United States has refused to uphold the long held tradition of past presidents in giving recognition to our National Day of Prayer; and

WHEREAS, deeply disturbed that the Office of the president of these United States disregards the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives by proclaiming an entire month to an immoral behavior;

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we the undersigned elected officials of the people of Oklahoma, religious leaders and citizens of the State of Oklahoma, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, solemnly declare that the HOPE of the great State of Oklahoma and of these United States, rests upon the Principles of Religion and Morality as put forth in the HOLY BIBLE; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, believers in the One True God and His only Son, call upon all to join with us in recognizing that “Blessed is the Nation whose God is the Lord,” and humbly implore all who love Truth and Virtue to live above reproach in the sight of God and man with a firm reliance on the leadership and protection of Almighty God; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, humbly call upon Holy God, our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment, and grant a national awakening of righteousness and Christian renewal as we repent of our great sin.

Signed on the second day of July in the year of our Lord Christ Two Thousand and Nine.

Amen, and amen… may God bless Ms. Kern and her household, along with those brave legislators who have stood up for what is right in the sight of our Living and True God.

Like so many other Wars on Some Institutional Evil declared in the past by governments that may have meant well… Mexico’ War on Drugs seems to be taking a turn for the worse.

According to this article from a series by the LA Times (not my normal choice of reading materials, mind you) it seems that the wealth and power that these thugs and smugglers trafficking narcotics and humans (illegal immigrants, or the more clinical-sounding and multi-culturally sensitive “undocumented workers”) over our very porous borders.

There are two things I would like to point out to our high-minded liberal friends who are so quick to point out that we are to blame - with such worrisome sounding statistics that upwards of 90% of weapons used by Mexican drug cartels are imported (illegally, of course) from the US.

First, while we do share some measure of guilt for consuming the nefarious products (primarily heroin and marijuana, among other drugs), and while regrettably, there is a trade amongst gun-runners for weapons.

A caveat: I’d venture to say that this is largely in the form of handguns, as automatic and semi-automatic US-manufactured long weapons such as Colt AR-15s and heavier caliber police weapons that fire .308 munitions tend to be much more expensive, and require harder to source ammunition.

.308 and 30.06 rifle rounds, and .50cal for sniper-grade weapons tend to be much more expensive and less ubiquitous than .762mm ammo, and the plentitude of cheaper, mass produced rifles that use it such as Chinese knock-offs of Russian AK-47 and SKS rifles which can be had at a 10th of the cost of a US military grade weapon, and certainly cheaper than high-end H&K or Steyr assault rifles.

Now this is not to say that these knock-off weapons aren’t sourced in the USA, but rather, to imply that these weapons present such a danger (concerning what could rightfully be considered an insurgency or an insurrection in another sovereign nation) that liberals would choose to enact even *more* Orwellian “gun control” laws is a fallacy. That is, law-abiding citizens should not be impeded from the liberty to buy, sell, and trade firearms and munitions nor should their Constitutional rights per the 2nd Amendment as recently supported by the DC v. Heller case be abridged because some criminals choose to traffic in these weapons.

The criminals themselves, should be caught, disarmed, and upon conviction in a court with due process be incarcerated - and hopefully, should we ever gain the courage to do so, enact laws that do not PUNISH the law-abiding gun-owners of our nation, but rather, to enact such severe punishments to include the death penalty for any such crime aggravated by use of deadly force (particularly in the case where the guilty has already built up a record of gun crimes or violent crime).

The other item that bears mentioning is that the nature of the Mexican drug war - concerning which there is (very much belated) discussion of deploying National Guard or possibly even active-duty regular Army on the border to combat incursions by Mexican (drug/human traffickers) into US territory.

Gentle readers, when we get to that point - when the regular police forces and the Mexican Army itself are taking casualties (over 7,500) in ONE year that make the body count for our invasion and occupation of Iraq for past eight years pale by comparison… when the weapons of choice for these drug warlords and kingpins are grenade launchers and anti-tank missiles… we have gone well beyond some gang of gun-runners selling cheap SKS-clones out of the back of a Ford Van, and have graduated to what are in fact REAL assault weapons: weapons meant for armed forces to actually engage in heavy assaults against fortified emplacements - in this case, police stations and paramilitary units.

What should our next steps be? Why not recall the military home to its true and originally constituted purpose - to suppress insurrection and repel foreign invasion: in this case, the invasion of Mexican traffickers across our southern borders - and sealing that long border with whatever means - even if it means regular Army patrols with helicopters and UAV assets with “shoot-first, ask later” rules of engagement.

I think the narco-gangs might think twice about bringing their war across our borders if it meant certain death, or at least a substantial barrier to their continued operational fitness.

The other step might be unthinkable, to a generation reared under the watchful eye of Mrs. Nancy Regan’s admonitions to “Say No to Drugs”, the motherly face of yet another failing War Against Some Social Evil (the War on Drugs).

Anything that involves the appointment of a titular “Czar” (in this case, the so-called “drug czar”) is an indicator of a bad thing - where the last real Imperial Czar - translatable from the Latin”Caesar” were the Romanovs of Russia, who along with most of his family had a most unhappy meeting with a few Bolshevik bullets more than 90 years ago. I’d say that would show that use of a title to be quite inauspicious.

That is all to say, that perhaps we should consider repealing the prohibition styled laws against certain “recreational” narcotics, while at the same time putting together a highly regulated and tax-revenue generating stream much like is already in place for the sale of alcohol, as well as making health insurance options reward those individuals who choose the better option of keeping their bodies away from the will abuse of destructive substances.

Such a *gasp* libertarian alternative just might staunch the flow of weapons, drugs, illegal migrants, and bloodshed on both sides of the border.

h/t to Dan Riehl and Moxie.nu for the original links…

The Centre for American Progress has a new quiz up to measure how progressive (read: liberal) or conservative you just might be. It scales 40 questions from 0 (vehement disagreement) to 10 (profound agreement) with more than a few “loaded” questions, and one or two that made completely no sense.*

I scored 97/400, with the median at that time of respondents falling near the middle at 209.5% at the time I took the quiz.

Apparently I’m an ultraconservative, though I did answer a number of questions targeted toward a neo-conservative view (particular those touching on military adventurism/interventionism) with a paleo-conservative non-interventionist attitude.

I have long suspected that the emergence of the Neo-Conservative dominance (NeoCons) in Republican politics was a device to supplant what had been the Old Right traditions of liberty, limited government, and non-interventionism, with the vain and expensive pains and punishments of the police state, overreached government, and global adventurism in the name of empire - the acquisition of client states by whose acquiescence is also gained with a bitter hatred for the conqueror.

What is troublesome, and what many people do not see for what it is, instead, claiming it to be all a part of an “inevitable and gradual shift of the American public to the left” as some pundits claim, but rather a subtle bait-and-switch: as many (but certainly not all) Neo-conservatives have had a history of being leftists and liberals in their now and increasingly distant youth who have embraced the grand statist designs and interventionism of their liberal ancestors (Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Truman to name a few) .

There is a saying among some of us Paleo-conservatives that the we did not leave the Republican Party mainstream, but that the Party has left - and moved to the left - of us. This is proving to be a truism, in that as the “new right” of the 1960s grew out of the decisive split between the decidedly liberal Rockefeller “country club” Republicans (most of whom came from the Northeastern “Yankee” states) and those who followed Barry Goldwater, as well as the Old Right that had decried the New Deal as something wrought by the Devil himself.

History bears that the Old Right had fallen out of favour, as much shown the door as the John Birchers and the last of the America Firsters had been when William F. Buckley, Jr., had drummed them out of the Party Faithful.

Actually, we have been here all along, waiting for history and wisdom to vindicate their children; yet, I am as yet uncertain what shall be left to us if the GOP, or at least, those left among the American people who want a strong America without mixture in socialism and its sovereignty irretrievably broken.

The line between the Rockefellerites (now better known by the perjorative “RiNOs”, or “Republicans in Name Only” and those who had followed in the van of Goldwater, particularly Ronald Reagan, came to be blurred (much to Goldwater’s later chagrin) as Reagan (a former Truman Democrat) and his “70% compromise” became the rule of the day to unite the Party, and win those undecided independent voters and marginally conservative Southern Democrats (formerly Dixiecrats among them).

This “70% principle” was based on the idea that where the interests of the divergent factions of the GOP meshed (from Reagan’s point of view particularly - strong national defense, opposition to Soviet Communism, and certain allowances for larger government) , the party would benefit from this compromise. Reagan’s victories with this coalition of the conservatives both old and new, and North (moderates and liberals) and South (social conservatives and the “religious right”) and West (libertarians and small government proponents) was a smashing success in 1980, along with other elements contributing to his victory.

As successful as the Reagan Coalition was throughout the 1980s, it gave rise to an otherwise increasingly left-leaning GOP leadership, specifically, the NeoCons - as the former Rockefellerites merged with the Goldwater/Reagan wing of the party, we see the rise of the Bush Dynasty, and along with it, the Republican Revolution of 1994 which brought in many who empathized with the promise of a new American Empire whilst claiming to want to reduce and not repeat the mistakes of the previous Democratic incumbents who they had replaced.

Instead of reducing and repealing the mistakes of Clinton - especially his international adventurism to spread “democracy” at gunpoint, the GOP became a plaything of the Neocons and the PNAC - the “Project for a New American Century” whose goal was to remake the world in America’s image, as well as secure America’s place at the head of the world table.

China, Russia, and India. along with the European Union might - and have received such grandiose notions as the effrontery that it is; in large measure, it has cost us that very place in the court of world opinion that the NeoCons desire to take by force and by manipulation of market forces.

Today’s NeoCons may well have fallen far short of Goldwater’s standard through its excessive accommodations of liberal ideals of big-government statism and interventionism, and worse, may be all but a ruse from the left (of we may hold the NeoCons’ origins as 1960s liberals against them) to play as political Bobbsey Twins as the Old Right is thought to be relegated to the role of a forgotten Danny Rugg - once a scary figure of McCarthyism and conspiracy theories grown old into as a crazy old uncle to be forever locked up in the actic as a marginalized and laughable fool by the mainstream of the GOP…

In the 1964 election, Goldwater’s once said that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” If indeed PaleoCons are to be painted as marginalized contrarians who continually thumb our noses at the mainstream mess of moderated mediocrity that the (now left-wing) GOP has become — mired by similar if not the same traps as the farther left Democrats have long faced — then it is not without a small amount of displeasure that I should point out that the contest of left vs. far left will only drag this nation further into national malaise and international derision as long as we heel to the failed policies of Socialism and government forced social engineering

The relegation to the Old Right to the margins serves a purpose best described by one late Samuel Francis, who in his day was derided as something of a irregular man, and even accused of racism and antisemitism by his enemies. Regardless of his actual position on matters of race, he said one thing in particular that catches my interest, per the September 2003 article he wrote for Chronicles Magazine (not available online at this time) :

This silence about the paleocons was the result, in part, of the abysmal ignorance of the writers of most such articles but also of the hidden purpose that lurked beneath much of what they wrote. That purpose was not so much to “deconstruct” and “expose” the neocons as to define them as the real conservative opposition, the legitimate (though deplorable and vicious) “right” against which the polemics and political struggle of the left should be directed. The reason the left prefers the neocon “right” to a paleo alternative is, quite simply, that the neocons are essentially of the left themselves and, thus, provide a fake opposition against which the rest of the left can shadowbox and thereby perpetuate its own political and cultural hegemony unchallenged by any authentic right.

This sums up quite well the development of the “evil of the two lessers” we face every four years now at the ballots for some time.

A brilliant piece originally published in “The Life of Colonel David Crockett,” by Edward Sylvester Ellis, and currently quoted on Dr. Ron Paul’s campaign site.

I’ll repost it below in the hopes that some folks may understand why and how people should demand accountability of our elected representatives.

Click here to read (more…)

I can think of nothing more meaningful than this image that popped into my head (it went through several drafts though) to reflect the current slate of frontrunners for this year’s POTUS election:

Click to enlarge

Credit for the final version’s captions go to this FreeRepublic user who made this comparison:

Unfortunately, you’re probably right about McCain, meaning I have to revise my grouping of snakes to a copperhead (McCain), a cottonmouth (Obama),and a rattler (the Witch). McCain’s the copperhead because his bite gives no warning, will be painful and sickening, but probably won’t be lethal. Obama’s the cottonmouth because his bite gives no warning and can be lethal. The Witch is a rattler because she’s given plenty of warning and her bite can be lethal.

Well met, and that is about what we have to pick from this year as we watch the economy circle the drain.

First Off… I have to take a wee bit of umbrage at Doc Weasel over at his weasel blog (warning: strong sexual imagery may be present).

Of course, “taking umbrage”, and especially on these here interwebnettie-tubes… is about as useful as eating raw cabbage. It doesn’t taste particularly good, it comes out all stinky in the end, and nobody generally wants to hear (or smell) it.

But it is my umbrage to take, and with so few visitors here that I need not worry about impressing… take it I shall.

Doc seems to think that we should all just shut up and eat our humble pie as we get on board the lying, stinking malarkey-artist poo-choo train “Straight Talk Express McCain Train” since Mitt has suspended his campaign, and Mike Huckabee is… well, honestly, hopeless at this point. I wouldn’t support him as much as I do not want to support McCain* on his own merits.

And Ron Paul? Hasn’t got a chance at all, unless by some we see a miracle and a brokered convention triggered by Dr. Paul and Huckabee pulling off several hundred delegates, and/or conservative voters doing a massive NOTA/write-in ballots for other folks. (There is a very small fringe of FredHeads still writing him in or voting for him where he is on the ballot). As I said on a thread at Dan Riehl’s web blog, there is probably a better chance of Calvin Coolidge getting an early resurrection and getting drafted to run in the remaining primaries and winning than the above happening.

Since Mitt has only suspended his campaign (ordinarily a somewhat harmful move) and not withdrawn outright, he still has 270+ delegates pledged to him with which to bargain with just in case something weird does happen. It is really a hedge against a very unlikely event, and perhaps a hedge against McCain asking Huckabee to be his VP.

In effect, he has played this very intelligently, in that it makes Mitt look magnanimous for conceding what would have been a costly and probably very futile remaining contest - see figure below for my estimate of what could have been the result of Mitt, Huck, Dr. Paul, and McCain going on to the bitter end:

This would have been a very ugly bit of carnage, although by no means would it have been certain, as my estimates have weaknesses for a lack of some current polling data (post Super Tuesday with some polls as dated as mid-December) where it may not accurately reflect how post-Thompson and post-Giuiliani voters might have gone, and now, post-Mitt.

So Magnanimous Mitt - nice hair and all - gets to look good by “taking one for the team” and “letting the Anointed Establishment Insider have his turn at bat” in front of the CPAC elites and bloggers, and may be able to gain a seat as Secretary of Commerce or perhaps even VP (although IMHO, Mitt should turn that down and go for the RNC chairmanship). In this way, he can become an insider in his own right, and cement his turn in line.

Sadly, the RNC is subject to this sort of rigid observance of seniority, much to its own potential downfall. Without a solid conservative (VP is all we can hope for at this point) to draw in the base, we have a lite “diet” version of the Democratic Party, and if we make the mistake of playing Blue, we will get played, and played hard. And we will pay for it as Hillary (or the Obamination) doles out entitlements like a gang of drunks with keys to the liquor store. The CW on that goes that once the entitlement programs are doled out, it is awfully, painfully, masochistically difficult to undo them.

And with the “war” on, it doesn’t bode very well for our cause if we get trounced in November and (although the upshot is) the Old Angry Codger gets to take the fall. Also, with the Dems getting a shot at plowing us hard and fast into the ground, there is an off chance that come next term, we will be the hungry (nay, starving) outsiders playing for “change” (back to Reagan/Goldwater/Coolidge conservatism) come to save the sinking ship of state, to say nothing of gaining back some (R) seats in the House and…

…the Senate, although made notoriously harder to get than ever, thanks to Ol’ Grumpy’s contribution of McCain-Feingold which shuts up any challenging political speech against lifetime, entrenched incumbents.

Let us just hope that they aren’t as smart so as to run a program of gradualism (death by 1,000 cuts) to shift us so far to the left that by the time the Obamanation has run his course, that the GOP isn’t regarded as an antique curiosity like the Whigs, or like Pat Buchanan is viewed by GOP moderates today.

Coming back to Doc (and numerous other more mean-spirited folks gloating in the resurgent Liberal Rockefeller Wing of the GOP) giving us ultimatums of “this is how it is gonna be, pard’ner” and “suck it up”, etc. etc… Please. The game is pretty much over, and though I bristle at Johnny Mac telling (us conservatives who don’t really trust him after having been stuck in the eye repeatedly) glibly telling us to “calm down”…

Kindly go jump in the lake, thank you very much. Most of us are plenty calm although the acrimony level and general nastiness by both Mittwits, FredHeads, McCainiacs, Ronulans, and Huckabucks alike (does this count as alliteration?) did reach strospheric levels of pique by more than just a few devoted fans of their respective candidates.

We will get over it and go on toward better things, like making sure that the downticket GOP conservatives get our votes (even if McCain faces the possiblity of getting passed up for a suitably conservative third party protest vote). Trust me on this, those fringe third parties, like the US Constitution Party sure wouldn’t mind getting the love, if not a notion of electoral validity from conservatives for a change.

McCain’ll do better to put up or shut up by convincing us selecting an arch-conservative (preferably Southerner with proven credentials - did I plug Senator Jeff Sessions yet…?)

Because, lest we forget, it is awful hard to win against an antagonistic and hungry Northeast, Illinois and California voters with the Southrons’ support… and as Templar Knight or Wahoo Willlie (regulars over at Dan Riehl’s place) put it (paraphrased) - Southrons generally don’t have much use for “country club Yankees” (i.e. Rockefeller) Republicans.

Looking at my voting record over the past few years, it seems that my votes more often than not, determine who looses any given contest:

Let’s take a look:

1992: voted for Ross Perot because the man had a plan, and I wasn’t that crazy about any more of G.H.W.B.’s “thousand points of light” or “a new world order”. And Clinton blowing his horn on the Arsenio Hall Show didn’t do it for me as much as Perot’s flip charts. Man, Ross could do a flip chart show… but he lost, and also lost Bush’41 his incumbency to Clinton ‘42.

1996: No votes because I was overseas, and couldn’t get my hands on an absentee ballot for NY State in time for it to be counted. FWIW, I probably would have voted for Dole.

2000: I wanted to support Gary Bauer, but since NY was a late primary state, my ballot only had choices between two guys I generally disliked, and a third guy who the traction of greased eel. I voted for “Dubya” Bush over McCain, and again for the “nookyuler” Dubya again in the general. Ah, the joys of the GOP throwaway vote in deep, deep blue NY…

2002: I don’t recall how I voted in the midterms clearly, I think I supported the (R) ticket all the way down the list. Mostly local pols, although Sue Kelly (my CD representative in NY-19) also ran. 2002 was kind of a bad year for me, and politics wasn’t high on my mind at that time. On the other hand, I was high much of that year, so that might have had a clouding effect on my memory as well.

2004: Supported “Dubya” once again, because I had this notion that it was bad form to “change the war horse” during a nebulous, obfuscated and otherwise grinding war against a concept (although said concept was laden with very nasty results). I’ve never cared much for “concept wars” (such as LBJ’s “war on poverty”, Nancy Reagan’s “war on drugs”, the “war on illiteracy”, and most recently and enduring, the “global war on terrorism” or the GWOT) as these tend to be very open-ended and lead toward an open-ended expenditure of my tax money. But, our boys were (are still) in a foreign land fighting for freedom, and I am loathe to see their sacrifice be rewarded with nothing. I want to see them come home, and the threat of foreign terrorism suitably reduced for their effort.

2006: My fleeting flirtation with the liberal Democrats, as the Lord was shaking me up and waking me up to see that I needed salvation: I actually voted (D) for a few folks, including Gov. Spitzer (!!) and John Hall, who isn’t actually that bad of a guy, though a true leftie-liberal. In Hall’s case, I was sick of Sue Kelly’s tolerance of soft corruption and well… that’s meat for another post. In this case, I got what I voted for: an entrenched far-left NY state government, and a tight race that won a bunch of lefty (D) seats in NY congressional districts. This trend was repeated on a national scale, and we conservatives still rue it… and may be a hint to us thinking about spurning the “inevitable” Johnny Mac.

2008: Where we are now: Fred quit, Mitt has quit, and we are left now with the Backstabber, the False Prophet, and the Calvin Coolidge Retread (who I am coming to like in spite of my earlier charges of moonbattery and asininity). Heck, I can be wrong too, y’know. For now, I will support (post-electorally for me, unfortunately) Dr. Paul for the remainder of the pimary season, even though McCain pretty much has the nomination in the bag.

The only thing left is: can I support McCain in the general, despite my very acidic earlier criticisms and judgments of his record and his character?

On his own merits, I cannot support him, and if he fails to pick a suitably conservative running mate, I shall certainly vote for Dr. Paul if he runs as an independent, or a suitably conservative third party (US Constitution Party?) candidate as a protest vote.

I hope he picks Sen. Jeff Sessions or someone of similar standing and record.

McCain would do well to pick a strong southern conservative, so as to be sure to prevent that region from being picked up by the Democrats, and with Mitt’s magnanimous withdrawal from the race, the western states will likely turn out for him as well. I expect the talk radio magnates (Rush, Hannity, and etc.) to give him their full but conditional “we will be watching you very critically” backing.

It may appear that either my user account at RedState has been blocked (hopefully by some sort of machine glitch which will be corrected in short order)…

… or I have somehow managed to annoy one of the moderators enough that he or she lowered the banhammer on me.

Generally, the mods warn people once, maybe twice, and then “Blam” them (which means their account gets banned). And it’s usually pretty quick, as there is a large handful of mods, and it is not obvious to newer users who they are - as newer users might be inclined to further sass the mods after they’ve told the offending party to straighten up.

I’ve checked the last dozen or so posts I remember making over the past few days, and see no such warning from anyone with the “moderator tone of voice”.

Now I’ll grouse here a little, because if indeed I’ve been banned, I can’t see how. I realize that sites like RedState (hereinafter RS) and DailyKos tend to get some folks with moderator power who might treat things like the site is their private fiefdom … where in fact, it is to a certain extent. I know well about this, as I used to moderate a forum years ago and had to ban the occasional user who got out of hand.

So, I acknowledge this and try to play by the RS house rules of as best as I can, although I can see some instances where the banhammer gets dropped really fast…

A while back, a whole slew of people got banned (new accounts that had been created with six months of that ban were bulk-deleted) for trolling for Ron Paul.

Now, while I’ll admit that some RP supporters are either young or without a proper working knowledge of basic netiquette - thus resulting in the overcorrection done by RS.

The reaction does rub me a little wrong - but RS is privately owned, and people are allowed to participate there at the owners’ pleasure: i.e. you have no expectation of freedom of speech, because you are on private property. And some folks there are pretty blunt in telling you that if you don’t like that, then tough - go somewhere else.

Setting aside any possible partisan arguments for why someone may have lowered the boom on my account, let’s see if I broke the rules…

The RS rules are simple and few:

# No profanity.
# No personal attacks.
# No harassment or demonization of a particular individual.
# No disruptive behavior or off-topic remarks for their own sake.

There are a few other rules particular to the blogging engine (such as not self-recommending posts) and not spamming something across multiple blogs.

I may have self-recommended a post early on before I knew what that feature really was about, and having later seen that rule, have never attempted to do so since.

Now coming back to why I *think* I may have been banned (although I have not been yet informed that I have been banned yet from any RS authority)…

… I had been an ardent supporter of Fred Thompson during his run, and had advocated for him in a friendly way on RS.

Fred dropped out, as did several other conservative candidates I might have considered supporting sans Fred.

Coming up to the recent FL primary, the RS user community seems to have split into Romney and McCain camps, with the Management seeming to align moreso with the McCain camp.

Farbeit for me to presume that any particular mods were acting from bias, so I will try to review the general gist of my position on Romney vs. McCain on RS thus far:

I stated that I *will not* support McCain, neither in the primary nor in the general — even to the point of crossing party lines for the POTUS choice.

I stated that McCain will generally be expected to act in opposition to the conservative base of the GOP, whereas Romney - while liberal for my taste - is supportable because he wants to get re-elected in 2012, and will be more beholden to that base.

Never did I question his patriotism, nor his valour while in captivity — those facts are a matter of record that McCain conducted himself with utmost care as a prisoner of war.

But I do question his willingness to do things his own way, I question McCain-Feinberg, I question McCain-Kennedy (amnesty) I question McCain-Lieberman, and I question his choice to side with the Gang of 14.

I question his tendency towards statism, and his acerbic wit, and temperament to govern, much less compete in a race against a calculating liberal, and a silver-tongued orator both of whom will know how to press his buttons in a Presidential debate.

I do not dislike the man personally, but I abhor his politics, and believe with ever fibre of my being that he is the worst possible choice for POTUS…

…and should any mods from RS happen to read this, and decide to ban me for my opinions - then I very well have no control or further input into it. If that is the case that I can’t play in your bailiwick because we disagree - then I guess I really can’t be bitter about it.

But I am disappointed.

“My standard is Christ … I will have to answer to him alone.”

Note: This is the longer response to a post I made at Dan’s Reihl World View blog, where a commenter took issue with Dan’s observations about the possibility of Mr. Huckabee’s willingness to let his faith potentially overstep constitutional bounds (re: the Establishment Clause)

Can this really be such a bad thing?

At first glance, a Christian would certainly think not. But to the ardent self-appointed watchdogs of American state secularism (to whom “Freedom of Religion” has become “Extirpation of Religion”) as well as folks on the right who are leery of a certain candidate’s apparent “cloak of the Gospel” being used to pander to the Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christian wing of the GOP… it could well be a warning bell.
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