Is There A LAWYER in the House?

Like most of us who are getting older and feelng the effects of aging, I've come to realize that I am not the invulnerable superhero I've always believed myself to be. In my younger years I would have to be bleeding profusely from a gunshot or knife wound, or have a bone protruding through my skin to feel the need to see a Doctor. Now as I glide towards my golden years, I realize that the need to be able to seek quality health care is no longer the luxury it once was. Consequently I took it upon myself to make sure that I had health insurance so that when the inevitable aches and pains of later life set in, I would be covered. Little did I think at the time that it would be dealing with that selfsame health insurance company that would be the CAUSE of many headaches. This is because I, like so many others do, assumed the insurance company was my PARTNER in health, not the ADVERSAY to it that it turned out to be.

Insurance companies are private, profit-driven enterprises. This means they must take in more than they pay out in order to maintain profitability and thereby viability. In a market that is faced with a shrinking number of people paying premiums and ever-increasing health care costs, this has become a real existential battle for the survival of the industry. Every insurance company employs a battery of both lawyers and accounts because every decision on a claim is run through a model of risk/reward, cost/benefit analysis. To pay or not to pay, that is the question. If an insurance company opts NOT to pay a claim, there are risks inherent in that decision.

Most states have a state run insurance commission headed by a commisioner to help mediate conflicts between an insurance company and an insured over a disputed claim for coverage. If the insurance company can show legal or contractural cause for the denial of the claim, however slight, the insurance commissioner will usually side with the insurance company. Once it has done so, most states then allow for an insured to prosecute a case in civil court for breach of contract, bad faith refusal to pay a claim, or malfeasance against the insurer, but such claims are highly unlikely to succeed, and the lawyers and bean-counters of the insurance company know this. The out-of pocket costs to the insured to pursue these remedies is also often prohibitive, and the insurance company lawyers and accountants know this as well. Consequently, more and more claims are routinely being denied by insurance companies resulting in mounting health care costs to consumers, growing losses to doctors, and increases in fees for both medical services and insurance premiums in a vicious and self-perpetuating cycle. This is just one way lawyers, and to be fair, accountants are impacting health care costs. The other, and for more onerous way is in the area of tort law known as medical malpractice.

In the interests of full disclosure, let me state that I used to make my living as a paralegal and as such, I have worked for law firms that represented both Plaintiffs and Defendants in malpractice cases. I say this so you understand that I am not a layperson and that I have a foundation in both education and experience to support my hypotheses in this article, and that is what these are. That said, when I was a rookie paralegal fresh out of college I was working at my first firm in Los Angeles. This firm specialized in representing plaintiffs in tort cases, including medical malpractice. I remember going into the library to do a bit of research and finding a medical journal on the conference table. The journal was open to an article about the effect of medical malpractice lawsuits on the medical profession, and I remember reading a statistic that said something to the effect of "two out of every ten doctors practicing today can expect to see the inside of a courtroom in their professional lifetimes."

Cut to the future some thirteen years or so and you find me at the end of my paralegal career working for a defense firm in beautiful downtown Atlanta, and I'm looking at another medical journal article on the same subject. Only this time, the statistic reads more like "3 out of every 5 doctors in practice today will likely be sued for medical malpractice." That's an increase of 40% in less than fifteen years. What accounts for that dramatic increase in malpractice lawsuit filings in so short a time? I don't have the definitive answer to that, but I DO have a few ideas.

For one thing, when I first started in the professon, malpractice was a highly specialized area of tort law practiced only by the most successful and venerable of trial lawyers. These were the kinds of lawyers that drove the Mercedes and BMWs, wore the thousand dollar suits, carried the aircraft aluminum briefcases, and worked in highrise luxury office suites. It had to be that way because it was very expensive to successfully prosecute a malpractice case. Expert witnesses, jury consultants, etc were all very expensive and if you wanted to get the multi-million verdict, it cost a lot of money to prepare your case for trial. It was also hard to even get a case initiated because you had to have an affidavit from a doctor to attest that there was malpractice committed. This wasn't easy to come by since doctors used to abide by the old Reagan rule, "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican" or doctor, in this case.

After I moved to Atlanta and took the job with an insurance defense firm, I noticed that more than a few of the cases that crossed my desk had been filed by the type of lawyer I categorize as "Andy the Ambulance Chaser." You know the type I'm referring to. The middle aged frumpy man with a suit that hasn't been pressed since the day it came off the hanger in the store, shoes that are scuffed, with the heels worn round, and soles that look like they've walked 100 miles, driving an old four door sedan with dings and rust spots, and practicing law out of a store-front in a strip mall located off the frontage road behind a Stuckey's restaurant. These are the classic "turn-em and burn-em" lawyers whose practice is mainly personal injury cases of dubious merit, and the whole intent is to get a quick settlement from the insurance company without having to expend too much time, effort, or energy. This type of lawyer does not typically take on a medical malpractice case because it's just too much work.

I asked one of the partners how an "Andy the Ambulance Chaser" type lawyer could pursue a medical malpractice claim and he advised me that the only reason it was now possible was that a cottage industry had sprung up in the medical community. Doctors in their late 40s and early 50s who were fed up with hazards of the practice of medicine, practicing defensive medicine, dealing with HMOs and PPOs, etc. decided to take early retirement and quit treating patients. However, these doctors did not go south to Florida to sail their boats, play golf, dodge hurricanes, etc. Instead they adopted an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentatlity and opted to sell their services and expertise to the legal community as expert witnesses and consulatants. This enabled lawyers like "Andy the Ambulance Chaser" to gain access to a "hired gun" to get his opinion letter and jump into the arena that had previously been off his radar.

Even so, "Andy the Ambulance Chaser" isn't desirous of taking his cases all the way to the "twelve in the box," referring of course to a jury trial. He's still in the "turn and burn" mentality of negotiating a quick settlement for what we in the defense term "nuissance value." "Andy" knows the "cost/benefit, risk/reward" formula that insurance company bean counters use to decide whether to try or settle a case, so he makes enough of a nuissance of himself time after time to get settlement offers on his cases. Consequently, he is able to take on multiple cases, regardless of their merit, and the insurance company passes these costs down to the doctors via higher malpractice insurance premiums. The doctors in turn pass these higher premium costs onto their patients via higher fees, and the patients feed the higher fees to their insurance companies resulting in higher health insurance premiums, etc., and the wheel goes round and round.

In addition to the "Andy" lawyers out there, there are the big guns like former Senator and filanderer John "Hairdo" Edwards. Now these are guys of TV and movie legend that stand in front of the jury box and make the women swoon and the men think they've found a new best friend. This kind of lawyer tugs at the heartstrings of a jury and gets them to redistribute millions of insurance company dollars to the grieving widow of "Roger the Roofer," a middle-aged, overweight, hard drinking, chain smoking roofer who just happened to have the good fortune to die on the operating table of a renowned cardiologist, thereby attracting the attention of the firm of Dewey, Screwum & Howe, which employs the wunderkid "Edwards" and makes a cause celebre out of the overindulgent roofer that he would never have been had he merely survived his quaduple bypass operation. Never mind that his lifestyle LED to that operation, or that under the new Obamacare, he probably wouldn't be able to GET that operation, he is now the focus of considerable weeping and hand-wringing in a dog-and-pony show that is solely for the benefit of an audience of "twelve in the box." And the jurors lap it up and reward the "pretty boy" lawyer with the insurance company's millions like it was nothing.

Now if those jurors could only hear "pretty boy" talking about them at the trial prep meeting in his swanky highrise office the night before, it would be VERY different story, because most lawyers think of the average juror as someone "too stupid to get out of jury duty." They also regard inner city jury pools as the "money pits" or "honey pots" because the average resident comes with a lifetime's worth of liberally induced class warfare propaganda and can't wait to "stick it to the rich" doctor or insurance company. The irony is that he's only sticking it to himself and others like him, because insurance companies don't PAY this judgment, they COLLECT it from their customers, namely other doctors. This results in ALL doctors having to pay higher premiums for their malpractice insurance. The next time that juror goes to see his or her doctor, that doctor will pass along the increased costs of his malpractice insurance to that juror and the rest of his or her patients. Finally, when that juror submits the higher medical bill to his or her insurance company either the claim will be denied and he or she will be stuck with the higher bill, or the claim will be paid, and the juror will get a notice in the mail a few weeks later informing him or her that his OWN insurance premium will be going up. You've got to love the irony in THAT.

This calls to mind a scene from the movie adaptation of John Grisham's book "Runaway Jury" in which Gene Hackman plays a hard-bitten, cynical and RUTHLESS jury consultant. He's in the courthouse men's room with Dustin Hoffman who plays the plaintiff's lawyer, a frumpy, rumpled schulb who's in reality anything but. In the scene, the lawyer expresses his confidence that he's going to win the case, and Gene Hackman's character responds with something to the effect of : "So what if you do. Nothing's going to change. He's still dead. The only thing that will change is when the widow goes to visit his grave, she'll drive to the cemetery in a more expensive car, and when she's walking to the gravesite and she snaps a heel on the cobblestone walk, the heel will come off of a much nicer shoe. All the rest is just colored bubbles." Cynical, yes, but truer words were never spoken. And yet, when President Obama stood in front of an auditorium full of doctors talking about health care reform, he stated that he did NOT favor any cap on medical malpractice verdicts. Why on earth would anyone truly interested in reforming the healthcare insurance system say that?

The answer is very simple and was revealed in technicolor when both the House and Senate rolled out their 1000 plus page healthcare reform bills and in those mountains of paper, revealed their intent to create a government run insurance company to compete with those in the private sector. Now, if memory serves, we already HAVE one of those. It's called Medicare, but they want to create a whole new government entity to compete against companies like Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kaiser, etc. Afterwards, President Obama stood in front of his "pet" reporters and asked how such a public company could drive the private ones out of business. I noted he had his little "I know something you don't" smirk on his face as he asked this because he knows the answer all too well.

Private insurance companies have to be profitable to survive and even more so to thrive. In a nutshell, they must take in more money than they pay out. A public company, however, has no such requirement. Look at any government run business such as Amtrak, the Post Office, Medicare, etc. and you will find more red ink on their books that you'll find drops of water in the Red Sea. This is because public companies are backed by the full faith, credit, and printing presses of the US Government. They CANNOT fail. Additionally, most American businesses are protected from such disparities by federal Anti-trust laws that prevent price fixing and other unfair business practices. One of the only two exceptions to this protection is, ironically enough, the INSURANCE industry.

So here's where the rubber meets the road. By allowing the abuses of the legal system to continue to affect the healthcare and insurance industries, the government is basically guaranteeing that the private sector insurers will NOT be able to compete effectively against a public company. Remember that private companies have to remain profitable so they can't pay out more than they take in, and they have no control over things like litigation that drive up their costs, so they have no choice but to pass these costs on to the consumers. If the consumer sees a public company that will save them an appreciable amount of money on their health insurance, they're going to defect like lemmings. As these defections become more massive, you will see private insurance companies closing their doors and declaring bankruptcy until the government run company is the only one left standing. It's human nature to save money, especially when you're dealing with a federal government bent on sucking it out from our wallets like a hoover vacuum cleaner. If you doubt this, visit your local Wal-Mart sometime. It's a living illustration of the point.

Now that the government will be the only source for healthcare insurance coverage left in America, some things will happen very rapidly. First, the trial lawyers will be told the party's over and reform and verdict caps will happen. The government will do this because now it's protecting its' OWN assets. Second, the same Geithner gestapo that's controlling pay for Wall Street executives will turn its focus to our doctors and they'll be told what they can charge going forward. Makes sense that the government should control doctors pay since they're the ones paying them, right? Maybe, but I doubt that the average doctor will like being told he's going to make the salary of a mid-level government bureaucrat for the rest of his life. I further doubt that students trying to decide on their career choices are going to want to pursue a medical career that requires four years of college, four years of medical school, an internship, and residence only to find at the end of all that work that he or she will make less then an assistant manager at JC Penny assuming of course, there still IS a JC Penny chain that survives Obama-nomics. If we cannot recruit qualified applicants to our medical schools, what will we do next? We'll either have to incentevise students or lower the admission requirements, resulting in less competent professionals being responsible for our healthcare, not unlike what happened to our military when we were forced to lower recruiting standards to allow convicted felons to serve because we couldn't get enough bodies otherwise.

Most of the doctors in practice today are older men and women who will be retiring soon, and there are not a lot of new ones coming along to take their places. There will be even less of them entering the profession going forward because the financial incentive to pursue the career, given all the work and expense it will take, will be gone. People talk about the fear of rationing of health care, and they're right. When you have increasing demand, and dwindling supply, it's an inevitability. How that care will be rationed is something only the government knows, but my guess it will be something along the lines of how old you are, and how many productive years of tax paying you have ahead of you. Look out Seniors. Logan's Run may soon be a realty for you, although I don't think even THIS government will try to actually KILL you. They'll just make sure you only get the pain medicine or medical marijuana you need to keep you quiet while you wait to shuffle loose the mortal coil. Forget the quadruple bypasses, hip replacements, knee replacements, etc. that you're getting now, though.

I don't make these predictions as if I have a crystal ball because I don't. What I DO have is eyes to see, ears to hear, and a brain to think with. Is it an accident that we have almost as many people LEAVING this country these days as we have trying to get into it? Is it a coincidence that our insurance companies are trying to ship patients to India to have surgeries today because the cost is about ten percent of what it here, and if so, why is that? Most Indian doctors and surgeons were educated and trained in western countries, including the United States. They do their medical school, internships, and residencies here. Given that we have a serious shortage of doctors in this country, why would they choose to leave? They are given preferential treatment with regard to getting green cards and they can surely find jobs in our hospitals and clinics, and yet they choose to leave as soon as they complete their education and training.

I asked a friend about this one time and he told me that he saw what our doctors go through with the HMOs, PPOs, malpractice suits, etc. and he would NEVER consider staying here and putting up with all that. Furthermore, he told me that India has an emerging industrial economy not unlike our own following the end of World War II. What he is saying, in a nutshell, is that there are better opportunities available in India than there are here, and this was before the prospect of nationalized healthcare emerged on the horizon. He left to return to India more than 6 years ago. Why then would heart surgery cost $10,000.00 there and $100,000.00 here? Maybe it's because we're only training Indian doctors here, not their LAWYERS.

To summarize, every country that has undertaken to socialize medicine is full of horror stories. We have horror stories here, too, but they mostly involve INSURANCE coverage issues. Let's not overreact here and throw the baby out with the bathwater. We DO need some reform in our health care INSURANCE industry, but NOT in the actual practice of medicine. Let's keep doctors in charge of healthcare, not lawyers or government bureaucrats. We'll all feel better. If all of this has given you a headache, remember what the doctor says: "Take two aspirin, and call me in the morning." If congress does what it wants to do, you can still get two aspirin because they sell those at your local grocery store. However, when you try to call the doctor in the morning, you're going to be on HOLD for a long, long time.

Heil Hitler! Heil Obama! What the Heil is Happening Here??

OK Liberal Democrats. I've really been resisting the urge to compare the modern democratic national socialist agenda with what happened in Germany in the 1930's, but every time I turn around I'm running into liberal propaganda equating George Bush, John McCain or conservative republicans in general with Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime. There's an old adage which says that "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," but as you persist in throwing rocks in your glass house, I'm just going to illustrate the many ways in which modern liberal democrats are much more in line with Adolph Hitler's Nazi movement than any conservative republican idea could ever be.
To be fair to liberal democrats, I'm not suggesting that liberal democrats want to commit genocide, conquer the world, or commit any of the other horrors typically associated with Nazi Germany. What I'm comparing is the method by which these comparable political ideologies acquired their power and the social, political, and economic environments that made these movement thrive and flourish.
The biggest single element that both German Nazis and American Liberal Socialists have in common is their spokesperson. In Germany, that person was Adolf Hitler. In modern socialist America, it's Barack Obama. What do Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler have in common? The answers might just surprise you. Again, I'm not suggesting that they are one and the same, far from it. But when you look at the two men side by side, and without the emotional disgust and revulsion that one normally associates with the name Adolf Hitler, you can see some similarities between the two men.
Let's start with Adolf Hitler, since the history has largely been written on him. Hitler came from modest means. Hist entire youth and early adulthood were marred by poverty and social ostracism. His father died when he as young, and he was frustrated in his attempts to achieve recognition and success as an artist. He blamed this failure not on his own lack of talent, evident to anyone who has ever seen any of his artwork, but rather on a conspiracy of Jewish professors at the Vienna Art Institute. This belief that he was cheated by this ethnic minority formed the nucleus of his lifelong passionate anti-semitism. Obama was the bi-racial child of a divorced, single mother but even though he did not grow up in poverty, I am relatively certain he suffered some social ostracism as a child.
Hitler migrated to Germany around the time of the outbreak of World War I, so Hitler joined the German Army. He needed a job, and he wanted to ingratiate himself with his adopted country. As a soldier in the German Army, Hitler distinguished himself in combat and rose to the rank of corporal, quite an achievement for a non-German, and was even awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class. It was because of this distinction that Hitler was permitted to remain in the German Army after the mandatory downsizing of the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty restricted the German Army to less than 100,000 personnel. Obama never served in the military or saw combat, but he did engage in public civil service as a community organizer.
As part of his duties following the end of the war, corporal Hitler was assigned by his commanding officer, Captain Ernst Roehm (that's right, the same Ernst Roehm who would later head the Sturmabteilung, the SA brownshirted stormtroopers), to attend political meetings to determine if any of the activities or topics of conversation could be considered subversive or illegal under the new Weimar Republican Constitution. Once such group was the German Worker's Party. Hitler attended a meeting of the German Worker's Party in a beer hall in Munich and what he heard there was a message that extolled the virtues of German ideals, the supremacy of German might, the and the ability of Germany to rise again and take its' place once more among the leaders of the world.
To a fervent nationalist like corporal Adolf Hitler, these words resonated and enthralled the young Hitler so much so that he not only failed to report the group, he actually joined it. When questioned by Captain Roehm about his experiences, he told Roehm that he did not see anything subversive or illegal about the group in that meeting, but that he should attend future meetings to make sure that there was nothing for the government to be concerned about. The next time Hitler attended a meeting of the German Worker's Party, he requested permission to address the meeting. As he was the group's newest member, they were only too happy to have him speak. When he spoke, his spellbinding oratory moved the group to such an extent that membership increased immediately, and Hitler was made the spokesman for the group from that time forward. Obama and the liberal socialists of the democratic party are also strong in the labor movement and enjoy union support. Is it a coincidence that the Nazi party started life as a labor union?
Ironically, Hitler knew that if this group were to become a political force that could achieve any significant political power, there would have to be some changes made. He started with the name of the group, because he understood instinctively that if the party were to achieve any success, it was going to have to appeal to Germans from all social and economic classes and a worker's party implied that the members were blue-collar laborers who carried lunch boxes was pumpernickel sandwiches and warm beer in the thermos. This image was not likely to appeal to the aristocracy, the illuminati, the glitterati, or the professionals he would need to attract to the party.
Germany, unlike France, Russia, and other countries that had experienced revolutions, did not disposess or murder its aristocrats when it became a republic. Even though Germany had been a feudal monarchy prior to World War I, and the ruling Kaiser and his family and court fled the country at the war's end, the German citizenry still had respect and admiration for its' nobility. Many of the heroes of the war were from noble families and Hitler knew he would need the support of men with Von in their names if he were to achieve political power. He also knew he would need to associate himself with academic, political, military, and celebrity personalities to increase his popular appeal. Sound familiar? It wasn't John McCain that was supported by the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg. Then factor in Colin Powell, Bruce Springstein, Kanye West, P-Diddy Combs, etc. and you have a modern comparison.
Regardless of his entourage, Hitler could not achieve any significant political successes until the advent of the Great Depression. It is only in a climate of economic misery and unbridled fear that the message of national socialism sounds even remotely attractive. Hitler used the Depression, the runaway inflation that made it necessary to take a wheelbarrow full of German currency to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread, and the rampant economic unrest to push his message of national pride, hope, and a return to past glories. Sound familiar?
With lines like "Germany forever," and "The German people are the rightful masters of the world," Hitler seduced the German citizens to support him, but even with all of these things going for him, he still couldn't win the power he sought. His newly named National Socialist, or "Nazi" party was gaining seats in the Reichstag, or Germany's congress, but it couldn't claim a majority against the communists, labor unionists, and worse, the democratic republicans who still believed in the viability of the Weimar Republic. Obama ran his campaign with slogans like "Yes we can," "I believe in you," "Our best days are ahead." etc.
Also problematic to Hitler's ambitions was the advocacy of the media against him. Newspapers and radio newscasters were trying to sound the alarm about Hitler and the true intentions of the Nazis. Unfortunately, Hitler had such reserves of cash and celebrity power that he was able to counter and ulitimately stifle and silence his critics. If you examine the ways this was done, you really begin to see some frightening similarities between Hitler's Nazis and modern liberal democratic politics.
First, the Nazis used their popular appeal and celebrity endorsers to boycott and punish by economic means, any newspaper or radio program that spoke negatively about Hitler or the Nazis. Economic assault proved to be very effective, but sometimes even that wasn't enough. When the economic muscle failed, Hitler brought in the stormtroopers, the brown shirted thugs of the SA, to help the misguided writers, editors, or broadcasters see the light. Sometimes this was done by trashing the newspaper offices, destroying the presses, or burning down the building. If that didn't do it, the stormtroopers would kick in the door of a journalist or editor whose writing they didn't like and maybe kick in his teeth, break his arms or some other such violence. If the target were too popular for such brutality, then the Nazis would engage in the politics of personal destruction to silence their critics. This could be accomplished a number of ways, but the most common was to photograph the person talking to a little girl or gay man, and release the photo charging all manner of inappropriate conduct, labeling the man as either a pedophile or a homosexual, effectively marginalizing him and alienating his public followers. He could then be shipped off to a prison or concentration camp with little or no public outcry. The politics or personal destruction. Sound familiar? Just ask Joe Werzelbacher or "Joe the Plumber" as he's more appropriately known. Ask Sarah Palin, if you need another example.
Silencing one's political critics is essential when you're trying to promote an agenda that if it were ever objectively examined would be denounced and defeated. The Nazis systematically removed any and all independent media outlets by passing laws that made it a criminal offense to publish or broadcast anything not approved by the Nazi Party. Sound familiar? The liberal socialists are idealogically aligned with nearly all of the mainstream media, so there are no worries about unfavorable press there. The same is true with most broadcast and cable television channels. The only media the liberal socialists do not control is talk radio and the internet. Talk radio is almost exclusively dominated by popular and therefore powerful conservative spokesmen and the liberal socialists want to silence these critics. Since they have failed to compete in the arena of ideas, they are turning to the same kind of government intervention that the Nazis relied upon, only now it's hypocritically referred to as the "fairness" doctrine. As for the internet, there have been rumblings about laws to require the registration of political websites. While this would seem to fairly apply to all such sites, it effectively draws a bulls eye on the backs of conservative political writers. After all, if we register, then they know where to send the stormtroopers, don't they?
Now, again to be fair, I'm not saying that Obama and the liberal socialist democrats are the Nazis. I'm not suggesting they are even remotely as malevolent, megalomaniacal, or genocidal as the Nazis proved to be. What I AM suggesting, is that there are remarkable and frightening similarities about how they achieved their power, and how they are attempting to keep it. If this last election cycle proved anything, it was that Nazi political tactics are alive and well and currently being used.
For the unbelievers that doubt that today's liberal socialists don't have their stormtroopers, their gestapo, their SS, etc. you would be very wrong. Ever heard of ACORN or SEIU? Those are the modern equivalent of stormtroopers, complete with kooky orange or purple hats and either orange or purple uniform shirts. They are the thugs that strong arm the opposition by breaking into foreclosed homes, registering dead and fraudulent voters, and engaging in other quasi criminal enterprises they dismiss as "civil disobedience" when confronted with their acts. Not surprisingly, there was a federal investigation into the activities of this group before the recent election, but I'm pretty willing to bet that this investigation will either become a whitewash, or will be swept under the rug altogether given the political sympathies of the group and its long history with our own Supreme Community Organizer in Chief. Of course, in true Hitlerian fashion, if his stormtroopers prove to be too big a political embarrassment, there might be another virtual "Night of Long Knives" in which Obama, like Hitler before him, determines it's more politically expedient to throw his stormtroopers under the bus and allow the justice department to prosecute them fully. Hitler used his SS, to arrest and murder the leadership of the Stormtroopers, including his old friend and Commanding Officer Ernest Roehm, when he needed the support of the German Army.
Who then are the modern liberal socialist's version of the SS?  Well, that is a little more subtle a comparison. There are no uniformed, jackbooted, mass murderers in the liberal socialist party that I'm aware of. However, if you visit sites like "the Daily Kos," "The Huffington Post," "Move on.org" or others of this ilk, you begin to see some similarities to the ideological purity espoused by Heinrich Himmler. Though not a racial issue today like it was with the Nazis of history, ideology has replaced race in the modern liberal socialist dogma. Today it is not Jews that are the target of liberal socialist ire, it is the "rich." Ironic when you consider that most of the liberal socialist poster boys and girls are themselves "rich." Still, it is the "rich" that are demonized and attacked by the liberal socialists. But the issue of Race is also alive and well, as the liberal socialists have proved more than once. They are perfectly willing to play the race card and any opportunity and brand anyone that disagrees with them as "racist."
Could today's "rich" end up in concentration camps? Well, read the editorials and blogs that call for the removal from office, and criminal prosecution of the Wall Street Banking and Trading executives that the liberal socialist propagandists blame for today's economic woes. Noticeably absent from the calls for incarceration, are the liberal socialists whose social engineering hubris is equally to blame. I'm not defending the Wall Streeters here. If they violated laws, they should be held accountable. I don't think anyone doubts that Bernie Madoff deserved his fate. There is, however, something fundamentally wrong with the notion that executives who ran a business and achieved economic success for their efforts should be punished for doing the things that have made them successful in the past merely because they were forced to take government money. Still, these executives may well be made scapegoats for the ills of today's society much in the same way the Jews were scapegoated by the Nazis. It is equally disingenuous behavior on the part of the socialist regimes whether in Germany in the 30's or here today.
Now, maybe next time you see an ACORN worker or SEIU Union member on the street in their conspicuous bright orange or purple shirts and hats, give 'em a "Heil." They might just "heil" you back. And now that I've sufficiently degressed myself, I'm getting the "heil" out of here to go do some serious drinking.  On second though, since HITLER first attempted to seize power in a beer hall, I might have to rethink that idea. 'Til we "meet" again.

Here Comes Da Judge!

I had just started writing this piece when a friend on mine asked if it were not redundant in light of my previously released piece, "His-PANIC" which addressed some of the concerns about the nomination of Judge Sonya Sotomayor to replace retiring Justice David Souter as an Associate Justice in the Supreme Court of the United States. I replied that while there were similarities, the previous piece, "His-PANIC" dealt with the racial factors inherent in the nomination and how both Republican and Democratic senators should handle the confirmation hearings about this nominee. With this article, I'm addressing the role of judges and justices in general in the interpretation and enforcement of laws that make the framework for the rule of law that is so essential to the structure and foundation of our democratic republic.

In the interest of full and fair disclosure, and because some of what follows will come across as being somewhat esoteric, let me preface the following by saying that I come by my knowlege of legal and judical practice and procedure very honestly. In addition to having a bachelors degree with a pre-law concentration, I also have the benefit of over ten years of experience working as a litigation paralegal. Additionally, I had the benefit of having as a mentor, a close family member who served as a Circuit/Superior Court Judge for more than thirty years. I also had the pleasure of cultivating personal friendships wtih judges of both the elected and appointed varieties as a result of my political activities over the years. Accordingly, my opinion on these subjects is more than the average layman's opinion.

Like most of the country, I first heard the name Sonya Sotomayor when she was first floated as a potential nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. When I first saw a photograph of her, I knew that identity politics were in play. I also knew that she would have a compellling story, and that she would he a highly qualified jurist, because the democrats are all about the rule of law, or more to the point, the MANIPULATION of the law to suit their political ideology. Democrats have been using the court system for DECADES to force laws and policies on this country our legislators (and the VOTERS who elect them) never intended. Republicans have joined in this practice more recently. By packing courts with "ringer" judges that will rule in accordance with the wishes of politicians, but enable them to avoid political liablity for these acts, the politicians are using the judiciary as "unelected legistlators," a role for which the judiciary was NEVER envisioned or intended by our Founding Fathers as set out in the U.S. or State Constitutions

The Supreme Court was established in Article III of the United States Constitution. Article III, Section II defines the juridiction of the Supreme Court and provides a framework for the kinds of cases the Court may hear and determine. The Court first asserted its jurisdiction in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison, which established the precedent for judicial review of laws passed by the Congress and their compliance with the Constitution. The whole rationale for the Supreme Court was that the framers of the Constitution understood that an elected President and Congress could collude to pass laws that would enfringe on the rights and liberties of the citizens, and could become every bit as tyrannical as the British King Geroge we had just sent packing. They also understood that elected legislators and Presidents would be beholden to their electorates, and the whims and caprices of the passions of the moment, because they were all about getting elected and re-elected. Politicians, therefore, must sometimes subordinate their better judgment to satisfy the demands of voters, who sometimes do NOT think about the long term effect of their acting on their momentary passions.

Every elected politician and government appointee from the President down to the newest enlistees in the armed forces takes an oath the "support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" prior to their entry into office or commencing their service. Sadly for us, some of them shed that oath the second they enter their offices and start promoting their social ideologies and political agendas which are sometimes CONTRARY to that very oath. When this occurs, it is to the judicial branch that We the People must look to preserve our rights and liberties. The framers of the Constitution understood this, foresaw it, and for this reason, built the judiciary to be free of the caprices of contemporary politics. Accordingly, once appointed, a federal judge or supreme court justice can serve for the remainder of his life, or as long as he or she so desires and cannot be removed unless they are impeached by the house and found guilty in the senate of serious criminal wrongdoing. This is NEVER happened to an associate justice of the Supreme Court and very RARELY happened to any members of the federal judicial branch. The most recent example I can think of is the case of Federal District Court Judge Alcee Hastings, who is now a serving member of the House of Representatives.

Though the office of a Federal District or Appellate Court Judge or Supreme Court Justice is not a political one, per se, candidates must be nominated and confirmed by elected politicians. These politicians look for judges and justicies that are sympathetic to their political and social ideologoes and agendas because they look to the courts to provide cover and in some cases to take on the role of legislators to protect the politicians from the wrath of the voters when laws may be unpopular with their constituents, but nonetheless support the politicians political or social ideological beliefs.

There are two kinds of judges or justices one can expect to see on the bench. The ones that read into the Constitution and legislation what they choose to support their own political or social beliefs are colloquially referred to as "activist" or "liberal" judges or "legislators from the bench." The other kind of judge or justice is the one that actually reads the Constitution or the law for what it says in black and white and doesn't attempt to read "into" it, his or her own personal politcs or ideas of "social justice" or "empathy." These are referred to as "strict constructionists" or sometimes "conservative" judges or justices. Sadly, there are far more of the former, than the latter sitting on our courts today. At a time when our rights to property, and even life itself, have never been more precarious due to the behavior of an elected President and Congress who have abandoned their oaths of office the second their hands came off the Bible, We the People have never been more dependent on a judiciary that actually FOLLOWS the Constitution as the framers wrote it and intended it. We are faced with government tyranny and corruption as never before and the stakes have never been higher.

In the weeks leading up to the senate's judiciary committee hearings, I did extensive research on the more recent rulings of the Hon. Sonya Sotommayoras well as some of her earlier decisions on the district court bench. I reviewed my research with friends in the legal profession, as well as active jurists and found that her rulings are both fair, and supported by statutory and case law precendents. Her judicial record is both impressive, and conservative though I would stop short of actually calling her a "strict constructionist." Likewise, I do not consider her remarks made at hispanic organizational meetings to rise to the level of indemic racism, and further consider attempts by politcians and political pundits to brand her as a racist on par with David Duke of the KKK, to be neither warranted nor accurate. I was particularly offended by a photoshopped representation of her in Grand Dragon's robes. I guess the election of our first black president hasn't moved us to that post-racial nirvana we were led to believe it would.

A very wise man, a career jurist, and my childhood mentor once told me that I should refrain from drawing a conclusion or making a judgment until it was absolutely necessary to do so. He went on to say that when it WAS necessary, that I should only make my judgment with the evidence of my own eyes and ears and not to rely on the reporting of others. If the past election cycle coverage has taught me anything, it is NOT to trust any so-called journlist for a fair and objective reporting on any political or social issue ever again. To that end, I did my own research and reading of Judge Sotomayor's judicial opinons, discussing them only with men and women more qualified than I to analyze them. I also sat through every agonizing second of the dog and pony show that passed for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on CSPAN so as to avoid the spin applied by reporters and political pundits alike. Despite numerous temptations to change the channel or pop in a DVD, I watched virtually every second of the speeches, the questions, and most importantly the ANSWERS to make my own independent evaluation of Judge Sonya Sotomayor and her fitness to be the next Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

When all was said and done, I arrived at two distinct, and (some might argue) disparate conclusions, or such was the consensus at my Toastmaster's Rountable group discussion earlier this week. The first conclusion was that the Hon. Sonya Sotomayhor is a very impressive woman with a personally inspirational life story, an impressive ciriculum vitae as both a lawyer and a jurist, and that she is in every way highly qualified for the office she aspires to enter. I also believe that she will, in fact, be affirmed to that position for both political and social considerations. While I don't wish to opine that she is an "affirmative action" candidate, I will not hesitate to state that her nomination is the result of the "identity politics" for which both political parties have become renowned in recent memory. Conservatives, anxious to avoid a repeat of the Robert Bork debacle, nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court believing that the Democrats would risk the support of the African-American community if they attacked him too viciously as they had Robert Bork. But for the emergence of the Anita Hill sexual harassment charge, his would have been a relatively passive and successful nomination and a political victory for conservative republicans. He did manage to get confirmed despite the best efforts of senate democrats, and I firmly believe that with Judge Sotomayor, history will repeat itself.

This, too, is the case with the nomination of Judge Sotomayor, and the Democrats have even gone so far as to verbally warn Republicans that they proceed against this nomination at their own peril, meaning they risk losing any support from the Hispanic community if they are perceived to have a bias against Judge Sotomayor for any reasons that can be deemed to be racial. When the facts fail, resort to the racism charge. In point of fact the Republicans have bent over backwards to avoid any racial component in their questioning of Judge Sotomayor, with the exception of asking her to explain her thinking when she repeatedly made her more controversial remarks as both a Federal District and Appellate Court jurist. The republican senators focused their questions and comments more appropriately on her judicial rulings, including the now infamous Ricci case which has since been reversed by the United States Supreme Court, though Judge Sotomayor relied on existing statutory and case law in sustaining the judgment of the District Court dismissing the case. We can only speculate as the whether or not she might have ruled differently if the plaintiff in "Ricci" were of Hispanic or African-American descent.

My second, and more controversial conclusion, judging by earlier reaction, is that if and when she is confirmed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Sonya Sotomayor will be every bit the liberal judicial activist that the republicans fear she will be. Now, I can hear the questions forming just as they did in my Toastmaster's roundtable when I was asked how, when conisdering her judicial record, I could conclude that she would totally change her judicial philosophy if confirmed. This is why I disclosed the fact that I had been privy to inside information from other judges. As a result of this special insight, I am aware of several fears shared by judges in general, but only TWO shared by ALL judges regardless of their jurisdiction or party affiliation.

The first universal fear shared by all the judges I know regardless of the demographic differences, is the fear of the loss of control of their courtrooms. This is a very real, visceral, fear that was illustrated and justified all too well a few years ago in Atlanta, Georgia when an escaping felon took the sidearm of a deputy sheriff and shot and killed several people in the courtroom, including the Judge. After this event, even the most liberal of judges, whose rulings had previously gone against the Second Amendment and groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA), suddenly found gun ownership to be a good thing. Many of them even started carrying their own firearms, in and out of court. There is nothing like seeing a collegue murdered to change a liberal judge's religion when it comes to firearms.

The second universal fear, and more relevant to the conclusion I reached about the Hon. Sonya Sotomayor, is the fear of having a judgment reversed by a higher court on appeal. This is the equivalent of getting your examination back in school with the dreaded red check marks. A reversal says to the judge "you got it WRONG," Reverals can have a detrimental effect on a jurist's career, esp if such reversals are frequent, and involve high profile cases with political implications. While reversals do NOT impune a judge's qualifications, they can lead a politican or layperson to conclude the judge may be less than competent. If a judge's appointment to higher office is a matter of political contention, numerous reversals can be used to justify NOT supporting the judge's nomination, as the reversals of Judge Sotomayor's rulings, including the "Ricci" case, have been used by the republican senators to challenge her qualifications for higher office.

Judges and lawyers alike have a colloquial expression for being reversed on appeal. It is called "being spanked on appeal." Unless these judges and lawyers are closet masochists, that would seem to imply that reversal is, at a minimum, an unpleaseant experience for a judge. It is for this reason, among others, that judges in lower courts tend to make their rulings conservatively to avoid the dreaded "spanking." The higher up in the chain a judge goes, the less fearful he or she is of the "spanking" consequence. Since there is no higher judicial authority in the country than the United States Supreme Court, and even if a justice's opinion is in the minority, it is not considered "wrong" and will be represented in the published opinion. Therefore, when a jurist is appointed to the Supreme Court, he or she is free to exercise his own opinons without fear of reversal or admonition, whereas as a judge in a lower court, the same jurist might tend to be more conservative in her or her rulings. For this reason alone, a judge's record on the bench is not an accurate predictor of how he or she will behave when all judicial constraints are removed and the said jurist is free to "let his or her freak flag fly,"

Ironically, this is EXACTLY what happened in the case of Justice David Souter, the man retiring from the Court creating the vacancy now being filled. Justice Souter was appointed by George H.W. Bush, a conservative republican president, who believed that he was appointing a conservative justice who would interpret the consitution literally. His vetting team concluded that then Judge David Souter was such a jurist based partly upon his judicial record, and in part upon the extensive interviews they had with the prospective nominee. Apparently Justice Souter was able to provide the team with the answers they wanted, because he got the nomination and he got confirmed. Since his confirmation, however, Justice Souter has ruled liberally more than sixty-five percent of the time, and if often referred to as one of the four liberals on the bench. Clearly, he was able to deceive the Bush vetting team, the President himself, and the senate judiciary committee to get the job, and once ensconced, was free to be himself, a liberal judicial activist.

In the Hon. Sonya Sotomayor, I see very many of the same chameleon qualities that we failed to see in then candidate Barak Obama. While her statements and answers in her confirmation hearings were well reasoned, I could tell she had been prepped very carefully and was, in fact, going to her memory to respond to questions that should have been second nature to her. Like the President, she backpedalled away from not only her record, but also a lifetime of political and social views that she had clearly heretofore embraced. This was reminiscent of the way then candidate Barak Obama threw his pastor of twenty years acquaintance, under the proverbial bus when he became a political liability. Suffice it to say, the logical conclusion is that Judge Sotomayor has been prepped by the same deceptive bunch of experts that caused us to elect a President that is NOTHING like the candidate sold to us under very FALSE pretenses. In short, I don't TRUST her and I don't know which Justice will show up to work on that First Monday in October. Will it be the one she's been all her life, the wise latina woman who will make better decisions than a white man, or the more moderate, and constitutionally faithful one she tried to convince us all she was in a week of hearings before the senate judiciary committee. One thing I am comfortable in saying is that the old expression "birds of a feather flock together" seems to be very much applicable to the present situation. I believe that President Obama would not nominate anyone that he didn't think shared his judicial and social philosophy. I believe he is intelligent enough and skilled enough as both a politician and lawyer to recognized someone who is aligned with his model of the world, and who will likely perform in the manner he expects her to. I do not think he is a man who can be easily fooled, but I also believe that his ego is such, that he may actually believe his press clippings and if that is the case, he might not be able to acknowledge the possibility that he is wrong in his assessment. Judge Sotomayor could turn out to be nothing like he thought and therefore be a pleasant surprise to those of us that want a justice who reads and applys the Constitution as written. Only time will tell.

As to how this likely appointment will affect the current makeup of the Supreme Court, there will not be an immediate impact. The current court consists of four justices that are considered liberally biased and frequently rule for the left side of an issue, four justices that are purported to be conservatives and frequently rule on the right side of an issue, and one lone justice that is referred to as the "swing voter" because he cannot be pinned with either a liberal or conservative judicial bias. Whether this is because he is the only justice who is faithfully adhering to his oath and genuinely trying to make his rulings in accordance with the Constitution, or because he is weak, and moderate in his views and can be readily persuaded by either argument. I can't say. I do not know the man well enough to speculate. I only know that at times I am very grateful for his support, and at other times I curse him for his vascillation. Isn't that always the way it goes?

With regard to judicial nominations, this round goes to the democrats. I congratulate President Obama for a very politically well reasoned and diabolical pick in the person of the Hon. Sonya Sotomayor. He found the one candidate who could actually survive the nomination process virtually unscathed, and claim a bi-partisan victory in the process. Whether you agree or disagree with his political and social philosophy, you have to give the man his due in that he is one formidable politician. Whether the credit for this goes to him or his handlers is a matter for specuation. But he did this without the aid of a teleprompter, cliffs notes, or any other crutch traditionally employed by politicians to help them make their points without making Biden-style gaffes. The republicans wisely chose to not waste their ammo against the unassailable Judge Sotomayor, but the equally, or perhaps MORE important issues of Cap n' Trade, and National Health Care Reform are battles still to be fought, and that fight may well end up before the Supreme Court of the United States where then Associate Justice Sonya Sotomayor will be able to answer our burining question "who will she be tomorrow?"

July 4, 2009, The Dis-Spirit of '76!

I LOVE the Fourth of July holiday! It is a time when American pride is at its' height. Summertime is in full swing, families are usually beginning or ending their summer vacations, school's out and will not be restarting for at least another month and a half, and it's generally a very happy and festive time. It is a time for watching fireworks, cooking hot dogs, burgers, steaks, brats, etc. It's a time for getting together in the great outdoors with family and friends, most of whom will be decked out in red, white, and blue apparell, waving flags, and singing songs about America and American pride. This has been the sum total of my forty-six years of experiences with this national holiday.

Of all the celebrations I remember, the one that stands out most in my mind is the one from our national bi-centennial in 1976. At a time when our nation was recovering from the Vietnam conflict, Watergate, years of economic malaise, we managed to put all of that aside and come together as we hadn't been able to do since World War II to celebrate our nation's 200th birthday. I remember well, that every square inch of the city was draped in either a flag or red, white & blue bunting. You couldn't walk a foot without bumping into someone wearing either a tricorn hat, an Uncle Sam styled stovepipe hat, or a revolutionary war era costume. Even more than the costumes themselves, were the SMILES on everyone's faces as they embraced and attempted to propound the Spirit of '76. This past weekend, a mere 33 years later, there was little if ANY of that sort of thing in evidence.

In the four years following the bi-centennial, the Carter years, national morale went into a steep nosedive. To be fair, we were still reeling form the ravages of Vietnam and Watergate when we elected President Carter, but it was his domestic and foreign policies, which culminated in the capture and holding of our embassy personnel as hostages for more than a year while we did NOTHING to effect their rescue, that had our national morale at an all time low when we elected former actor and Governor of California, Ronald W. Reagan to oust the innefectual Carter from the White House.

Reagan's greatest political asset was his abilty to communicate with the people of this country and appeal to our patriotism and national pride. He made us proud to be Americans, once more, and inspired the patriotic anthems "Pround to Be An American", by Lee Greenwood, "In America," by the Charlie Daniels Band, and a slew of other musical tributes, including one by noted liberal, Bruce Springsteen, called "Born in the USA." Even though the latter was not written to celebrate America or Reagan, it was still played as though it were. President ?Reagan restored our national pride in many ways, including but not limited to the freeing of our hostages, the support he gave the Polish labor movement, Solidarity, and his challenge to Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall." He never flinched on the world stage, and he NEVER showed even the slightest sign of weakness in this country. He also NEVER apologized for or about anything the United States had done, said, or stood for, especially on foreign soil.

Contrast that to our current President who has circled the globe, pretty much on his knees, apologizing to friends and foes alike for all things American. Contrast the optimism and hope of Reagan with our own First Lady's comments about not having pride in her country at any time in her adult life, including the Reagan years, prior to 2008 when her husband was nominated by the Democratic Party as it's presidential candidate. Would Nancy Reagan ever have made a comment like that? I don't think so. In fact, this President has spent more time on his knees than Debbie did the whole time she was doing DALLAS! I hope he has a good pair of knee pads because I have a feeling he's not through groveling just yet.

The final blow for me came this past weekend, our Fourth of July Independence Day holiday, when this selfsame apologist-in-chief actually had the temerity to apologize to ENGLAND for our own Declaration of Independence and by extension, our very existence. His next stop is Russia where he'll be right at home among fellow Marxists like Putin and Medvyedev. I wonder what he'll apologize for THERE. Winning the Cold War, perhaps, Salt, Detente, Perestroika? The possibilities are endless.

The worst part about all of it is that it's for NOTHING. He's not going to win one point in either popularity or gain one concession as as result of his prostration before the thugs and dictators of the world than he would have gotten making his requests in the same manner used by George W. Bush. The difference is that the world leaders RESPECTED George W. Bush, even if they didn't always say so. They KNEW he wasn't a man they could mess with, and that he would back up his words with decisive action if necessary. They have NO such illusions about Barak Obama. In all fairness to President Obama, he may very well be able to act if necesary and all the supplication may just be a tactic to engineer a specific outcome. At some point in time, however, he's got to realize that it is not only ineffective, but that it makes our country look weak and inconsequential in world affairs. He's being punked like a freshman nerd in the high school playground on the first day of school. This is evidenced by every two bit thug and dictator doing pretty much whatever he pleases these days. Iran is escalating it's nuclear production and has no intention of abating this no matter what takes place in any discussion with this president or his representatives. North Korea is firing off missles and exploding bombs like there is no consequence for doing so, because at this time there ISN'T. Thugs and dictators don't respect social niceties, they respect only what they FEAR and they do not fear Barak Obama. They see him, unfairly or not, as a weak willed dilletante they can push around at will, and they are doing so daily. How can we feel a sense of national pride with such a leader?

In all fairness to President Obama, this is not all his fault. patriotism and Americanism has been under assault in this country in earnest since the Vietnam era. Our television and print news media, entertainment media, music, movies, schools, etc. have been systematically programming their audiences with the none to subtle message that America is BAD and that the bad things happening in the world are somehow OUR fault. There are at least TWO generations of students that have pretty much been indocrinated since preschool to think this way. There are at least THREE generation of college students, including the baby boomers like Bill Clinton, that have been programmed with this and other marxist ideologies since college.

Traditional American ideals and values, such as Christianity, liberty, self-sufficiency, free enterprise, capitalism, etc. have been under constant seige by the Left for DECADES. When Hillary Clinton referred to that "vast right wing conspiracy" that was out to get her husband, she indavertently exposed the very real "vast LEFT wing conspiracy" that had been in existence since the late nineteeth century. This freudian slip was the result of a psychological phenomenon known as "projection," which means that you "project" your own ideas or behaviors onto others as either a coping mechanism to help you deal with them, or as a form of subterfuge to distract your opponent from what you yourself are doing. This is a technique often employed by philandering spouses when their mates become suspicious of their behaviors. The cheating husband whose wife is getting suspicious of his late night "business meetings" will suddenly turn and accuse the wife of having an affair. It puts her off her guard and on the defensive and takes her focus off of him and what HE is doing. This is the same reason magicians often have beautiful leggy girls in skimpy attire as their stage assistant. It is not by accident, but design, as they know that the audience will be more likely to stare at her LEGS and NOT his HANDS, so he can complete his illusion without his methods being detected.

This left wing seige began with the publication of "A Communist Manifesto" by a writer/philsopher named Karl Marx. This philosphy was embraced by academic institutions the world over and has been effective in indoctrinating both democrats and republicans alike. Marxist indocrinees are responsbile for the existence or organizations like the ACLU, labor unions, and community ordganizations like ACORN. Students of these teachings have graduated and become television and print journalists, hollywood actors, directors, and screenwriters, educators, law enforcement officials, etc. These teachings have been at least partly responsible for the moral decay experienced by our society and the war on religion, family values, and our sense of pride in our national identity.

It continues to this day in the relentless assault on the Bush administration by both the Obama administration and it's sycophants and toadies in the congress. For what is the Bush administration, but the long legged magicians assistant designed to keep our focus looking backwards so we don't see what our governement is doing in the present time. In point of fact, nothing President Bush did puts our lives and lifestyles in peril half as much as what's being done today and we need to keep our focus on that. Democratic congressmen and senators aren't all true believers and many of them are betting their re-election on President Obama's popularity ratings. If they continue to fall as they have been, you're going to see these career politicians start backing away from him and his policies like rats off of a sinking ship. It is for precisely this reason that the administration is in such a rush to get Cap n' Trade, National Healthcare Reform (a euphamism for socialized medicine), and maybe even a SECOND stimulus passed and signed before that can happen.

Cindy Hale wrote "Governments don't take away the rights of free people in large blocks but in small chips that are barely noticed, until one day you wake up and realize you are no longer a free people." Whether liberty is lost in a sudden violent hail of bullets or legislated away in thousand page bills passed over a period of years, the net result is the same. It's gone, and as long as keep electing the same kind of politicians to public office, it's NOT coming back. Our founding father Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that there were three rights endowed by our Creator and not by government. These were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Liberty is second only to LIFE in that trilogy. He further started the then New Democratic Party to safeguard against the legislating away of any of these rights by the creeping bureaucracy of an expansive federal government. Today it is that self same Democratic Party that is doing precisely what Jefferson warned us against for he understood that although these rights come from God, not government, they CAN be legislated away. Eleven score and thirteen years later, my how things have changed!

In spite of outward appearance however, the Spirit of '76 is alive and well. It was evident in the Tea Parties of April 15, and July 4, it's evident every day on the internet and certain television stations, and it is only going to grow as our President and Congress continue to try to legislate us into a socialist model of utopia in a vainglorious effort to preserve their political power and polish their legacies. Still, as long as we remember the words of yet another founding father, Virginian Patrick Henry when he said "Is life so dear as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me LIBERTY or give me DEATH!" While I don't believe anyone in the Obama administration or the Congress of the United States desires our deaths per se, I DO agree with Patrick Henry in that a life without liberty is a mere existence and not worth the effort. So, unfurl your flag, dust off the tricorn hats and keep going to meetings, websites, tea parties, and ultimately the voting booths and keep the Spirit of '76 alive and well so that we may proudly celebrate our Tri-Centennial in 2076.

California DREAMING

When I woke up this morning the LAST thing I had planned to do was write anything of a political nature. I was working on a nice blog article about the passing of Farrah Fawcett, which has all but disappeared from the public notice in the media tsunami over the equally untimely and tragic passing of Michael Jackson. So there I was writing my little personal tribute to the woman whose face and figure helped get me through the "awkward" phase of adolecense when I heard President Obama's dulcet tones telling us that we should model our national energy policy after that of the State of California, and that we as a country should be more like California. So much for the Farrah piece because I can't let a man with such a large microphone spew out inaccurate, false, and deliberately misleading statements without challenging them. This is supposed to be the job of the press, but since they are too busy obsequiously fawning over their hand-picked and annointed messianic symbol to do their JOBS, I guess it will be up to people like me, so here goes. I lived in California in the Reagan 80's and even then, California had a serious pollution problem. I remember in Los Angeles, we got daily smog reports with the morning weather and traffic, and as long as I can remember, California cars have had significantly stricter requirements for automotive emissions than the rest of the country. Despite all this, you could still see a brown smog cloud hanging over Los Angeles, especially in the summer months and it made being outside, nearly unbearable at times. Clearly some reforms were needed, and they were being undertaken by the last good Republican governor to run the Golden State, Pete Wilson. When Californians elected liberal democrat George Dukmejian, the enviornmentalists where pretty much given the keys to the kingdom and free reign over the Sunshine State. I'm glad I got out of there before that happened, especially in light of what followed. To be fair to the environmentalists, the Golden State of California was a mess in many ways. We're all familiar with the story of Erin Brockovich, thanks to her book, movie, and portrayal by academy award winning actress Julia Roberts. She took on the largest power company in the state over the issue of toxic waste coming from a power plant. When Dukmejian was elected, he targeted the largest power companies in the state, forcing them to close a number of power plants deemed hazardous to the environment. This is all well and good, but if you take power plants off line, what happens to the power they generate? Do we stop using less just because we're making less? In the case of California, the power companies tried to make up the shortfall by rehabilitating some of the closed plantsto bring them back online. This was rejected by the government. The utility companies then wanted to build a nuclear power plant as nuclear power is cheaper and less polluting than coal or oil run plants, but thanks to the specters of 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and The China Syndrome, the state refused to allow nuclear power. The companies attempted to increase output from the remaining plants, but consumption was too high. This forced the power companies to make up the shortfall by buying electricity from out of state companies at a premium. As businesses do, they pass their cost increases down to their customers, and California residents saw their power bills increase exponentially. This is something we might ALL be able to relate to soon, if Cap n' Trade passes in the Senate and gets signed into law by The ONE, himself. When people are unhappy the complain to their representatives and the unhappy Californians were no different. The problem is, that when you ask politicians to solve a business problem you get a political rather than an effective solution. The same held true in California, and instead of allowing the power companies to create more power by opening a plant or easing environmental restrictions, the government of California decided to regulate the rates utility companies could charge their customers, regardless of the costs those utility companies incurred to produce that energy. This created an inbalance which the government then offset by paying subsidies for the power purchased from out of state. All was well for a time. The people were happy because their utility bills were leveled off, the government was happy because the people were happy, and the power companies were not quite as happy, but they weren't hemorrhaging money so they weren't unhappy. This would have gone on smoothly, but as i pointed out earlier, the state was being overrun by the enivronmentalists and their lobbyists. This resulted in more and more regulation and restrictions on the power plants, which in turn resulted in decreased power production and increased purchasing of power from outside the state and premium rates. The subsidies in place were no longer adequate and the State of California refused to either increase the subsidies, or relax the regulations to allow the power companies to generate more of its own power. The power companies then made the decision produce as much of its own power as it could given the regulations, purchase only as much additional power as the subsidies would cover, and if that weren't sufficient, then there would be blackouts. To minimize the discomfort to the residents, the blackouts were allowed to roll from one end of the st ate to the other keeping the outages to a minimum, and the inconvenience to the residents to a minimum. These rolling blackouts earned then Governor Grey Davis the less-than-flattering nickname of "Grey-Out Davis." They also got California's legilslators costituents calling their representatives again. Consequently, Governor Davis and the legislature decided to increase the subsidies to the power company to stop the blackouts, but then decided to announce an increase in the state's property taxes to help pay for it. That tax increase announcement was the straw that broke the camel's back and caused the citizens of California to rise up, recall, and replace Gov. Grey-Out with Arnold Schwarzenegger, a.k.a the Governator. Whether that was a good thing or not is a matter of public debate. I won't get into that issue here. In conclusion Mr. President, if we're going to emulate any policy of California, it should NOT be an economic or ENERGY one. We don't need skyrocketing utility bills or rolling blackouts on a national level. We also don't need to be swimming in a sea of red ink that makes the Red Sea look like a kiddie pool by comparison. If there is ANY policy of California we might WANT to emulate on a national level, I vote for the ability to recall and ineffective or downright dangerous chief executive. THAT policy I could support with a clear conscience.

His-PANIC!

When Barak Obama was elected, I PRAYED that his term would pass without any of the nine Supreme Court Justices retiring or passing on.  I only asked for a four year moritorium because I believed then, as I believe even more NOW, that he will be a one-term President.  I also believed that he would, at some time, overreach his authority as President and perform some act that he was not constitutially empowered to do and, in this area, he did NOT disappoint me.  Thanks to his unprecendent seizures of banks and auto companies and, his forcing salary caps and bonus restrictions on private companies, as well as his firing of General Motors' CEO Rick Wagner; and, his strong-arming of a bankruptcy court judge to deprive Chrysler and General Motors' bondholders and shareholders of their rights under federal laws, he has opened himself and his administration up to legal and political drama.

 Clearly, there are numerous grounds for legal challanges against this administration.  In our entire history there has only been one attempt to nationalize a private enterprise and that occurred when Harry Truman attempted to nationalize the steel industry during the Korean war.  Now granted, this was about settling a strike that was hurting our war effort, but notwithstanding this, the courts struck this down as unconstitutional and that case is controlling to date.  A legal challenge against these actions is the only recourse we have to protect our private property rights.  As voters, we can do nothing against this administration before November, 2012. However, the bondholders and shareholders can take the administration to court to seek injunctive relief.  Due to the unprecendented nature of events, any such challenge would likely reach the Court of Appeals, or even the Supreme Court.

Into this muddled morass of facts and circumstances comes the Hon. Sonya Sotomayor, the nominee for the position of Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court being vacated by the current Justice, the Hon. David Souter.  Justice Souter was appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, and was believed to be a conservative leaning Judge at the time of his appointment.  Contrary to this belief, Justice Souter has ruled with the liberal justices more the sixty-five percent of his time on the bench.  Clearly, replacing him with an equally liberal justice does nothing to change the balance on the court at this time.  Still, every prospective justice should receive proper vetting by the United Sates Senate prior to his or her confirmation, and this is where we find outselves.

Sadly, there is more to this story because the liberal Democrats of the Senate, as well as the White House Press Secretary are playing traditional identity politics with this nomination.  They are doing the typical quota-filling tokenism with this nomination, and they are daring those on the right to "proceed at their peril" when it comes to the vetting process required by law.  They are betting that any challenge to this nominee will cost the Republican party any propect of support from the Hispanic community in upcoming elections.   Where was this concern for THEIR support from the Hispanic community when THEY were ripping into Alberto Gonzales? The simple answer is that is was nowhere to be found.  This is probably because it is all a load of BULL.

What the press may not want you to remember is that the senate democrats demonstrated the very bigotry then now warn the republicans not to display when it came to the nomination of the  Honorable Miguel Estrada, to the Court of Appeals.  Miguel Estrada is a judge with an American story every bit as impressive as Judge Sotomayor's is.  Why then, you may ask, is there not an Appellate Court Judge named Miguel Estrada?  The answer is a bit more complicated.  Liberal democrats have this "token" mentatlity when it comes to minorities.  They like to be the first to put a "first" in a position of authority or responsibility.  That would not have been a bar here as there were already Hispanic judges at the Appellate Court level, namely Judge Sonya Sotomayor.  And what was their excuse for the treatment shown to Alberto Gonzales when he was nominated for Attorney General.  He, too had a very compelling American story, but that didn't seem to matter to the senate democrats, including the self-righteous Senator from New York, Charles Schumer, and the junior Sentaor from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The actual reason there is no Justice Estrada on the Court of Appeals has nothing to do with his being an Hispanic, and EVERYTHING to do with the fact that he believes the role of a Judge is to take the laws written and enacted by the legistlature (i.e. the Constitution), and apply it, as written, to the fact pattern of the case at bar.  This is the mark of a CONSERVATIVE judge.  Now in contrast to this, the liberal democratis believe that it is the role of the judge to write new legistlation from the bench if the laws on the books do not comply with said judge's political ideology.  This is the mark of a LIBERAL judge, or judicial activist as they are sometimes called.  This is the contrast between what liberal democrats want in a Supreme Court Justice and what conservative republicans want in a Supreme Court Justice.  Clearlly there are maked differences between the two, and it is those differences that need to be fully exposed during the confirmation hearings. 

Barak Obama is a liberal democrat, and notwithstanding the fact that his is himself a constitutional scholar, clearly favors the liberal activist judge model.  He would not have nominated Judge Sotomayor if he did not belive she shares his belief that it is the role of the judge to make law from the bench, a function NOT intended for judges by our founding fathers when they penned the Constitution.   The founding fathers built in a system of checks and balances to keep any one branch of the government from becoming more powerful than any other.  The founding fathers intended for elected legistlators ALONE to write laws, and for the President alone to be able to approve or veto them.  This is because these officials are the only ones accountable to the voting public. 

 The role of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary is to safeguard the Constiution and ensure that neither legislators nor Presidents would enact laws that were contrary to the tenets of the Constitution.   They did this to ensure that neither political expedience or popular prejudices would upset the balance of power and emperil the rights of American citizens.  The founding fathers intended the rule of law to be sacrosanct and for the government to honor contracts and respect private property rights and individual freedoms of all citizens, except under such circumstances as conviction of a crime or enforcement of a civil judgment.  The conduct of this administration flys in the face of these protections and clearly warrants a judicial review.

In the hearing for Judge Sotomayor, you will not hear a peep from the democratic senators about the role of the judge, judicial activism, or anything else that could be perceived as a negative against this Judge.  Just like President Obama, the liberal democrats in the Senate believe this nominee is EXACTLY what they want, an activist judge who legislates from the bench, and they will do NOTHING to expose this and emperil their nominee.  It is left to the republicans in the senate to actually do their jobs and show the American people what kind of judge this nominee actually is, and to further illustrate to the American public the contrast between what democrats want in judges and what republicans want in judges so that the people can decide for themselves who best represents their interests in these and and other matters.

It is these distinctions between republicans and democrats that have been sorely lacking in the past eight years.  Ive often posed the question: "Are congressional republicans transvestite or transsexuals?"  Now before the gay rights types go nuts on me, it should be clearly understood that the vast majority of transvestites are HETEROSEXUALS, so there is no homophobic intent here.  I merely pose the metaphor because I can't decide if congressional republicans are merely dressing and acting like democrats, e.g. transvestite, or if they've had full gender reassignment surgery to become democrats, e.g. transsexuals.  In the case of Senator Arlen Specter, this is no longer a question.  He's CLEARLY a post-op democrat.  The jury's still out on Senators Susan Collins, and Olympia Snow.  I'm reasonably secure in declaring John McCain a transvestite in this metaphor.

While the republicans clearly must distinguish themselves from their democratic counterparts and actually DO their jobs vetting this candidate, they must also beware and avoid falling into the trap set for them by those very democrats.  To do this, they need to avoid the Rush Limbaugh example of comparing Judge Sotomayor to David Duke.  To be fair, Rush never actually did this, but the facts are irrelevant to the liberal media and he's been widely reported as having done this.  While Rush can defend himself, quite ably, the example is very real.  Republican Senators and political pundits alike must avoid the race issue altogether.  In the first place, it's irrelevant.  Nobody, including Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, thinks that Judge Sonya Sotomayor is anything like David Duke.  The comparison is ludicrous at best and to make it puts the republican party at real risk of coming off to the Hispanic voters as being either racist or xenophobic.   

The way to avoid this trap is simple.  Treat Judge Sotomayor first and foremost as a qualified judge with an inspirational American story and an equally impressive ciriculum vitae, as well as a seventeen year history that reveals how she interprets and applies existing laws to the fact patterns of her various cases.  Use the facts and judgments in these cases to show clearly how she interprets the role of a judge in constitutional questions and bring out facts that support her comment that it is actually the appellate court judge that makes law and sets policy.  Also, bring out the fact that she has been reversed three out of her six times on appeal to higher courts, including the Supreme Court to which she now apires to sit.  Lastly, show her the deference and respect you would show any woman in her position.  Do that and you will not antagonize or alienate the Hispanic community,  Most importantly, you must give people a choice if you wish them to make one so the differences between senate republicans and democrats must be clearly illustrated.

The worst thing republican senators can do is try to play to the media.  This is a losing proposition from the very start.  For a republican, you will be about as successful in appeasing the press as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was in trying to appease Adolf Hitler.  It's NOT gonna happen, because neither Hitler, nor the press, come to the table with honest intent.  No matter what republicans do, they're gonna be shredded in the press.  If they go soft on Judge Sotomayor, theyre going to be portrayed as weak and innefectual, a judgment that will be SHARED by their voting constituents.  If they do their jobs and bring out the truth about the judge, they will be portrayed as racist, sexist, and mean spirited for sure, but this is irrelevant because regardless of any spin applied by reporters or pundits, the viewing public will also see the tape of the hearings themselves and no one will doubt the evidence of their own eyes, especially if the press reports to the contrary.  No one trusts the media anymore, so don't worry about that audience.

As for the Hispanic community, if you don't disrespect the judge personally or make any derrogatory statements about her race or anything personal to her as a woman, you won't have a problem there, either.  Trust that our fellow Americans are not blind to liberal hypocrisy, which is about the only thing that is transparent about them.  In this, they are as transparent as Saran Wrap.  Contrary to the liberals world view, Hispanics are a proud and diverse group.  They do not see themselves as "victims" and will not forgive the liberals for their condescension and hypocrisy when it comes to their treatment of minorites.  It is pure hubris on the part of the liberal democrats to think that any minority group "needs" their largesse in this day and age.  No one, least of all Hispanic Americans, wants to dine on government cheese.   We tried that for the three decades between the 1960s and the 1990s.  It was called welfare and it was a liberal democrat named Bill Clinton that ended it.  

In summation, the gauntlet has been thrown down by the evil Sir Charles of Schumer. Republican senators must now do what medievil knights have always done in this situation.  They must pick up the gauntlet, slap the said Sir Charles of Schumer across the face, forcefully (figuratively speaking, of course), draw their swords, and engage the challanger in combat.  Retreat is not an option, because then as now, if you retreat, you will lose your honor, integrity, and in all likelihood, your jobs.  Accordingly, I say this to the senate republicans: "DO your jobs and vet this judicial nominee thoroughly and respectfully if you want to KEEP your jobs in the next elections; and, most of all, do not PANIC,

The Devil-lution of the Modern Liberal!

My conservative friends are fond of tossing around the statement that "the only GOOD liberal is a DEAD liberal." When I hear this phrase, I'm often heard retorting that they should "bite their tounge" because without political liberalism, there would be no United States of America today. The truth of the matter is that our founding fathers were ALL political liberals. But as another old saying goes, "the devil is in the details."

The concept of "innocent" political liberalism can best be exemplified in a quote by Robert F. Kennedy which said something to the effect of "Some men see the way things are and ask Why? I see things as they never were and ask Why Not?" The "innocent" liberal honestly wants to do the most good for the most people and is not about his own self-aggrondisement. Likewise, he or she wants to make a better world, but unlike the not-so-innocent idealogues, does not come from a place of hate, especially when it comes to America. The "innocent" liberal is aware that we have less than pleasant chapters in our long and diverse history, but can also appreciate all the good that this country has done in and for the other nations of our world. Then there are the not-so-innocent politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, etc. who are all about their own wealth and power. Then, last but not least, are the committed idealogues like Rosie O'Donnell and Janeane Garafalo who genuinely HATE this country and all it stands for but probably have no rational foundation for this hatred or any conscious knowledge of WHY they have such rage and hatred in them.

Thus the modern liberals can be broken into 3 types. The first of these is the "innocent" liberal. This type of liberal can be summed up in the Three Musketeers motto, "all for one and one for all." Personalities that represent this type would be George Cloobey, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, Darryl Hannah, Matthew Modine, etc. These are people that put their money where their mouths are and actually WALK the walk, not just talk the talk. While I may disagree with them politically, I respect them personally and they do a lot of good in the world.

The second type is the "not-so-innocent" type. This would include the career politicians such as Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, etc. These can be summed up by altering the Three Musketeers motto as follows: "all for one and that ONE is ME." Celebrities can also fall into this type as well. These are the ones that put their names and faces out front of any political or social cause they get involved in, but that involvement is more about self-promotion than doing anything for anyone else. I'm not going to name any specific celebrities here, but you know who they are. These are the types that run around the globe taking smiling photos with some of the world's worst dictators and happily take starring roles in movies that are going to bomb at the box office to bolster their political bona fides. Also included in this category would be hypocrites like Al Gore and John Edwards. Al Gore espouses environmental causes like Global Warming but puts down one of the biggest carbon footprints attributable to any single human being on the planet. Likewise, John Edwards runs for President espousing family values and concerns for the poor when he is unfaithful to his wife, and lives like a Roman Emperor.

The last type is the commited idealogue. This type hates all things American, and spends all his or her time telling anyone that will listen what a horrible country this is and what awful people we Americans are. This is the category I reserve for Al Franken, Rosie O'Donnell, and Janeanne Garafalo. These people cannot love this country and knowingly say and do the things they do on a daily basis. Several leading Democratic politicians fall into this category as well, but I'll not feed their egos anymore by mentioning them here.

The ancient oriental general/philosopher Sun Tzu made two statements in his treatise "The Art of War" that were eerily prophetic to our current political situation. The first statement is paraphrased as: "The closer the enemy is, the harder he is to see." The second statement is paraphrased as: "In order to defeat an enemy you must first be able to identify him." When Howard Dean succeeded Terry McAuliffe as head of the Democratic National Committee, I remember reading and hearing statements from various political pundits that the Democratic Party had been hijacked by its' liberal wing and that it was no longer Grandpa's Democratic Party. Like most things reported in the press, some is true, and some is innacurate.

The Democratic party is no longer Grandpa's Democratic party, that's for sure. To clarify, only ONE of my grandfathers was EVER a Democrat but he would have ripped up his membership card if he could see them today. The media's deception is in the identity of the hijackers themselves and this is largely because the media has been complicit in the hijacking process. The hijackers of the Democratic party of Thomas Jefferson and dear old Grandpa are neither liberals, nor Democrats. They are the resurgents of the American Communist Movement and Party.

Now, before you go relegating me to the status of that crazy old uncle that every family has and doesn't claim, let me clarify a couple of points. I am well aware of the negative visceral reaction most Americans have to the words "communist," "marxist," and "socialist. Like most things we base on emotion, the facts tend to get lost in the feelings and more times than not, we get it wrong. When I refer Communism, I'm not talking about the former Soviet Union, North Korea, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, or Venezuela. The sad truth is that the actual practice of communism as defined by Karl Marx in his book "A Communist Manifesto" occurs in only one country that I'm aware of and that country is Israel. True communism is not the central form of government in Isreal, but it is the form of government in the agrarian kibbutz comminites. There, the maxim "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs is actually put into practice effectively.

The countries that purport to be communist countries have about as much to do with Marx's philosophy as the Islamic terrorists have to do with the Quoran. The Soviet, Cuban, and North Korean governments are totalitarian dictatorships and not communist despite their usurpation of the title. I could call myself Hercules, too, but it does not mean I can bench press half a ton. Still, so as to remain on point, the communism I will be talking about here is the philosophy as defined in the Manifesto of Karl Marx.

The book "A Communist Manifesto" was first published in Germany in 1848 as a work of philosophy, not a political writing. As such, it was embraced by the universities and colleges in Europe and The United States. It was so embraced because at the time the words had not been tainted by the bloody deeds of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. The book itself speaks of nothing resembling the totalitarian dictorships of Russia, Cuba, and North Korea, but rather of a socialist Utopia in which all are equal and no man is richer or more important than any other. It is this last concept that makes the work appealing to the liberal minds of college students to this very day. The difference is that the students who began class after the 1920s were not aware of what it was they were studying or by whom they were being indocrinated. The reason for this is that by the mid 1920s the deeds of the Bolsheviks were well known and words like "communism," "marxism," and "socialism" had taken on the more sinister connotations we have of them to this day.

As to how all of this ties today's liberal Democrats with the American Communist Party, the string that tied the bow for me came in this quote from Norman Thomas, the last man to run for President in 1948 on the American Socialist Party ticket. He said, "The American People will never knowlingly accept Socialism, but under the label of "liberalism" they will accept every fragment of the Socialist progam until one day America will be a Socialist nation without ever knowning how it happened." This idea a socialism-by-stealth fits perfectly with the program of indoctrination disguised as education adopted by the Communists that became university and college professors following the demise of the American Communist Party in the aftermath of the "red scares" of the 1920s.

The American Communist Party as a political organization came into being in 1919, even though Communism as a philosophy had been generally accepted and embraced by academia since the 1850s. American Communists, emboldened by the Russian Revolution and the establishment of a communist state, decided the time was right to bring similar change to the American way of life. Unfortunately for the founders of this party, the atrocities of the Bolsheviks in Russia came to light causing the public to react violently against all things communist. To see how dangerous it was to be a communist in America in the 1920s, watch the movie "Reds" starring Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton. Given that declaring oneself to be communist could result in anything from arrest to assault and battery, most American Communists felt that discretion was indeed the better part of valor and abandoned the party opting for safety over ideology.

Americans thought they had seen the last of the Communists in this country, but like the cockroach, communists don't go away. They hide out of sight and flourish in the shadows. Like the cockroaches who scatter when you turn on a light as a survival instinct, so the communist hid from the light of public scrutiny, but they were committed more than ever to their goals of making America a utopian state. To accomplish this, they needed to be able to get their message to people open-minded enough to receive it and what better place can this be accomplished than in colleges and universities. Students are by their very nature open to new ideas and what better way to get a message to young, eager, and captive minds than from the bully pulpit of the university classroom.

Now if you walk up to a liberal democrat and call him or her a communist, they will probably respond to you by calling you something very insulting. They may deny the allegation outright, but more often than not, they'll just attack you. The degree and nature of the attack will depend largely upon whom you attach the communist label. If you choose a minority female like Shelia Jackson-Lee or Maxine Waters, you'll be called racist, sexist, and stupid. If you choose a minority male like Jesse Jackson, Jr., you'll be called racist, and stupid. If you choose a caucasion female like Hillary Clinton, you'll be called sexist (although she'll probably use "mysogenist" because she did go to Wellesley and Yale after all). Finally, if you choose a caucasion male like John Kerry, you won't be called anything. He'll just look down his nose, his upper lip will make a snarling gesture demonstrating utter contempt for you as he opines that you don't understand what you're talking about (elitist for "stupid"). This was seen many times in his presidential campaign, especially when the press actually did its' job and asked him tough questions or questions that clearly made him uncomfortable.

The sad reality is that many of today's liberal communists don't realize that they are, in fact, the idealogical successors of the original communist movement because their indocrination was most likely done without revealing to them either that they were being indocrinated or by whom. I doubt seriously that in the wake of the red scares, a communist professor would stand in front of his class on the first day of the semester and announce that he was a communist and he was going to make communists out of them. If he didn't get beaten to death by his students, he would certainly have been out of job when one of them reported him to the dean. So it's most likely that this indocrination would have been by stealth. Likewise, I doubt any college professor in the 1920s would have whipped out a copy of "The Communist Manifesto" and lectured from it openly. More likely, the professors would have started with Plato and the importance of the State over the individual and progressed from there. Still, if today's liberals don't realize they are indocrinated communists, it's only because they don't WANT to know, or better still, they don't want YOU to know. Another juicy little secret is that the indoctrinated ones are not just on the the Democrat side because, contrary to popular belief, Republicans go to college, too.

In spite of what I just said about the Republicans, it is in the Democratic constituency that you see a veritable rogues gallery of American Communist legacy organizations. First among these is the American Civil Liberties Union, often jokingly referred to as the Amercian Communist Lawyers Union. As with most jokes, we laugh because they're funny, but they're funny in part because there's some truth in the humor. The same holds true here because even though the letter C in ACLU doesn't stand for Communist, in many ways it really IS the American Communist Lawyers Union. The initial director, Roger Baldwin, as well as initial members like Crystal Eastman, and William Z, Foster were purported to be card carrying members of the American Communist Party. This is not to say that the ACLU hasn't done some good for our citizens in its history, but in the time since the Vietnam era, the ACLU has been more about attacking our American values and way of life than anything good it may have done before. This makes sense when you consider that in order for the Communist ideas to succeed, you first have to remove morality from the American psyche and the best way to do that is to attack the foundation of that morality, our Christian values. Regrettably, they have succeeded in this endeavor all too well.

Next up in the communist cavalcade are the unions. While they will strenously object to any links between unions and communism, the fact of the matter is that the labor movement did not exist in this country until the communinsts came together. Unions will argue this point by saying that the labor union goes back to the guilds that have been around since Egypt was building pyramids. This is true, in part, but the fact remains that there was no organized labor union in this country until 1875, well AFTER Karl Marx published his Communist Manifesto. Unions also point to the Upton Sinclair novel "The Jungle" which served as an expose on the conditions for the workers in an industrial manufacturing plant and called for workers to organize to protect themselves from corporate abuses. While it's true that "The Jungle" was published in 1906, well before the American Communist party came into being in 1919, its' writer, Upton Sinclair, studied Marxism in college and was an avowed Socialist, which was the same as a Communist, especially after the "red scare" of the 1920s. That the letter "U" stands for Union in the ACLU is NOT a coincidence. Unions owe their existence to the efforts of the American Communist Party, whether they want to admit it, or not.

Last, but certainly not least, is the group, ACORN. This body of community organizations owes its' existence and sustenance to Saul Alinski, author of "Rules for Radicals" and a hero to the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Alinski was himself a community organizer dedicated to the proposition that communities should organize and use their organization to bring down both the goverment and business structures of the United States. His "rules" combined with the lessons of Nicolo Machiavelli provide the blueprint by which the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, our first Communist President, ushered in the "politics of total destruction," a practice honed, perfected, and used with deadly precision by the modern communists of the Democratic party and their supporters to date; and, "political correctness," an insidious form of censorship and thought control and prevents us from speaking our minds in most situations.

Ironically, all these organizations, the ACLU, labor unions, community organizers, and communism itself all come from the latin word "unum" meaning "one." The word is featured in our own national motto "E Pluirbus Unum," meaning "from the many - ONE. Our founding fathers interpreted this to mean from the many, i.e. the 13 colonies, come the ONE, the United States of America. Our current liberal communist democrats interpret this to mean: "from the many, our private wealth and property, to the ONE, the Federal Government. Like a swarm of termites, these liberal communists have infected and infested both the super structure and infrastructure of the great House that is the United States of America. Like a large Victorian mansion so infected, that house is today buckling under its own weight and in serious danger of a total collapse. Now that we have, in fact, become the Socialist country we have so long feared, somewhere in the vast reaches of the infinite universe, Norman Thomas is smiling.