Life's Inanities and Ironies

If you think the Obama administration doesn't need help in dreaming up new schemes to reinterpret the Constitution and add new restrictions on our freedom, think again. President Bush, for all his mistakes and miscalculations, never allowed his U.N. representatives to participate in such negotiations. But President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reversed course and agreed to join the negotiations. Secretary of State Clinton announced in October that the U.S. would join the negotiations "if they are based on consensus," implying that the U.S. could exercise a veto if negotiations went off course. That implies that the U.S. would reject any treaty that violates our Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms. The problem is she can't make that promise or guarantee that outcome. The truth is it is very dangerous for the U.S. to go down this road no matter how many assurances are given by President Obama and his minions. Once committed to the "process...

December 15 is neglected by most Americans for its historical significance as the anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Even worse, American politicians neglect the actual Bill of Rights on a day-to-day basis. Whether or not the Bill of Rights can ever be an effective means of limiting the government is open to debate. However, the Bill of Rights does offer a fairly good outline of a free society, and it shows how far our country has strayed. In an America with a full respect for the Bill of Rights, there would be no Federal Communications Commission regulating the airwaves and forbidding certain speech, no Federal Election Commission limiting how much Americans can donate to political candidates or what they can say in independent political ads, no Food and Drug Administration harassment of pharmaceutical and wine producers regarding their commercial speech, no federal laws that have anything to do with religion whatsoever, and no federally established "free-speech zones." Ther...

This venerable and much honored WW II vet is well known in Hawaii for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organizations and causes all over the country. A humble man without a political bone in his body, he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now. He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the president. Dear President Obama, My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don't believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert. I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos'n Mate. Now I live in a "rest home" located on the western end of Pearl Harbor allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country. One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direc...

Were Swine Flu Death Projections Hyped? By Adam Murdock, MD The 2009 H1N1 swine flu "pandemic" may turn out to be one of the most overblown and expensive medical crises in modern history. Indeed, this particular swine flu may be one of the weakest in history. The most recent figures show that the number of flu cases are already dropping in the U.S. , England , and elsewhere. It is a mild illness in most but occasionally can lead to severe complications due to bacterial superinfections. In the UK, under 200 people have died from the virus and in the US a debatable 4 thousand people have died. The number of deaths in the US greatly expanded from 1,200 to 4,000 after the CDC recently decided to lump in bacterial infections and "flu-like illnesses" with confirmed swine-flu related deaths. Even with these inflated numbers, in comparison to previous pandemics or even compared to seasonal flu epidemics, this has been a relatively mild illness. The Spanish H1N1 flu of 19...

You Should Know About Harry Reid’s Government-Run Health Care Experiment 1. $493 Billion In Tax Increases On Health Insurance, Medical Innovation, Payroll And Small Businesses Would Pay For The Bill. (Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid , 11/18/09) 2. Americans Won’t See Benefits Of This Health Care Experiment Until 2014, But They Start Paying For It In 2010. (Page 13, Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid , 11/18/09) 3. Reid’s Bill Allegedly Reduces The Deficit By $130 Billion In Ten Years , But The Obama-Reid-Pelosi Spending Agenda Produced Deficit Of $176 Billion Last Month Alone . (Table 3, Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid , 11/18/09) 4. $465 Billion In Medicare And Medicaid Cuts Would Pay For Two New Unsustainable Entitlements. (Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid , 11/18/09) 5. Health Care Costs For The Federal Government – And Your Family – Would Increase, Not Decrease. (Page 16, Douglas...