Redstate Morning Briefing

I'm sure he had a perfectly good reason for being a wimp and selling out to the dhimmis. He probably talked to his wife before he voted to bankrupt the nation.

Eric Cantor's Failure of Leadership

On Friday, 92 Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, joined all of the Democrats to defeat an amendment offered up by Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn to ensure the GOP lived up to its "$100 billion in cuts" pledge.

This was a failure of leadership, particularly by Eric Cantor.

Blackburn's amendment, by its own description, would have "reduce[d] spending by 5.5% in 8 non-securiy spending subsections of the bill and reduce[d] Legislative Branch appropriations by 11%."

In other words, just as Republicans pledged to bring spending down to 2008 levels, Congresswoman Blackburn's amendment would have ensured it happened across the board, save for security matters.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy joined Democrats to oppose this. Other Republicans took to the floor to call Rep. Blackburn and her conservative colleagues "lazy" for wanting across the board cuts.

You Should Wrap Your Head In Duct Tape Before Reading This

In a bid to stem taxpayer losses for bad loans guaranteed by federal housing agencies Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn) proposed that borrowers be required to make a 5% down payment in order to qualify. His proposal was rejected 57-42 on a party-line vote because, as Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) explained, "passage of such a requirement would restrict home ownership to only those who can afford it."

Our Senators voted against this. Remember this in 2012, when we replace Webb.

Morning Must Reads from DCExaminer

Chris Stirewalt - GOP must seek to govern, not just win elections
Democrats are about to be turned out for the cardinal sin of overpromising and underdelivering. If Republicans follow the same path back to power, they'll be turned out just as fast.

Julie Mason - Stakes high for all as Obama convenes health summit
Whether President Obama's televised health care summit amounts to a substantive foundation for reform or empty political theater, the stakes are high for all sides.

Susan Ferrechio - Stupak says many Dems opposed to health care bill
Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said Wednesday the House will have a hard time passing Obama's compromise health care proposal and not just because of controversial abortion funding language that pro-life House Democrats oppose.

Byron York - Rep. Grayson, Blackwater critic, finds himself in a jam. Blackwater to the rescue.
Rep. Alan Grayson, the outspoken Florida Democrat, has been a big critic of several military contractors, especially Blackwater, the company now known as Xe. But last week, Grayson, on congressional business in Niger, found himself in a dicey situation when violence broke out and a coup was underway. (Grayson could hear the gunfire from a nearby building.) After a stay at the U.S. Embassy, Grayson was able to catch a flight, arranged by the State Department, out of Niger to Burkina Faso, from which he returned to the United States.

Michael Barone - Democrats exiting (or not entering) the sinking ship?--Part 24
Tennessee Democrats are having a hard time finding a serious candidate to run in the seat being vacated after 26 years by House Science Committee Chairman Bart Gordon.

Stuff From the Inbox

Washington Examiner Political Digest

Chris Stirewalt - Obama delivers a cynical speech to a cynical nation
The biggest casualty in Tuesday night's speech was Obama's credibility. Even his detractors were taken aback that he would be so calculating, even on matters of life and death.

Michael Barone - Are Democrats exiting the sinking ship? Part 2
The Hotline reports that Congressman John Tanner of the 8th district of Tennessee is retiring in 2010. Tanner, a Democrat and a member of the Blue Dog Caucus, was first elected in 1988; he turns 66 in 2010 and in a statement said he considered retiring in 2008, but decided to run for one more term so that he could serve as Chairman of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly..
Jim Geraghty of National Review notes that Tanner was facing competition this year from Republican gospel singer Stephen Fincher, who has raised $300,000 in a short period of time and seemed likely to wage a serious campaign in a district that voted 56%-43% for John McCain in 2008. This west Tennessee district was one of the few where Barack Obama ran behind John Kerry's 2004 showing; George W. Bush carried the district by only 53%-47% in 2004. It voted 51%-48% for Tennessee's own Al Gore in 2000.

David Freddoso - Honesty from Baucus on Health care -- and a bomb from Tom Coburn
PA bit of honesty today from Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D, Mont., regarding the tricks used to make the health care bill appear deficit-neutral:
“Health care reform, whether you use a ten-year number or when you start in 2010 or start in 2014, wherever you start at, so it is still either $1 trillion or it's $2.5 Trillion, depending on where you start”
This is an important point. The health care bill costs $2.5 trillion over ten years if you count from the year when it started.

Pelosi's outrageous attempt to hide congressional spending
Remember when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said "This leadership team will create the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history”? Well, if a little noticed rule change by Pelosi is anything to go by, she lied -- big time.
If $217.55 is enough to save a job, then there's no reason for the White House to worry about meeting its goal of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs. They're on pace to create 3.5 billion jobs.

Michael Barone - Global warming alarmists getting frozen out
The Australian Senate has rejected Labour party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's carbon emissions bill by a vote of 41-33. Interestingly, it was supported by Liberal (i.e., conservative) party Malcolm Turnbull, who was promptly sacked as party leader. Like the Waxman-Markey carbon emissions bill which passed the House back in June but seems to have no chance in the Senate, Rudd's measure was criticized by both conservatives and by global warming alarmists.

How Politicians Should Act

I had read this story before, and even made an attempt to find it a few weeks back. I knew someone would put it out again before we were through with the current issues.

Leave to Mark Alexander to use it as it should be used. An example of what this country was and what we will eventually return it to.

Not Yours To Give
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents..." --James Madison

David Crockett
My paternal ancestors settled in East Tennessee about 10 years before it was admitted to the Union (1796). Not far from where they settled lived a fellow who was the region's most famous frontiersman.
David Crockett was his name.

He has been immortalized as a folk hero, known for his battles with the Red Stick Creek Indians under Andrew Jackson, and his last stand at the Alamo with fellow Patriots James Bowie from Kentucky and William Travis from South Carolina.

Crockett battled the Creek side-by-side with fellow Tennessean Sam Houston, but both men were friends to the Cherokee clans, which were composed of highly civilized native peoples living in the border regions between Tennessee and North Carolina.

At the end of his formal service as a soldier, he was elected Lieutenant Colonel of the Tennessee Militia.

Crockett is less known for the several terms he served in Congress between 1827 and 1835 during the presidency of his old commander, Andrew Jackson. Crockett's friend, Sam Houston, had been elected governor of Tennessee. (Houston, who would later become governor of Texas, is the only American in history to serve as governor of two states.)

Though he had little formal education, Crockett exuded a commanding presence and was feared, if not loathed, by his more refined congressional colleagues for his backwoods rhetoric.
In one of his more legendary orations, Crockett proclaimed: "Mr. Speaker ... the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Everett] talks of summing up the merits of the question, but I'll sum up my own. In one word I'm a screamer, and have got the roughest racking horse, the prettiest sister, the surest rifle and the ugliest dog in the district. I'm a leetle the savagest crittur you ever did see. My father can whip any man in Kentucky, and I can lick my father. I can out-speak any man on this floor, and give him two hours start. I can run faster, dive deeper, stay longer under, and come out drier, than any chap this side the big Swamp. I can outlook a panther and outstare a flash of lightning, tote a steamboat on my back and play at rough and tumble with a lion, and an occasional kick from a zebra."

Crockett continued, "I can take the rag off -- frighten the old folks -- astonish the natives -- and beat the Dutch all to smash, make nothing of sleeping under a blanket of snow and don't mind being frozen more than a rotten apple. I can walk like an ox, run like a fox, swim like an eel, yell like an Indian, fight like a devil, spout like an earthquake, make love like a mad bull, and swallow a Mexican whole without choking if you butter his head and pin his ears back."

What I wouldn't give to hear a tad more of that on the floor of the House these days!

Though his rhetoric may have been unorthodox, Crockett was a man of principle.

His fervent opposition to Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830 (forcing removal of the peaceful Cherokee tribes along the infamous "Trail of Tears") cost Crockett his congressional seat, but he declared, "I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, and fetch and carry, at the whistle of the great man in the White House no matter who he is."

But it was Crockett's stalwart opposition to unconstitutional spending that is most worth noting given today's congressional penchant for such spending in the trillions.

According to the Register of Debates for the House of Representatives, 20th Congress, 1st Session on April 2, 1828, Crocket stood to challenge the constitutionality of one of the earliest welfare spending bills.

While the exact text of his speech was not recorded in full (as that was not the practice of the time), the spirit of his words was captured years later under the heading "Not yours to give" in the book "The Life of Colonel David Crockett" by Edward Ellis.

Ellis wrote, "One day in the House of Representatives a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose..."
According to Ellis, Crockett said, "Mr. Speaker; I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him.

"Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."

Though the measure was expected to receive unanimous support, after Crockett's objection, it did not pass.

Be sure you are right...

Ellis recounts that Crocket was later asked by a friend why he had opposed the appropriation, and he replied: "Several years ago I was one evening standing on the steps of the Capitol with some other members of Congress, when our attention was attracted by a great light over in Georgetown. It was evidently a large fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as fast as we could. In spite of all that could be done, many houses were burned and many families made houseless, and, besides, some of them had lost all but the clothes they had on. The weather was very cold, and when I saw so many women and children suffering, I felt that something ought to be done for them. The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for their relief. We put aside all other business and rushed it through as soon as it could be done."

Crocket explained, "The next summer, when it began to be time to think about election, I concluded I would take a scout around among the boys of my district. I had no opposition there, but, as the election was some time off, I did not know what might turn up. When riding one day in a part of my district in which I was more of a stranger than any other, I saw a man in a field plowing and coming toward the road. I gauged my gait so that we should meet as he came to the fence. As he came up, I spoke to the man. He replied politely, but, as I thought, rather coldly.
"I began: 'Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate beings called candidates, and..."

His constituent interrupted, "Yes I know you; you are Colonel Crockett. I have seen you once before, and voted for you the last time you were elected. I suppose you are out electioneering now, but you had better not waste your time or mine, I shall not vote for you again."

Crockett replied, "This was a sockdolager ... I begged him to tell me what was the matter."

The farmer said, "Well, Colonel, it is hardly worth-while to waste time or words upon it. I do not see how it can be mended, but you gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me. But I beg your pardon for expressing it in that way. I did not intend to avail myself of the privilege of the constituent to speak plainly to a candidate for the purpose of insulting or wounding you. I intend by it only to say that your understanding of the Constitution is very different from mine; and I will say to you what, but for my rudeness, I should not have said, that I believe you to be honest. But an understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot overlook, because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions.

The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is."
Crocket responded, "Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have got me there. But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I did."

But the farmer fired back, "It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man. ... So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people."

Thus, Crockett explained of his opposition to support the widow of that distinguished naval officer: "Now, sir, you know why I made that speech yesterday."

Today, there are but a handful of Senate and House incumbents who dare support and defend the Constitution as Crockett did. But there are candidates emerging around the nation who, with our support, will deliver orations as brazen and eloquent, and stand firm behind those words.

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!

Yes Virginia, Obama IS a Racist

Alexander's Essay – August 20, 2009
Media Blackout
"Equal and exact justice to all men..." --Thomas Jefferson
Editor's Note: PG suggested -- this essay contains graphic descriptions of a brutal crime.
In 1775, John Adams wrote, "There is in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong, a love of truth and a veneration of virtue ... if the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice..."
Adams understood that a shared penchant for justice and virtue is essential to liberty, and depends upon the ability of people to discern between right and wrong.
Today, it is evident to every astute social scientist (and most anyone with common sense) that among definable American subcultures the capacity for distinguishing between right and wrong is severely diminished.
The origin of these deteriorating standards for justice and virtue is rooted in the dissolution of the family, and the failure of our places of worship and our schools to instill those values necessary for self-government -- self-government being the foundation of family-government and that being the foundation of social responsibility.
U.S. urban centers, and to a lesser extent suburban and rural areas, are now home to generations of sociopaths who do not value your life, simply because they do not value their own.
Making matters worse, the MSM perpetuates a virtual blackout of news regarding select sociopaths, while trumpeting allegations and speculations of others. This results in a distorted popular understanding of the extent of the social degradation around us.

Three years ago (March 2006), the Leftmedia spent a year relentlessly convicting in the court of public opinion three white Duke University lacrosse players for a "hate crime" -- the alleged gang rape of a black woman named Crystal Gail Mangum. Millions of dollars in defense-lawyer fees later, it turns out that there was no evidence and that Mangum was a liar. The real victims were, in fact, the accused men: David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Colin Finnerty. (All charges were dropped, but there has been no apology yet from 88 Duke professors who jumped on the bandwagon, condemning Evans, Seligmann and Finnerty in an open letter before the first day of their trial.)

Four weeks ago, Barack Hussein Obama interrupted a live media propaganda confab promoting his administration's most critical national initiative (nationalizing health care) in order to accuse a white Cambridge, MA, police officer, James Crowley, of "acting stupidly" for arresting Obama's black friend, Henry Gates. That accusation was followed by similar knee-jerk pronouncements of racism by the black governor of Massachusetts and the black mayor of Cambridge. Under such heavy-handed political and media pressure, all charges against Gates were dropped.

The Gates' story dominated the national media headlines for a couple weeks, until it was determined that the officer's actions were, in fact, justified. Obama attempted to make amends by tossing back a few beers with the Gates and Crowley in the Rose Garden, but BO offered no public apology. (Narcissists do not apologize, they just reinterpret the facts.)

This week, there is a trial underway which is racially charged, but, unless you were reading The Patriot back in 2007, chances are you have not heard of this one since it involves a savage black-on-white crime, rather than MSM feeding frenzy accusations of white-on-black crimes.




Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom

I am referring to the brutal torture, mutilation and murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom by four black men in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In the event you were not a reader in '07, allow me to recount this horrendous incident ... because you won't see or hear it from any MSM news outlets.
On 6 January 2007, Channon (age 21) and Christopher (age 23) were out for a Saturday dinner date, after which Channon called her mom to report that they were on the way to visit friends. But Channon and Christopher never arrived at their friends' house -- nor returned home.
The next day, the mutilated and burned remains of Chris Newsom were found along a railroad track. Two days later, Channon's mutilated body was recovered from a trash bin.
Channon and Chris were in Channon's Toyota 4-Runner when they were carjacked. They were taken to a nearby house, brutally gang-raped, mutilated and then murdered. They were subjected to lengthy torture in each other's presence.

Newsom was raped, his genitals were cut off, and then taken to the railroad tracks where he was shot execution-style. The perpetrators soaked his body with an accelerant and burned his body.
Christian was kept alive for a while longer, repeatedly raped, mutilated, had cleaning solution poured down her throat in an attempt to destroy DNA evidence, and then stuffed inside a trash can where she suffocated to death.

This appalling attack is more than a case study in sociopathic evil. It is a case study about which stories the MSM headlines and which they do not. Yes, there are some 17,000 murders committed in the U.S. each year, but this double murder was clearly far more barbaric, far more monstrous, than most.

Regrettably, there is nothing new about the racial aspect of this story, which may explain why it was not national news. Although blacks represent just 12 percent of the U.S. population, black perpetrators are convicted by a jury of their peers in more than half of all murder and manslaughter cases. Additionally, per-capita black-on-white crime is far more prevalent than the inverse.

The underlying social factors contributing to such racially unbalanced crime statistics have been delineated by many conservative black leaders and academicians. However, their solutions -- most notably promoting family unity, faith-based programs, better schools and individual responsibility and accountability, contradict leftist political objectives, which seek to maintain black folks' status as wards of the state. (The modern Democrat implementation of a plantation system.)


The Accused

Charged in the torture/murder of Chanon and Christopher were Eric Boyd, Letalvis Cobbins, Lemaricus Davidson, George Thomas and Vanessa Coleman.
In April 2008, Boyd was convicted in federal court of being an accessory after the fact, but the MSM was too busy fawning over the candidacy of Barack Obama to report that conviction. (Boyd's case is on appeal.)

"One down. Four to go," said Channon's father, Gary Christian.

He and Channon's mother, Deena have been present at all the proceedings. "We do this for Channon," said Deena. "We've been through the worst. We and the Newsoms have lost our children. We can endure anything."

This week, the trial of a second defendant, Letalvis Cobbins, is underway, but it's safe to say that the prosecution of this defendant will pass without a satellite news-link truck anywhere in sight.
I draw your attention to this case not only to mourn the murder of this young couple, but also to call attention to a despicable political double standard which includes the MSM's complicity in advancing that standard.

In 1998, three white men in Jasper, Texas, beat a black man, James Byrd, then chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him three miles to his death. Not surprisingly, Byrd's murder received national media attention -- as it should.

Clearly, hate was a motivating factor in the Jasper case, but it was also a motivating factor in Knoxville, though not a "hate crime" as defined by federal law. So, why do white-on-black hate crimes invariably result in a media feeding frenzy, while black-on-white hate crimes receive nary a mention?

What about the double standard when it comes to race-hustling poverty pimps like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (who fabricated the Tawana Brawley rape hoax)? The only difference in racists such as Jackson and Sharpton and those in the KKK is that the latter are not Leftmedia celebs.

To that end, my colleague Walter Williams posited this query: "What have we heard from the NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and others who rushed to judgment and outrage as they condemned whites in the cases of the 'Jena 6' and Don Imus when he referred to the Rutgers ladies basketball team as 'nappy-headed ho's'? Where were the national news media and public officials? You can bet the rent money that, were the victims black and the perpetrators white, Knoxville would have been inundated with TV crews, with Jackson, Sharpton and other civil rights spokesmen and politicians from both parties condemning racism, possibly blaming it all on George Bush..."

As for the defendants in this case, Knox County has already paid in excess of $350 thousand to prosecute and defend these monsters. Based on the eyewitness account of defendant Vanessa Coleman, the question before Cobbins' jury, and those yet to be empanelled for the other defendants, is not one of guilt or innocence, but guilty of what charges.

Those found guilty will be treated to either life imprisonment, with all entitlements, or life on death row for maybe a couple decades -- all at a cost to taxpayers of more than $100 thousand per year per convict.


Martin Luther King, in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail, proclaimed, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
The MSM blackout of this crime is a grave injustice.
To the families and friends of Channon and Christopher, we share your grief and will continue this vigil with you until justice is served.
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher,
PatriotPost.US