Blog Break

The Coast Guard is sending me to school.  I won't have any time to blog while I'm there.  I'll be back in three weeks.  Meanwhile, please leave a comment so I know who has been coming by.  Talk to you soon.

Bush and Cheney

There's been a lot of talk about Bush dumping Cheney from the ticket. Some feel that Cheney changed his physician as a prelude to a medical excuse for him to step aside. Barring a (God forbid)serious medical emergency, Cheney is going to stay on the ticket. One of the traits of the Bush family is loyalty to those who are loyal to them. Cheney is a great VP. No one in their right mind is saying that he wants to run for president in '08. He has gone as far as he wants but he could be President if it came to that.
That being said, wouldn't it be great to see the reaction of the left to Bush/Rice '04 bumper stickers?

The Phillipines

I am just dumbfounded at this news. The Phillipines have decided to withdraw their troops from Iraq in exchange for the release of a Filipino hostage held by Islamist terrorists. Do they really think that this will stop violence? It might stop any Filipino's being taken hostage for awhile but that's it. All this will do is embolden the terrorists to go after the smaller members of the coalition and try and pick them off one by one.

This is all the more surprising considering the resistance that the Filipinos put up against the Japanese in WWII.

Red State is Up

Redstate.org is up now. This site was developed by Tacitus. Here's a quote from the site's mission statement;

RedState.org is focused on politics, and seeks the construction of a Republican majority in the United States. We hope to unite serious, innovative, and accomplished voices from government, politics, activism, civil society, and journalism to participate in this work.

Check it out and put it in your favorites. I have.

Fake voter sign-ups increasing

Is anyone really surprised that fake voter sign-ups are increasing? It just goes how far the left will go to get rid of Bush. Amazing isn't it? The left has a history of ignoring the law if it feels that a "greater good" is being accomplished by breaking it.
This election is Bush's to lose and it would be very easy for him to do so.

Law and Scruples

Today's Richmond Times-Dispatch has a great editorial on the judiciary, entitled, Law and Scruples. For a little background on the story, go here. While the story is a Virginia one, the points raised reflect what's going on in the country today especially with the Massachusettes Supreme Court. Read on.


In issuing an injunction to prevent enforcement of the accidentally reinstated blue law, Circuit Court Judge T.J. Markow made a trenchant point: 'The legislative process, like the judicial process, is sacred. It isn't the function of the court to rectify the situation' by correcting legislative mistakes.
Indeed not - particularly because the legislative branch is the most democratic of the three, while the judiciary is the least democratic. The day-at-rest injunction happens to address a situation in which the lawmakers themselves admit to being horrified by the oversight they committed, but it still sets an unhappy precedent. Imagine the havoc that might ensue were judges to begin routinely overturning statutes on the ground that they knew what the legislature really meant to achieve.
Actually, one need not imagine. One need only survey the national landscape and observe activist judges completely ignoring original intent - never mind a plain reading of legislative or constitutional text - to reinvent the law in the image of their own policy preferences. 'Rectifying the situation' easily could be yet another gauzy veil behind which to hide judicial usurpations of power.
Markow deserves credit for the unease he displayed in responding to desperate pleas. The nation would be a better place if more jurists displayed similar scruples."

Police Chiefs Thumb Nose At Illegal-Immigration Laws

Jennifer Nelson has an interesting article on illegal immigrants in of all papers, The San Francisco Chronicle. She is astounded that police chiefs in California are holding press conferences to assure illegal immigrants in their jurisdictions that they are NOT cooperating with federal authorities. Of course the statements are being mad in both English and Spanish so those who are here illegaly and unwilling to learn English will know that the local cops won't enforce the law.

At one point though, Nelson tries to have it both ways when she says;

It's not that I believe all people who come here illegally are criminals. Many are not, though we've got a good number of them sitting in our jails and prisons. But the folks who come here illegally are not stupid. They know they broke a law to get here, and they know they are staying here illegally.

In my definition of criminal, all illegal aliens are criminals because they broke the law to get here.

Of course, whenever one talks about illegal aliens, the left will often call them a racist. They say that we don't want anyone immigrating into the country. What bunk! This is a nation of laws. We can't say that one group has to follow the law and another doesn't. That would be racist and unfair. If you want to immigrate to the country there is a process to do so. I'm sorry if it takes time to complete but if you want become an American badly enough, isn't it worth the wait? I would think so.

Today's Reading Assignment

The Bleat today is a must read. James Lileks dissects Michael Moore's Fourth of July editorial.

Debunking the DaVinci Code

Father Jones has a problem with the Da Vinci Code. That shouldn't come as a surprise, a lot of peole have a problem with it. Father Jones has put his problems on paper and wrote Cracking the Code (link in pdf format). I'll let him describe what his problem is;

So what is my problem? Well, my problem with The Da Vinci Code is that the book blurs the lines between fiction and fact – in a way that comes across to me as deceptive, false and willfully misleading. Most of all, I am troubled that many readers finish the book with grave questions about the essentials of the Christian faith and Church history. As a pastor, and a public Christian authority, I have spoken with countless numbers of confused people – who have read the book, and simply don’t know what to make of the supposedly factual remarks by the book’s scholarly characters. People don’t know what to make of the claim to factuality made in the title pages of the hard-cover edition. People in my church, all of whom are normally highly educated, don’t know what in the book is true and what is pure fiction.

I read the Code and also Brown's first book, Angels and Demons. They weren't the best books that I have read by far. I took them for what they were, entertaining stories. I don't look for my history lessons from fiction.

Father Jones' paper is well worth the read.

VP Choice Scoop

An aviation forum scooped Kerry's Veep choice at 9:45 last night! The internet is an amazing thing. Here's the post;
"John Kerry's 757 was in hgr 4 pit tonight John Edwards vp decals were being put on engine cowlings and upper fuselage. :up: "

Democrats and Gun Safety.

If I was on the range and had my finger on the trigger like this, the Gunner's Mates would pull me off of the line in a heartbeat.
Can anyone come up with a good caption for this photo?

Rock Paper Saddam

What do you mean you've never heard of Tiger Hand?

Mystery Quote

Can you guess who said the following?

"It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world . . . .He has supported and harbored terrorist groups, particularly radical Palestinian groups such as Abu Nidal, and he has given money to families of suicide murderers in Israel . . . .We should not go to war because these things are in his past, but we should be prepared to go to war because of what they tell us about the future."

Give up? It was said by Senator John Kerry in October 2002.
Hat tip; Richmond Times Dispatch.

Where is the South?

Class Maledictorian has asks Where is the South? Be sure to check out the comments. My comments were;
My family has been in Virginia since 1609. So I consider myself a Southerner. I think that should be the defining characterstic of the South. It is where the people call themselves Southerners. That is why people in southern Virginia call NoVa, "occupied Virginia." The people there aren't from there and those that are don't consider themselves Southerners.