I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. -- Thomas Jefferson (Hat tip to J.B. Williams)
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There may be at least two vacancies on the United States Supreme Court during the next presidential term. As president, I will ensure that only those judges who strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States are appointed. I will nominate judges who understand that their role is to faithfully apply the law as written, not impose their will through judicial fiat.
                                                               -- Sen. John McCain
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Articles

Browsing the b’sphere 

Philip Mella, who writes at ClearCommentary.com, is among my favorite conservative writers, ranking up there with JB Williams and Frank Salvato at New Media Journal.us. Seldom do I disagree with the written opinion pieces that appear on my screen from any of these three columnists, yet I am envious of their abilities to express their opinions so clearly and well. However, Philip’s May 9th article entitled Senator Clinton: the Beginning of the End was a rare exception. While I do agree with his basic premise that the Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential  campaign is approaching futility and has probably already arrived at (and passed) that point, I would disagree with his assertion that Sen. Clinton, in the last few months, has transformed into a kinder, gentler person or, as he writes,

While it is fitting to speak kindly of the deceased when writing their obituaries, to this observer at least, she is still the “same old” Hillary, able to get other people to do her dirty work for her while she maintains her aura of deniability. Now she is relying heavily on none other than her former-president husband, who is crisscrossing the country and playing hardball against anyone who gets in Hillary’s way. She is still as “cardboard” as ever (perhaps “cellophane” would be more appropriate), even though she seems to have abandoned the folksy southern accent and soul sister, African-American dialect when addressing audiences. 

Whatever the case may be, we hope that she does not heed the advice of influential fellow Democrats to drop out of the race before the August Democratic National Convention. We doubt that she will. The “no-holds-barred” Clinton machine is too inwardly focused to be concerned about the good of the Democratic Party. Republicans hope that it remains that way.

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If you have been listening to Michelle Obama lately, you might agree that it is simply terrible that we are forced to live in such a miserable country as America.  It’s enough to drive us all to drink, to guns, and to the bible. The only hope for the country that has lasted and prospered for two hundred and thirty-two years is to elect her husband as President, and he will solve all of our problems, whatever they may be. We haven’t actually gotten that far yet, that is, to explain how this will all be accomplished, but rest assured, “we can bring change.” The very fact that so many Americans are taken in by this drivel suggests that there is an element of truth to what she says. Like a flock of vultures soaring above a wounded animal in its final death throes, there are eager politicians who are willing to pounce on those people who have already succumbed to a nanny-state philosophy in America that destroys initiative, responsibility, and ambition. 

Along comes a study out of New York University that explains all of this. As reported by Warner Todd Huston at New Media Journal.com, the study attempted to determine whether politically liberal or conservative people were happier, a dubious yet interesting endeavor. They could have just asked Michelle Obama and saved both time and money. Not too surprisingly, researchers John Jost and Jaime Napier found that conservative people tend to be happier than liberals are. Good. They should have stopped there. Instead, they allowed the biases of their hypotheses to win the day. Jaime Napier described their research project, The Psychological Basis of Ideology and System Justification, thusly:

The researchers then concluded that the reason conservatives are happier is because they hate everyone. Conservatives, they say, accept inequalities in America by rationalizing concepts such as rewards for hard work and perseverance. That is wrong, according to the researchers. 

Liberals, on the other hand, are less happy because they worry about other people. For example, they worry about economic inequalities in society. If I remember correctly, Marx and Engels worried about the same thing. Then again, too few Americans have any knowledge of who Marx and Engels were, a fact that we owe largely to our public education system. 

Huston’s article is entitled New Study: Conservatives are Happier Because They Hate Everyone.

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A new book by economist Fareed Zakaria entitled The Post-American World describes the changes that are taking place in the world’s economy. The first chapter, The Rise of the Rest, describes how the economies of other nations around the world are growing, to the point where, in the not too distant future, the United States will no longer hold the dominant position. It can be found in the online version of the New York Times.

If there was ever an argument for Free Trade, this is it. Once again, it is unfortunate that so many Americans are not aware or will not accept this unequivocal truth, worrying about protecting American jobs while the worldwide demands for our goods and services dry up. But then again, Americans have always been slow learners when it comes to international issues.

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A Blow to Political Correctness

In almost unbelievable fashion, an American public school district put on a very traditional and patriotic presentation that most likely has the ACLU, the NEA, and other communist-front organizations having epileptic-like seizures. We do not know where this school district is located; the video does not tell us. We would bet, however, that it is not in Massachusetts, New York, or California.

Wherever it is, The Drum and Cannon salutes the brave teachers and administrators who put this together. And the thoughtful parent who filmed it and allowed the rest of us to see it.

View this video at:

http://www.greatdanepromilitary.com/Battle%20Hymn/index.htm

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Whither thou goest, America? 

While media attention has been focused on the continuing controversy regarding Barack Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Hillary Clinton has been getting a free pass on what are potentially much larger issues, namely her penchant for not only distorting the truth but blatantly misstating it, and the ongoing legal battle over possible campaign fraud in her 2000 run for the Senate.  

In perhaps the best-known example, Clinton’s basic disregard for the truth was never more evident than her original claim that during her 1995 visit to Bosnia she landed under sniper fire.

Later, she recanted, claiming that she “misspoke”. Misspoke? How does a person “misspeak” about something so basic and obvious?  “Now, it is possible in the most recent instance in which she discussed this that she misspoke with regard to, you know, the exit from the plane,” campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said. If any opponent had made such a fraudulent claim, you can be sure that the Clinton people would have called it an outright lie, and rightfully so.  

In a recent campaign speech, Sen. Clinton related a story about how a company in Indiana that was engaged in critical defense technology was purchased by the Chinese government. Shortly after the purchase, all of the American workers at the company were laid off and the work was shifted to China. According to the way Hillary told the story, President George W. Bush could have stopped the sale, but didn’t. She went on to say that if she were President, this never would have occurred. Whoops! She “misspoke” again. In reality, the sale of the company was promoted by prominent Democrats, including the Billionaire Communist-in-residence George Soros, and the sale was approved by none other than her husband’s administration. Unfortunately, working-class voters believe her untruths and don’t bother to learn otherwise, and with the typical, wimpy Republican lack of response, she received another free pass.  

It is also extremely helpful to have friendly judges on your side during a campaign. Writing at Take Political Action.org and cited in New Media Journal.us, government watchdog Donald Blunt reports that a California Superior Court Judge, Aurelio Munoz, ruled that Senator Clinton would not be required to testify as a material witness until after the November election in the case that has been dubbed “the biggest case of campaign finance fraud in US history”. According to the New Media Journal.us:                  

In the landmark civil fraud case against Bill Clinton in Los Angeles, where the former President is charged with defrauding a Hollywood dot com millionaire to help Hillary Clinton obtain more than $1.2 million from him for her 2000 Senate campaign, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Aurelio Munoz ruled on Friday, April 25 that Hillary Clinton would not be required to testify in a sworn deposition as a material witness in the case until after the November election. While Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Al Gore, Ed Rendell, Barbara Streisand, Cher, Stan Lee, Brad Pitt, Mike Wallace, Larry King and others may be called to testify and be deposed starting in May, Hillary alone has been protected from explaining her role in her husband's fraud charges. In an astonishing ruling by the Judge, Hillary Clinton may not be deposed about her role in the illegal solicitation and cover up of the largest contribution made to her Senate campaign until after the presidential election. 

In one of the most widely watched videos to ever appear on the internet, Hollywood mogul Peter Paul (himself no shining knight in armor) describes how he sponsored a plush extravaganza that raised over a million dollars for Hillary’s 2000 Senate campaign, a fact that Hillary vehemently denied, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. For those who perhaps have not seen this video, click HERE. 

If this is reminiscent of past scandals associated with the Clintons, it should be. For far too many American voters, it is a tolerable price to be paid for having leadership that caters to the whims of organized labor, the legal profession, the media, and the educational elite. It is either politics as usual or a vast right-wing conspiracy to those who slavishly swoon to the Clintons’ rhetoric and pandering.  

Fortunately, there are still that 50% or more of Americans who tell pollsters that they would never vote for Hillary Clinton; Americans with a sense of justice and belief in the ideals of honest government. Whether or not these numbers hold up through and after the Democratic National Convention remains to be seen. As columnist Joan Swirsky points out in her article   

Democrats Offer Electorate Horrific Hobson’s Choice, the presidential options that are available to Democratic voters in the 2008 campaign clearly shows how far the Party has plummeted since it allowed its Far Left wing to take control. Of Hillary, Ms. Swirsky writes, “[L]ying is nothing new to Hillary. What is frightening is the degree to which her followers accept this glaring character flaw, in essence saying: We know she’s a liar – but she’s our liar! So much for the character and integrity of her liberal acolytes.”  And for Barack Obama, she cites Thomas Sowell, who said, “Obama is also part of a long tradition on the left of being for the working class in the abstract, or as people potentially useful for the purposes of the left, but having disdain or contempt for them as human beings.” Of the latter, if any proof is needed, we need look no further than Obama’s intended “confidential” speech to the group of San Francisco elites regarding Midwestern “working class” values and lifestyles. Had his words not been leaked to the media, his charismatic and intellectual façade would continue to be fooling those who would prefer to think with their hearts rather than their brains. As Ms. Swirsky so aptly stated in her article, “The dirty little secret that liberals pretend doesn’t exist is that their decades-long embrace of the welfare system, affirmative action, public-school-and-other unions, diversity and multiculturalism, were (and are) all calculatedly designed to keep society’s 'victims' in their assigned and dependent roles, the better to promise them everything and deliver them – as they always have – nothing but more victimhood.”

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