World Domination?

If a person does the following, would you consider such positions to amount to a desire for "world domination"? or do you perhaps have a better word?:

Wanting to intervene and put down anyone who crosses our ally?

Not respecting the sovereignty of other nations (Iraq, Iran Pakistan, Afganistan etc. etc.) The country name does not matter, what matters is advocating military or other force against other countries.

Wanting to be able to decide who does and who does not get nukes.

Maybe "world domination" is too strong a word, but I happen to think it is appropriate. Such a person want to remain the strong man, the one who can push others around. It is the desire to ensure secuirty and economic prosperity through force.

IMHO, what applies to individuals applies to nations: "He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword."

Good Thing the Smart Folks are Running the Country

Cause this just plain sounds dumb to me.

Here's the problem:

Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario for current law. Unless revenues increase just as rapidly, the rise in spending will produce growing budget deficits. Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to more borrowing from abroad and less domestic investment, which in turn would depress economic growth in the United States. Over time, accumulating debt would cause substantial harm to the economy.

And this is the solution?:

Vice President Joe Biden told people attending an AARP town hall meeting that unless the Democrat-supported health care plan becomes law the nation will go bankrupt and that the only way to avoid that fate is for the government to spend more money.

“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

Afghanistan War Resister to “Put the War on Trial”

What do we think about a soldier who does this?

What about this?

Louisiana Attorney General Signs Amicus Brief Supporting Second Amendment

Please Thank Attorney General Buddy Caldwell!

Two-thirds of the nation's attorneys general have filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in the case of NRA v. Chicago and hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This bi-partisan group of 33 attorneys general, along with the Attorney General of California in a separate filing, agrees with the NRA's position that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental individual right to keep and bear arms, disagreeing with the decision recently issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Attorney General Caldwell was one of the many who agrees that the Second Amendment is a fundamental individual right and signed the amicus brief. Please call Attorney General Caldwell at 225-326-6000 and thank him for standing up in support of the Second Amendment. You may also e-mail him at AdminInfo@ag.state.la.us

All Seeing, All Knowing

In Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, Saruman made use of the Palentir, or "Seeing Stone" to see all things near and far. Eventually, he fell under the spell of Sauron and was corrupted by his evil.

Government Radio reports on Palantir Technologies, a company offering software which uses data-mining to identify potential terrorist.

Getting To Know Your Government

President Barack Obama recently appointed John Holdron to a position often referred to as the administration's "Science Czar." Here's a little background on Mr. Holdron:

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A "Planetary Regime" with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology -- informally known as the United States' Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation's drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who "contribute to social deterioration" (i.e. undesirables) "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" -- in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational "Planetary Regime" should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans' lives -- using an armed international police force.

For scanned images from his book, and more, go here.

Bush is Unamerican

Bush's trampling of the constitution is worse than we knew.

Founding Principles

This morning I listened to a Focus on the Family show on the radio while doing a couple of errands before work. They were saying a lot of things that seemed to me to be on the right track. One comment was made that I have heard a number of times and have often wondered about. They said our country, and specifically the Constitution, was based on "Biblical Principles." I've never quite understood exactly what this means. What principles and what parts of our country's government are they referring to? I can see how a Marxist government would be based on non-Christian and even anti-religious principles, but other than that I don't see how our country is any more "Biblical" than any number of other countries. In fact, I think a case could be made that the actual principles underlying our founding are in many respects less "Biblical" than a host of other countries. Any thoughts?

Is the Pope Calling for a One-world Government?

There is some buzz that the Pope calls for a “true world political authority” in his latest encyclical, CHARITY IN TRUTH. I've printed out that encyclical, but haven't had a chance to read it yet (It's about 50 pages). I think though, that the statement is being taken out of context. The pricipal of subsidiarity is, I think, well-established in the Catholic Church and can be found in Pope Leo XII's Rerum Novarum of which Charity in Truth is apparently an update (in the line of social encyclicals over the past century and a quarter). Subsidiarity holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization.

Any thoughts?

UPDATE:

Here is an article that is very much on point and I think clarifies things. Hat tip to JLW (Note this is a different piece from the Zmirak column he references below).

Could the Jingoist, Cowboy, Jew-lovin', NeoCons Have Been Right?

Those idiotic neocons said that democracy in Iraq could spread throughout the middle east. First there was Lebanon, and now Iran. What if they were right?

Christopher Hitchens:

The most exciting and underreported news of the past few weeks in Iran has been that the emerging challenger to the increasingly frantic and isolated "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. And Rafsanjani has recently made a visit to the city of Najaf in Iraq to confer with Ayatollah Ali Husaini Sistani, a long-standing opponent of the Khamenei doctrines, as well as meeting in the city of Qum with Jawad al-Shahristani, who is Sistani's representative in Iran. It is this dialectic between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites that underlies the flabbergasting statement issued from Qum last weekend to the effect that the Ahmadinejad government has no claim to be the representative of the Iranian people.

One of the apparent paradoxes involved in visiting Iran is this: If you want to find deep-rooted opposition to the clerical autocracy, you must make a trip to the holy cities of Mashad and Qum. It is in places like this, consecrated to the various imams of Shiite mythology, that the most stubborn and vivid criticism is often to be heard—as well as the sort of criticism that the ruling mullahs find it hardest to deal with.

So it is very hard to overstate the significance of the statement made last Saturday by the Association of Teachers and Researchers of Qum, a much-respected source of religious rulings, which has in effect come right out with it and said that the recent farcical and prearranged plebiscite in the country was just that: a sham event. (In this, the clerics of Qum are a lot more clear-eyed than many American "experts" on Iranian public opinion, who were busy until recently writing about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the rough-hewn man of the people.)

Related notes from Michael Ledeen and Richard Fernandez.

Nothing is too Tacky for Jesus