Right Minded Online

Back on December 6, Mitt Romney gave what may be the best speech so far this campaign season. Entitled “Faith in America,” it was delivered at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, and was a stirring reminder of the importance of religious faith throughout the history of the United States.

One of many praiseworthy quotes made during the speech contains an unforgettable passage from our second president. Said Romney, “There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation’s founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator. And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom. In John Adams’ words: ‘We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion… Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.’”

Indeed, religion without freedom results in tyranny, while freedom without religion results in anarchy and hedonism.

Our great nation was founded by wise and Godly men who understood that every person is created equal and that we are granted, by our Creator, the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States is also the freest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation on earth. The latter is a direct result of the former.

Barry Lynn, who heads the organization Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), ripped Governor Romney for his speech, asserting “I was disappointed in Romney’s statement. The founders of our Constitution meant for religion and government to be completely separate.”

No, they did not.

Those who advocate separation of church and state are not rooted in the intent of the founders. Their interpretation does not reflect what the U.S. Constitution states, but rather what they wish it stated.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution begins “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The first part is known as the Establishment Clause. The second part is known as the Free Exercise Clause. Overall, it’s perhaps the most misinterpreted sixteen words in the entire document.

When the Bill of Rights was written in 1789, several states had their own religions. The Establishment Clause was written to prevent Congress from establishing a national church, which would have trumped the various state churches. The words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the Constitution, explicitly or implicitly. That phrase was found in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists dated January 1, 1802.

The phrase “separation of church and state” wasn’t introduced into American jurisprudence until 1947 by Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black (Everson v. Board of Education). This was 158 years after Congress passed the Bill of Rights.

There are three elements to the Establishment Clause. They are: (1) Congress must (2) make a law that (3) establishes a religion. Not only did Romney’s speech violate no part of the Establishment Clause, but was completely protected by the Free Exercise Clause.

Civil libertarians have done a masterful job the last forty years or so of convincing a significant percentage of the American people that separation of church and state is in our founding document and that those words are actually engraved in the Bill of Rights. Not only are the words not there, the concept isn’t either. It is an extra-constitutional construct fabricated by those who are motivated by an anti-evangelical bias and who endeavor to re-write the history of our founding in order to portray our founders as secularists.

In other words, the gains of civil libertarians with respect to religion and government are coincident with the retreat of those who are ignorant of the letter of the Constitution and the content of our history. You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand this. The Constitution is written in plain English. The words mean the same today what they meant when they were written.

If you really want to know what how the Founders felt about government and religion, all you have to do is read the Declaration of Independence, or Washington’s Thanksgiving address of October 14, 1789, which began “WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour….”

At any rate, Lynn’s hypocrisy is glaring. While routinely criticizing conservative Christians and intimidating evangelical churches into silence during election season, Lynn rarely (if ever) offers criticism of liberals who use churches to make campaign speeches.

For example, Senator Barack Obama makes routine campaign appearances in churches, and in June he appeared at the United Church of Christ gathering in Hartford, Connecticut. Barry Lynn excused the appearance, asserting “I find no evidence that a violation of the federal tax law against church electioneering occurred.” Likewise, when Senator Obama was endorsed by Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, Lynn excused the mix of politics and religion with the excuse “He [Robinson] stressed that his endorsement was as an individual, not as bishop.”

In October, Senator Obama spoke at the Redemption World Outreach Center in Greenville, South Carolina, where he remarked “I think it’s important, particularly for those of us in the Democratic Party, to not cede values and faith to any one party.”

Also in October, while speaking before religious leaders and others at what he called an “interfaith forum on climate change,” Senator Obama said God has entrusted humans with the responsibility of caring for the earth, and “we are not acting as good stewards of God’s earth when our bottom line puts the size of our profits before the future of our planet.”

And you could hear the crickets chirping at AU.

There’s nothing non-partisan about Barry Lynn or his organization, which prides itself on being non-partisan. In fact, the title of his most recent book is “Piety and Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom.” And you don’t have to be on AU’s website for very long to observe that this non-partisan organization is as left-wing as I am right-wing. I used to believe that civil libertarians weren’t necessarily against religion, just Christianity, but a more accurate statement might be that civil libertarians aren’t necessarily against religion, just when it is espoused by conservatives.

After four years of running enormous budget surpluses, the state of Tennessee is running in the red three months into the current fiscal year. Late last month, it was reported that tax collections were running $135.9 million less than what had been budgeted. Despite the fact that tax collections are up 3.2% over last year at this time, the budget passed by the Tennessee General Assembly earlier this year grew spending far beyond what the tax base can sustain.

In other words, we do not have a revenue problem. We never have. We do have a spending problem. In Tennessee, we have this thing called the “Copeland Cap,” which is supposed to limit the state’s annual budget increase to the rate of economic growth. Unfortunately, it only requires a simply majority vote to override the Copeland Cap, which the Legislature does pretty much every year.

As for the budget we’re operating under right now, not only did the General Assembly increase spending as much as the Copeland Cap allowed them to, they voted to increase the budget by $723 million ABOVE the cap, or $60.25 million dollars per month. In other words, had the Legislature abided by the Copeland Cap, we would instead be enjoying a surplus of nearly $45 million instead of a deficit of $135.9 million.

The Bredesen administration is trying to blame the deficit on a slow economy, yet the administration’s own figures show that unemployment in Tennessee is 4.6%, which is down from 5.1% a year ago. Besides, slowing economies don’t produce 3.2% in revenue growth.

Republicans are as much to blame as the Democrats this time. The 2007-2008 budget, which grew government beyond what our tax base can sustain, violated the Copeland Cap, squandered the previous year’s budget surplus, and raised the cigarette tax by 62 cents per pack could have been stopped in the Senate, where the the Speaker is a Republican and most of the committees are controlled by Republicans. Not only did the GOP let this behemoth slip through committee, only two Senators voted against it. (Mae Beavers was one of them.)

In the House, the vote was 87-8, which means that a large majority of the Republicans went along with the Democrats to pass the $28 billion budget.

As a solution, the Bredesen administration is conceding that some state services may have to be cut, or, as Finance Commissioner Dave Goetz laments, “we’re going to be putting together a much smaller improvement package for next year’s budget.” (Oh, the horror!)

In addition, the administration is poring over the list of items that don’t get taxed in Tennessee, such as prescription medicine, advertising, laundromats, and newspapers, among many, and will consider removing some of those exemptions in order to raise revenue. In all, the state will “lose” $6.4 billion in revenue because of all the things that aren’t taxed. At least the Bredesen administration calls this a loss. In truth, the state doesn’t lose anything through sales tax exemptions, because you cannot lose what you do not have in the first place.

So one way or another, we taxpayers are going to have to pay for the fiscal recklessness of the people we elect to public office. Like parents with out-of-control offspring, we always do.

What is sorely needed is for Republicans to start acting like Republicans and stop giving the Democrats everything they want. Democrats are Democrats. They are born to grow government. This is who they are.

Since the Senate is the one entity the GOP actually controls here in Tennessee, it would behoove Speaker Ron Ramsey and his fifteen fellow Republicans to start running the Senate the way Jimmy Naifeh runs the House — under total lockstep partisanship, where the Republicans would control every committee, and Democrats would be largely shut out of the process of passing legislation. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Had the General Assembly stayed within the Copeland Cap, the issue of taxes and spending would be completely different than they really are. Nashville journalist and blogger Bill Hobbs, an expert on state finances, has studied the Copeland Cap and calculated that if it had been strictly adhered to over the years, the $28 billion budget would be less than $25 billion — a savings for taxpayers that would allow the total elimination of the sales tax on food and a reduction in the overall sales tax from 7 cents on the dollar to about 4.5 cents.

Instead, the Legislature has spent nearly every dime of four years worth of surpluses growing government, and we are to the point now that the taxpayers cannot keep up with our free-spending legislators. This is the same fiscally irresponsible behavior that brought us to the brink of a state income tax years ago, and, unless, Republicans can start behaving responsibly by insisting that the General Assembly restrain itself when passing budgets, it’s where we are headed again. We taxpayers learned a lesson from that debacle. Our elected representatives haven’t.

I’ve been under the impression that America’s reputation among other nations was in the trash because of President Bush and his “unilateral” decision to go to war. At least that’s what we’ve been told by the left for the last several years.

Never mind that the United States is the freest, wealthiest, most generous nation on the planet, not to mention the most benevolent superpower that has ever existed. The rest of the world hates us. And it’s all because of George W. Bush.

Of course, when President Bush led us to war in Iraq, he was putting legs on a heretofore worthless stack of U.N. resolutions against Saddam Hussein, and he had dozens of nations on his side, including Great Britain, Georgia, Australia, South Korea, Poland, Romania, El Salvador, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Mongolia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Albania, Armenia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Slovakia, and Latvia. And that’s not even the complete list. But we didn’t have the French with us, and so Bush was accused of acting unilaterally and, therefore, of trashing our reputation overseas.

But an amazing thing happened in France back on May 6. Nicolas Sarkozy, an unabashed conservative, defeated Socialist Party contender, Ségolène Royal, in that country’s presidential election, having received more than 53% of the popular vote.

On November 6, President Bush hosted a state dinner where he welcomed the new French president. Nicolas Sarkozy, the democratically-elected president of a nation that supposedly hates the United States had nothing but words of praise for the host nation, a portion of which are included here:

“To the millions of men and women who came from every country of the world and who — with their own hands, their intelligence, and their hearts — built the greatest nation in the world, America did not say, ‘Come, and everything will be given to you.’ Rather, she said, ‘Come, and the only limits to what you will be able to achieve will be those of your own courage, your boldness, and your talent.”

“The America that we love throughout the world impedes this extraordinary ability to grant each and every person a second chance, another chance, because, in America, failure is never the last word. There is always another chance. Here — in your country, on this soil — both the humblest and the most illustrious citizens alike know that nothing is owed to them and that everything has to be earned. That is what constitutes the moral value of America.”

“America liberated us, and this is an eternal debt we owe America. Every time, whenever an American soldier falls somewhere in the world, I think of what the American army did for France. I think of them, and I am sad as one is saddened to lose a member of one’s family.”

“We need France to be stronger. I am determined to carry through with the reforms that my country has put off for all too long. I will not turn back. I will implement all of them, because France has turned back for all too long. I have come to present to you today a France that comes out to meet America, to renew the covenant of friendship and alliance that Washington and Lafayette sealed in Yorktown. Together, let us be true to their memories. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I say this to you on behalf of the French people: Long live the United States of America. Long live France. Long live French-American friendship!”

You will never hear an American liberal describe this nation in such glowing terms. (Unfortunately, you don’t hear too many conservatives tout America’s exceptionalism anymore, either.) In fact, you will most often hear American liberals trash their own country. In the eyes of the left, we’re imperialists, greedy, selfish capitalists, polluters, land thieves, racists, bullies, etc.

Fortunately, the president of a nation that did not heretofore support our efforts in the War on Terrorism, and at a time when our image overseas is supposedly tarnished, has described the United States of America for what we are: the greatest success story in history, a world leader, a beacon on a hill, a nation of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and a liberator to whom much of the world owes a debt of gratitude.

Likewise, America isn’t the scourge of the world, but the envy of it. Those from other nations, especially the poor and oppressed, see us and want to be like us. That’s why we have such a problem with illegal immigration. People are attracted to the United States. Our wealth and freedom are coveted, and so Americans ought not be ashamed, but have every reason instead to be grateful.

It’s been six months since the Creation Museum opened near Cincinnati, yet the museum has already surpassed its yearlong goal of 250,000 visitors, and officials now expect more than 400,000 guests to pass through the turnstiles during the first 12 months.

On Thursday, it was learned that some twenty abandoned dogs were discovered on a rural lot outside Lebanon, plus several carcasses. Dogs were even feeding on other dogs. It made front page news.

Seven six-week-old puppies were to be transferred to a veterinary clinic. The dead dogs were to be given autopsies.

Both law enforcement and animal control officials were involved in the rescue.

In Gallatin, we learned the next day that a veterinarian working for the Sumner County Animal Control had been accused of carrying out illegal and inhumane practices while euthanizing animals.

The veterinarian used a procedure known as “intercardiac euthanasia,” a method in which sodium pentobarbital is injected directly into an animal’s heart. The practice is not illegal, but state law does require animals to be sedated, anesthetized, or comatose before the injection is administered.

A secret video shows the injection being given to unsedated animals, which has animal-rights advocates outraged.

Most people, especially pet owners, are similarly outraged at cases of animal abuse — and justifiably so. Those of us living in a civilized society do not tolerate cruelty directed at animals.

But there is something missing in our outrage. While we react to news of animal abuse, we ignore the fact that an average of 3,000 human lives are terminated every day in the U.S. owing to an institution known as abortion. It never makes headlines.

Consider that there are more laws on the books protecting animals than unborn human beings.

With respect to late-term, or partial-birth abortions, the methods used to end human life are barbaric and inhumane. While we have laws requiring that animals be sedated before intercardiac euthanasia, laws requiring anesthesia for unborn human beings before they are euthanized are fought by abortion-rights advocates.

While the puppies found at the Lebanon property were to be transferred to a veterinary clinic for care, a registered nurse, Jill Stanek, became active in pro-life circles after she discovered newborns being aborted alive and shelved to die in a soiled utility room at the hospital at which she worked. She testified before a U.S. House committee in 2000 and 2001 for the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, and was fired in 2001 from Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, for her outspokenness.

Consider some of the specialty plates we have here in Tennessee. There is an American Eagle plate, where a portion of the proceeds goes to the American Eagle Foundation to be used for the preservation of the American Bald Eagle and its habitat.

There is an Animal Friendly plate, which helps support the Animal Population Control Endowment Fund.

We have Fish and Wildlife Species plates that are used to help protect the habitats of various animals.

We also have specialty plates for Small Mouth Bass, the Tennessee Wildlife Federation, and Watchable Wildlife.

The good intentions of these organizations and causes are rarely questioned. They are considered compassionate.

Then there is the Choose Life license plate, which was allowed last year only after a lengthy court fight. Proceeds go to New Life Resources, which provides assistance for pregnant women, funds awareness campaigns, and supports adoptions. The concept of choosing life with respect to unborn human beings is considered to be politically charged, and far more oppose the mission of New Life Resources than, say, the American Eagle Foundation, even though one organization is dedicated to the preservation of unborn human beings, whereas the other carries out the same cause on behalf of birds.

Since abortion was legalized across the U.S. nearly 35 years ago, more than 48,000,000 human lives have been snuffed out in the womb. That’s more than the population of Spain. It averages out to more than 3,000 abortions per day. Imagine wiping out the entire population of Wilson County over a period of 30 days. That’s what abortion does, and most of us don’t even think about it.

The most important step in keeping abortion legal, even right up to the moment of birth, is to dehumanize the unborn. Indeed, abortion-rights supporters have succeeded in convincing a significant portion of the American people, politicians, and judges that a fetus isn’t a human life until viability (usually the third trimester), or until that moment when the fetus passes through the birth canal alive, or, as Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) pointed out during a Senate debate in 1999, life begins “when you bring your baby home.”

We would like to think of ourselves as a compassionate society, but we have instead become so self-centered as to exhibit a callous disregard for the unborn. Judging by the way we react to animal cruelty cases versus the way we react to the daily, monotonous extermination of more than 3,000 human lives, I’d argue that we are contemptible for the way we have inverted our morality. We humanize our pets while dehumanizing unborn human beings. We are compassionate for supporting charities and government agencies that look after animals, but are politically incorrect if we support charities and laws that look after unborn human beings. Just as slavery was in its era, abortion is the evil of our generation. Until that time when we recognize abortion for what it is, we can in no way consider ourselves a compassionate and moral society.

A few weeks ago, conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh made an off-hand remark about “phony soldiers” on his show. He was referring to a young man named Jesse MacBeth (and others like him) — a self-described Army Ranger who claimed to have witnessed all kinds of atrocities committed by U.S. troops in Iraq. He became a darling of the left.

Outside the old Roane County courthouse in Kingston, there is an historical marker that proclaims “Capital for a day.” It reads “On Sept. 21, 1807, the State Legislature met on this site, and immediately resolved to ‘adjourn forthwith from Kingston,’ to meet in Knoxville on the 23rd. This brief meeting was in technical fulfillment of terms in a treaty with the Cherokees by which the Indians relinquished the site of Southwest Point, ostensibly for locating the capital at Kingston.”

The treaty in question was signed in 1792. It called for a square mile of land at the point where the Clinch and Little Tennessee Rivers meet, known as Southwest Point, which was a fort designed to provide protection for whites passing through the territory. Thus, the town of Kingston was laid out around the existing reservation, encouraging the Indians to believe that the state capital would be located there. The General Assembly’s brief stay was designed to show the Indians that the Legislature needed more room than Kingston could possibly afford, and so it was back off to Knoxville. This was not altogether the case, though, since a new courthouse had just been completed in Kingston the year before.

Thus, through an act of chicanery, the town of Kingston, located just east of the Cumberland Plateau, got to serve as the capital of Tennessee for one day.

There have been four capitals of Tennessee since being admitted as a state in 1796. Nashville, the present and longest-serving capital, wasn’t permanently established as the seat of government until October 7, 1843. Nashville was founded by James Robertson in 1779 as Fort Nashborough, but wasn’t incorporated as a city until 1806. At the time of Tennessee’s admission to the Union, Nashville was nothing more than a small settlement on the Cumberland River, and was surrounded by a vast area of wilderness.

Knoxville, established in 1786, first served as territorial capital, then state capital after a constitutional convention held there established Tennessee as the 16th state. With the exception of September 21, 1807, Knoxville remained the capital of Tennessee until 1812, when it was located to Nashville. For five years, the General Assembly met in Nashville, but returned to Knoxville in 1817.

Now, in 1811, the Tennessee General Assembly established Cannonsburgh as the Rutherford County seat. The name was soon changed to Murfreesboro in honor of Revolutionary War hero Hardy Murfree, who was also the great-grandfather of writer Mary Noailles Murfree.

As the population of Tennessee continued to expand westward, having the state capital so far east was becoming a burden to those who had to travel from the western end of the state, and so Murfreesboro became the fourth city to serve in that role in 1818. In fact, by 1810, Middle Tennessee had become more populous than the eastern third. (By then, the population of the entire state was 261,727.)

Eight years later, in 1826, the seat of government transferred back to Nashville — a move that became permanent in 1843.

Several towns across the state were nominated and received votes for this honor, but in the end, Nashville edged out Charlotte (the Dickson County seat) by a single vote. The Tennessee Supreme Court had met at Charlotte from 1817-1827. It is also interesting that Charlotte, named in honor of James Robertson’s wife, has the distinction of housing the oldest courthouse in the state that is still in use — a lovely red-brick building that was constructed during the 1830’s. (The previous courthouse was destroyed by a tornado in 1830.)

The Tennessee State Capitol was constructed over a period of ten years, beginning in 1845, and was designed by William Strickland, an architect from Philadelphia, who modeled it after a Greek Ionic temple. Strickland, who died before the final stone was put in place, considered the building his crowning achievement. (He is entombed in the northeast wall.) The Tennessee Capitol stands 236 feet long, 109 feet wide, and 206 feet from the ground to the top of its dome. It is one of the oldest working capitols in the United States.

So, for the first 47 years of Tennessee’s existence as a state, the location of its capital was in flux, moving six times among four cities, from Knoxville, to Kingston, to Knoxville, to Nashville, to Knoxville, to Murfreesboro, then finally to Nashville.

Dear Tennessee smokers, if you go out of state to buy your cigarettes because they’re cheaper there, you’d better start doing it in Montana. That’s because Tennesseans who get caught crossing the state line in order to purchase large quantities of smokes will be prosecuted by the Tennessee Department of Revenue.

On September 27, the state of Tennessee began the new “cigarette surveillance program,” whereby revenue agents monitor “hot spots” across the state line where Tennessee smokers buy their cigarettes in order to avoid Tennessee’s high cigarette tax. If you get caught, the monitoring agent will call an arresting agent, who will stop you when you cross back into Tennessee.

The penalty depends on how much contraband you attempt to smuggle back home. If you are caught bringing more than two cartons of cigarettes into Tennessee without paying Tennessee taxes, it’s a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by of up to six months in jail and/or a $500 fine. Revenue officers also have the discretion of seizing your car. Bringing in 25 or more cartons is a Class E felony, carrying a 1-6 year jail term plus a fine of up to $3,000, and you will definitely have your car seized.

On July 1, despite running an enormous revenue surplus for the fourth consecutive year, the Tennessee General Assembly raised the cigarette tax from 20 cents per pack to 62 cents. We now have a higher cigarette tax than any state that borders Tennessee. Missouri has the lowest tax, at 17 cents, while Arkansas has the highest, at 59 cents. Kentucky’s is 30 cents per pack. Thus, if you drive to Kentucky for your Lucky Strikes, you’ll save $3.20 per carton in taxes. If you buy 25 cartons there, you’ll save $80 in taxes, but will also spend at least a year in jail and have your car seized.

State Representative Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) put the cigarette surveillance program into perspective by pointing out that “This administration has been very willing to turn a blind eye to illegal aliens pouring into our state, yet, when a natural Tennessean brings a couple of cartons of smokes across the state line, they want to arrest them.”

Indeed, the Tennessee General Assembly has certainly passed its share of boneheaded legislation over the years, but its boneheadedness with respect to smoking laws is in its own league. Not only is the state wasting its law enforcement resources on nickel-and-diming smokers, but the legislature passed the cigarette tax increase on the same day it banned smoking in restaurants and some workplaces. The tax increase was earmarked for education. In other words, the Tennessee General Assembly raised taxes on a product it banned so it can spend more money on schools.

Representative Campfield also calls into question the constitutionality of the cigarette surveillance program, as it involves interstate commerce. Tennessee Department of Revenue Commissioner Reagan Farr insists the program does not run afoul of federal restrictions on state interference with interstate commerce, noting “We’re not regulating the purchase of anything in another state. We’re regulating the possession of contraband in Tennessee.”

Although laws have been in place for years that require Tennesseans to pay a use tax on items that are purchased out of state and transported into Tennessee, the state of Tennessee has never actively monitored the commercial activities of its citizens while out of state, until now. Why the state has singled out smokers is a mystery. One can purchase any other item out of state and bring it into Tennessee without being monitored — even cold medicine, which is used to make methamphetamine — but if you smuggle in three cartons of cigarettes, you face an array of penalties.

Not only is the cigarette surveillance program the product of a heavy-handed government obsessed with over-regulating the activities of its citizens, but it is also a waste of resources. Really, how much extra tax money are we keeping in Tennessee’s coffers by sending revenue officers into other states to monitor the buying habits of Tennesseans? And how much is it costing the taxpayers to do this?

I wasn’t surprised that Columbia University invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on its campus last Monday during the Iranian President’s recent visit to the United States.

I figured Columbia would find a kindred soul in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pronounced something like “My-mood I’m-in-a-jihad”). I was sure the university would treat him with great dignity and fanfare, applaud his put-downs of President Bush, the war in Iraq, and the nation of Israel.

It’s rare that I have to do this, but I was entirely wrong.

Much to my pleasant surprise, Columbia President Lee Bollinger, after receiving sharp criticism for having invited Ahmadinejad, berated the Iranian President during his introduction.

President Bollinger got off on the right foot by calling Ahmadinejad a “petty and cruel dictator.”

According to an Associated Press account of the exchange, Ahmadinejad provoked derisive laughter by responding to a question about Iran’s execution of homosexuals by asserting that “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.”

President Bollinger went on to assert that “In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as the fabricated legend. One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers. When you come to a place like this, it makes you simply ridiculous. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history.”

Ahmadinejad denied he had questioned the existence of the Holocaust.

Lee Bollinger told him “You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”

President Bollinger went on to harangue Ahmadinejad for his support of terrorism, his crackdown on academic dissent, and his threats against Israel (the country he wants “wiped off the map”).

Keep in mind that Lee Bollinger isn’t exactly George W. Bush, and Columbia University is no conservative bastion, which makes this exchange all the more remarkable. It’s refreshing to see an American liberal take a hard line against a thug like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and even more refreshing that he was applauded by other liberals.

David Nason, writing for “The Australian,” called it “one of the great political ambushes of modern times,” noting that the Iranian President “looked silly, vulnerable and under arrest.”

Bollinger finished off Ahmadinejad with the clincher “I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.”

Right on.

Ahmadinejad didn’t fare much better at the United Nations the following day, where he provoked boos and laughter with his reassertion that “In Iran we do not have [homosexuality]. I do not know who has told you we have it.”

Most of the crowd of 700 were Ivy League students, whose garb included “Stop Ahmadinejad’s Evil” tee-shirts.

Elsewhere, presidential candidates from both major parties took swipes at Ahmadinejad for his Holocaust denial, support of terrorism, and for arming Iraqi terrorists against American troops.

Of Ahmadinejad’s visit, New York Congressman Anthony Weiner, a Democrat, remarked “Sometimes we have snakes slithering through the streets of New York.”

And the “New York Daily News” bore the front page headline “The Evil Has Landed.”

It has been some time since members of the left have shown such hostility toward a foreign leader. It’s refreshing to see American liberals able to see true evil where it really exists for once, instead of portraying President Bush and the United States as the evil parties. Although they still have a long way to go in sorting out who America’s friends and enemies really are, there may be hope for the left, after all.

John Edwards, who is running for president, has a universal health care plan — and what Democrat doesn’t have one? — that would force Americans to go to the doctor for preventative care.

Explains Edwards, “It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care. If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”

Folks, liberals are the most meddlesome bunch on the planet. These people cannot resist telling the rest of us how we are supposed to live. They want to tell us what to drive, what to eat, where to smoke, where we can and cannot exercise religion, how much toilet paper to use, how much of our paychecks we can keep, how to raise our children, what we can and cannot listen to on the radio, that we cannot buy “Choose Life” license plates with our own money, and now that we have to go to the doctor, even when we are well.

Similarly, Hillary Clinton, who is also running for president, recently trotted out her 2007 version of HillaryCare, her dream of a universal, government-controlled health care system. Shockingly, the Bloomberg news agency reports that “65 percent of Americans in a July Gallup poll [expressed] ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ of confidence in her on the issue. That’s more than any other White House contender.”

What makes Hillary Clinton an expert on health care? The fact that she’s a U.S. senator? How come getting elected to public office suddenly makes an individual an expert on something? What makes Hillary Clinton a doctor? What makes Al Gore a meteorologist? What makes John Edwards an expert on poverty? What makes Harry Reid an Army general? Folks, politicians probably don’t know any more about issues than you or I do, yet we place great weight on their “knowledge” simply because they are elected to office. One thing we do know better than politicians is the fact that the private sector is much more efficient at running health care than the government.

For example, Canada has a socialized, government-run health care system that is the envy of American liberals. The problem is that the Canadian system is a lemon. A recent op/ed in the Investor’s Business Daily notes that Canadians actually have the choice go to the U.S. for their care. IBD relates the case of Belinda Stronach, a Liberal Party member of Canada’s Parliament, who is also a close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Stronach came to the U.S. last June for a cancer operation because it was the “best place” for her type of surgery. I can’t say I blame her.

Another Canadian family, Karen and J. P. Jepp, had to leave their home in Calgary, Alberta, for Great Falls, Montana, to give birth to their quadruplets due to a shortage of neonatal beds and the inability to perform a C-section for multiple babies. In other words, this Canadian city of more than a million people has fewer beds for newborns and fewer services than a remote American city of 57,000. Capitalism works every time.

In 1998, 212,990 Canadians were on hospital waiting lists for surgery, with an average wait of 13.3 weeks. Today, more than 800,000 Canadians are on such waiting lists, often waiting 20 weeks or more.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that survival rates for major types of cancer in the U.S. are higher than in Canada. Seven of the ten Canadian provinces send their prostate-cancer patients to the U.S. for treatment.

The reason, notes Canada’s Fraser Institute, is that “Canadian patients do not get the same quality or quantity of care as American patients.” We Americans have more access to advanced medical procedures like dialysis and coronary bypass surgery, and use more medical technology like CT scanners and MRI imaging machines. That’s what the free market does.

If Democrats in the United States fulfill their dream of governmentalizing our health care system, our top-shelf system will go the way of Canada’s. Liberals want us to believe that whatever the private sector can do, government can do better, but experience tells us that is almost never true. The American health care system is so efficient, and so advanced, that those who have governmentalized their systems often send their patients to us for proper treatment. That should tell you everything.

Let’s take a quiz. Who recently made the following statements in a televised speech? Was it a) Hillary Clinton, b) Al Gore, c) Nancy Pelosi, or d) Barack Obama?

“The life of all mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories [and] the major corporations.”

“Thus what is called civil war has taken place and the situation has become worse because of [President Bush] and slipped out of his control.”

“This war was entirely unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports.”

The American people want the Iraq war ended and “elected the Democratic Party for this purpose” in the 2006 elections.

Actually, this is a trick. It wasn’t any of them. These statements were made by Osama bin Laden in the first of two videos he disseminated earlier this month. But you thought it was a Democrat, because Osama bin Laden sounds a lot like Democrats these days.

Osama bin Laden timed his videos to coincide with the sixth anniversary of 9/11, which also coincided with Congressional testimony given by General David Petraeus, commander of our forces in Iraq.

Democrats in the House and Senate treated the four-star general with contempt and disrespect during his testimony last week. It’s amazing, but Democrats will believe every word uttered by Osama bin Laden, but frequently refer to their own President as a liar, and will dress-down a patriot like General Petraeus simply because his reporting on the successful troop surge in Iraq doesn’t fit their template of defeat.

For example, here’s how Senator Barbara Boxer addressed the general: “Please, General, I ask you, please, don’t do what you did in ‘04 when you painted a rosy scenario in an op-ed piece, turned out to be wrong, like you did in ‘05 when you told us, and we believed you, that the Iraqis were just about there, they were going to take over their own defense. And please consider that others could be right.”

Robert Wexler: “The surge has failed based on most parameters. In truth, war-related deaths have doubled in Iraq in 2007, compared to last year. … Cherry-picking statistics or selectively massaging information will not change the basic truth. It is my patriotic duty to represent my constituents and ask you — question you — about your argument that the surge in troops be extended until next year, next summer. I am skeptical, general — more importantly, the American people are skeptical — because four years ago very credible people, both in uniform and not in uniform, came before this Congress and sold us a bill of goods that turned out to be false!”

Even before the Petraeus report was released, Democrats swung into damage control by twisting the facts. The week prior to General Petraeus’ testimony, Senator Chuck Schumer asserted “Let me be clear. The violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from Al-Qaeda said to these tribes, ‘We have to fight Al-Qaeda ourselves.’ It wasn’t that the surge brought peace here. It was that the warlords took peace here, created a temporary peace here.”

Senator Dick Durbin: “By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and the surge is working. Even if the figures are right, the conclusion’s wrong.”

As we discussed in this column back on July 31, the troop surge is working. It’s working so well that President Bush announced a few days ago that he plans on reducing the number of servicemen stationed in Iraq. By next summer, our troops would number 130,000 to 135,000, down from the current 168,000. General Petraeus recommends that a 2,000-member Marine unit return home this month without replacement. That would be followed in mid-December with the departure of an Army brigade of 3,500-4,000. Another four combat brigades would be withdrawn by July.

Democrats (and some weak-kneed Republicans), who work in comfort inside the Beltway, believe that General David Petraeus, who commands our troops in Iraq, doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to events in Iraq. These people have never commanded an army, yet they lecture us and dress-down a four-star general as though they, and not the military, are the experts on military matters. Folks, the war against the terrorists in Iraq is the equivalent of a 30-3 thrashing in football, with our side winning, yet the Democrats continue to proclaim defeat.

Democrats are so invested in the defeat of the U.S. that they cannot afford politically for us to win. But we are winning, and rather than share in victory, they must do whatever is possible to project the perception of defeat, and that includes, in this case, shooting the messenger. While the United States of America is at war with terrorists, Democrats are at war with their own nation, and at war with reality. With Democrats, it’s their political well-being first, national security second.

The United States will win the war against terrorists, because we’re the United States, and we win wars. Unfortunately, we’ll have to do it with one of the two major political parties rooting for defeat.

Robert Rector of National Review ran an article on August 27, pointing out the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual report on poverty showing that 36.5 million Americans live in that economic category. (The poverty threshold is currently defined as an annual income of $20,614 for a family of four.) You can expect Democrats to take this ball and carry it as far as they can. They thrive on poverty.

Rector points out some facts regarding those 36.5 million Americans who live in poverty.

Forty-six percent of all poor households own their own homes. The average such home contains three-bedrooms with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36% of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

Six percent of poor households are overcrowded. Two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

The typical poor American has more living space than the average (not just poor) individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities across Europe.

Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car. Thirty-one percent own two or more cars.

Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television. More than half own two or more color televisions. Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player. Sixty-two percent have cable or satellite TV.

Eighty-nine percent of poor households own a microwave oven, more than half have a stereo, and a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

A third of poor households have both cell and land-line telephones. A third also own answering machines. Only one-tenth of families in poverty have no phone at all.

Furthermore, the average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class children, and, in most cases, is well above recommended levels. Poor children actually consume more meat than do higher-income children. Poor children today grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and ten pounds heavier than the U.S. servicemen who landed on Normandy in World War II.

Eighty-nine percent of the poor report their families have enough food to eat, while only two percent say they often do not have enough to eat.

The typical American poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work per year –- an average of 15 hours per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year, which averages out to a 40-hour-work-week, plus two weeks off for vacation, nearly 75% of poor children would be lifted above the poverty level.

The absence of fathers is the primary cause of poverty in America. The overall poverty rate is 12.3%, but skyrockets to 28.3% in households headed by a single female. The poverty rate for married-couple families, on the other hand, is only 4.9%.

Americans enjoy more affluence than any group of people who have inhabited the planet. In 1967, the first year for which such statistics are available, the median household income, reported in 2006 dollars, was $36,847. In 2006, that figure had jumped to $48,201, for an increase of more than 30%.

Despite our growing wealth, the poverty rate in America has remained essentially unchanged since 1966, the year after the welfare state was born (Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society). Keep in mind that the poverty rate was declining before the Great Society was put in place. In 1959, the poverty rate was 22.4%, and had already fallen to 17.3% in 1965. Yet between 1966 and 2006, the poverty rate has never risen above 15.2%, nor fallen below 11.1%.

In 2005, the Heritage Foundation calculated that American taxpayers had spent $8.5 trillion on the War on Poverty (providing food, housing, medical care, and social services for poor and low-income Americans). In other words, we have spent enough money on poverty to completely retire the national debt, and with zero net results.

The most effective cure for poverty is therefore not government and its wealth-transfer programs, which discourage marriage and full-time employment. The most effective cure for poverty is to get an education, get married and stay married, find a full-time job and stick with it, and stay out of prison. It’s no more difficult than that.

You may have heard that there are 47 million Americans without health insurance. Don’t believe a word of it. It’s a myth.

The Democrats’ health care crisis is an issue that typically gets batted around every election cycle, although it will be in the forefront during the 2008 campaign season, with Democrat candidates for President falling over themselves in promising more government intrusion into America’s health care system.

The health care crisis received a great amount of attention back in 1992 when Bill Clinton made it a pillar of his candidacy. Then we were told there were 38 million Americans without health care, and President Clinton wanted government to fix the problem. Fifteen years later, that figure, so we are told, has risen to 47 million, which illustrates just how effective liberals are at solving problems.

Of course, President Clinton’s “solution” was a massive socialization program, dubbed “HillaryCare,” that might have provided health care for those 38 million Americans, but also would have ruined the system for all of us. So it’s actually a good thing that HillaryCare failed to pass the Democrat-led Congress back in 1994.

Now that Hillary Clinton has become the presumptive Democrat nominee for President, we are up against the ghastly prospect of HillaryCare II.

What about those 47 million Americans without health care? The Business and Media Institute, a Virginia-based division of the Media Research Center, has checked the numbers, and discovered that the actual number of long-term uninsured Americans is somewhere around ten million.

Not everyone, it turns out, should be included in that 47 million. (To be exact, the 2005 figure reported by the U.S. Census Bureau is 46.577 million.) The number of non-citizens lumped into that total is 9.487 million, and those earning at least $50,000 per year who are uninsured totals 17.04 million, so we’re already down to 20 million uninsured.

Rush Limbaugh, for example, is one of the 47 million Americans without health insurance. He chooses not to buy insurance because he can afford to pay for his health care out-of-pocket. Democrats who propose taxpayer-funded health care for the uninsured would have us pay for coverage for rich folks like Limbaugh. How would you liberals like your tax dollars going toward Rush Limbaugh’s doctor bills?

We have shown that the number of involuntary uninsured Americans is around 20 million. Statistics from the Congressional Budget Office show that 45 percent of those without health insurance will have coverage again within four months after switching jobs.

What we’re left with, therefore, are between 8.2 million and 13.9 million Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and who make less than $50,000 a year, or about 3-4% of the U.S. population. These are the true long-term uninsured.

Voters are going to be brow-beaten until next November with the myth that there are 47 million uninsured Americans, and that the only solution is bigger government and more taxes. The mainstream press does and will continue to regurgitate this number verbatim, with no attempt to put the figure into its proper context.

The Democrats’ objective with the health care crisis is the same as their objective with most other crises they invent, and that is more government control over our lives. So, to borrow some Clinton lingo, when you hear about those 47 million uninsured Americans, don’t inhale.

Despite the hot weather we’ve seen this month, August has not been good for global warming alarmists. I’ve often wondered how the alarmists would spin it if observed meteorological data didn’t back up their apocalyptic forecasts. I recently got my answer.

A group of British researchers have published an article in “Science” to attempt to explain why natural weather variations have offset the effects of global warming for the past couple of years, and, so they predict, will continue to keep temperatures down through next year.

According to Breitbart.com, which summarizes the paper, “…global warming will begin in earnest in 2009, and a couple of the years between 2009 and 2014 will eclipse 1998, the warmest year on record to date, in the heat stakes, British meteorologists said.”

Furthermore, “Existing global climate computer models tend to underestimate the effects of natural forces on climate change, so for this analysis, Met Office experts tweaked their model to better reflect the impact of weather systems such as La Nina, or fluctuations in ocean heat and circulation.”

Problem #1: 1998 is not the warmest year on record to date. Just as the “Science” article hit mailboxes, it was revealed that NASA had quietly fixed flawed temperature data that showed 1998 to be the warmest year on record. The error was caught not by NASA, but by Steve McIntyre, a Toronto resident, who operates the website climateaudit.org. McIntyre discovered the flaw after investigating the data and the methods NASA used to arrive at their results.

The fix lowered the 1998 temperature by a few hundredths of a degree — enough to push it back to second place. This highlights another flaw with the data used by climatologists, who make their conclusions based on fractions of a degree that far exceed the instrument error of the thermometers that are used to tabulate such data.

In short, the warmest year on record is 1934. Five of the 10 warmest years on record occurred before World War II. So my question is what was causing global warming before WWII?

Problem #2: The British researchers, in trying to prove global warming, unwittingly undo it with the revelation “Global climate computer models tend to underestimate the effects of natural forces on climate change.”

Are these the same computer models that are being used to forecast the weather 1, 5, 10, 50, even 100 years in advance — the same forecasts that are being used to frighten the public into believing the Great Global Warming Hoax — the same forecasts that are being used to suggest policies that literally involve spending trillions of dollars of tax revenue, scale back lifestyles, and punish wealthy nations? If so, said researchers have just illustrated that their global warming models are junk.

Problem #3: “Natural weather variations have offset the effects of global warming for the past couple of years.”

Is it safe to say, then, that nature is more powerful than man? If that is the case, then the global warming alarmists who put this research out just refuted the case for man-made global warming. Up to this point, climatologists have admitted they are perplexed when it comes to trying to separate man-made influences on climate (if they exist) from natural variation. Thus, it is certainly possible that man, despite all of his industrial activity, may be inconsequential when it comes to climate change.

Problem #4: “But global warming will begin in earnest in 2009.”

There isn’t a meteorologist alive who can accurately predict the weather two years in advance. Weather forecasters have a tough enough time accurately forecasting the weather a week out. Yet a global warming alarmist can issue a forecast years ahead of time, and followers will treat that forecast as though it’s infallible, even though hurricane forecasts the last two years, for example, have been a bust.

I am convinced that the global warming issue will sooner or later collapse under the weight of its lack of scientific veracity. With each year, the crackpot theories issued by global warming scientists become more ridiculous. Two recent examples illustrate that point.

Chris Goodall, author of “How to Live a Low-Carbon Life,” suggests that walking to the store is more damaging to the environment than going by car. According to the UK Times, “Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.”

Of course, this flies in the face of everything we’ve been heretofore told by global warming alarmists regarding the harmful effects of our automobiles. Don’t believe for a second that they have scientific consensus on their side. The theories put out by global warming alarmists are as varied and contradictory as you will ever see.

In a separate story, this from the UK Guardian, we are told that global warming will lead to increased seismic activity. “As sea levels climb higher so a response from the world’s volcanoes becomes ever more likely, and perhaps not just from volcanoes. Loading of the continental margins could activate faults, triggering increased numbers of earthquakes, which in turn could spawn giant submarine landslides.”

That theory, which is devoid of any real science, was put out by Bill McGuire, who authored the book “Surviving Armageddon: Solutions For a Threatened Planet.” So, if we are to believe global warming alarmists, you saps who insist on exercising walking to the store are going to be responsible for more volcanoes, earthquakes, and submarine landslides by your activity. Tsk, tsk.

Global warming is a religion, which explains the previous reference to Armageddon, and why people like Al Gore refer to global warming as a moral and spiritual issue. Since factual analysis actually destroys global warming, it takes religious-like faith to believe the wild stories and predictions of doom put out by global warming alarmists.

On the other hand, every “solution” suggested by the leftists who believe this stuff involves higher taxes, bigger government, and more regulation. In short, the left uses global warming to tell the rest of us how we are supposed to live, and telling the rest of society how to live is a staple of liberalism. Global warming is simply the vehicle that carries them there. We are supposed to make personal and economic sacrifices on behalf of the planet that those who lecture us are unwilling to make themselves (Al Gore, for example).

So, in order to counter the higher taxes, bigger government, and more regulation demanded by global warming alarmists, if we’re going to have separation of church and state, then we also need separation of global warming and state.

On August 1, the I-35 bridge that crosses the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota collapsed, sending at least five motorists to their deaths. While most of the nation mourned, the Democrats’ spin machine kicked into gear.

Never ones to miss the opportunity to blame a calamity on President Bush and the Republican Party, Democrats began pointing fingers across the aisle and trolling for votes practically before the dust had settled.

Here’s a sampling of what some left-wing journalists and politicians were claiming within hours of the bridge collapse:

Craig Crawford, MSNBC: “I’ve looked up what it would take to fix the nation’s infrastructure. It’s about $532 billion a year. It just so happens to be about what we’re spending in Iraq.”

Joe Scarborough, MSNBC: “Certainly American voters would probably decide it would be wiser to invest in our own aging infrastructure than continuing to throw good money after bad in Iraq.”

Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA): “If we did not have the war in Iraq, with hundreds of billions of dollars, we would be able to do a great deal more.”

Jack Cafferty, CNN: “How could the U.S. better spend the $2 billion a week that we’re pouring into Iraq here at home?”

Lou Dobbs, CNN: “We’re not even succeeding in rebuilding the infrastructure and creating new infrastructure in Iraq.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN): “Priorities in our country have been out of whack the last few years. We’ve spent like almost $500 billion in Iraq.”

Okay. Let’s take a look at where we are spending our federal money. The President’s budget request for FY2008 calls for $2.902 trillion in spending. (That’s $2,902,000,000,000.) Of that sum, $481.4 billion (or 16.6% of the total budget) is designated for the Department of Defense.

Mandatory spending (i.e., entitlements) amounts to $1.527 trillion, or 52.6% of the total budget. That’s more than three times the amount we spend on national defense, even as our nation is at war. Yet it’s never asserted by these liberals that we’re spending too much on social programs. But that pesky military price tag. Now that’s another thing. If we weren’t wasting all that money fighting terrorists we could fix our crumbling infrastructure.

Folks, any way you slice it, this war has been a success. We have liberated two formerly oppressed nations, significantly weakened al Qaeda, rid the world of Saddam Hussein, and we have not suffered a terrorist attack on our soil in nearly six years.

The war on poverty, on the other hand, which was conceived 42 years ago, and which is the source of a significant chunk of our entitlement spending, has been a colossal failure. As of 2005, we had spent $8.5 trillion fighting the war on poverty — a figure which was greater than the national debt.

Since 1965, the poverty rate in this nation has never risen above 15.2%, nor fallen below 11.1%. It’s been remarkably stable. Clearly, the war on poverty hasn’t worked. But the left never questions the effectiveness of its social programs, only praises its good intentions.

So the answer isn’t higher taxes. The answer is reallocating funds from programs that don’t work into programs that will, such as infrastructure repair. Taxes don’t need to be raised in order to do this.

Those who weren’t busy blaming the President decided to make global warming the culprit. Leave it to a liberal to make the connection between global warming and a bridge collapse.

Joseph Romm, a former Clinton administration official, asserted in an op/ed “Certainly climate change will have the biggest infrastructure impact on our coastal cities, water and sewage systems, levees, and electric grid. But given that a remarkable 70,000 other bridges in the country are also structurally deficient, we should seek to learn whether such troubled bridges can take the ever-growing stresses generated by global warming.”

The Democrats have shown us who they really are in the wake of this bridge collapse. There are no tragedies anymore. It used to be that something like this would occur, and there would be an outpour of sympathy. But not with Democrats. To them, every tragedy, be it a terrorist strike, a hurricane, a tornado, a school shooting, and now a bridge collapse is an opportunity for political exploitation. You’d think the Democrats would be happy these days since they won the election in November, but they are just as angry and spiteful as they’ve ever been.

Senator Hillary Clinton addressed the National Education Association (NEA) during the July 4 holiday where she outlined her agenda for universal, government-run preschool. Her proposal, which has been introduced into the U.S. Senate, would give states $28 billion over five years to integrate the nation’s 120,000 preschools currently run in businesses, churches, and storefronts into a government-run system.

Clinton has long been a champion of government-run daycare. Ten years ago, she declared a daycare crisis in America, and President Bill Clinton responded by demanding $300 million over five years to train 50,000 daycare workers, improve their pay, and direct Americorps student volunteers to look after latchkey kids.

Going even farther back, Hillary Clinton contributed to the book “Children’s Rights: Contemporary Perspectives,” published by Teachers College in 1979. In her part, “Children’s Rights: A Legal Perspective,” Clinton writes “…where the decision or lack of one will significantly affects the child’s future [it] should not be made unilaterally by parents. Children should have a right to be permitted to decide their own future if they are competent.”

Clearly, Hillary Clinton is a champion of children’s rights (except those in the womb), and does so at the expense of parental authority. It’s no wonder that she believes government can do a better job of parenting than parents.

Now couched in the generic term “early childhood education,” the left’s desire to separate parents from their children at ever-younger ages has been a drumbeat for years. Hillary Clinton is perhaps the most visible champion of government-run preschool, and the left-wing NEA is whole-heartedly on board.

For example, one of the NEA’s resolutions passed at last year’s convention states that “The National Education Association supports early childhood education programs in the public schools for children from birth through age eight.” The NEA also believes that “early childhood education programs should include a full continuum of services for parents/guardians and children, including child care, child development, developmentally appropriate and diversity-based curricula, special education, and appropriate bias-free screening devices.” Of course, these government-run daycares would be fully funded with taxpayer money.

Liberals won’t actually come out and say it, but their desire to drive a wedge between parents and their children is born of their inherent distrust of average Americans. After all, parents tend to instill values in their children such as belief in God and the Bible, abstinence until marriage, and moral absolutes of right and wrong. Such values run counter to the agenda that liberals often try to run through public schools, which consists of the godless ideology of Darwinism, homosexual advocacy, safe-sex, and moral relativism. (For example, while addressing Planned Parenthood last month, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), who is running for president, remarked that sex education for kindergartners, as long as it is “age-appropriate,” is “the right thing to do.”) Indeed, young minds that are shaped by parents are minds the left cannot control, which is also why organizations such as the NEA vehemently oppose homeschooling.

Preschool by itself isn’t a bad thing, which is why so many parents pay to send their children there. Here in the Bible Belt, many churches operate preschools, and they flourish because parents want their children involved in a Christian environment. Believe me, this drives the left bananas. You don’t need me to tell you the effect that a government takeover of the private preschool industry will have, especially on church-run schools. When government comes in, God goes out. (We have to have “separation of church and state,” you know.)

Here in Tennessee, Governor Bredesen is trying to get a head start on Hillary Clinton’s nationalized plan. The governor was able to expand the state’s preschool program by 257 classes this year, at an additional cost of $25 million. This means the Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K program now costs $80 million annually, operates in 94 out of 95 counties, and 133 out of the state’s 136 school districts.

Governor Bredesen has designs to expand that $80 million price tag to $170 million by the time he leaves office. The current arrangement is designed primarily for “at risk” students, but the governor wants to make the system available to all students. After all, the governor notes, “Every kid can benefit.”

This is how liberals worm their way into American families and our paychecks. Proclaim a crisis, conceive a government program as the cure, and claim it’s for the children, or the poor, or both. After all, who can be against the children — especially ones who are “at risk?”

One of the benchmark beliefs of conservatism is that a child’s parents are the best parents for that child. It seems an obvious statement, but liberals tend to believe that whatever parents can do, government can do better.

It won’t be long, once universal preschool is established, that liberals in positions of power, at the behest of teachers unions, will begin knocking on the door to mandatory preschool. Remember, kindergarten hasn’t always been compulsory. It’s all part of the cradle-to-the-grave nanny state the left desires to establish, thereby gaining control over ever-widening aspects of our lives, including preschool-age children who are better off with their parents than in the hands of the NEA and its “bias-free screening devices.”

The Swiss-based New Open World Corporation recently sponsored the worldwide election of a new seven wonders of the world. The winners were announced on July 7 in Lisbon, Portugal. They include the Great Wall of China, Petra in Jordan, the Christ Redeemer statue in Brazil, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Chichén Itzá pyramid in Mexico, the Colisseum, and the Taj Mahal.

Not to take away from the wonder of the new seven wonders, I have my own list of seven wonders, and they all exist inside the United States.

1. The Gateway Arch in St. Louis was built on the site of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, which is located near the starting point of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Known as the “Gateway to the West,” the Arch symbolizes the fulfillment of America’s Manifest Destiny, which saw the original thirteen colonies expand all the way to the Pacific Ocean and beyond. The Arch stands 630 feet tall and is 630 feet wide at the base. Construction on the Arch began in 1963, and took two years. The geometric form of the Arch was established by mathematical equations provided by Dr. Hannskarl Bandel. The base of each leg at ground level had an engineering tolerance of one sixty-fourth of an inch, or the two legs would not mate at the top.

2. Hoover Dam, is located along the Colorado River along the Arizona-Nevada border. It was built during the Great Depression — the worst economic period of our nation’s history. Construction began in 1931, and was completed in 1936 — two years ahead of schedule. There were 104 workers who lost their lives during its construction. Hoover Dam contains 4.36 million cubic yards of concrete. It is 1,244 feet wide and 726.4 feet tall — the second highest dam in the U.S. Hoover Dam is 660 feet thick at the base, and tapers to a width of 45 feet at the top. It holds back 28,537,000 acre-feet of water, and its turbines generate 2,080 megawatts of electricity.

3. Like Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building in New York City was built during the Great Depression. Construction began in 1930, and it took 3,400 workers just 410 days to erect what was then the tallest building in the world. The Empire State Building stands 1,453 feet tall, contains 102 stories, and has a total floor area of 2,768,591 square feet. The building contains 6,500 windows, 70 miles of pipe, 470 miles of electrical wire, 73 elevators, and there are 1,860 steps from the ground to the 102nd floor. There are some 20,000 employees who work there (second only to the Pentagon), and the Empire State Building even has its own zip code.

4. Speaking of the Pentagon, that monolith is the perfect symbol of American military power and might. Located in Arlington, Virginia, the Pentagon is the headquarters of the Department of Defense. The five-sided structure was begun less than three months before Pearl Harbor, and took 16 months to complete. It is the third largest building in the world by floor area, with more than 6.6 million square feet, and houses 26,000 military and civilian employees. Although it stands just five stories tall (plus two basement floors), the Pentagon contains more than 17 miles of corridors, spreads across 29 acres, and houses more than 100,000 miles of telephone cable. It uses six zip codes.

5. Like Hoover Dam and the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was built during the Great Depression. When it opened in 1937, following four years of construction, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, and still ranks second, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City being the longest. The Golden Gate Bridge spans 8,981 feet, stands 746 feet tall, contains 1.2 million rivets, and holds six lanes of traffic. One an average day, 100,000 vehicles cross the bridge.

6. The Alaska Pipeline was built during the 1970’s after oil was discovered in Prudhoe Bay. It transports oil from that frozen, barren region to the nearest ice-free port, Valdez, which is 799 miles away. Construction of the Alaska Pipeline consumed three years, and at one time required 21,000 employees. Aside from the harsh environment of Alaska’s frozen tundra, the pipe crosses three mountain ranges, many rivers and streams, and the permaf?ost of Alaska required that almost half of the pipeline be built above ground. The four-foot thick pipe has transported over 15 billion barrels of oil since 1977, or an average of more than 1.3 million barrels per day, every day, for thirty years.

7. No company represents the American entrepreneur and the powerful U.S. economy any better than Wal-Mart. Founded by Sam Walton in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1962, Wal-Mart now employs 1.8 million associates worldwide — 1.3 million in the United States. It is the largest private employer in the U.S. and Mexico, and one of the largest in Canada. It operates more than 4,000 stores in the U.S., and more than 2,700 outside the U.S. The company enjoyed $345 billion in sales last year, and donated $245 million to charity in 2005. True to Sam Walton’s vision that “we’ll lower the cost of living for everyone, not just in America, but we’ll give the world an opportunity to see what it’s like to save and have a better lifestyle,” Wal-Mart saves the average household more than $2,300 per year.

They may not be as old as the new seven wonders, and generally don’t draw the tourists that, say, the Taj Mahal draws, but the American seven wonders are tributes to the greatest society ever to inhabit the planet.

I often hear the question asked “Is America ready for a woman president?” My answer is always the same. It depends on the woman.

Of course, that question is most often posed with Hillary Clinton in mind. There’s little doubt that the junior senator from New York will end up the Democrat Party’s nominee next year, and there is a reasonable chance she could end up this nation’s first Madam President.

However, we’re asking the wrong question with regard to Senator Clinton. A better question would be “Is America ready for a quasi-socialist president?” I certainly hope not.

A Mason-Dixon poll released late last month indicates Hillary Clinton has a lot to overcome. Fifty-two percent of Americans wouldn’t consider voting for her as president. Even 47% of women said they wouldn’t consider voting for her. Let’s hope those numbers hold.

Hillary Clinton does not suffer from a lack of name recognition. She owes that advantage not to herself, but to her husband. If her last name were still Rodham instead of Clinton, she would probably still be practicing law somewhere in Illinois, or Arkansas, or New York, or wherever it is she’s from, and none of us would have ever heard of her.

But back in the 1970’s, she managed to attach herself to an intelligent, affable young man with political ambitions, and rode his coattails all the way to the White House. Her status as First Lady for eight years enabled her to launch her own political career, winning a senate seat in the liberal state of New York as her husband’s presidency drew to a close.

Therefore, her three selling points in 2008 are her last name, her gender, and her ability to change accents. There is nothing substantive that qualifies her for the presidency. Senator Clinton’s loftiest political endeavor to date came back in 1994 when her vision for government-run healthcare failed to pass a Democrat-led Congress. But she has won two senate elections in New York, and owes her husband every bit of the credit.

Aside from this, Hillary Clinton can take on the accent of a black preacher when speaking in black churches, and can take on a southern drawl while speaking in the South, and I suppose this remarkable talent sould count for something.

Is America ready for a woman president? Yes, America is ready for a conservative woman president in the mold of, say, Margaret Thatcher (or Mae Beavers, for an example a little closer to home). To vote for a socialist simply for the novelty of having a woman occupy the White House wouldn’t be worth the novelty. We can wait another four years.

Should Hillary Clinton lose, you can bet the farm that many on the left will accuse Republican voters of sexism, much the same way we were labeled racists last November for not electing Harold Ford, Jr. to the U.S. Senate. It wasn’t Junior’s race that sent him packing, however. It was his liberalism. Likewise, it won’t be Hillary Clinton’s gender that provides her undoing, but her politics.