Conventional wisdom says that this state should be an easy win for Mitt Romney. Conventional wisdom didn’t work out too well in Colorado.

If you’d like to help in this effort in any way, email me at idaho.santorum@gmail.com.

Great victory speech to end a great night.

Our Republican Caucus workers (God bless ‘em) are going to have their hands full. We’re going to have a lot of Republicans showing up to register to have their first real say in the Republican nomination process since Gerald Ford was battling Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, from everything I can gather, many folks have not registered Republican in advance.  Many Republican elected officials, legislative district chairmen, and other activists still haven’t registered.

Please note that long delays waiting in line will not constitute a conspiracy against your candidate, they’ll constitute people not having registered as Republican in advance, and the pain points as we adapt to party registration.

If you registered after July 2011 and checked the box as a Republican, you’re good to go.

If you’ve not, please download this form, mail it in to your county election office and have it there by February 17th. If it’s convenient for you, you can do what my wife and I did and stop by the County election office and register in person. In Ada County, it’s on Benjamin Road, so if you happen to be out near the mall before 5 on a weekday, and can find the time, you can do it that way.

Even, if you read this after February 17th, you can still expedite the process when you get to the Caucus site by printing up the form above and filling it out in advance.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of time waiting in line to register, be kind to caucus workers, be kind to yourself, and be kind to your fellow caucus attendees who need to go to work the next day, and do your best to register as a Republican by February 17th.

Dr. James Dobson said: “The institution of the family is the key issue facing this great nation.  It is the foundation, the bedrock, upon which every dimension of Western Civilization rests.  If it is undermined or weakened by cultural and governmental forces, the entire superstructure will collapse in short order.  And indeed, today it is in serious jeopardy.  The very definition of marriage is threatened, which has implications for the next generation and the stability of society itself.

Of all the Republican candidates who are vying for the presidency, former Sen. Santorum is the one who has spoken passionately in every debate about this concern.  He has pleaded with the nation and its leaders to come to the aid of marriages, parents, and their children.  What a refreshing message.  The Congress voted in 1969 to impose a marriage penalty tax on husbands and wives who were struggling to raise their children.  That unfair tax continued for 32 years, until George W. Bush rolled it back. Now, if Democrats and some Republicans have their way, the marriage penalty tax will be re-imposed in 2013.  We desperately need a president who will intercede on behalf of those who are caring for the next generation and working to build this nation.

“While there are other GOP candidates who are worthy of our support, Sen. Santorum is the man of the hour. His knowledge of international politics, especially Israel and the turmoil in the Middle East, is highly relevant to the dangerous world in which we live.  This is why I am endorsing former Senator Rick Santorum for president of the United States, and urge my countrymen to join us in this campaign.”

The pony tail guy asked the question of World War II hero George H.W. Bush at a debate in his campaign against draft dodger Bill Clinton.

The answer of modern conservatives seems to be. “Heck, yeah.”

Says Ed Morrissey:

Unless there are some revelations of political malfeasance, this should be a nothingburger, but it’s hard to know how people will react to this.

And Morrissey saves his outrage for the obvious villain of the piece:

It is, however, supremely unfair of Marianne to dump this on the race now — not to Newt, but to voters who sincerely backed Gingrich.  If Newt so lacked the “moral character” for the Presidency, why did it take Marianne eight months to tell us?

If I were to speculate, I’d say that Mrs. Gingrich would rather hope that Mr. Newt would defeat himself without her aid as this is a somewhat painful process to go through, but that as she believes Mr. Gingrich lacks the moral fiber to be President, and would be a disaster to the country, she’s left with little choice.

As a former Cain supporter, I’m particularly frosted by this as Hot Air breathlessly reported every allegation, along with the rest of the press despite the lack of credibility of the accusers. Apparently, what was devastating to Cain was that people were alleging that he was a sleazy person, but with Newt, it was already built in knowledge that he was. Can we move on to the next brilliant debate answer?

Ultimately, the reason I didn’t believe Cain’s accusers is because the allegations didn’t jive with what I knew of Cain’s personal character. It contradicted everything those who knew him best said of him.

With Speaker Gingrich, it’s another case.  His actions in private and public are both equally selfish, egotistical, and vain.  The same ego that made him even ask his wife of nearly two decades for an open marriage when he was a chubby 56-year old is the same ego that made him cry foul when Bill Clinton had him sit in the back of a plane. It’s the same ego that transformed him from the guy who said,  “Hey, let’s only attack Obama.” to the Incredible Hulk releasing his fury on Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital.  It’s the same vanity that leads him to think out loud and toss out every stray idea that comes into his head as a public policy proposal. It was his selfish desire to maintain power that led him to fail address the entitlement crisis that’s facing us now during his second speaker.

Gingrich supporters would have us believe that Newt has two suits of character. He steps out of his house and he acts in an entirely different manner that he does in his personal life. He goes home and he’s back to Newt #1. Sorry, but there’s only one person, only one character.

It’s Newt’s character that has created his high negative ratings and it’s these high negatives that will undermine his ability to win in a general election.  I’m a believer in the thirteen keys theory and think it doesn’t matter a whole lot as to the question of winning or losing as to who we put up in the fall. If things are bad enough, the GOP will win. If not, we will lose. However, I think the type of candidate we put up will impact the margin of a loss. If Newt is our nominee, we will face a loss of Nixon-McGovern proportions. And if he wins, he’s shown he’s willing to do whatever it takes to hold on to power. Gingrich offers conservatives a true lose-lose proposition.

Fundamentally, I’m willing to lose this elections and lose it by those type of margins, standing firm for conservative principle.  What I’m not willing to do and what I think no conservative in their right mind should be willing to do is lose the election because you nominate someone of an undisciplined and egotistical character.

The type of bumps and poll numbers that Newt is enjoying suggest that in our quest to not nominate Mitt Romney that some conservatives have taken leave of their senses. Contrary to what Gingrich supporters  argue, we are not electing a National Debate champion and while the three presidential debates are important, Newt’s smackdowns of Obama will not change the course of the election. It may be emotionally satisfying to Republicans, but emotional satisfaction and 39% of the vote nets you 39% of the vote.

Great closing video for Rick Santourm!

The assumption is not made without reason. Since 1980, the winner of the South Carolina Primary has won the GOP nomination. And also since 1980, the winner ofSouth Carolinawon eitherIowaorNew Hampshirefirst. Therefore, by the logic of the historical record, as Romney wonIowaandNew Hampshire, he’ll winSouth Carolina, and then the GOP nomination.

This problem is that this sort of analysis is too shallow.South Carolina has been critical to the GOP nomination for so long that many have forgotten why it became so important in the first place.

In 1980, South Carolina held its primary three days before Alabama, Florida, and Georgia voted. Reagan won South Carolina, knocking out southern competitor John Connally and picked up valuable momentum that allowed him to sweep the three southern states. In 1988, the power of South Carolina was further magnified with the introduction of Super Tuesday, with seventeen states (mostly in the South) voting three days after South Carolina. And in 2008,South Carolina occurred ten days before the Florida Primary and 17 days before the biggest Super Tuesday ever: twenty-one contests including many winner-take-all affairs in large states such as California,New York, and New Jersey.

South Carolina’s influence has depended on its proximity to a huge number of primaries, particularly those that are winner-take-all to provide crucial momentum to candidates. This situation prevailed for 28 years, but not any more.

 The RNC has given the Republican nominating process a makeover. First, it required that with the exceptions ofIowa,New Hampshire,South Carolina, andNevada that states hold their contests no earlier than March or face the loss of half of their delegates. Secondly, the RNC required that contests held before April allocate their delegates proportionally. The net result is that many of the big states that made it impossible for candidates to come back from aSouth Carolina loss in 2008 are slated to vote much later in the process this time around. This makes it virtually impossible for any candidate to mathematically clinch the nomination by winning the required 1,144 delegates until well into the spring when winner take-all-states begin to vote.

In addition, because of Florida moving its primary forward, South Carolina is now voting forty-five days before Super Tuesday, which will only feature eleven contests this year. This doesn’t mean that should Romney win in South Carolina, Florida, and Nevada that he will not have a ton of momentum. It does mean that conservatives opposed to Romney’s nomination will have time to rally and try to beat back the Romney juggernaut, particularly if Romney’s support from party regulars remains as cool as it has been. As of this writing, the Real Clear Politics national polling average shows Romney at 29% among Republican Primary voters, hardly overwhelming support.

Right now the anti-Romney conservative vote is split between Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich. None of these candidates are leaving the race after New Hampshire, but it’s a safe bet that the field will be winnowed after Florida, giving the remaining candidate a chance to consolidate opposition to Romney. While, a difficult task, history tells us it’s not impossible. Ronald Reagan nearly defeated President Gerald Ford for the GOP nomination in 1976 after losing the first six primaries in a row.

The only way the presidential race will be over afterSouth Carolinais if Romney opponents buy into out of date media analysis or surrender to the idea of Romney’s inevitably due to not liking the other alternatives. While after the first two contests, Romney is the clear frontrunner, the ultimate fate of his campaign is still in the hands of Republican voters. Smart political analysts would do well to remember that.

Let me be clear, Rick Perry is done, finished, kaputsky. If I were a gambling man, I’d bet 10:1 against Perry being the Republican nominee. Rick Perry gave a classy speech today to give way to a classless alibing of his poor performance in Iowa.  Said Perry:

“This is quirky place and a quirky process to say the least,” Perry said of Iowa and its caucuses. “We’re going to go into places where they have actual primaries and there are going to be real Republicans voting.”

Really? It’s a quirky place and a quirky process? Maybe you could have figured that out beforeyou spent $6 million. I’m going to give Perry the benefit of the doubt of understanding after 4 months of the race that Iowa was a tricky process. To quote the famous political analyst Super Chicken, “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.” You came, you saw, you fell flat. $6 millions in TV ads and weeks of retail politicking and ultimately and Perry finished tied for third among White Evangelical Voters behind Rick Santorum and Ron Paul.  Among Evangelicals, theEntrance Poll indicates that Perry finished behind the guy who wants to repeal federal laws against cocaine. And in South Carolina, the latest Real Clear Politics polling average puts Perry ata whopping 5 percent and there’s no reason to think that in the two weeks since the last poll with Perry campaigning in that Quirky state that he stands much better.

Newt Gingrich’s case is not quite as severe, but it’s pretty desperate. Not only did Newt do a little better than Perry, he also has superior poll position in New Hampshire.  The latest Suffolk tracking poll shows Newt in striking distance of Ron Paul for second and after Paul’s rather disappointing third place finish in Iowa, he may see a loss of momentum. However, the same poll showed Santorum within three of Gingrich and one back of Huntsman, so the next week could be crucial.

That said, Newt’s still a longshot. I wrote at the end of the year,  Newt’s rise to prominence was because of his decision to take the high road, campaign against President Obama, and compliment his opponents. It made people think he could unite the Republican Party.  Gingrich, in response to Romney has transformed to an aggressive attacker in a way reminiscent of the Incredible Hulk (Newt Smash!). The way Gingrich is running his campaign, he can help Rick Santorum, he can help Jon Huntsman, if his attacks backfire too bad, he can help Mitt Romney, but the one person he won’t be able to help is Newt Gingrich.

This isn’t to say that Perry and Gingrich don’t have a role to play in the race. They have the same role as Fred Thompson did in 2008.

In 2008, I was supporting Fred Thompson. Thompson finished a distant third in Iowa (which gave him a greater claim to legitimacy than either Perry or Gingrich) and he went to South Carolina while other candidates were working New Hampshire and Michigan.  He went and he attacked and undercut Mike Huckabee to build up his campaign (as Rick Perry will have to do to stop Rick Santorum among conservatives) and he won 16%, while Huckabee lost the state by 2.3%. Thus Fred Thompson helped John McCain secure the crucial South Carolina Primary and set the stage for John McCain’s nomination. Perry and Gingrich have the exact same chance to go and secure the nomination for Mitt Romney.

Of course, to be fair, it wouldn’t have been possible for Thompson to succeed had it not been for Thompson supporters. I was one of them in 2008. I gave Thompson donations and even when people in the field told me that Thompson’s campaign was not getting the response they needed, I basically refused to believe the obvious evidence that it was over.

Had I and other supporters of Fred Thompson faced reality and realized that campaign was going nowhere and realized what the real choices lay, it’s possible that John McCain wouldn’t have been nominated.

If conservative voters opposed to Romney cleave to sure to lose campaigns, than Romney will be the nominee. These conservatives may find that Romney is not the nominee they want. They may believe he is not the nominee the country needs. But he’ll be the nominee conservatives deserve.

And that’s the whole list. No names are missing.

And for Gingrich supporters, the only candidate to finish fourth and win was John McCain who: 1) Almost finished third, not nearly ten points behind  like Gingrich and 2)Won New Hampshire and had focused his entire campaign there ala Jon Huntsman.

The phenomenom of one candidate leading the GOP pack and then leading another has been described as “flavor of the month.” This is ultimately disrespectful to both the process and the candidates that have run the race. Each Conservative Candidate for President brings a lifetime of unique and exceptional experiences that has carried them through years and politics and business. You don’t get elected three times as Governor of Texas, rally thousands to the Capitol against Obamacare, win two terms in the Senate in a blue state, or lead the Republican Revolution because you are a flavor of the month.

Perhaps, the most apt comparison is to a marathon. While this might be slightly cliched, it is far more apt. Each candidate has had their chance to surge to the front, but ultimately was unable to go the distance.  It is Rick Santorum that ultimately crossed the finish line in the Iowa Marathon, because he ran the best rac.e

I have respect for many candidates. While they have their flaws, I admired many of the candidates who ran this race and would have been happy had they been our nominee. I decided to avoid committing myself until I saw the race play out. I supported Herman Cain, but when he left the race for November, I returned to neutral position. I waited to see who would emerge as the Conservative champion in the Iowa marathon. I hoped that it would be someone I could be proud to support.

My hopes were realized with Rick Santorum’s shocking showing in Iowa. Rick Santorum has been a strong conservative throughout his career.  I remember his leadership on the pro-life issue, where he lead the fight against the gruesome practice of partial birth abortion. But I also knew Santorum as a blue collar fighter, a Mr. Smith in Washington, fighting battle after battle for our conservative values. He has lived up to them personally.

I do not say that Rick Santorum is a perfect candidate, he’s not, but he’s a good man and he is the best candidate we have. Realistically, this race will come down to a choice between Santorum, Romney, and perhaps Newt Gingrich, I choose Santorum. I believe Santorum will bring fresh ideas and revitalize our nation’s economy. I trust him to address the nation’s most pressing issues.

I’ve always thought Rick Santorum would be a good President if he could actually win.  However, I concluded that he lacked money, organization, and resources. I thought several times, he should quit to focus on the candidates who could win. I wondered whether his campaign was more like one of Alan Keyes’ prophetic crusades or Orrin Hatch’s legislative summation campaign in 2000.

Tuesday night, Rick Santorum proved he was for real. He proved the critics wrong. He proved me wrong. In a campaign dominated by Super PACs spewing negative attacks, and multi-million dollar personal hit jobs, Rick Santorum ran his campaign in Iowa with shoe leather.  He won the hearts of Iowans by connecting with them. He offers America a consistent and passionate and consistent conservative who we can have confidence to take on the big issues.

I’m declaring my support for Rick Santorum and I hope others who dismissed his campaign will take another look and get behind this great conservative warrior. For my part, I’ve never been happier to be wrong about a candidate.

Much has been said about the King James Version, which spent the best part of its 400 year history as the Bible of choice for Americans of all stripes. The King James brought the Bible to the common person and a common cultural language to English-speaking peoples. The beauty of the translation was unparalleled.

I was fortunate to grow up with the King James Bible, which is somewhat rare for someone my age. The KJV has fallen into disuse in the U.S.A. over the years as more modren translations are introduced constantly. Most would agree that the KJV could use some updating in some of its use of archaic words. However, no one quite agrees on how to update and no new translations stop with that. We now have dozens of translations on the market. I guess this is to be expected. Who can expect a country with more than 700 Christian denominations to have just one Bible?

I’m past the point of fighting about bible versions. Too many churches, friendships, and families have broken up into strife over the great Bible version debate. I’ve come to a point of acceptance. When I need to communicate something to the general culture, I accept that we live in a modern Bible version country where if you read a “peradventure,” or a “whosoever” people will stare at you fish-eyed. As such, if I want to communicate with that perspective, I wouldn’t use the King James any more than I would use the King James Version to communicate to Spanish-speaking people. For these purposes, I use the ESV, which is perhaps the best of the modern versions. I still use the KJV for my daily devotions.

The big thing I think that we are missing today in modern Bible versions is that sense of having a book that is, The Bible and provides a common frame of reference for Christians and the culture as a whole to communicate. While on the most important things, the Bible versions are solidly in agreement, the exact phrasing is often vastly different. The beauty of the King James was that the way it said things was easy to memorize and communicate ideas with.

One example of how this worked came in World War II. British soldiers were trapped at Dunkirk with the Germany Army advancing. The forces sent a simple message, “But if not.”  The three word phrase came from the book of Daniel where Daniel’s three friends refused to bow to the idol of King Nebuchanezzar:

If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

The phrase, “but if not” sent a message to not only the British army, but to the British people, and the world. The soldiers defending Dunkirk would be faithful to death.

“But if not” means nothing in many modern Bible versions.  With everyone reading different translations, we find ourselves without that common language, which Protestants of nearly every denomination used to share. It’s a tragic loss of our modern times.

Charles Dickens-The Seven Poor Travellers

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.-Luke 2:10, 11

Right now Congress is considering two bills—the Protect IP Act, and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)—that would be laughable if they weren’t in fact real. Honestly, if a friend wrote these into a piece of fiction about government oversight gone amok, I’d have to tell them that they were too one-dimensional, too obviously anticonstitutional.

Make no mistake: These bills aren’t simply unconstitutional, they are anticonstitutional. They would allow for the wholesale elimination of entire websites, domain names, and chunks of the DNS (the underlying structure of the whole Internet), based on nothing more than the “good faith” assertion by a single party that the website is infringing on a copyright of the complainant. The accused doesn’t even have to be aware that the complaint has been made.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz has stated that Congress hasn’t done its due diligence is sending up red flags. Despite the entertainment industry’s lobbying campaign, even Ashton Kutcher realizes this is bad medicine. Is your Congressman smarter than Ashton Kutcher? Mine isn’t.

In a response to a constituent, “Simpson” writes :

Dear Phil:

Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act. I appreciate hearing from you and having the opportunity to respond.

As you may know, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) introduced H.R. 3261 on October 26, 2011. This legislation aims to promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property. Currently H.R. 3261 is under consideration by the House Committee on the Judiciary.

While I do not sit on the committee with jurisdiction over this piece of legislation, I will continue to monitor its progress as it makes its way through the committee process. You can be confident that I will keep your thoughts in mind should it come before me on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Phil was annoyed because, “This is supposedly a “personal response.”  This of course is an obvious form letter with constituent name, bill name, sponsor, and other information merely inserted.

In addition, this is not some minor issue. This is an issue that is about our fundamental liberty and freedom of speech. Perhaps, Mike Simpson has been too busy trying to raise taxes to pay attention when a bunch of Hollywood lobbyists are trying to undermine our liberty in order to bolster their profits.

Isn’t it time that we had a Congressman who, I don’t know, provided a level of service and respect to his constituents that is at least on par with what fast food restaurants near BSU? Isn’t it time we had a Congressman whose business was defending our liberties rather than trying to find more ways to squeeze money out of us?

Hopefully, an election in the new year will at last bring us a new Congressman.

WASHINGTON—House Speaker John Boehner, bowing to heavy pressure from fellow Republicans, agreed Thursday to a two-month extension of a payroll-tax break, ending a stalemate that had created a wedge within the party.

The deal, which forestalls a Jan. 1 tax increase on 160 million workers, represents a retreat for the House GOP, which had been at odds with Senate Republicans and party elders who feared the party would suffer in the 2012 elections if the tax break was allowed to expire.

John Boehner is a good man and he’s awful Speaker of the House in terms of the basic ability to competently lead. The Boehner speakership heretofore has been a mess, marked incoherence and drift.  Boehner decided to take a battle he couldn’t win in fighting the payroll tax holiday extension and misplayed it badly, just as he did the debt ceiling debate earlier in the year.

To be clear the payroll tax holiday is bad policy, but good politics.  Louis Woodhill makes the case in Forbes quite well:

So, what we have here is a tax cut that does (at best) nothing for economic growth, does  (at best) nothing for employment, but adds more than $100 billion per year to the deficit and debt.  Why do most of the Democrats and many of the Republicans in Congress support it?  Here is one explanation.

America has a two-party system.  We have a Stupid Party (the Republicans) and an Evil Party (the Democrats).  Every so often Congress does something that is both stupid and evil, and we call this “bipartisanship”.

While the “evil and stupid” theory has definite merit, there is a simple fact is that Americans are not prepared to have a body blow to their paychecks. For those who are employed, Obamacare is already leading to massive increases in the costs of insurance.  If you add to taking 2% more out of people’s paychecks for the payroll tax, then take home pay is taking a huge hit.  It’s the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

So, of course that payroll tax holiday was going to be extended. Americans are going to be ticked off if they see $100 bucks less on their first paycheck than they did last year’s.

Republicans need some smart leadership in the House that will pick the right battles, and then when he goes into battle, keep the troops united. Unfortunately, that leader isn’t John Boehner and as long as he remains the most powerful Republican in Washington, the GOP has got a big problem.

If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants. While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell’s first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably.

According to Rabbi Hammerman, America is full of crazy all to certain Christians who are ready to go pillaging mosques and putting the ban on immigrants…if a football game goes the wrong way. It seems Hammerman practices the hysteria and hatred he accuses others of.

Of course, the question is where do Cain supporters go? The answer seems to be all over the place. If I were in Iowa, I’d probably be supporting Rick Perry. However, not eager to have to switch candidates again, I’ll wait until after the Iowa Caucuses and perhaps after New Hampshire to get behind another candidate.

Not Gingrich and Not Romney conservatives in Iowa seem to be in a bit of a pickle. Perry, Santorum, and Bachmann all have a little momentum going, picking up endorsements, making some good moves, but no one has the clear inside track. This seems likely to lead to a scenario where the top 3 in Iowa are Gingrich, Paul, and Romney, and the rest are left out in the cold. It would be almost impossible for Bachmann and Santorum to go on should they finish out of the top 3 and it would be futile for Perry to do so.  However, a 3rd place finish might give some hope.

Perry is probably the only one who could not win Iowa and still end up winning the nomination. If he were to finish 3rd in Iowa, it would signal a clear comeback. It would be particularly good if Ron Paul were to win the State, as it would hurt Gingrich. If Gingrich takes more damage, it could open the door for Perry in South Carolina.

For Bachmann and Santorum, there’s no way they can make it past Iowa if they don’t win the state or finish an extremely close second. Santorum has no money. To be honest,  if Santorum did win Iowa, I don’t know how he goes past that. Bachmann has some fundraising ability, but its limited and to grow that base she needs to show results.  

Of course, if all three of these choices fall flat and were left with Romney v. Gingrich, then I’d reluctantly back Romney.

Hopefully, we’ll know much about this race in three weeks when people start voting.

The ban has opened a war of words between worshippers in the Pike County community and provoked accusations of discrimination.

It was imposed after Stella Harville, the church secretary’s daughter, attended a service with her black fiancé Ticha Chikuni.

With the New Hampshire Union Leader’s endorsement of Newt Gingrich as well as Gingrich’s rise in the polls, the former speaker has the momentum in the race for the White House, but is this a good thing?

Speaker Gingrich has many commendable points. He’s skilled at crafting conservative policy proposals and he is an accomplished debater and proponent of conservative ideas. Gingrich also deserves credit for working with President Clinton to pass welfare reform, and some credit for the balanced budgets that existed prior to 9/11. Conservatives remember Gingrich fondly for leading the GOP to victory with the Contract with America.

However, things did not go so well once Gingrich was in office. His troubled tenure from 1995-99 (which he at one point compared to being prime minister) as well as his post-speakership career raise several red flags that conservatives would be wise to consider:

1)  Big Spending and Earmarks:

While Gingrich was speaker, Congress and the president balanced the budget. This did not come about through hard choices, but rather through a booming economy. As the information age dawned and the dotcom boom began, government coffers surged with revenues.

As part of the balanced budget agreement, Congress put in place spending caps. With the surge of revenue, Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott decided to break the spending caps that had been put in place in the balanced budget agreement and increased federal spending. This practice was continued under Gingrich’s successor, Dennis Hastert. The predictable result of the Republican Congress’ profligacy on spending was that once the dotcom bubble burst and economic growth slowed, the only way that Congress could afford to continue the increases they’d made in the good years of the economy was to run up deficits.

Gingrich’s speakership  was dealt a telling blow as a result of his ineptness in negotiating the FY1999 budget which was passed a month before the 1998 elections and increased spending without delivering any major tax reductions. Then-Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) said voters complained to him that nobody read the bill and “the president (Clinton) got virtually everything he wanted.”

One part of Gingrich’s legacy that remained long after he left was the expanded role of earmarks in congressional politics. Gingrich doubled the number of earmarks in Congress and his office sent out memos encouraging the use of earmarks for protecting vulnerable members of Congress. The number of earmarks would eventually increase to 14,000 per year and would lead to the end of the Republican majority. While the greatest excesses did not occur during Gingrich’s speakership, the first steps toward the Republican train wreck of 2006 were taken during Gingrich’s tenure.

Read the whole thing at Pajamas Media. One of the four items included was not Gingrich’s character issue, given the serious policy and ideology issues. I do give benefit of the doubt to the former Speaker that a combination of age and spiritual growth will make less likely a recurrence of what happened during his speakership. But, the past will be very tricky. Having at least one actual long-term affair would give any accusers (whether real or not) bonus credibility and we can be sure that we’ll be hearing a lot more about this before it’s all said and done if Gingrich is the nominee.

On a personal note, I’d add that examining Gingrich’s record makes Romney look better. All of my concerns with Mitt Romney, such as his ability to effect needed change or his willingness to stick to conservative principles, as well as Romney’s typical politician behavior are even more severe concerns with Newt Gingrich. I still hope Cain has a comeback Kid still style resurgence and that I get to vote for him or we see a return of another of the more conservative candidates such as Bachmann. However, if we get to March, and it comes down to Romney and Gingrich, with Gingrich having a chance of taking the nomination, I’ll vote for Romney.

 What would you do if you had superpowers?

Dave Johnson is the world’s biggest superhero fan. His comics allow him to escape the pain of the real world where he’s stuck in a dead end job and his wife and eldest son have lost respect for him.

Then Dave meets Zolgron, a symbiotic alien banished from his home world and forced to give great powers to whoever he attaches to. With Zolgron’s help, Dave becomes Powerhouse, a super strong, superfast crime fighter whose super imagination can mold reality to his vision. Dave sets off to save the day just like a comic book superhero and hilarity ensues.

Evil is scarce in Dave’s small town, so he sets about bringing justice to jay walkers and violators of a smoking ordinance. At the local police’s suggestion, he commutes to Seattle, where he faces down a ring of car thieves and comes face to face with the organized crime syndicate that has bought off Seattle policemen, prosecutors, and newspapermen.

To protect his family, Dave guards his secret identity from everyone, including his wife, Naomi. She begins to suspect Dave’s rapidly improving body and unexplained absences are signs of an affair. With Dave’s head in the clouds, can the Johnson marriage survive?

With all the fun and excitement of your favorite childhood Saturday Morning heroes, Tales of the Dim Knight is an action packed family comedy that will keep you laughing until the very end.

“A truly original premise, Tales of the Dim Knight is a light-hearted escape into the world of superheroes and villains with a thoughtful twist as to what matters most in life.”
–Christy Award Winner Jill Williamson, author of By Darkness Hid
A fun, fun read!
~ Frank Creed, award-winning author of Flashpoint

I’ve considered several candidates since then: Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachmann. I’ve remained on the fence until now. I’m firmly on the Herman Cain train.

I laid out what I was looking for in a Presidential candidate in this column and what I believed a Republican Candidate: political courage, character, the confidence of the base in his intentions, and the ability to inspire optomism in Americans. Herman Cain is the man who best represents this ideal.

When I look at other main contenders, their courage to address tough issues is definitely in question.  Cain’s is not.

The issue of character is one that some might contest given the recent sexual harassment rumors. However, none of these rumors have had any evidence other than heresay to support them. It’s reasonable to expect a candidate’s known and proven conduct be exemplary. It’s not reasonable to expect he be invulnerable flimsy baseless allegations.

Optomism is also important. We Americans have been beaten down by events. Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, our own image of America has taken a relentless beating.  And really our economy is suffering as much from our pessimissism about  the future as the current problems. We desperately need to feel good about our country. Herman Cain best exudes that Reaganesque confidence in America that instills that good feeling that can restore our national self-confidence.

There are many criticisms of Mr. Cain, including his lack of foreign policy expertise, his mis-statements on some issues, and his campaign staff.

I won’t deny that Cain hasn’t had some facepalm moments, but being president is not merely a matter of being the master of political trivia. It’s about leadership and the willingness to take on hard problems. While I may question some of his staff decisions, it must be admitted that: 1) the quality of staff was affected by the shoestring budget that afflicted the campaign until this quarter and 2) whatever the complaints about Mr. Block, had Cain taken the advice of most pundits and bloggers instead of Block’s, he would have been out of this race three months ago and never become a national contender.

Others make a dubious comparison between Mr. Cain and President Obama. “In 2008, we elected a charismatic guy with no experience, do we really want to do that again?” The argument assumes that the problem with the last three years has been that Obama didn’t have a long enough political resume. The problem with the last three years has been that Obama’s been has been pushing harmful policies, not because of inexperience, but because he believes in bad ideology and political philosophy. It is decades of political experience that has produced the two biggest job killers in this term, Obamacare and Dodd-Frank (named after two members of Congress with more than 30 years in office.) Unlike Obama, Cain will bring executive experience and the one clear failure of executive leadership that we have (the BP oil spill) would never have occurred if Herman were president.

Americans are tired of politics as usual, of men who think up clever answers to everything and take a bunch of positions on issues that they have to reverse themselves on once in office because they didn’t fully understand the situation.

Herman  Cain does have staying power beyond the “Flavor of the Month” phenomena. Even after the last few weeks, he remains competitive in national polls and in Iowa. I think he can come back and win this particularly as more intention is put on Newt Gingrich’s past record.

In the Fall, I will support whoever the Republican nominee is against Obama. In this primary election campaign, I’ll support the candidate I think will be best for America. That’s why this morning I put a Cain bumper sticker on my car and I hope to caucus for Mr. Cain on Super Tuesday.

The only abortion clinic in Santa Fe will close as of December 23, 2011, when abortionist Lucia Ceis retires from private practice. The last day abortions will be done is December 16, 2011.

Ceis admits to having done thousands of abortions over her 35 years of business. Ceis posted an ad in The New Mexican newspaper announcing her retirement.

That closure will leave Santa Fe abortion-free and will reduce the number of abortion clinics in New Mexico to five.

Of course, there are liberals who will jump on this. “You say you’re pro-life , but you support the death penalty,” or “You’re a Christian, how can you support the death peantly?”

The pro-life issue has a flip side , as most (but not all) of the death penalty’s most fierce opponents are also pro-choice. I’d suggest that for these liberal opponents of the death penalty, this has less to do with the sancityof human life and more to do with a permissive attittude towards crime and murder and a lack of respect for the lives of crime victims.  Of course, not all opponents of the death penalty are liberals, but they are the ones who push the argument strongest.

To me, the death penalty is an affirmation of the value of human life, as those who destroy human life face the ultimate sentence. Innocent human life should always be protected.

As a Christian, I do not see anywhere in scripture, there is no general prohibition of the civil authority from executing criminals. Indeed, it’s at least hinted at in Romans 13: 3, 4 (KJ21):

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same, for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain; for he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

As a Christian, I hope Rhoades makes his peace with God. But as an Idahoan, I fully support the state, as God’s minister, executing its duty to punish evil.

And Rhoades is not the longest serving death row inmate. That “honor” goes to Gene Francis Stuart, who was sentenced 29 years ago to die for the torture death of a 3 year old boy. There are four others with current death sentences that have been waiting for their execution for more than 20 years.  While I understand that we all want to be careful making sure that executions are done to the right people, doesn’t anyone else think that 30 years of appeals for the obviously and manifestly guilty is obscene. In Stuart’s case, the wait for his execution has been nearly 10 times the short life of his victim.

It’s no wonder that prosecutors didn’t push for the death penalty in the Robert Manwill case.  If Daniel Ehrlick were sentenced to death, the odds are he would die of old age before he was executed.

Note to legislators and judges: Streamline this appeals process, so that it’s humane to the victims’ families. This forever wait for justice blunts the purpose of the death penalty which is to express society’s strongest sanction against the most heinous crimes. If we’re going to wait 30 years to carry out the execution few  even remember  why we’re doing this, then why bother with the death penalty? Do we just have a need to keep the court’s busy? Either streamline the appeals or end the thing. As it is right now, Idaho’s death row is a joke.

Update: A reminder via Don Surber that Idaho isn’t alone in this problem:

Since 1978 when California reinstated capital punishment, 54 condemned inmates have died from natural causes, 19 committed suicide, 13 were executed in California, one was executed in Missouri and six died from other causes, including murder.

When 4 times as many people are dying of natural causes as are being executed, the system is failing.

“Usually when you have a big field like this, some candidates kind of focus on Iowa, some focus on New Hampshire, and some focus on Florida or Nevada,” he said. “So there may very well be some candidates, especially some very conservative candidates, who feel New Hampshire isn’t the right venue for them, so they might actually come to Idaho. That seems like it’s possible.”

Possible, not terribly probable. I’ve never known of presidential candidates to leave campaigning in New Hampshire. to go to a non-binding straw poll. No candidate is going to be able to argue to donors. “I may have finished 7th in Iowa and 6th in New Hampshire, but I won the Idaho Straw Poll.”  Duncan Hunter did head to Wyoming last time, but there were delegates at stake there.  Unfortunately, the Idaho Straw Poll is a victim of Florida violating the rules and moving its primary to January which led to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina also moving up their contests.  Had that not happened, we’d have a decent shot at getting a few candidates to come in.

I will participate, but I fully expect the Straw Poll to go to Ron Paul because not only is this the type of pay-to-play event that his supporters have done well at across the country, but Paul has a strong base in the state.

The claim by the Perry camp that this could save $483 billion in compliance costs is fatuous. You’ll have the same amount of paperwork sent out regardless. Showing me how this will save one penny in compliance costs anywhere. At least with Herman Cain’s plan, he: 1) gets rid of some taxes and 2) has the ultimate goal of getting rid of the Tax Code and replacing completely. There’s simply no reason to believe any compliance would go down under Rick Perry

Of course, the attack from liberals who say the plan benefits those who can afford to file their taxes twice is also silly. With most of us e-filling our taxes, good computer software can easily calculate whether it makes more sense to go under the Flat Tax or the normal system, just as my $20 Tax Software can calculate whether it makes sense for me to itemize or take standard deductions. However, the use of e-file also means the popular flat tax image of us filing our taxes on a postcard is also outdated because most of us don’t file paper.

Michael Dougherty of Business Insider lambasts the plan:

Perry’s tax plan would preserve all the confusion, waste, and market distortions in the current code, and add another layer. The politicians who manage that would get a new tax code to fiddle with as a bonus — one that has little substance beyond massively cutting taxes for the wealthy. Perry is selling simplicity to the GOP’s base voters — that’s the most appealing thing about a flat-tax — but most of these voters would actually pay less under the current more confusing code. ..

It’s difficult to imagine that Perry has the capacity to explain his plan with any sense of confidence. Mitt Romney’s economic plan may be over 50 pages long, but Romney can recite PowerPoint-style presentations spontaneously. Rick Perry forgets his one-liners halfway through delivering them.

Perry’s editorial outlining his plan didn’t even mention whether his team believed it was revenue-neutral. Does he care? Probably not. Does it matter? Of course not. This plan is only good for disqualifying the candidate who bothered to suggest it.

In theory, the optional nature of optional flat taxes are based on the idea that if people are given the choice they’ll choose the simpler code. In practice, what it represents is a way for politicians to act like they’re supporting tax reform without offending any of the interests that have learned to game the current code. Herman Cain raised a serious issue with his bold tax reform and Rick Perry provided an unserious response typical politician response just as Fred Thompson did.

The idea of an optional flat tax pretends that the problem with the current tax code is that it makes it hard for some individuals to do math. The true problem with the tax code are macroeconomics: It’s costly to the whole economy, retards economic growth, discourages investment and thrift, and has huge compliance costs.

Rick Perry’s tax plan won’t bring down the cost of taxes.

Rick Perry’s tax plan won’t lead to job growth.

Rick Perry’s tax plan won’t bring down the cost of compliance.

Rick Perry has given us the tax plan that won’t do anything.

Herman Cain’s record of Pro-Life support goes back to his 2004 Senate Campaign in which he denounced abortionand the Roe v. Wade decision, writing: 

Today we mourn the murder of millions of innocent lives because of the decision made 31 years ago by the United States Supreme Court to give doctors the right to end the life of an unborn child. Unbelievably, the decision of Roe v. Wade shows that our Nation still chooses to place human convenience over the sanctity of human life. No great nation can prosper when life is not valued.

Cain spent $1 million of his own money for an ad campaign against abortion in 2006. The ads exposed the tough truth of the higher abortion rates among blacks and Hispanics which and as late as March of last year, he called Planned Parenthood, “Planned Genocide.” The National Right to Life Committee has backed Cain up, stating that he is fully pro-life.  His clarifying statements to the Brody File coupled with his past record should dismiss the question of his dedication to pro-life principles.

Unfortunately, Wolf is almost alone in admitting his error. There are still people who are questioning’s Cain commitment to the pro-life cause to drive a wedge between Cain and pro-life voters.

Either they, like Wolf, are totally ignorant of Cain’s pro-life record, they are incredibly obtuse, or they’re smearing Cain to promote their favored candidates. And for Presidential candidates who are joining the attack such as Rick Perry,  Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum, the attacks on Cain’s commitment life is really being made without regards to truth in an attempt to save their flailing presidential campaigns.

It is fair game to suggest that Cain committed a gaffe and got confused in his interview with Morgan. It’s fair to question whether based on his articulation skills in interviews, if he has what it takes to be President. What’s not fair is to ignore the totality of Cain’s commitment to the cause of life for the sake of political gamesmanship.

Of course, I’m hardly alone in seeing staggering increases in the cost of health care as the insurance companies brace for the impact of the full implementation of Obamacare. (i.e. Patient Protection and Affordable (Heh)  Care Act.)

On the way up to being middle class,  from being a poor kid living in Montana, I heard constantly how Republicans in the lower and middle classes were voting against their own interests. Something like the premium hikes that have sprung up from Obamacare. suggests that it may be middle class Democrats who are voting against their own interests.

After all, the vast majority of Americans who had perfectly fine healthcare  insurance  prior to the passage of Obamacare really didn’t benefit from this “reform. ” If you voted for Obama, you voted for a huge spike in your health insurance premiums. President Obama promised not to raise your taxes if you earned less than $250,000 (smokers and those who use tanning beds have already been lied to) but there are other ways for government to increase your expenses without raising taxes.

In addition, a friend in the insurance industry tells me that these hikes are going across the country.

 If you want a brief summation of why this economy is dulldrums, you have two big problems that can be laid at the feet of this administration: 1) the high cost of gasoline (hovering between $3.50 and 4.00 a gallon) caused by this administration’s horrendous and out of touch energy policy which throws up roadblocks to our exploitation of our own resources  and 2) a health care bill that’s vastly increasingly the amount we pay for our health insurance.

America has a 9 +% unemployment rate and those who are employed are getting squeezed by the Obama Administration’s two headed beast.  That’s no formula for economic recovery.

 Witness the current controversy over Republican Presidential Candidate Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax reform proposal with its 9% personal income tax, 9% corporate income tax, and 9% national retail sales tax.. Many of the objections raised to Cain’s plan are familiar to advocates of tax reform from Steve Forbes’ Flat Tax in the 1990s to the Fair Tax (which is Cain’s ultimate goal.).

 The current criticism of Cain’s 9-9-9 plan goes along the same lines. There are two big thrusts:

The fear of the unknown: 9-9-9 has had an immediate positive response from voters, but opponents have questioned that 9-9-9 might lead to higher rates in the future. What, for example might stop 9-9-9 from beginning 18-18-18?

Others such as Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Mn.) are concerned that Cain’s 9-9-9 plan gives the federal government another revenue stream in the form of a sales tax, ignoring that Cain takes away four other revenue streams by abolishing taxes on capital gains, inheritance taxes, payroll taxes, and repatriated profits. 

Similarly, on the flat tax, it has been asked how the flat tax will remain flat? Columnist Mike Adams opines to flat tax supporters, “The IRS had changed the tax code 16,000 times in 22 years. They change the tax code twice as often as you change your underwear. How long do you think a flat tax would remain flat?”

With the Fair Tax, the worry is that after repealing the income tax and enacting a National Retail Sales Tax, that Congress would then bring back the income tax code unless the 16th Amendment is repealed, leading many to say that they won’t back the Fair Tax unless the 16th Amendment is repealed first with a 2/3 vote of Congress and 3/4 of the State Legislatures.  

Cain’s answers on how he plans to check nightmare scenarios on 9-9-9 haven’t satisfied critics. While Cain would like to get Congress to require a 2/3 majority to increase the rates, Congress has been very reluctant to limits its taxing authority. Cain also promises to veto any increase in the 9-9-9, but Cain could only be President for up to eight years.

The hard truth about tax reform is that there is no tax system that can remain solidly pro-growth without the vigilance and involvement of the American people to hold Congress’ feet to the fire. This is not a good reason to retain a tax code that’s not working.

The fear of some people losing: Whenever a major tax overhaul proposal is offered, opponents never make the argument, “This plan will be bad for our overall economy.”  Rather, they pick specific instances where somebody will be a loser or appear to lose.

In a recent debate, a moderator asked Cain what the sales tax would do to the nation’s automobile industry as used cars are not subject to the tax, and the car industry manufactures new cars. The question was born of the mindset of our current tax code which picks winners and losers.

The tax code includes a myriad of deductions and credits that are supposed to boost various industries and activities such as housing, oil exploration, green energy, higher education, and retirement.

Advocates of tax reform have the simple view that the purpose of a tax code ought to be to collect revenue in a way that allows the economy to grow.

However, tax winners seek to hold on to their deductions. Not all of these winners are on the left. Many businesses chafe against government overregulation and over-taxation, but would very much like to hang on to tax loopholes that have been won through expensive lobbying.

Perhaps the most common complaint is from those earning $50,000 or more who take advantage of the $200 billion  Home Mortgage Interest Deduction. Hugh Hewitt has dismissed the Fair Tax because of its lack of a home mortgage interest deduction, and any flat tax that has that has that mammoth deduction included will have such a high rate as to be unpalatable to the American people.

The sheer number of sacred cows protecting the tax code on both the left and the right frustrate any efforts to achieve serious reform.

Cain deserves credit for taking on this political hot potato and realizing the serious problem presented by current tax code and why reform is essential, even if it is politically difficult.

The cost of our current tax code is embedded in every product that we ship overseas which hurts our exports.  It makes the United States a less attractive place to do business, and discourages investment and economic achievement. Compliance with the code costs the U.S. Economy $340 billion pear year.

The tax code is holding back the U.S. economy and if it’s not replaced, our long term economic growth and prosperity will be at risk.

Rather than trying to imagine what horrors may come upon us from a future Congress or getting upset about what tax write-offs we’ll no longer be able to take, Conservatives should evaluate if a tax reform proposal is good for America as a whole. Will it create an environment where the economy can grow again and where businesses can hire people again?

The question we should ask about 9-9-9 is not , “Is this tax reform proposal perfect?” Instead we should ask, “Will this new tax system be better for America than what we have now?”

Reporters can create controversy — or the appearance of it — by reporting half the story or taking details out of context. Conservative voices such as Rush Limbaugh report on the national media bias each day, but here are examples of sensationalist journalism closer to home.

Now, how the heck did Rush Limbaugh get into this story, we might ask? It seems to me that McKenzie is trying to play himself up as a victim of media bias in the hopes of gaining sympathy from Conservatives. Well, it doesn’t work, at least not for me.

McKenzie and McGee’s use of the higher rate of per diem is in the news not because they’re the two most conservative Senators in the legislator (they’re not) but because it’s a massively inappropriate use of the privilege.  Legally, they can do it.

But there’s a bigger issue here both ethically and in leadership by example. As an ethical matter, the purpose of the Per Diem for members who live within 50 miles of the Capitol is to pay for them to stay in the City of Boise. Now, McKenzie can talk legalities until he’s blue in the face, but the reason the extra per diem money is given is not to compenstate members for having to put up with living in Boise, but rather to defray the costs of staying in the city. If you’re not spending money to stay here, and are sleeping with relatives like Senator McGee, you’re gaming the system.

McKenzie goes on to make the point that our legislators don’t do the job for the money and are very modestly paid. While this may be true, to quote that great statesman Superchicken, “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.”  The low rate of pay (which McKenzie claims not to be complaining about) doesn’t justify grabbing for all the taxpayer benefits, whether they’re in accord with the Spirit of the law or not.

In a time of economic crisis, when police officers and teachers are having to do with less, it sends the wrong message for legislators to be taking thousands extra per year by gaming the per diem system.

The Statesman Editorial Board lambasted both McGee and McKenzie on this and while the Statesman is often biased, even a broken clock is right twice  a day. The criticism has been well-deserved and it seems both men could learn a thing or two about leadership.

Ray Stevens taken on the President.

In the meanwhile, Dennis Mansfield calls for McGee’s resignation citing an action with hypocritical undertones:

 I was told today by two very reputable sources that John McGee as a part of GOP Senate Leadership last year agreed to fire a key administrative secretary in the Idaho State Senate because she had been arrested on a DUI. (I am keeping her name anonymous for her sake and for her reputation.) BTW, she did not contact me, nor did anyone connected to her.

So if you’re a legislative secretary, you get caught drunk driving, you lose your job. If however, you’re the golden boy of the GOP establishment, you don’t even a slap on the hand from leadership? It looks bad.

That said, I’m not quite into the call for him to resign camp. While I trust that Mansfield and his sources are being accurate, the information is second and third hand. Is there some aggravating circumstance that somehow made the legislative secretary’s action worse than McGee’s? For example, was she drunk with kids in the back seat of the car? Was she a serial DUI offender?  We need more facts and we need more context.

However, if after we have all the context in the world, it still looks like McGee is a hypocrite who holds underlings to a higher standard than he holds himself, he should definitely resign.

While the study’s primary report did not explore religion, some additional analysis focusing on sexual activity and religious identification yielded this result: 80 percent of unmarried evangelical young adults (18 to 29) said that they have had sex – slightly less than 88 percent of unmarried adults, according to the teen pregnancy prevention organization.

There are a couple things to unpack here. First, the numbers are a little messed up. If 80% of unmarried young Evangelicals are having sex and 88% of unmarried total young adults are engaging in sex, the common sense comparison would be between Evangelicals and non-Evangelicals. What the magazine linked by CNN does is compare Evangelicals to general population which doesn’t show what they’re trying to show.

Still 80% is very high. The question is why is this happening. The answer can be found in scripture. The Bible is pretty clear what Christians relationship to culture ought to be. In Matthew 5, Jesus states it’s succinctly:

“Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.

“Ye are the light of the world…”-Matthew 5:13, 14 

Another parable spoke He unto them: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened.”-Matthew 13:33

The message of all three parables in a nutshell is that Christians are to be a force for good, influencing the world around them. The Church is to operate like leaven in the the rising of bread, working its influence into the whole lump.

What’s happened in the West is that the world and its values are influencing the Church in both its communication of the gospel and the way Christians live their lives and we can see it in how the church communicates.

Many youth ministries have taken to using pop culture as a basis for their ministries and engagement with teen. The problem with that is that the church ends up affirming pop culture institutions that don’t share Christian values.

The Church never came to grips with the shift of culture institutions in the 1960s. Up until that point, School, State, and Media were, if not allied with the church, at least not hostile to it.  That’s changed.

The life of a Christian teenager in America could go something like this:  they will spend 35 hours a week in school and another 5-10 hours on homework being taught out of textbooks that are writing by atheists, secualarist, and humanists. They spend another say 15 hours consuming TV shows and movies writen by secularists, atheists, and humanist.

On the flip side, they’ll spend maybe 2 hours studying the Bible and praying, they’ll spend another hour in Church on Sunday and if they’re fortunate, another hour and a half in youth group. Let’s add up the scoreboard:

Secularist/Humanist Influences=55-60 Hours a week

Christian Influences=4 1/2 Hours a week.

And that’s before we consider how their friends will influence them, which may be the most powerful influence of all. With such numbers, its a miracle that every Christian kid isn’t out having sex outside of marriage. And despite that this pretty close to typical, a lady writing a tongue in cheek article  on Christian parenting suggested that sheltering your kids is a way to ruin their lives. Yeah, because we know that’s the major problem Christian parents face today.

With the leftist having succeeded in redefining the culture’s values, Christians need to be counter-cultural.  This is something for Christians in America to  embrace, but historically Christianity has been against anti-Christian norms of culture.

For example, Saint Telemachus died in the fifth century trying to stop gladiator games. Today, if Gladiator Games were going on, would we be like Telemachus? Or would we be crowding the TV to watch it and rushing down to the stadium so we could talk with folks around the office cooler?  Would the church use gladiators as  sermon illustrations, have a youth group outing to watch the bloody slaughter, and condemn people like Telemachus as being legalistic and Pharisees about the whole thing?  

Tough questions.  And this whole discussion raises another question. If the church has been too influenced by the world around it, how do we fix it? It’s beyond our power to just change our own minds. W’eve all been influenced by the culture’s attempt to brainwash us.  And for most people, the brainwashing has been at least partially successful. Ultimately, our only hope lies in God and in his promise to transform us by the renewing of our mind.

I’m not interested in either. The Shack is but the latest in a line of trendy Christian books that are topics of great buzz, such as The Prayer of Jabez, The Purpose Driven Life, and Left Behind. Yet, as with these books, the work of The Shack has generated controversy.

There are godly Christians on both sides of the discussion and I respect those who hold differing views. I come down in the middle on this.

1) There’s Something to Doctrinal Concerns About the Shack. Much has been written about the doctrinal problems in The Shack. It’s not my aim to rehash them all here. But these claims are not entirely without merit. One passage seems to teach Universalism:

Jesus said, “Those who love me come from every system that exists.  They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptist or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions.  I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous.  Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians.  I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my beloved.”

Young himself claims not to be a universalist. A former colleague claims he embraced it several years back. Whichever the case, the passage does seem to teach it. So either it is embracing universalism or the writer wrote it poorly.

I’m further concerned by Young’s rejection of churches as a bad and dangerous example to set. I can attest to the fact that there are some weird, and plain bad churches. But there’s a much greater number of imperfect churches. People who attempt to practice “Churchless Christianity” most often end up isolated from those around them and often stray into old heresies they think are new revelations from God. Some stray into abusive behavior (The Christian radio drama Unshackled recently aired a two part episode on the case of a woman named Elishaba Speckles, which illustrate the pitfalls, listen here and here.) Having grown up with a mostly Churchless Christianity, I cannot recommend it, and I find Mr. Young’s suggestion to be quite harmful.

In fairness, many other doctrinal issues raised in the Shack, such as precise understanding of the operation of the Trinity and the operation of law and grace, are not issues on which Christians universally agree. So, raising Mr. Young’s views as some sort of heresy doesn’t wash.

2) The Book’s Theological Problems Cannot All Be Dismissed Due to Its Fictional Status.

One defense of the Shack is, “Hello, it’s fiction!” This does have resonance for me. As a writer of fiction, I’m aware of the scope of literary license. Certainly, when C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia or The Space Trilogy, he was not professing belief either in witchcraft or aliens, but using them to discuss wider themes. This defense can apply to some complaints with the book.

Regarding Young’s setting and his portrayal of the three persons of the Godhead, I’m willing to cut him some slack. However, much of the book focuses on God talking to the hero about theological matters in a way that is neither metaphorical nor symbolic. Rather it is an attempt to communicate a theological treatise through the dialogue of a fictional book, placing the author’s own views in the mouth of God. It’s flummery to defend these portions based on them being fiction.

3) The Shack’s Opponents Have Made Silly Charges.

Shack Opponents have not stuck to the truly meaty theological issues contained within the book, but rather have gone off the rails with many concerns that would belong in the trivial category. The belief is common that the more complaints you throw at a controversial book, no matter how unsubstantive they happen to be, the better.

Lets consider a couple examples from this website, which does include the above quote about universalism, but also complains about this quote:

“‘Whoa,’ said Papa, who had returned from the kitchen with yet another dish. ‘Take it easy on those greens, young man.  Those things can give you the trots if you ain’t careful.’”

The reason for the complaint, “God the Father is talking about diarrhea? Seriously?… What God is this before which a man is casually having a conversation and diarrhea is the topic?”

For the faint of heart, you may want to skip the next couple paragraphs, but I do have news for you. God does talk about things many Christians consider icky. In the book of Revelations, Jesus uses vomiting as a metaphor. In Jesus’ teaching in Mark about what defiles a man:

Do ye not perceive that whatsoever thing from outside entereth into a man, it cannot defile him, because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly and goeth out into the drain, thereby purging all meats?”-Mark 7:18 and 19 (KJ21)

What’s being described here is the digestive process from start to a finish that mortal men long dare not discuss in polite company. If we look into the book of Ezekiel, we’ll find God commanding a prophet to eat dung as a sign.

God serving a meal and warning that eating too much of a food may be harmful doesn’t appear all that extreme in context.

Further, on the above protestor’s top 10 list of quotes from The Shack, this quote ranked #6. The quote on universalism ranked #9. Talk about burying your lede.

4) Where’s the Love in the Shack Attacks?

One can find a lot of pretension, posturing, and arguments in the attacks on The Shack, but not a whole lot of love, other than for the Christians they fear might be deceived. Many of these arguments fail to look deeper at why these books are appealing.

The church is full of walking wounded, such as Mr. Young was: victims of physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse. They long to be healed and to enjoy a closer, more intimate relationship with God as their Father. Opponents of The Shack may respond with apologetic statements, but they never address these real needs of hurting people.

Young can be charged with forgetting God is holy, righteous, and worthy of reverence, and for disregarding God’s church, but at the same time, it seems the Shack’s opponents have forgotten God came to bind up our broken hearts, longs for intimacy with us, and is the God of imagination and beauty who created this Earth.

5) The Shack Opponents are Using a Time-tested Strategy that doesn’t work.

Whenever a controversial book comes out, response books hit the shelf at a high rate. Invariably, websites will pop up taking issues with the inaccuracy and dangerousness of the book and some enterprising individuals will cash in by selling a rebuttal. These rebuttals are mostly read by those who wouldn’t have read the original book or wouldn’t have believed its more controversial claims. None of the rebuttal books against any of the fad Christian best-sellers of recent years has “stopped” its target. What has invariably happened is that the fads ran out of popular inertia.

You cannot oppose something with nothing, which is what critics ultimately offer. The needs of the hurting people that the Shack speaks to must be addressed. If you think the The Shack is the wrong way to do it, then how should it be done? Those who create will accomplish more than those who criticize. Those who write the books and produce the films, those who comfort the afflicted and proclaim the truth of God’s word in their churches will make far more impact than all the critical pamphlets in the world.

I’d much rather spend my time creating rather than waste it on useless criticism.

Hoffa’s comments were probably innocuous. I say, “probably” because Mr. Hoffa has a somewhat unique family background, and unlike say Sarah Palin that is considered synonymous with links to organized crime.

Even if it was innocuous, I can’t help but recalling some of the statements we heard during the media coverage of the shooting in Arizona with Congresswoman Giffords: That we needed to watch our language in case a crazy person was listening lest we incite them to violence. Well?

In addition, the media seems more than happy to give benefit of the doubt to even the most over the top leftist language and shows an understanding of hyperbole and analogies. Yet, with conservative rhetoric, even the most innocent things such as “targeting Congressional districts” get blown out of proportion.

The Jimmy Hoffa incident illustrates why conservatives mostly refuse to take organized  liberal calls for civility seriously, because liberals are completely insincere in the whole effort, and only want to use “civility” as a way to squelch conservative speech.

I’ll do my best to be decent and fair to everyone I write about, but there’s no way I’m going to give cover to bloviating left wing hypocrites.

Update:

Props to Jack Tapper for calling the White House Press Secretary out today:

Jay Carney refused to answer the question as to what standard there would be for civility for the GOP nominee because when it comes to these sort of outrages, the only standards that the left knows are double standards.

It’s easy for the left to stereotype conservatives as callous rich businessmen, Alex Keaton wannabes, or plain anti-worker. The truth is conservatives have five legitimate concerns with modern day labor unions.

1) Unions Tend Towards Tyranny

Thomas Jefferson fought to protect Virginians from being forced by the government to fund Churches. In the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, Jefferson wrote, “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical.”

Jefferson’s use of sinful and tyrannical fits well with what unions across the country do. The ideal situation for unions is to have a union shop where employees have to join the union in order to work, or at least pay union dues, which makes them involuntary contributors to causes they may not support.

The National Education Association, for example, gave over $13 million to left wing advocacy groups. The NEA took money from conservative teachers living in states where union membership wasn’t optional and gave the money to People for the American Way, the Rainbow-Push Coalition, Media Matters, and the Human Rights campaign.

Even with no specific religious or ideological objection, many workers want no part of a union, but find themselves compelled. Such was the case with a sixteen year-old part time grocery store clerk who realized that union membership would be of no benefit to her and was bullied by the Union and threatened with losing her job.

Unions in the 21st Century want to take away the rights of individuals to make their own decisions and to force them to join the Union. Nothing illustrates this more than the failed efforts for Card Check legislation, which would have eliminated the secret ballot in union certification elections and opened the door to more intimidation.

2) Union Corruption

The links between organized labor and organized crime are well documented. These links did not end with the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. In January, a grand jury handed down indictments against several union officials alleging mafia ties.

Beyond the Sopranos stuff, there remains a significant amounts of embezzlement unions. A Buffalo, New York Union President just entered a guilty plea this week. Another New York Union leader allegedly took her union for $42 million. In recent years, teachers Unions in Washington, Massachusetts, and Dade County, Florida have suffered major embezzlement scandals.

The sheer volume of union corruption is jaw-dropping. That alone should lead to a re-examination of public support for unions.

3) Encouraging Mediocrity and Shielding Bad Actors:

Unions are notorious for protecting the jobs of people who perform poorly or misbehave at work. Nowhere is this more evident than in New York’s public school system. Thanks to the lengthy process to dismiss incompetent and abusive teachers, “rubber rooms” are maintained in which more than 700 teachers sit around and get paid full salary for doing nothing at a cost of millions of dollars per year to the taxpayer.

Teachers unions also oppose merit pay plans, claiming whether students do well in class is entirely out of their control, when studies show teacher quality is the biggest determining factor in how much students learn.

Union attitudes towards achievement are a turn off to people who might otherwise consider the teaching profession. A world where the good teachers make as much as the bad teachers is not one which will attract the best quality workers.

4) Demands that Ruin Business

Unions have contributed to the bankruptcy of several great companies, including GM and Chrysler, as well as United Airlines. Public employees pensions have put many states, such as California, on the verge of bankruptcy. Unions often deem the survival of the business they work for as secondary to getting larger health and pay packages.

The biggest damage done to businesses by unions have involved pensions and retiree health plans, but Union demands have gone beyond that. Thanks to the UAW, while GM was struggling to survive, they had to continue to pay laid off workers for years in a “Job Bank,” where they drew full salary to watch television, play board games, and read.

There was a time when unions fought against legitimately poor working conditions and sweatshop wages. In the 21st Century, unions serve mainly to drive up the cost of doing business in America and send jobs overseas.

5) The Opponents of Reform

Want to make government work more efficiently and do a better job providing services? The unions will be opposed. Powerful public employees’ unions pour massive amounts of money into campaigns and lobbying to kill efforts to reduce and reform government.

This is particularly noteworthy in education, where teachers don’t want any hard reforms passed. The unions are such diehards on opposing reform, they twice booed the President for proposing even the most meager changes to increase educational performance.

The constant opposition of teacher’s unions killed D.C.’s opportunity scholarships, taking educational opportunity away from more than 200 schoolchildren. Across the country, many students remain trapped in schools where they will never achieve their full potential, or remain on never-ending waiting lists to get into Charter schools for one reason and one reason only.

The teacher’s unions want it that way.

One famous teacher’s union president once declared, “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.” Opposition to school choice highlights this point.

The good news for conservatives this Labor Day is that the tide has begun to turn. As union membership declines and union excesses become more notorious, Americans are becoming less favorable in their views towards unions. However, conservatives have a long way to go to counteract the negative impact Unions have on our country.

After we parked, my wife remarked the only thing that would have been less comforting would have been if the driver sat leaned back and was staring with their feet.

The incident also led me to think of the texting while driving debate. This was a good reminder of why our current law focusing on “distracted” driving makes sense. Drivers should be paying attention and that’s what law enforcement should be focused on, not micromanaging the exact use of electronic devices in the car’s cabin.

Sunday morning religion wasn’t limited to churches this past week. NBC’s David Gregory spent the last third of his interview with GOP Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann asking about her personal views on such issues as God’s guidance, her interpretation of biblical passages on husband-wife relations, and her personal views on homosexuality.

Bachmann isn’t the only candidate with religious views that have come under media fire. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism has been under constant media fire. Jacob Weisberg of Slate has suggested Romney’s Mormonism should disqualify him as have some fringe evangelicals. Governor Rick Perry’s religious faith has been similarly under scrutiny.

Some have argued that if there is to be any overt religious involvement in politics, then all religious points are fair game, even if dealing with obscure credal issues or statements made in religious non-political events. Not only does this lead to focusing on issues that have nothing to do with governing, but it also encourages prejudice against people of faith running for public office. While Americans still believe in God, there is widespread ignorance around the particulars of religion. This ignorance makes it possible to turn a benign belief into something to fear or ridicule.

Religion has been part of American politics since the founding era. Yet, it hasn’t been the source of political contention that it is today. In fact, it helped unite Americans during the Revolutionary War. This wasn’t because Americans all agreed on religion. While America was not as diverse religiously as it is today, there were nearly a dozen religious backgrounds among the Founding Fathers, including groups such as Presbyterians, Catholics, Quakers, and Episcopalians: groups that had been at odds in the old world.

If the political discussion of God focused on inter-religious snark about the Catholic view of the Eucharist, the Calvinist belief in predestination, or the Quakers quiet sitting services, the result would have been such interreligious loathing that there would be no hope of accomplishing a revolution. Instead, the religious political dialogue of the Founding Fathers focused on three key points about God that helped unite Americans and give them the strength to fight the world’s most successful revolution.

Perhaps, we should take a page from their book.  Rather that looking into the minutiae of a candidate’s personal beliefs, we’d be well-advised to focus any discussion of religion on the candidate’s views on these same points.

1) God is the source of our rights

When the Declaration of Independence states that it is self-evident that we “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” it declares God, rather than the state or the king is the source of rights.

The issue of rights being “God-given” is something that you will hear from conservatives quite a bit. It defines nearly every major debate, whether you’re talking about abortion, religious freedom, the second Amendment, economic policy, and personal liberty, the idea that drives many on the right is that the state cannot legitimately step over these boundaries.

Liberals prefer to view rights as more elastic. In a 2000 debate, Professor Alan Dershowitz rejected the idea of natural law, stating, “Rights are not self-evident. They’re not unalienable. They are subject to modification just like anything else.”  This view is consistent with the left’s belief in a living constitution that ends in the creation of new rights and the curtailment of old ones to fit the courts view of how society is changing.

This is a crucial issue that every candidate needs to address and their actions need to back up their words.

2) God Governs in Human Affairs

Benjamin Franklin, a deist, in pleading for prayers to be offered before meetings of the Constitutional Convention declared this at the Constitutional Convention in calling for prayer. The founders often spoke of Divine providence which in Washington’s words, “wisely orders the affairs of men.”  The Founders believed that God was at work in the world.
This is why they believed in prayer. It was not an exercise in showing religiosity to curry political, but they did so out of a genuine sense that God was active and willing to guide those who asked for his help. At the Constitutional Convention, they had studied the failures of every well-intentioned effort to set up free governments, leading Franklin to quote scripture in declaring, that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages.”

These ideas gave the founders a sense of humility. It made them understand the limitation of their own wisdom to make rules for the lives of others, and is at the core of why self-government is so important in our system of government.

3) God is Just

The founders didn’t believe that God was neutral in human affairs. They believed that he stood on the side of justice. Even the irreligious Thomas Paine wrote, “I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent.  “

However God’s justice was a two-edged sword and many founders realized that there would be consequences if America acted unjustly. On slavery, Jefferson wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” Lincoln later acknowledged the Civil War as part of God’s justice in his second inaugural, quoting scripture to declare, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

A belief in a just God should cause leaders to be just themselves in the way they treat others and to ensure justice is done, knowing that they will called to give an account.

Beyond these simple but profound truths, their remains a whole universe of religious issues that while very important in a theological sense, have no relevance to the public sphere. While it may matter a great deal what a church believes regarding worship styles or if they believe in dietary restrictions, these questions have little relevance to public policy.

And citizens shouldn’t expect answers. It is irrelevant whether a candidate believes you are living in sin, or doesn’t believe that you will enter Heaven, as long as they don’t believe in using government to force you to go to Heaven. It is only the mind of an insecure person that looks to politicians to answer on these sort of issues. For example, what Mitt Romney thinks will happen to me in the afterlife is completely irrelevant as he has no vote on it.  

Let’s debate other issues of religious import within the appropriate forums, but when it comes to our nation’s political life, let’s stick to basics that made our nation free.

“We do have a serious problem in terms of debt and deficit, and much of it I inherited,” Obama said. The financial crisis, he said, made the problem worse.

To an extent, Obama has a point. The country was in bad shape in 2008. That’s why he was elected. However, the “inherited” problems excuse is something that ran out of anything meaningful power a year ago. To quote the great Super Chicken, “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.” Obama promised to turn things around, to bring us the change we needed. During most of the campaign unemployment was at 5%, through most of Obama’s term, it’s been at 9%.  The question once again is, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Obama is like a baseball manager who took over a team that only won 70 games and promised to turn it around. It’s three years into his contract, and now the team is only winning 60 games a year with no prospects of getting better. A manager can’t complain about “inherited” problems. He’ll ultimately be fired because he failed to turn the team around, and he didn’t even make any progress.

Americans may feel that George W. Bush got us into the recession. But in 2011, that’s irrelevant. What we care about is how we’re going to get out of this mess.

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) – Police in Idaho Falls said on Tuesday they have told a 34-year-old man to stop wearing a bunny suit in public after residents complained that he has been frightening children…

Falkingham told police that while he “enjoys wearing the suit,” he understood the concerns, and that he could be cited as a public nuisance for that type of behavior, Idaho Falls Police Department spokeswoman Joelyn Hansen said.

A neighbor was quoted as  saying, “He’s got the bunny outfit, a cowboy suit and a ballerina dress but you don’t see him except where he’s tripping through his backyard.”

The fact is that as long as he’s not walking around the yard nude, it’s none of the government’s business what he wears on his property unless Salmon has a law against cross-dressing on the books as a lot of Idaho towns do. But the cowboy suit and the bunny suit, the city definitely has no grounds to intrude on his right to do as he chooses on his own property.

This is a classic example of bad apple power-hungry cops and citizens who can’t mind their own business undermining the rights of others.  If parents are worried that the man may be some sort of pervert, getting rid of his bunny suits will not help the situation. If anything, as kids are afraid him, it protects the kids. Most child molestors don’t wear bunny suits, they are well-dressed well-groomed and very clever about their approaches.

  Because something bugs people, that doesn’t make it a crime. Unfortunately, small towns with bored police officers often have to learn this lesson the hard way: with someone suing the town. Here’s hoping a lawyer will hop to that task.

America is heading down a road that leads us over a cliff of fiscal disaster and we were travelling at 120 miles her hour. Thanks to the debt ceiling deal, we’ve slowed down to 115 MPH and we’re promised that will slow down to 110 MPH once the super commission releases its proposal. However, we’re still headed for the cliff.

Republican leadership is probably right that this was the best they could do. And Obama would have gotten a “clean” debt ceiling increase and we’d be heading over the cliff at 130 miles per hour if Democrats were still in Congress. With a Senate and a President unwilling to address the serious problems in entitlements, there was very little Republicans could have done. And it must also be said that despite the constant lambasting of the Tea Party, that without their efforts, there would be no deficit reduction.

Unfortunately, this may be a case where the best is still not good enough. We’re still headed for the cliff at a fast speed and running out of time to brake before we head into the abyss.

Here is how one tipster phrased it: “The only name I’ve heard is Elliot Werk. Several people I know have told me that he is considering running because of his aspirations to run for Mayor at some point in the future and plus he is pretty ineffective in the state legislature (consider the fact that he lost the minority leadership race as the straw that broke the camel’s back). You may wanna give him a call and ask him about his plans.”

Boise is the only place in the state that would be unwise enough to entrust Elliot Werk with political power. And the ineffective part is true, though most Democrats won’t admit it. Even though Werk was very pivotal in giving Democrats complete control of four boise districts for 4 years, all it got him was on the losing end of 28-7 votes. 

This would be interesting should Werk leave the Senate as Kate Kelly left last year, and Nicole LeFavour nearly returned to the State House. What this would suggest is that for Democratic politicians in Idaho, there’s a point when you hit the wall, so to speak, at the state level, where it’s not worth it anymore to spend months of your lives when you’re not going to get your ideas enacted.

As for the Boise Mayoral and Council elections, I don’t see a lot of reason for conservative optomism. One reason I’m really not tempted by this race is the results of the 2009 Council elections when insurgent campaigns had the Trolley Folly going in their favor plus the growth of the Tea Party movement and the Democrats won the seats overwhelmingly. The North End continues to dominate city politics with much higher turnout than the rest of the city and conservatives have failed to do anything to cut into this advantage. So, if Werk runs, he probably has a good shot of getting elected.

“So, what type of food should we have for an intervention?”

My wife Adrienne blinked at me. “Andrew, I don’t think anyone’s going to want to eat.”

I shrugged. “These things always make me hungry. It’s stressful.”

“I know it is, but we need to talk to Uncle.”

The doorbell chimed. I walked to the dark blue door and opened it. My middle aged cousin and his Asian-American wife stood outside. Both were dressed in their Sunday best: an old gray suit for Fred Merkel and a white silk skirt suit for Akima.

Fred craned his neck. “Is Uncle here yet?”

I shook my head. “No, JT and Maria will be bringing him here on the pretext of discussing another loan.”

Fred and Akima came in and sat on one end of our cat-scratched corner couch. Fred’s glance darted around the room and settled on the empty end table. “Hey, you got anything to eat?”

Akima elbowed Fred.

I beamed at Adrienne. “I told you so.”

She glared at me. “We’re not here to eat. We’re talking about Uncle’s life here. We’re talking about our family’s future.”

Fred sighed. “It’s so uncomfortable.”

Akima touched her husband’s wrist. “He needs it, though. We need to get everything out in the open, and then he can get help.”

“Sure, but what good will it do?”

“Come on, guys.” Adrienne extended her hands. “It’s got work.” She whirled to me, a hand on her fleshy, succulent hip. “Andrew, you’ve got to take a bigger part in this. You know what’s going on.”

The doorbell rang. I answered it. My younger adopted brother wore his African-American hair in dreds, an earring in his left ear, black jeans, and a black hoodie. JT glanced over his shoulder. “Maria will be in with Uncle in just a second.” He plopped on the couch diagonally across from Akima. “Hey, you got any Cheetos?”

My wife rolled her eyes at me. I raised my hands. “I didn’t say anything.”

Maria entered in a green, red and white traditional Spanish peasant dress. She scooted in next to JT. Her dainty form gave plenty of space between her and Akima.

Uncle sauntered in, ducking to fit his rotund, seven-foot frame through our doorway. Red, white, and blue striped pants, a matching top hat, a blue coat, and a white dress shirt about to burst its buttons spangled the obese, white-haired old man. I pointed to the tweed chair in the center of a room. “Have a seat.”

He settled in his chair, facing the couch. Adrienne and I squeezed into the corner space between Akima and Fred and JT and Maria.

Uncle smiled wide. “Children, it’s good to see you. I wasn’t expecting to see so many.”

I swallowed. “Uncle, we all love you. We’re thankful for the free land you’ve given us to live on. We’re more than willing to help you pay for security and that sort of thing.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“However, you have a problem.”

Uncle laughed. “Me? I don’t have any problems. I’m the world’s greatest uncle.”

“You’ve run up a huge debt.”

He frowned. “I need more money, or the bank will foreclose on my property, including the homes I’ve so generously given you. All I ask is that you ungrateful swine pay for my property taxes, mortgages, service fees, utilities, and my other costs of living.”

Lord, help me not to be taken in by this leech’s lies. “Uncle, it’s not that you don’t have enough money. It’s that you’re spending too much.”

JT leaned forward. “Yeah, man. You spend all that money bailin’ out folks, payin’ off cronies, and tryin’ to take care of everybody.”

Uncle Sam pressed up out of my chair and shook his fist. “Do you heartless people want me to throw the old people out in the streets? To not write Fred’s veteran’s benefit checks? Quite frankly, I’m surprised at you ingrates. Look at you.” He glared at my wife and me. “I helped pay for your education, guaranteed your loans, and supported you when you lost your jobs.” He whirled to JT and Maria. “I bought your families’ groceries when you were children, and paid for your educations, too.” He shot a glance at Fred. “I provide you a monthly income, free medical care, and I paid for college.”

Fred growled and tapped his metal leg with his cane. “Pardon me, but I believe I earned some of that, thank you.”

Uncle’s lips curled into a snarl of a smile as he settled back into his chair, his hands spread out wide in a welcoming gesture. “Of course, I want to give it to you.” Uncle glowered at me. “But this ingrate is threatening to force me to take it away.”

I shook my head. “You’re getting defensive and attacking us rather than dealing with the problem. It’s not a matter of whether you’ve helped us in the past.” I glanced sideways at Fred. “Nor is trying to turn us against each other going to stop this.”

Akima clenched her teeth “Uncle, you’ve been playing these manipulative games my whole life. I’m tired of it. You seek to divide our family into the “white side” and the “black side” the “rich side” and the “poor side.” You play divide and conquer with us so you can get more money and power. I’ve been a fool, but we’re not fools any longer.”

Uncle Sam leaned back. “Perhaps you don’t understand all that I do. I run charities that provide for millions of poor people in our own country and around the world. I help people go to college. I pay for your own children’s K-12 education.”

“You do not!” Maria held her thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart. “You provide that much money towards our children’s education and you use that to control it. I’m tired of having to answer to your bureaucrats for how I run my school.”

“I’m ensuring they get a proper education.”

She growled. “All you’re doing is getting in my way.”

I nodded. “And your help for college hasn’t been much help at all. All the money you’ve been spending has only been driving up the cost of tuition. Schools charge us more because of your reputation for deep pockets.”

Adrienne twirled her turquoise beaded necklace. “I’ve heard a lot of the money you give to help the poor in foreign countries ends up in the hands of criminals and thugs.”

Uncle scowled and shook his fist. “Lies, all lies! You’re not looking at the good things I do and mean to do, if you’ll give me more money.”

Akima snorted. “Your good intentions end up wasting money.”

Uncle raised his hands. “Okay, I admit, there’s been some waste. I’m working on it. An unbiased committee from my board of trustees is investigating it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Uncle, didn’t you have an unbiased committee look into it before? Haven’t you had several unbiased committees investigate?”

“What are you saying?”

I cupped my hands together. “It seems to me that appointing an unbiased committee is your way of avoiding an issue rather than trying to solve it. When was the last time you actually listened to what one of these commissions said?”

Uncle stared at me, his lips parted.

Maria extended a hand to him “Uncle, nobody is perfect. We’ve let you do what you want because you do a lot of good, but we’re getting concerned about your spending.”

JT furrowed his brow. “Man, you’ve been running up a trillion and a half dollars on your credit cards every year. That’s more than I’d make in 10,000 lifetimes. My kids are being born $100,000 in debt because you can’t control your spending.”

My wife nodded. “It’s not just about you, Uncle. It’s hurting others around you.”

“What about your retirement funds?” Uncle whirled to Fred. “If those heartless, ungodly people don’t start giving me more money, I’ll be forced to stop your trust fund payments. You’ve paid into your trust fund all of your life.”

Fred shook his head. “I used to buy your garbage, but I found out the truth. There’s a word for what you’ve done with our trust funds: Embezzlement. You took my money and everybody else’s, spent if for other things, and left us a stack of IOUs. If you weren’t investigating yourself on such charges, you’d be in prison with Bernie Madoff.”

“But I’m Uncle. I needed the money.”

“That’s every embezzler’s excuse. If all I’ve got in my trust fund is a stack of IOUs, that is your fault, not my cousin’s fault. The world’s changed since you set up our retirement trust funds. The plan doesn’t work anymore. We need a new one.”

Uncle stamped his foot. “No, the current plan works fine! I just need these ungrateful swine to give me more money!”

I shook my head. “Your current plan takes the money I put into my trust fund and distributes it to those already receiving payments. Even if you don’t misappropriate a single dime, we’ll soon have more folk receiving payments from their trust fund than we’ll have folk making payments into their trust funds.”

Maria frowned. “And you want us to have even fewer children!”

I nodded. “The math has changed, so the plan has to change. People our age have to save for own retirements. We’re not going to rely on you to support us.”

Uncle gasped and pressed a fist into his corpulent side. “What, I’m not good enough? You’re fools to risk your money. Don’t you remember the stock market crash?”

JT rolled his eyes and laughed. “Man, you’re pathetic. You want folk to owe you so you got a hold on them. You can’t stand nobody who you don’t got a hold on.”

Uncle’s face flushed fire engine red. “Don’t you dare psychoanalyze me!” He glanced around the room, scowling. “What do you think you’re going to do?”

I bit my lip. “We’re not taking out any more credit cards for you.”

Uncle laughed. “You’re joking.”

We stared at him, our arms all folded across our chests.

A tremor rattled Uncle’s gargantuan body. “You have to be joking.”

I shook my head. “No joke.”

The color fled from his face. “You can’t! Our interest rates will sky rocket. The banks will foreclose on us. People wouldn’t get their trust fund checks. Our bond rating will be downgraded.”

JT leaned in. “You’re playin’ chicken little again.”

Fred nodded. “Yeah, I got taken in by you with the insolvent banks and the bankrupt car companies you bought. I’m not buying that again.”

I drew a deep breath. “Uncle, we’re just trying to bring you to your senses. We know it would be very difficult if you had cut by forty percent immediately, and we’d be willing to help, but you’d have to reform. First thing, you’ve got to start cutting back on the money you’re spending now.”

My wife added, “And you’ve got to limit the money you’re going to spend in the future.”

JT glanced at me and then at Uncle. “Then you have to balance your budget like the rest of us, and I’m not talking a one time deal. Put it in the family bylaws.”

Uncle crisscrossed his hands repeatedly. “No way will I be limited by the laws of stupid math to not spend more than I take in. However, I can patiently offer you swine a most generous compromise. If you’ll agree to give me more money, say $1 trillion, I’ll agree to cut spending by $2 trillion over the next ten years.”

I smirked. “Give me a break. You played this game during the Reagan Administration and in the 1990s. It never works. You get more money, which makes your spending deficit temporarily lower, and you make a few tiny cuts in the first couple of years. By the time year five comes around, you’ve forgotten all about your side of the deal.”

JT raised a hand towards Uncle. “Man, I think you missed the point. Your problem isn’t that you don’t have enough money. It’s that you spend too much.”

Uncle leaped up, shaking both fists. “I’m fine! You’re the ones with the problem! You’re all so selfish! You don’t want to give your poor uncle a little extra money. Now you’re going to let me have anymore new credit cards. That’s my only means of support, with the measly $2 trillion you ungrateful, bratty kids give your generous, benevolent uncle to live on. You all are the worst family in the world!”

He stormed out the door. I ran after him and screamed after his backside, “Uncle, you can run, but eventually you’re going to go bankrupt! You can’t go on like this forever!”

Shaking my head, I walked back in. “Well, that went well.”

My wife stood and squeezed my shoulder. “You did the best you can. Sometimes, these interventions are rough.”

JT sighed. “I bet he’s gone to find some other fools to adopt and get to support his hide.”

My wife frowned. “Let’s hope not. It’ll just enable poor Uncle Sam.”

I can guarantee you that once Romney has the Republican nomination, Obama’s people will play the Mormon card. They may be subtle about it, and make documentaries and television programs about the “weird” Mormon beliefs. They may focus on polygamist breakaway sects, such as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and hope that many Americans will not realize that the FLDS is not part of the same church as Romney.

Cramer  does write that regarding whether Mormonism should disqualify a candidate from the presidency, “I don’t think it should.” His argument is that political reality demands that Republicans not nominate a Mormon because it could lead to a GOP defeat.

I agree with Cramer that the Democrats will attack Mormonism if Romney is nominated.  However,  I disagree that it should dissuade Republican voters from backing Romney for three reasons.

What Cramer has cited is a line of attack Democrats will use.  However, for every candidate, the GOP offers, there will be multiple lines of attack. Of other candidates, Cramer says, “They may attack Bachmann or Palin for inconsistency in not being meek little wives, but they can’t directly attack them for being Christians. ”

They can’t attack them directly for being Christians in a nation the vast majority of Americans identify themselves as Christian, but they can attack them indirectly being observant orthodox conservative  Christians and for many other things. For Bachmann, it’s her husband’s mental health clinic.  For Palin, it’s her family and Trig and a thousand other things.  For Rick Santorum, it will be how “creepy” the way he handled the death of his son Gabriel For Rick Perry, it will be his state’s rights statements that many have interpreted as sympathetic to secession as well as his association with some preachers.

Telling us that a candidate is vulnerable to an attack doesn’t tell us the attack will be successful. Indeed, the example that Cramer cited in his piece (CBS doing a piece on Ron Reagan, Jr.’s ballet career to hint at homosexuality before the election) didn’t work.

The second problem I have with the argument is that if Obama can be beaten (big IF), people are not going to care about Mormonism, because the country will be a wreck, that is the only way he’ll win. People will put aside their prejudices and vote for a change. This happened in 2008 as Nate Silver recounted when a Democratic volunteer called a home in West Virginia and was told, “Ma’am, we’re voting for the n***er.”

Finally, I also have a problem with an argument that encourages us to take an action to win an election that violates the spirit of our country’s founding.  Washington in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island said that our national government should give  ”to bigotry no sanction.”

Mormons have fought and died under the country’s flag.  Most are decent citizens. They have also given Republicans more support than any other political group.  To reject a candidate because of their Mormon beliefs is to sanction people’s prejudices, to try and win an election by violating the principles the nation is founded on isn’t an acceptable trade.

To be clear, I’m not a Romney backer. I don’t trust him. I don’t think he has the political courage or skills needed for times like these, but his religion has nothing to do with it.

The problem with these stories of the horror, woe, and doom of 1995? They’re not true.

In the 1996 elections, Congressional Republicans lost nine house seats, but picked up two senate seats. The Republican losses in the Houses were to be expected after the landslide 1994. Any time a party has a national wave, here will be districts that the party wins that they can’t possibly maintain as well as members who lack the political skills and judgment to be elected without the aide of political tsunami in their party’s favor.

Then there’s the argument raised by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the 1995 Government shutdown “helped” Bill Clinton get re-elected. This is a quaint idea that disregards the role that nation performance plays in American presidential elections. When voters decide on a President, they ask questions about how the country is doing.

Looking back to 1996, what reason did swing voters have to throw President Clinton out of office? The economy was doing well with the dot com boom serving as a political windfall for the President and unemployment was moving down. President Clinton had struck a grand bargain to reform Welfare and at the same time raise the minimum wage, fulfilling a key campaign promise that wouldn’t have been possible if Democrats had kept control of Congress. The deficit was smaller than when Clinton took office with a growing GDP. Outside of Clinton’s early misstep in Somalia, the U.S. was in a relative state of peace with only peacekeeping deployments to a few trouble spots. He’d even joined social conservatives in support for the Defense of Marriage Act.

Conservative activists had plenty against President Clinton including his appointments, his stance on social issues and gun control, esoteric scandals that the electorate either didn’t understand or didn’t care about, and the fact that he had raised taxes on those making more than $127,000 per year. None of this resonated with the American people or provided the high burden of proof that voters demand to remove an incumbent President, particularly in good economic times.

With President Obama, many of these situations are reversed. Unemployment is higher than when the President took office and the economy is stagnating. Rather that shrinking deficits, the President offers us a future with trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. Unlike Clinton, Obama has no unfulfilled moderate impulses that can be parlayed into a major popular policy achievement with the Republican House. All he has to credit is a highly unpopular health care bill that was cobbled together in the last Congress and led to electoral disaster for his own party.

Are there lessons to be drawn from the period? Sure, but not the doom and gloom being concocted by pundits and DC politician.

In the first place, Republicans in 1995 lost the PR battle. Some of this was personality driven with Newt Gingrich’s complaints about his Air Force One seating on a trip to a state funeral. But there was also a policy articulation problem. That the event is referred to universally as “the Republicans shutting down the government,” shows how badly the GOP mismanaged its communications. Technically, the GOP didn’t shut down the government. President Clinton did. He vetoed a continuing resolution that would have kept the government running and force changes that would lead to a balanced budget in seven years. The GOP ought to have been on the air with ads slamming the President for shutting down the government and touting the Republican Majority as doing what it promised to do in reigning in fiscal profligacy. Instead, there was none of that. President Clinton and the media got to define what had happened, so they won the debate. Republicans need to be prepared for a PR war as the debt ceiling deadline looms.

The second lesson is the danger of timidity. Then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole the government shutdown by passing a continuing resolution that met President Clinton’s demands. The Republican Revolution of 1994 was effectively over. The GOP determined to go along to get along and became the party of earmarks, big spending, and the preservation of political power. The new boss became the old boss.  In 2005, then-House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-Tx) best exemplified this new establishment attitude when he declared the budget had been “pared down pretty good.”

They maintained their majority for eleven more years but they failed to address the serious fiscal issues with entitlements that were always there, other than making them worse by expanding into Medicare Part D. The Republicans failed to advance any Conservative health care plan that could have headed off Obamacare-style reform. The Republicans failed to reform the U.S. Tax Code. Tentative attempts were made at some of these items, but under media fire, the GOP always wilted as retreat seemed to be easier than explaining their program to the American people.

The GOP Majority of 1996-2006’s timidity in the face of big issues played large role in creating the crisis we’re in right now. In this debt ceiling debate, one cannot help but hear echoes of that wasted Congressional decade in nervous voices of those who warn about the dangers of the 1995 government shutdown. If America’s fiscal problems are going to be addressed, the GOP needs to act in the spirit of the old Latin proverb, “Fortune Favors the Bold” rather than the GOP motto of recent years when facing tough issues, “Duck and Cover.”

The reason Obama is calling for tax increases is not because it is strictly mathematically necessary to raise taxes in order to reduce the debt. We have a spending problem and there is money to be found that while a bit more difficult to obtain, is still available. The reasons are a two edged political sword:

1)  It would comfort his own political base against whatever  cosmetic little spending cuts that are spread out over 10 or 20 years get into a reduction package.

2) It would absolutely decimate Republicans. They ran on not raising taxes and if they raise taxes or pass some phony deal on the debt ceiling, the Republican Party will be sowing the wind and set to reap the whirlwind. For many Republican and Tea Party voters, the Republican victory last fall was not a matter of love of the Pachyderm. Rather, Republicans are double probation and voters on not afraid to give up on them. Voters expect promises to be kept or else.

The President’s posture in these negotiations has been bad faith. He has asked Republicans to take steps that would be politically devastating and might even split the Republican Party. No cut discussed has been of that magnitude.

If you want Republicans to talk tax increases, take serious steps on Social Security and Medicare that will stop that $44 trillion avalanche, get rid of a couple cabinet departments. Slay a couple of federal sacred cows. We’re not seeing that from the President.

As an aside, I have to comment on the cynicism of our political system. If a candidates breaks their campaign promises to get things done, they are maligned as a flip flopper and a liar. If they honor their campaign promises, they are called intransigent partisans. This is why most candidate for high political office are either sociopaths or people of extreme patriotism who can put up with this sort of nonsense.

The 51st state should be named South California, says Jeff Stone, a Republican on the the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. But the proposed 13 southern California counties that would split off from the Golden State would not include Los Angeles.

Stone told the Times’ Phil Willon that the ommission is intentional and is part of a plan that would make for a new conservative Californian state.

I like the idea and it makes good sense. California is just too darn big and culturally dominated by the big cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles.   Of course there are political reasons why I like this and that’s why it’ll never happen.

First, it would like add 2 GOP Senate Seats. Second, it would probably cost the Democrats 20 electoral votes or thereabouts and South California can’t secede from California on it’s own initiative. There have only been two attempts to break up states that have been successful. In 1820, Maine gained approval from the Massachusetts Legislature to secede after two decades of fighting. In 1863, West Virginia was created for the portion of the Virginia that remained loyal to the union during the Civil War. Of course, there was partitioning of states out of territories. For example, there was a healthy debate over whether the Dakotas would be one state or two.

So, unfortunately South California is a pipe dream, but what a nice pipe dream it is.

I like Congresswoman Bachmann. I’ve campaigned for her. I respect her. But her record of accomplishment in Congress is non-existent. It’s non-existent.

How silly is attacking her lack of Congressional accomplishments? Congresswoman Bachmann came into Congress as Democrats were taking over. Republicans just got into the majority this year, so she hasn’t had the opportunity to accomplish much.

Of course, Pawlenty’s got a legitimate dig that he goes on to make:

We’re looking for who can lead a large enterprise in a public setting and drive it to conclusion. I’ve done that, she hasn’t,

This is fair enough. Pawlenty’s been a governor, she hasn’t. On the other hand, Bachmann is capable of building a Presidential campaign people are willing to support and Pawlenty isn’t. And that will probably make a bigger difference in the long run.