THE FOUNDATION: CONSTITUTION

“I trust that the proposed Constitution afford a genuine specimen of representative government and republican government; and that it will answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes of society.” —Alexander Hamilton

CONSTITUTION DAY 2008

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America… Done… the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our LORD one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.” —George Washington and the delegates

Today, 17 September, marks the 221st anniversary of the Constitution’s signing by our nation’s Founders. In recognition of this day, The Patriot Shop invites you to browse our selection of Founding Documents, including our popular Constitution booklets and Declaration and Constitution parchments.

For more information on the Constitution and related documents, visit The Patriot’s Historic Documents page and Mark Alexander’s essay, “A ‘Living Constitution’ for a Dying Republic”.

All sales proceeds at PatriotShop.US support our Mission of Service to America’s Armed Services, and help ensure that The Patriot Post is distributed to thousands of military personnel and students without a fee. The Patriot receives no corporate, foundation, political or special interest funding. Our mission and operations are funded by—and depend entirely upon—the financial support of American Patriots like YOU!

INSIGHT

“If the government gets into business on any large scale, we soon find that the beneficiaries attempt to play a large part in the control. While in theory it is to serve the public, in practice it will be very largely serving private interests.” —Calvin Coolidge

“There are no persons capable of stooping so low as those who desire to rise in the world.” —Lady Marguerite Blessington

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government.” —Edward Abbey

“If you are desirous to prevent the overrunning of a state by any sect, show it toleration.” —Voltaire

“You can’t stop a politician, even by defeating him.” —Will Rogers

UPRIGHT

“The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy. In fact, what we see now is a market correction to foolhardy government policy. Congress’ move to bailout lenders and borrowers who made poor decisions will simply create incentives for people to make unwise decisions in the future.” —Walter Williams

“Congress is back. If, upon reading those words, your hand shoots reflexively to your wallet or purse to make sure it’s still there, then you know what comes next: A Gang of 16 in the Senate is pushing an energy bill that would spend billions of dollars, raise taxes, and do nothing to lower the price of gasoline.” —National Review

“At 35%, the United States has a higher corporate tax rate than France (34.4%), the United Kingdom (28%), Japan (30%), Germany (15.83%) and even that Scandinavian welfare state deluxe, Sweden (28%). And Barack Obama intends to keep it that way—competitiveness be damned!” —Don Feder

“If elected, President Obama, arm in arm with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, would be in a position to do serious damage to the country on a number of fronts. His convention speech removed any doubt that he is an orthodox, big—no, huge—government liberal.” —Mona Charen

“Obama’s reaction to this sudden turn in his fortunes has been nothing less that sheer and visible disorientation. It’s obvious that he simply doesn’t know which way to turn, and his confusion has led him to launch a sleazy campaign to destroy Gov. Palin’s reputation—no matter what it takes—before she destroys his presidential hopes.” —Michael Reagan

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

“[Barack] Obama… blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the ‘trickle-down’ economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend. But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street’s most revered institutions. Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties. The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but ‘predatory.’ Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the ‘90s by Clinton and his social engineers.” —Investor’s Business Daily

DEZINFORMATSIA

Accidental admission: “[J]ust as foreclosures were showing up on B-17, or in the real estate section, along comes this horrific headline out of Wall Street… I mean, this is what [Obama and Biden] wanted. They believe, of course, that the economy is one of their strengths and that they can paint John McCain as George Bush.” —CNN’s Candy Crowley

World’s Worst Person: “Perhaps the fate of the McCain/Palin campaign lies in the hands of a power much greater than America’s constitutionally designated democracy [sic]. In fact, your votes may not matter at all. Your prayers, however, that’s a whole different ball of wax. In our number one story on the Countdown, Sarah Palin, messenger and messiah… If you want to get something done, ask the Lord. He or she probably doesn’t have much else to worry about besides oil pipelines.” —MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann

Hot air: “[Sarah Palin’s] view of global warming reflects an extreme outside-the-mainstream view that John McCain doesn’t share, and frankly, no respectable scientist shares.” -CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin repeating the “consensus” canard on global warming

That’s not exactly the reason: “Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.” —New York Times columnist Bob Herbert

The “race war” is on: “I stand by the column [warning a ‘race war’ would commence if John McCain defeats Barack Obama]—but after all of that backlash, I realize I was dead wrong. We don’t have to wait until after the election for a race war. We’re in one now.” —Philadelphia Daily News columnist Fatimah Ali (yes, that’s her real name)

Newspulper Headlines: ‘That’s Capital V, I, C, E…’: “Palin Spells Out Her Role in McCain Administration” —Associated Press

Why Don’t They Mind Their Own Business?: “French to Retain Oversight of Palin Probe” —Anchorage Daily News

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “Where Is Coverage of Nader Campaign?” —Des Moines Register

First Same-Sex Marriage, Now This: “Pumpkin and Apples Wed Well in Oven Pancake” —Associated Press

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “100 Goats Turned Loose on a Downtown L.A. Plot” —Los Angeles Times

Bottom Stories of the Day: “Joe Biden Impresses Manitowoc Teen in Rally” —Manitowoc (WI) Herald Times Reporter (Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

THE DEMO-GOGUES

Color of skin, not content of character: “That will be a transformative event in American politics and internationally. That all by itself will be significant.” —Joe Biden on electing a black president ++ “If I lose, it won’t be because of race. It will be because, you know, I made mistakes on the campaign trail, I wasn’t communicating effectively my plans in terms of helping them in their everyday lives. But I don’t think that race is going to be a barrier in the general election.” —Barack Obama

You don’t say: “If we’re going to ask questions about, you know, who has been promulgating negative ads that are completely unrelated to the issues at hand, I think I win that contest pretty handily.” —Barack Obama

Non sequitur: “I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy… and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well, guess what, folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?” —Joe Biden *Most Americans are fine with ADULT stem cell research. It’s destroying embryos to do it that’s the problem.

Indeed: “The campaign a person runs says everything about the way they’ll govern.” —Joe Biden

Another inconvenient truth: “A culture in Washington where the very few wealthy and powerful have a seat at the table and the rest of us are on the menu.” —Joe Biden, who has been part of this DC establishment for 36 years

Code for “bigger”: “Part of my job, I think, as president, is to make government cool again.” —Barack Obama, who may be getting a little ahead of himself

VILLAGE IDIOTS

Open mouth, insert foot: “Our economy wouldn’t survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats. It’s extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn’t know how to send an e-mail.” —Obama Spokesman Dan Pfeiffer *“McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.” —Boston Globe

Distorted View: “Should I be worried about being a slave and being returned to slavery? Because certain things happened in the Constitution that had to change.” —constitutional scholar Whoopie Goldberg to John McCain, who for some reason subjected himself to appearing on “The View” ++ “You know, the one thing that I don’t think anybody’s said yet is that [Sarah Palin is] very mean to animals, this woman. Why does she have it in for these poor polar bear and the caribou and she aerial kills wolves? That’s a very mean thing to do.” —Joy Behar of “The View”

Radical feminism: “[John McCain has chosen a running mate] whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.” —South Carolina DNC Chairwoman Carol Fowler ++ “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.” —Wendy Doniger, feminist “academic” at the University of Chicago

Glitterati attack: “Is our country so divided that the Republicans best hope is a narrow minded, media obsessed homophobe?” —actress Lindsay Lohan on Sarah Palin ++ “I can’t stand her. She can suck it!” —Queen of Silicone, Pamela Anderson ++ “I need know if she really thinks dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago. That’s an important—I want to know that. I really do. Because she’s going to have the nuclear codes, you know.” —actor Matt Damon

SHORT CUTS

“The only new polls Barack and Joe can take solace in are these just in from Europe. The Europeans love him, and none more than the French. The froggies give him a polling lead of 80 to 12, and John and Sarah aren’t likely to make up enough ground by November to avoid arrest for loitering if they visit Paris… The Republicans can take their solace in the knowledge that the entire European Union, though overflowing with righteous piety, nevertheless has fewer electoral votes than Wyoming.” —Wesley Pruden

“Right now only Mrs. Palin can hurt Mrs. Palin. Messrs. Obama and Biden can’t do it and shouldn’t try. And the media can’t, because more than half the country won’t listen to them on this subject now, and for a while. The media could get videotape of Mrs. Palin saying, ‘We should invade Mars and it will be easy because Mars is hidden inside my hair!’ and people would say, ‘Stop sliming Sarah!”’ —Peggy Noonan

“More facts surfacing about Sarah Palin’s background every day. Sarah Palin’s father says that they shoot 90 percent of the meat their family eats. The other 10 percent they hit with their pick-up truck.” —Conan O’Brien

“It’s funny. The left has been whining about having their patriotism questioned for so long it feels like they started griping in the Mesozoic era. Feminists have argued for decades that womanhood is an existential and metaphysical state of enlightenment. But they have no problem questioning whether women they hate are really women at all.” —Jonah Goldberg

“Barack Obama was asked if he wished Hillary Clinton was his running mate in the wake of the Sarah Palin mania. He should have passed up Hillary for another woman. Bill Clinton did that all the time and enjoyed eight years in the White House.” —Argus Hamilton

Jay Leno: Here’s the latest word from Wall Street: “Ahhhh!” … Well, if you saw the big interview with Gibson, Sarah Palin quoted Abraham Lincoln, when Lincoln said, “Let us not pray that God is on our side in any war, or at any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.” And here’s the amazing part: You know who Abraham Lincoln said that to? John McCain. … As you know, McCain… is a true American war hero. And today, a new video was released of John McCain being tortured by his captors. I want to warn you, this is very disturbing [on screen: McCain on “The View”]. … Despite all the animosity in this campaign, John McCain and Joe Biden are actually old friends from the Senate. They’ve been friends for years. In fact, they go back so far that when they first met, McCain had hair and Joe Biden didn’t. … The other day while talking to a group of supporters, Joe Biden said that Hillary Clinton might have been a better pick for vice president than him. Well, that’s one thing to get the base fired up—tell them they picked the wrong person! Yeah! That’ll get them fired up! … August was a big fundraising month for the candidates: Barack Obama set a record for fundraising in August—$66 million. John McCain raised $47 million. Ralph Nader got a $10 gift card from Jamba Juice.

Veritas vos Liberabit—Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families—especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)