The Foundation

“Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment.” –George Washington

Political Futures

“It has been generations since Americans have been exposed to a more vivid depiction of the significant differences between the left’s and the right’s views of this country and its future. The delineation between conservative and liberal had grown hopelessly blurred to a majority of citizens. But Obama and his leftist cabal have been successful not only in demonstrating the frightening vision progressive liberals have of making America into a European-style socialist state. They have also managed to animate a vast conservative majority that has lain painfully dormant since the mid-1980s. … While conservatives like [Rep. Eric] Cantor believe money belongs first to the citizen and is confiscated by government, leftists like Obama believe money belongs first to the government. That government then lets select citizens keep some of it … if and only if government ‘can afford’ to be so generous. Further, when Americans open their newspapers, they are greeted with the wise counsel of Obamabots like Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman. Friedman’s recent piece in the New York Times called the Tea Party movement ‘narrow and uninspired’ while touting that ‘[w]e need to raise gasoline and carbon taxes to discourage their use and drive the creation of a new clean energy industry.’ Krugman … laments that the waste of nearly one trillion taxpayer dollars on a government spending bill meant to stimulate a still-stagnant economy wasn’t enough, and it should be followed up with an even bigger second stimulus. Everywhere they turn, Americans see that the left is offering higher taxes, less freedom, more debt and regulation. They simultaneously see the right offering lower taxes, freer markets, and fiscal sanity. Voters’ first opportunity to choose between those two visions occurred in the 2010 midterms. Their preference was unmistakable – to everyone, that is, except Barack Obama.” –columnist Peter Heck

The Gipper

“Sir Winston [Churchill] led his people to great victory in war and then lost an election just as the fruits of victory were about to be enjoyed. But he left office honorably, and as it turned out, temporarily, knowing that the liberty of his people was more important than that of any single leader. History recalls his greatness in ways no dictator will ever know. And he left us a message of hope for the future, as timely now as when he first uttered it, as opposition leader in the Commons … when he said, ‘When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our futures? We have,’ he said, ‘come safely through the worst.’ Well, the task I’ve set forth will long outlive our own generation. But together, we too have come through the worst. Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best – a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation. For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.” –Ronald Reagan

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Opinion in Brief

“Julian Assange (ah-SAHN-zh) is the creep behind, and the face of, Wikileaks. … Assange is not a digital Robin Hood. He is a hacker, a thug, and an accused rapist. … Here’s the thing about what Assange is doing: He has decided that he, among the 6.7 billion humans on the Earth, is solely qualified to decide what should be held secret and what should be made public. News outlets worldwide have taken to describing Wikileaks as a ‘whistleblower website.’ That’s like saying the Central and South American cocaine drug cartels are ‘entertainment entrepreneurs.’ … Now that he is being hunted like the dog he is, Assange has made it known that he has posted a file containing more than a gigabyte (one billion characters, more or less) containing many secret documents not previously released. That file has been sent to cohorts around the world, but it is password protected. His threat is: Arrest me (and/or knock Wikileaks.com off the internet) and the password will be made public, the files will be unlocked, and massive harm will be done to the United States government and at least one major U.S. bank. Assange is blackmailing the world to allow him to continue to play his part in this international game of Russian roulette. Like every megalomaniac from Napoleon to Lex Luthor he believes only he knows the path to truth.” –political analyst Rich Galen

For the Record

“At a [recent] news conference, Attorney General Eric Holder assured the nation that his people are diligently looking into possible legal action against WikiLeaks. Where has Holder been? The WikiLeaks exposure of Afghan War documents occurred five months ago. Holder is looking now at possible indictments? This is a country where a good prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich. Months after the first leak, Justice’s thousands of lawyers have yet to prepare charges against Julian Assange and his confederates? … Where is the Justice Department? And where are the intelligence agencies on which we lavish $80 billion a year? Assange has gone missing. Well, he’s no cave-dwelling jihadi ascetic. Find him. Start with every five-star hotel in England and work your way down. Want to prevent this from happening again? Let the world see a man who can’t sleep in the same bed on consecutive nights, who fears the long arm of American justice. I’m not advocating that we bring out of retirement the KGB proxy who, on a London street, killed a Bulgarian dissident with a poisoned umbrella tip. But it would be nice if people like Assange were made to worry every time they go out in the rain.” –columnist Charles Krauthammer

Liberty

“The fact is, we are not stuck with the TSA model. We can and should do better. We need to start shifting to a public-private model. That means, first of all, ditching the body scanners. It’s not a question, as some have suggested, of whether the scans are anonymous. Either way, they show that we are not screening properly for those who pose the greatest threat to airline security. How do we do this? Sort passengers into three groups: 1) ‘Low-risk’ ones we know plenty about – those with federal security clearance, for example, or a biometric ID card. 2) ‘Ordinary’ ones – mostly occasional flyers and leisure travelers. 3) ‘High-risk’ ones we either know nothing about, or who raise red flags. Each group would receive a different level of screening. The ‘low-risk’ ones would get something like what was in place before 9/11. The ‘ordinary’ passengers would go through the system put in place right after that infamous attack. Those classified as ‘high-risk’ would be questioned closely and undergo a more rigorous security check. … There’s no way that such a system could be worse than what we have now, with its ludicrous restrictions on ‘profiling.’ We do ourselves no favors by acting as if, say, a small child from Missouri or a nun from Iowa is as likely to be a terrorist as someone from Yemen. Certain ‘home-grown’ terrorists are possible, yes, but they would fall into the high-risk group. Besides, we’re already profiling. Pilots, flight attendants, cabinet secretaries, top congressional leaders and other senior officials are exempt from the new screening procedures. If all pose an equal threat, why the free pass for these individuals?” –Heritage Foundation president Edwin J. Feulner

Government

“The common explanation of why we cannot implement Israeli-style airport security here, despite acknowledging that the Israeli approach is the world’s best, is logistics. Israelis don’t rely on machines. Their approach is human-centered. All passengers get a quick interview by an agent trained to identify revealing behavior. Such an approach, the reasoning goes, is possible in a nation dealing with 10 million passengers annually, but with the 600 million we deal with, the logistics become unmanageable. But this is not the whole story. It’s true that the Israelis use primarily people rather than machines to screen. But the real difference in the Israeli approach and success is reliance on human judgment. Human judgment can never be removed from the equation. We’ve been sold, and we’re buying, the big lie that machines can replace human judgment and responsibility. All technology starts with people. It is people who define problems and then design machines to deal with those problems. If the problem is incorrectly defined to begin with, then the machine, no matter how technologically sophisticated, is not going to solve it. In other words – garbage in, garbage out.” –columnist Star Parker

Faith & Family

“Sadly, I don’t think there’s a government program that will turn around our culture’s shifting attitudes about marriage. Unfortunately, perhaps due to our cultural distaste for doing hard things, negative attitudes are evident in our view of the institution itself. According to a recent study from the Pew Research Center, 39 percent of Americans now say marriage is obsolete. More importantly, 34 percent of Americans said the growing variety of family living arrangements is good for society, while only 32 percent said it didn’t make a difference and just 29 percent said it was troubling. Count me among the 29 percent. The decline of traditional marriages and the families on which they are built is taking an economic, social and spiritual toll on our nation. Reigniting our culture’s commitment to commitment – even one that is truly daunting – is the key to revitalizing our families and communities. Nobody said marriage was easy. But in every way you can measure what is good for people and society, it’s worth the effort.” –columnist Marybeth Hicks

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The Last Word

“The two biggest stories [last week were] WikiLeaks’ continued publication of classified government documents, which did untold damage to America’s national security interests, and the Democrats’ fanatical determination to repeal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and allow gays to serve openly in the military. The mole who allegedly gave WikiLeaks the mountains of secret documents is Pfc. Bradley Manning, Army intelligence analyst and angry gay. … According to Bradley’s online chats, he was in ‘an awkward place’ both ‘emotionally and psychologically.’ So in a snit, he betrayed his country by orchestrating the greatest leak of classified intelligence in U.S. history. … According to The New York Times, Bradley sought ‘moral support’ from his ‘self-described drag queen’ boyfriend. Alas, he still felt out of sorts. So why not sell out his country? In an online chat with a computer hacker, Bradley said he lifted the hundreds of thousands of classified documents by pretending to be listening to a CD labeled ‘Lady Gaga.’ Then he acted as if he were singing along with her hit song ‘Telephone’ while frantically downloading classified documents. … Bradley’s friends told the Times they suspected ‘his desperation for acceptance – or delusions of grandeur’ may have prompted his document dump. … For liberals, gays in the military is a win-win proposition. Either gays in the military works, or it wrecks the military, both of which outcomes they enthusiastically support. … Any discussion of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ should begin with Bradley Manning.” –columnist Ann Coulter