The Foundation

“The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.” –James Madison

Essential Liberty

“The Susan G. Komen foundation succumbed [Friday] to a relentless barrage of political bullying, a fact that is not only sad news for those who cherish the sanctity and dignity of all life, but also for all of us who believe that a private philanthropic organization shouldn’t be subjected to such harassment. That the Komen foundation apologized for its decision to halt contributions to Planned Parenthood is another illustration that political correctness is running amok. … Consider the facts: The Komen Foundation is a private philanthropic organization. It has every right to fund or not fund charities or causes of its choice. That certain individuals and causes are ‘outraged’ over Komen’s announcement is, in itself, outrageous. … Planned Parenthood is regularly lobbying for even more federal subsidies. So not only do they now want to take more of your money via taxes – but they also want to be able to tell private foundations whom they (should) give to! … At the core of this matter, though, is a fundamental difference of opinion. Should private organizations have the right to operate under the rule of law? Should they be permitted to distribute their own funds to whom they see fit? Or should they be subjected to the rule and pressure of a mob mentality that is no respecter of independent rights, one who demands the donor’s money?” –Focus on the Family CEO Jim Daly

Share your thoughts on Komen’s cave

Reader Comments

“I was shocked to read in Friday’s Digest that Komen Foundation ever supported Planned Parenthood. If I had known any of our donations were going for Planned Parenthood, I never would have made the first one. Now, amazingly, I read this weekend that Komen has reversed their commitment not to support Planned Parenthood. I want a refund on what I have given, and will NEVER support Komen again.” –Pinked no more!

Editor’s Reply: Komen’s reversal of their reversal occurred just after we published on Friday. Please read our comments on this terrible decision by Komen, as posted by Mark Alexander Friday afternoon.

“Mark Alexander’s essay, ‘Defeating Obama’s Socialist Propaganda,’ should be required reading for every Republican candidate at any level of government. It is the most succinctly framed rebuttal to leftist class warfare socialism anywhere. If Republican presidential, Senate and House candidates could grasp the message in this essay, that the focus really needs to be on our Constitution, then we would be on the way to reversing the slide into tyranny.” –USMC (Ret.)

Faith & Family

“Just recently, the Obama Administration announced that the Affordable Healthcare Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare, requires that employers pay for [insurance including] contraception, including abortifacients, and that Catholic institutions are not exempt from this requirement. … In the administration’s twisted way of thinking, contraception is ‘preventive care’ that helps prevent illness in the same way that cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes screening do – even though pregnancy is the means by which life is perpetuated and the species’ existence continued. Even worse is the willful refusal to accommodate the beliefs of the nation’s largest religious body. [HHS Secretary Kathleen] Sibelius defended the decision as ‘striking the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.’ This is the same Kathleen Sibelius who told the crowd of abortion supporters at a NARAL fund-raiser, ‘we are at war’ over the ‘pregnancy prevention’ issue. This the same Kathleen Sibelius whose department has issued hundreds of waivers for plans that fail to meet other Health and Human Service standards, including those offered by McDonalds. ‘Appropriate balance,’ my foot! Every Christian, not just Catholics, should be outraged by the Obama Administration’s decision. The regulations represent a move to define religious liberty in the narrowest possible terms.” –author Chuck Colson

Re: The Left

“Lieutenant General William G. (‘Jerry’) Boykin is like an action-movie hero. … Jerry Boykin has done it all. He’s been in battle as part of America’s most elite fighting force, then rose to command those troops as a general, and also served in the CIA and Pentagon on the strategic planning and management side of this equation. … As a private citizen retired from the Army, General Boykin was invited to speak at a prayer breakfast at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. … But the Far Left exploded. Boykin has cast America’s war against radical Islamic terrorists as fighting Satan. So his religious language has made strange bedfellows of various Islamic groups joining with atheists to call on West Point to disinvite this American hero who risked and achieved so much for this country. … President Obama’s pick to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a lesbian activist who says that homosexual rights should always trump religious liberty. This is the same EEOC that argued it had the power to order a church to reinstate as a minister a person the church had fired for violating church teaching, a position the Supreme Court unanimously rejected. And the administration has enacted regulations under Obamacare forcing Evangelical and Catholic universities and hospitals to provide contraceptives against the religious beliefs of those church-affiliated institutions.” –columnists Ken Blackwell & Ken Klukowski

The Gipper

“The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. … It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.” –Ronald Reagan

Today marks President Ronald Wilson Reagan’s 101st birthday, or as he would have phrased it, the 62nd anniversary of his 39th birthday. The observance of this occasion provides a vital bond with our national heritage of Liberty and those who have devoted their lives and fortunes to advance it. Don’t miss our remembrance.

Opinion in Brief

“The Nevada GOP couldn’t get the votes counted. By halftime of the Super Bowl CNN.com was reporting that a full day after the caucuses only 83 percent of the precincts had been recorded. The Iowa GOP chairman resigned in disgrace after it took nearly two weeks to decide that Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney had been the winner there. By that time, whatever minor momentum Santorum had gained by ‘losing’ by only eight votes on caucus night had long dissipated and he was but a footnote in the South Carolina story. … I am serious about this: RNC National Chairman, Reince Priebus, should immediately dispatch anyone in the nation who has any idea how to run a caucus and tell the state parties that the RNC-designated person is in charge. This is a little time sensitive in that there are two more caucuses schedule for tomorrow – Minnesota and Colorado. In addition there are two states with rolling caucus dates this month. Maine is now underway through the 11th, and precincts in Wyoming can meet anytime between the 9th and the 29th. Missouri has a non-binding primary election on Tuesday, but that has drawn almost no attention from the candidates or the media. … It is likely that Romney will crack the 50 percent ceiling by the time the counting is over, even though that might not be until the next Super Bowl.” –political analyst Rich Galen

Editor’s Note: Romney did indeed crack 50 percent as of Monday morning.

And speaking of the Super Bowl, here are Alexander’s Picks for the worst ads: Clint Eastwood on halftime in America, and the Obama rhetorical echo award goes to Met Life for its soft classism ad asserting, “Every family should have the financial security they need.” Then as the limo pulls up, “Not just the ones who can figure it out, not just the most fortunate, everyone.”

Political Futures

“[Barack] Obama now rarely talks about his supposed signature achievements, whether the huge deficit ‘priming’ or the unpopular Obamacare. Republicans have only controlled the House of Representatives for the past year, yet Obama now blasts them for stopping what he in theory wanted to do as president. In contrast, he hardly praises the Democrats who controlled both houses of Congress for twice that time and enacted all that he wished. How strange to keep silent about successes only to broadcast failed what-ifs. … This year, Obama will run not so much on what he really did in 2009 and 2010, but more on what he wanted to do, but was stopped from doing, in 2011 and 2012. The president will tell his base that he really wished to go green in a big way while telling Middle America that lots of oilmen went ahead on their own to find new gas and oil. For his liberal supporters, Obama really did want to end the antiterrorism protocols, and for the rest of America he really did find those same protocols necessary to kill Islamic terrorists. The message is clear: If voters do not see or hear the new un-Obama too often, if his left-wing legislative agenda is sidetracked, and if the private sector can ignore him, then voters may still sort of like the idea of him back as president.” –historian Victor Davis Hanson

For the Record

“In President Obama’s first budget, entitled … ‘A New Era of Responsibility,’ he projected that the federal budget deficit in 2012 would be a rather hefty $581 billion…. Fast-forwarding three years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now projects that it will instead be $1.079 trillion, meaning that, if the CBO is right, Obama was wrong by $498,000,000,000. … Medicare could magically have become free for 2012, and the deficit would still have exceeded Obama’s earlier estimate. Deficit spending under Obama has truly been historic. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal rightly observes that ‘Mr. Obama has the worst fiscal record of any President in modern times. No one else is even close.’ However, even this is somewhat generous. When you factor in the context – we’re not currently fighting the Civil War, World War I, or World War II, which are the only other times that our deficits have exceeded 6.0 percent of GDP (as they have every year under Obama) – the deficits on Obama’s watch are by far the most profligate in all of American history.” –The Weekly Standard’s Jeffrey H. Anderson

Insight

“As long as the law may be diverted from its true purpose – that it may violate property instead of protecting it – then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting to gain access to the legislature as well as fighting within it.” –French economist and author Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

Culture

“Lego, which markets plastic building blocks for everything from ‘Star Wars’ fighting vehicles to Egyptian pyramids, has now introduced a line aimed at young girls. … [T]hese toys depict girls engaging in traditionally female activities and roles: getting their hair done, baking, caring for children. The company says that it has introduced the new line because of customer demand. … But feminist critics say that the real motive is to reinforce gender stereotypes and limit little girls’ aspirations. In fact, it’s the feminists who want to limit women’s choices. Their message to girls and young women is: If you’re not exactly like men, you don’t believe in equal rights. For much of the last 40 years, feminists have pushed to masculinize women. … At the same time, feminists have taken on the task of feminizing males. … But despite the feminist movement’s almost complete success in refashioning the terms of the cultural debate, feminists have not been able to convince most little girls to want to play with starfighters and missile launchers. … As long as we don’t tell girls they should never choose the action figure over the princess or tell boys that they must play with guns and not dolls, we’re not cutting off options for either gender. Real choice entails letting individuals … gravitate toward what they want, not what ideologues wish them to prefer.” –columnist Linda Chavez

The Last Word

“As you may have heard, invasive Burmese pythons have nearly wiped out populations of white tail deer, raccoons and other mammals in the Florida everglades. … I understand that the serpents are very well suited to survive in the Everglades, they have no natural predators, they possess the ability to swim and go without food for up to a year, and the native animals have no natural fear of giant snakes etc etc. Ecologists talk as if this is a lost cause. This amounts to blanket amnesty for illegal immigrant giant snakes. The Hell, I say: We nearly wiped out the buffalo in this country because a bunch of guys made money off of buffalo hides. Thousands of years before that, mankind eradicated the woolly mammoth with spears. Spears! … You see, I don’t think we need a vast new government bureaucracy to kill snakes. Heck I think if we created a vast new bureaucracy to kill snakes we would very quickly end up subsidizing people to raise snakes to kill them. But, are you telling me that during a time when unemployment is outrageously high, the government can’t put a bounty on snakes and get results?” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team