Columnist.
Susan Rice, President Obama's National Security Advisor, told TV talk show host Charlie Rose that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming speech before Congress about Iran is "destructive" to the relationship between the United States and Israel. What is going on? The National Security Advisor is just that – an advisor. It is not a cabinet post, nor a position of authority. It is not an appointment that requires confirmation of Congress. The president picks this individual to serve as a staff advisor on national security affairs. So who is Susan Rice to be hitting the media and defining the nature of relations between the United States and it's principle friend and ally in the Middle East – the only free nation in that part of the world?
In April 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. landed in jail in Birmingham, Alabama for violating a local injunction against demonstrations. Sitting in jail, he learned that local white clergy advised against "outsiders coming in," calling King's activities "unwise and untimely." In response, King wrote his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." In the pages long, handwritten letter, he lays out the logic and theology of his activities. He explains that, like the prophets and apostles, he was compelled "to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my home town."
The Congressional Black Caucus will forgo no opportunity to retard black progress in America and undermine the ideals that were once understood to be the goals of the civil rights movement. In the latest example, the caucus has issued a press release calling Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) a racist for opposing confirmation of Loretta Lynch as the next U.S. Attorney General. Paul earlier issued a press release stating three reasons for his opposition to Lynch. The caucus ignored two and called the third, her support for civil asset forfeiture, "…nothing but an excuse to keep an African American legal scholar from holding this high position…"
I've got a new book out which is not really so new. It's new because it has just been released as an eBook. But it is not so new because it is a collection of some of my columns from past 10 years with Scripps Howard News Service. And those columns reflect what I have been saying over the last 20 years -- about race, about politics, about religion, about America's problems and my sense of the answers to these problems. It's called "Blind Conceit -- Policy, Politics, and Racial Polarization: Moving Forward to Save America." It's a book about love and faith. Love of God, love of America, love of freedom, and faith that the answers to the many problems that trouble us so deeply today have answers in our traditional sources -- our Bible, our Constitution - and that as more Americans turn to those sources we can get back on the path to the freedom and justice we seek.
Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas and Congressman Luke Messer of Indiana have introduced a bill that could produce positive, badly needed change in American K-12 education. The bill allows for Title 1 education funds "to follow low-income students to any public or private school of their choice." What is Title 1 funding? It goes back to President Lyndon Johnson's War of Poverty. In 1965 Johnson signed into law the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Title 1 of the Act provides federal funds to schools with the target being low-income students. The motivation is special assistance to students from low-income families to close the performance gap in reading and math between them and national averages.
This past week, following the nation's celebration of the birthday of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the U.S. Supreme Court heard an important case related to landmark law enacted during the civil rights era – the Fair Housing Law of 1968. This case highlights how some policies that followed civil rights era legislation – in this case government low-income housing projects – actually have hurt the very communities they were supposed to help. The Court heard arguments in the case Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, a non-profit defining itself as for "thriving racially and economically inclusive communities."
This Thursday, January 22, hundreds of thousands will march in Washington, DC, in the annual March for Life. This notes the 42nd anniversary of the Roe V. Wade decision, which legalized abortion and began a barbarous era in which 57 million unborn American human beings have been lost. As I type these words on my Apple computer, I consider the likelihood that this device would not sit in front of me if abortion was legal in 1955 when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was born to an unwed graduate student and put up for adoption. There is one message that these "pro-lifers" who will arrive in Washington, DC, will convey to their nation and, yes, to the world at large.
Now that the U.S. economy is showing signs of life, President Obama is not wasting a moment to take credit for this recovery. "The steps we took nearly six years ago to rescue our economy and rebuild it on a new foundation helped make 2014 the strongest year for job growth since the 1990's," he said in a recent speech. For sure we can expect the president to continue this message in his upcoming State of the Union address, as he works to rebuild his credibility, thinking toward his final two years in office and his place in history. And it's working. The president is creeping back up in the polls. His current Gallup 45 percent approval rating is the highest it has been in almost 8 months.
If you want to identify a serious potential leader, someone committed to getting America back on track as a free and prosperous nation under God, just check the intensity of efforts of those on the left to try and destroy the reputation and career of that individual. The more time and energy liberals invest to destroy someone, you can bet that this is someone who loves America, what it stands for, and who can make a difference. Latest case is attacks on Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) because he spoke, in 2002, to the European American Unity and Rights Organization, a white supremacist group founded by racist David Duke.
At the close of the last century, British conservative historian Paul Johnson wrote "A History of the American People." He began his sweeping panorama of our history in a most extraordinary way. He posed, on the very first page, three probing "fundamental questions" about the United States. "First, can a nation rise above the injustices of its origins and, by its moral purpose and performance, atone for them? Second, "In the process of nation-building, can ideals and altruism -- the desire to build the perfect community -- be mixed successfully with acquisitiveness and ambition, without which no dynamic society can be built at all?" And third, "…Americans originally aimed to build an other-worldly "City on a Hill," but found themselves designing a republic of the people, to be a model for the entire planet. Have they made good their audacious claims?"
The story is told that when Tennessee frontiersman Davy Crockett served in the US Congress (between 1827 and 1835) he voted for a bill appropriating $20,000 for relief for victims of a fire that broke out in Georgetown. When he returned home, a constituent farmer chastised him for supporting the bill and for "giving what is not yours to give." The farmer told Crockett the constitution does not grant Congress the power to give charity and if it did, "You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and favoritism and corruption, on the one hand, and robbing the people on the other."
One of President Ronald Reagan's most famous quips was that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." It is indeed sad that America today is plagued, indeed threatened, by the very institution it invented to protect its own citizens. Government. And there's no better example of today's distortions of what government is supposed to be about than the EEOC -- The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Pain is part of life as is, hopefully, joy. As we read in the book of Ecclesiastes, there is "a time to cry and a time to laugh." But real tragedy is disaster we bring on ourselves. Disaster that comes from refusal to learn from mistakes. How many of us know someone clearly on the path to destruction, but refuses to listen, to learn? Then the inevitable happens. This is what we've got on our hands with the Ferguson, Missouri debacle that now dominates the news.
The executive order, which President Obama has issued, granting amnesty to millions of individuals now residing illegally in our country, should make clear the profound disregard our president has for American voters, our constitution, and our two-party system. It might be possible to justify this action if it was addressing a national emergency of utmost urgency or clearly reflected the priorities and wishes of the American people. But neither is the case.
New Gallup polling on party favorability ratings should be useful reading for leaders of the Democratic Party who are still in denial about the meaning of the Republican sweep in the recent elections. The percentage of Americans giving the Democratic Party a favorable rating is at an all time low -- 36 percent. It now stands below the current 42 percent favorable rating of the Republican Party. Notable is that Democrats themselves are increasingly unhappy with their own party. Whereas now 81 percent of Democrats give a favorable rating to their own party, this is 14 points below the 95 percent where it stood in December 2012.
I am a conservative. I believe in the truth of traditional values, of limited government, and free markets. And I believe in personal freedom and that it is not possible without all the above. Our country has been going in the opposite direction and things, predictably, have not been going well. The American people spoke last Tuesday, and I am happy with what they had to say.
Some call the fear and hate ad campaigns being orchestrated by Democratic Party supporters to boost black turnout in next Tuesday's congressional elections desperation. I call it pathetic. The way for a Party to get support is to deliver success. When there is no record of success, lies, distortion, and fear become the operative tools, in hope that uninformed voters will buy the garbage.
Prospects that three term Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu will return to the US Senate to represent Louisiana for a fourth term are looking increasingly bleak. Senator Landrieu has good reason to be concerned. One reason is disenchantment among Louisiana's black population, which amounts to 32 percent of the population of the state -- the nation's second largest black population percentage-wise. Justification for black disillusionment is eloquently and explosively captured in the ad being run by Republican State Senator Elbert Guillory's FreeAtLast PAC. Guillory shook things up in 2013 when the then conservative black Democrat announced he was switching to the Republican Party.
Former Democrat House Speaker Tip O'Neill's political wisdom that "All politics is local" has been a staple in political thinking for many years. But the truth of the matter is that, regarding elections for national office, politics is really, today, a national business. And this is what voters in Kansas should be thinking about in the current close Senate race between Republican incumbent Pat Roberts and Independent challenger Greg Orman.
Republicans need to pick up six seats in November to gain control of the Senate. Consensus to date points to good prospects of this happening. But one state where the picture remains unclear for Republicans is North Carolina. Republican challenger, speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives Thom Tillis, has failed to pull ahead of Democrat incumbent Senator Kay Hagan and average of latest polling shows him behind 3 to 4 points. Mitt Romney won North Carolina in 2012 by three points. In the last ten presidential elections, Republicans prevailed in North Carolina eight times.
