Monthly Archives: December 2007

Drew Carey – A Tale of Two Cities

By Duane Lester - - 0 Comments

Link To Video

Reason.tv host Drew Carey revisits the problem of eminent domain abuse following up on his earlier video, National City: Eminent Domain Gone Wild.

The City of Los Angeles used eminent domain to take a popular Hollywood bar and numerous other small businesses so that the city could hand the land over to private developers planning to build a W hotel and million-dollar condos. Fortunately, there’s a better way to revitalize neighborhoods. In contrast to Hollywood, Mayor Curt Pringle of nearby Anaheim has found a way to encourage redevelopment by working cooperatively with property owners, without using the power of eminent domain.

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The Battle for Third in Iowa

By Duane Lester - - 0 Comments

If second place is the first loser, then what is third? In Iowa in 2008, third place is a great place to be:

The race for third place in Iowa could have a dramatic impact on the GOP nominating contest as a whole. McCain could use a third-place “better than expected” bounce to beat Romney in New Hampshire, where polls show a narrowing race. Giuliani could use the boost to resurrect what looks like a flagging campaign. Thompson could do the same, catapulting himself back into contention in far friendlier South Carolina. And Paul would stun everyone and generate a new round of jaw-dropped coverage.

Fred might be done for if he can’t pull third in Iowa. He’s not going to do well in New Hampshire, since they are still bitter over him choosing Leno over the debate. Giuliani has little chance of getting third in Iowa. He might get beaten by Ron Paul. McCain could surprise some folks also, considering the second look people are giving him following the assassination of Bhutto.

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Looking at the Earmarks Found in the Omnibus Bill

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I mentioned the omnibus bill in my article today. Donald Lambro takes a look at the earmarks found in that monster:

This is just a sampling of the 11,331 “earmarks” (a 426 percent increase over last year) that this Congress snuck into its annual appropriations bills and accompanying reports for fiscal year 2008 — nearly 10,000 of them in the omnibus bill alone. Want more?

– $700,000 for a bike trail in Minnesota.

– $200,000 for a post office museum in downtown Las Vegas.

– $1 million for a river walk in Massachusetts.

– $150,000 for the Louis Armstrong Museum in Queens, N.Y.

– $200,000 for the Hunting and Fishing Museum in Pennsylvania.

– $113,000 for rodent control in Alaska.

– $4 million for a Beverly Hills veterans’ park.

– $37,000 for the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.

– $8.8 million for the Rural Domestic Preparedness Consortium at Eastern Kentucky University.

– $2.4 million for renovations in the Haddad Riverfront Park in Charleston, W.Va.

– $250,000 for construction work at the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Center in Prosser, Wash.

– $126,000 for the National First Ladies’ Library in Canton, Ohio.

– $10.4 million to the ProLogic company, a firm in West Virginia that is allegedly under federal investigation.

If one special interest in the country has been left out of these bills, it would be hard think of one. It contains money for everything from New York’s Center for Grape Genetics to peanut production in Georgia, from
Pennsylvania’s Center for Dairy Excellence to the Bronx River Restoration Project.

Keep in mind, these are projects that the administration did not request money for, nor were they recommended or formally evaluated by any of the appropriating committees. These are items that were inserted into spending bills, with the full approval of the majority leadership of Congress, to buy political support in their states and districts to help them win another term in the 2008 elections.

This is the kind of spending that is going to ruin this country. How many of those things should the federal government be involved in, according to James Madison or Thomas Jefferson? Zero. Not one. Yet our COngress finds more and more ways to spend your money to insure their re-election. It’s time for this to end. Call your representatives. Tell them to stop spending what they don’t have. We have to regain control of this entity before they get us all in a world of hurt.

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Special forces on standby over nuclear threat

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Prepared to deal with radical Islamic coup

green-berets.jpgUS special forces snatch squads are on standby to seize or disable Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the event of a collapse of government authority or the outbreak of civil war following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

The troops, augmented by volunteer scientists from America’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team organization, are under orders to take control of an estimated 60 warheads dispersed around six to 10 high-security Pakistani military bases.

Military sources say contingency plans have been reviewed over the past three days to prevent any of Pakistan’s atomic weapons falling into the hands of Islamic extremists if the administration of President Pervez Musharraf appears threatened by civil unrest. [source]

Two years ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that if there were to be a radical Islamic coup in Pakistan the United States was prepared to deal with it. It is believed that there are Special Forces on alert in Afghanistan who are ready to move in and secure Pakistan’s warheads.

During my time serving in the U.S. Army, I encountered a group of Army Green Berets while on training maneuvers in Australia. We were on the same side, and they put a little fear into my heart. I didn’t speak to them, and they didn’t give me the slightest notice, but having seen them I can tell you that I would never, ever, want to face them in battle. I have no doubt that our Special Forces can and would get the job done if they were called upon.

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General Welfare Insanity or How We Are Spending Ourselves into Oblivion

By Duane Lester - - 5 Comments

$9,128,000,000,000+.

That is what our national debt sits at as I write this article. I can’t put the actual number because it is increasing so fast it would be wrong within minutes. In fact, the debt is increasing at a rate of one million dollars a minute. That’s about $1.36 billion dollars a day, according to the U.S. National Debt Clock. We are spending money like there is no tomorrow.

And if we don’t stop, there might not be a tomorrow for our republic.

Why are we spending so much money? Our elected leaders have warped the phrase “general welfare” into something it was never meant to mean. Continue reading →

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Weekend Links

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The final weekend of 2007…here’s some links:

And some links just for the fun of it:

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In Pakistan Our Quarrel Is With The People

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Andrew C. McCarthy at the National Review has written an article on Pakistan. I wish I’d written this one.

The real Pakistan is a breeding ground of Islamic holy war where, for about half the population, the only thing more intolerable than Western democracy is the prospect of a faux democracy led by a woman — indeed, a product of feudal Pakistani privilege and secular Western breeding whose father, President Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, had been branded as an enemy of Islam by influential Muslim clerics in the early 1970s.

The real Pakistan is a place where the intelligence services are salted with Islamic fundamentalists: jihadist sympathizers who, during the 1980s, steered hundreds of millions in U.S. aid for the anti-Soviet mujahideen to the most anti-Western Afghan fighters — warlords like Gilbuddin Hekmatyar whose Arab allies included bin Laden and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the stalwarts of today’s global jihad against America.

The real Pakistan is a place where the military, ineffective and half-hearted though it is in combating Islamic terror, is the thin line between today’s boiling pot and what tomorrow is more likely to be a jihadist nuclear power than a Western-style democracy.

I’ve never really understood why we were so “buddy buddy” with Pakistan, and less so with their neighbor India, who is the worlds largest democracy. I suppose part of it could be the whole “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” strategy. Pakistan is more dangerous and unstable than Iran in my opinion. If the government falls into the wrong hands, which isn’t unlikely, we could have a major nuclear problem on our hands.

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