Imagine you are sitting in your college class, just eight days after the Northern Illinois University shooting, when the following happens:

An armed man who burst into a classroom at Elizabeth City State University was role-playing in an emergency response drill, but neither the students nor assistant professor Jingbin Wang knew that.“I was prepared to die at that moment,” Wang said Tuesday.

I would think so. It would be terrifying. Now consider this: The man was a campus security officer, and the drill was planned by the university, but they didn’t tell the class or the class’s teacher about it.

The Friday drill, in which a mock gunman threatened panicked students in the American foreign policy class with death, prompted university officials to apologize this week to Wang and offer counseling to faculty and students.

Anthony Brown, vice chancellor for student affairs, said the university was testing its response to shootings of the sort that have shaken campuses around the country. “The intent was not to frighten them but to test our system and also to test the response of the security that was on campus and the people that were notified,” Brown said.

Good job running drills on this kind of thing, but come on. How could you not inform the class and the teacher? That seems like something that is kind of hard to forget.

It sounds like a good drill.

The intruder instructed Wang to close the door and then ordered the seven students to line up along the wall. Wang said the man told them that he had been kicked out of school and that he needed a lung transplant.

At one point, Wang said, the man threatened to kill the student who had the lowest grade point average. Wang offered to let him sit in his class, he said, but the man rejected attempts at negotiation.

Wang said some students thought the gun was fake, but they were not sure. “I was the guy who was feeling the gun on my back,” he said.

After about 10 minutes, the class heard people talking outside the door, and campus police rushed in and subdued the man.

But Wang said, “Even after this was over, nobody explained it.” Nobody explained it to the other classes either. Students in other classes barricaded themselves in classrooms and were ready to jump out of windows to get away. Some were texting their parents.

How do you set something like this up and not tell those involved that it is going to happen?

Today we’re going to start a new series of posts titled “American History”. This will be an occasional and long-running series highlighting a moment of the history of our great nation.

The first installment is the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981. The clip is from NBC News coverage of the event, and is 52 minutes long.

I welcome comments about the video, Ronald Reagan, and this series.

Conservative writer and commentator William F. Buckley has died at age 82, the New York Times reported on its Web site Wednesday. Buckley founded the political magazine National Review.

He is credited with fusing traditional conservatism with libertarianism, the basis for political beliefs such as those held by President Ronald Reagan.

He was a great man whose intellect will be sorely missed, particularly in the political realm.

Rest in peace, William F. Buckley.

Here’s a little clip of a 1958 educational film about global warming titled, “The Unchained Goddess”.

Produced by Frank Capra for the Bell Telephone Company and featuring the voice talents of none other than Mel “Bugs Bunny” Blanc, this informative yet witty film, clearly aimed at audiences averaging age 14, succinctly explains how global warming could lead to a rise in sea levels that could put Miami under 150 feet of water.

It’s been 50 years since this movie came out, and we’ve been pumping carbon dioxide into the air nonstop since then. I haven’t been to Miami lately, but does anybody know if it’s under 150 feet of water at all?

Hat Tip: Don Willmott

As I have noted time and again on the podcast during the “Field Guide’s” Chapter on gun defense and the Second Amendment, guns are the great equalizer. Guns save a lot of lives each year, and are used far more often to defend than to attack.

John Stossel notes the same in today’s article:

The press ignores the fact that often guns save lives.

It’s what happened in 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law. Hearing shots, two students went to their cars, got their guns and restrained the shooter until police arrested him.

Likewise, law professor Glenn Reynolds writes, “Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school’s vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene. In (last) February’s Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun”.

It’s impossible to know exactly how often guns stop criminals. Would-be victims don’t usually report crimes that don’t happen. But people use guns in self-defense every day. The Cato Institute’s Tom Palmer says just showing his gun to muggers once saved his life.

“It equalizes unequals,” Palmer told “20/20″. “If someone gets into your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone? You can call the police if you want, and they’ll get there, and they’ll take a picture of your dead body. But they can’t get there in time to save your life. The first line of defense is you.”

This little kid’s spirit and progress is inspiring:

Youssif happily pulls off his plastic face mask and pats his cheeks, which were once covered by horrific burns.

“No hurt,” the 5-year-old Iraqi boy says in English. “No hurt.”

He then shows off his right hand. It too had been marred by hardened scar tissue after he was attacked by masked men outside his central Baghdad home January 15, 2007. Now, his hand is smooth.

Youssif flashes a proud grin.

A few moments later, he darts off and comes back toting his kindergarten portfolio. In less than a month of schooling, he’s now writing the alphabet in upper- and lowercase.

I have written about Youssif’s story here and about his progress here. I am very happy he is doing so much better. May be time for another donation.

Hillary Clinton says her plan to socialize health care is “the most aggressive plan to lower health-care costs.” Barack’s plan “emphasizes lowering costs.”

Neither of these candidates will deliver on their promises. They underestimate the cost of what they are proposing.

Wisconsin wanted to try universal health care, but stopped when they realized how much it would cost the state. Their version of socialized medicine would have cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than they collected in all taxes.

Pennsylvania’s governor Ed Rendell ran as a health care reformer, promising to create a plan to insure Pennsylvania’s uninsured. But once in office, Gov. Rendell “concluded that such a move would be unaffordable, and perhaps politically unattainable, without serious efforts to control costs.”

California’s Congress rejected Gov. Schwarzenegger’s “universal” health-care plan out of concerns of its high costs.

Massachusetts is one state that has socialized medicine. It is re-learning a hard lesson:

The subsidized insurance program at the heart of the state’s health care initiative is expected to roughly double in size and expense over the next three years – an unexpected level of growth that could cost state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars or force the state to scale back its ambitions.

State projections obtained by the Globe show the program reaching 342,000 people and $1.35 billion in annual expenses by June 2011. Those figures would far outstrip the original plans for the Commonwealth Care program, largely because state officials underestimated the number of uninsured residents.

Another article says the cost of the health insurance mandate in Massachusetts will rise 85% in 2009. Why? “…the cost increase is largely due to an increase in the number of people signing up for state-subsidized health insurance.”

In typical political form, the current Democratic administration of Massachusetts first blames the previous administration, then says more money is the answer:

In a statement, however, the governor’s spokesman, Joseph Landolfi, said, “It is clear that paying for health care reform will pose a much greater fiscal challenge than was anticipated by the previous administration. We are committed to making health reform a success by aggressively pursuing cost savings and efficiencies in the health care system, as well as working with legislative leaders to review options for additional state revenues so that we can continue to afford this important initiative.”

The key part of that statement is “aggressively pursuing cost savings and efficiencies in the health care system.” This is where your health care turns from what is best for you, to what is best for everyone. This is where the bottom line takes precedence over your well-being. It’s already happening in countries with socialized health care.

Arlene Meeks was on vacation in California when her appendix burst. She was hospitalized and underwent surgery, but when she was ready to go back to Canada, there were no beds in British Columbia for her. The Ministry of Health spokeswoman Marisa Adair claims the reason is threefold:

“It’s the three factors all in one — the fact it was a specialized type of bed that she needed, the fact it was over the Christmas holidays which does tend to be a busy time and then some staff generally around Christmas take breaks,” said Adair.

Certainly is doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that “Lower Mainland hospitals are currently under capacity by approximately 550 beds.” They have a shortage of beds because the government reduced the number by over a thousand beds to cut costs:

NDP Health Critic Adrian Dix says the issue is one that’s continued to plague the Lower Mainland and he’s blaming Liberal government cuts to acute care beds. “The number of acute care beds in British Columbia was reduced by 1,300 in the first mandate of the government, and some of the new facilities being opened won’t be adding to that number.”

A bed was finally found for Arlene, but the ordeal was frustrating for the Canadian.

In Great Britain, there are even more troubling ways of saving money. Colette Mills has been sentenced to death by the budget. She was battling breast cancer when she turned to the National Health Service for Avastin, a drug that when combined with the meds she was taking, was “likely to keep the disease under control for twice as long.”

She was refused the drug by the government and offered to pay for it out of her own pocket. The government then told her that if “they purchased the drug, the mother-of-two would have to pay for all her future NHS care – to the tune of £15,000 a month.”

The NHS is treating Debbie Hirst in the same manner. The NHS refuses to supply a drug which could extend their lives because it just isn’t cost effective. While they both could afford to buy the drug, the government made the decision cost prohibitive to them. The reason for doing so is disgusting:

The Department of Health in Britain argues that individual payments for supplemental treatment can’t be permitted alongside the one-size-fits-all system because that would “undermine” the “fundamental principle of the NHS, now supported by all the main political parties, that treatment should be free at the point of need.”

In the case of Colette Mills, that means “free” but unavailable — “free at the point of need,” but disallowed by the central planners.

Also playing a role in making Avastin unavailable to Mills was the ideology of egalitarianism, the idea that all inequalities are inherently malicious and immoral. As Templeton explains: “The government claims that to allow some patients to pay for additional drugs on top of their NHS treatment creates a two-tier system between those who can and cannot afford them.” In other words, better dead than unequal.

While the British government refuses to pay for a drug they deem to be too expensive, they refuse to allow their citizens to save their own lives because of it wouldn’t be fair to others. It is, however, fair in their eyes to let these women die in order to save money and “the founding principles of the NHS.”

There are other ways of saving money when the budget gets tight.

A recent letter reported on by The Times details instructions given to a group of London hospitals. They were told to postpone surgeries as long as possible “in order to cut the trust’s debt“:

In the leaked letter, Ken Walton, chairman of the trust’s professional executive committee, tells GPs: “This means patients sent for outpatient appointments will only be seen at 10-13 weeks (national target 13 weeks) and elective surgery will be delayed until the sixth month (national target six months).”

It means that the maximum wait of six months promised by the Department of Health will become the minimum. However, the delays will enable the trust to postpone paying for operations, saving it money this financial year.

…

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said: “The Government denies deficits are affecting patient care, yet as a direct result of deficits, patients are being pushed to the limit of targets. Delaying treatment will not solve the deficit problem.”

Other hospitals there are simply removing patients from the waiting lists.

One patient waiting for a hernia operation in Oxford, Patricia Lloyd, was told she could go private or wait until her hernia got worse and justified emergency admission. Thames Valley Strategic Health Authority is £34 million in debt.

In Fulham, southwest London, the local PCT believes that it can save £695,000 by canceling referrals made by one consultant to another. Again the Department of Health declined to comment. “These issues are local and have nothing to do with central decision-making” a spokeswoman said.

Millions of other patients under the dominion of the NHS could be denied treatments because they are too fat or because they smoke. Former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said the ban on certain procedures based on this criteria was “perfectly legitimate.”

Dr. Peter Bradley of the Suffolk Primary Care Trust said, “We have limited resources and it’s sensible to use money where we know treatment is going to work.”

It’s sensible to deny treatment to people, even though they have paid their taxes into this system which is designed to provide treatment. Did I mention that that Dr. Bradley’s hospital is £ 31 million in debt. In order to save money, they deny care.

But being denied care is not the worst of it. It is suspected that elderly patients are being subjected to “an unspoken policy of ‘involuntary euthanasia.” It is thought they are being left to starve to death in order “to relieve pressure on the National Health Service.”

As the state of Massachusetts has shown, along with Great Britain and Canada, socialized health care generally runs a higher cost than is initially expected. In order to meet the financial goals, the quality of care offered to the patient is compromised. If either Democrat candidate wins the 2008 election and enacts a universal health care program in America, there is no reason to doubt that we’ll face similar results here. The cost of free health care is expensive not only in monetary terms, but also in the cost of lives.

How the Hell does this make any sense:

Felony charges against a Pleasant Dale man accused of killing his 10-month-old daughter and dumping her body have been withdrawn in favor of a misdemeanor.

Seward County District Court Judge Alan Gless has thrown out charges of child abuse and death of a child against 23-year-old Lucas Peterson. They were replaced with a lesser charge for concealing the death.

As a result, Peterson faces up to a year in prison rather than a life sentence.

His sentence was reduced because after killing the baby, concealing the murder, burying the child in a shallow grave and lying to the police, he then acted like a stand up guy and took the authorities to the body.

Pardon me, this is an OUTRAGE! You don’t kill babies. You just don’t do it. I think it is even in the Bible. “Better a millstone” and all that stuff.

A year in prison for killing a 10 month old baby. Maybe he won’t make it out.

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All American Original

• Socialized Health Care is A “Moral Imperative” Founded on Immorality

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• Canada-U.S. pact allows cross-border military activity
• Don’t be quick to count out a Clinton

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As Democratic followers of Obama tell stories of how they “came to Obama,” and Barack himself insinuates that he is the messiah, Jesus come again, he now has another set of beliefs to draw from: that of the Nation of Islam, promoter of black empowerment and nationalism. Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan has given Obama an “unofficial” ringing endorsement. He goes so far as to compare him to Muhammad:

“A black man with a white mother became a savior to us,” he told the crowd of mostly followers. “A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall.”

To be fair, Obama’s spokesperson has stated that “Sen. Obama has been clear in his objections to Minister Farrakhan’s past pronouncements and has not solicited the minister’s support.” The past remarks he refers to would include “calling Judaism a “gutter religion” and suggesting crack cocaine might have been a CIA plot to enslave blacks.”

On the other hand, according to Investor’s Business Daily, Obama’s church also espouses nationalism.

In short, Obama’s “unashamedly black” church preaches the politics of black nationalism. And its dashiki-wearing preacher — who married Obama and his wife and now acts as his personal spiritual adviser — is militantly Afrocentric. “We are an African people,” the Rev. Jeremiah Wright reminds his flock, “and remain true to our native land, the mother continent.”

In fact, Wright has a connection to Farrakhan himself.

Wright once traveled to Libya with black supremacist Louis Farrakhan to meet with terrorist leader Muammar Qaddafi. Last year at a Chicago gala, Wright honored his old pal Farrakhan, who’s fond of calling whites “blue-eyed devils,” for lifetime achievement.

Sorry, Louis, I’m afraid Barack isn’t quite the “hope of the entire world” that you proclaim him to be; I know I’m not alone in thinking he’s a bit- off. In fact, I find him downright creepy.

Hillary Clinton has appealed to the SCOTUS to ask that several of Obama’s states be awarded to her and that she be guaranteed a minimum number of future state delegates in order to fulfill the quotas of states won by women. There is a rumor that she may have included language that indicates she may also be attempting to qualify as a minority as a white women in NY.

According to Clinton Strategist Mark Penn, It seems that she believes that if we include the number of illegals in New York state she should qualify as a minority and should therefore qualify for additional benefits and guarantees of both equal time and an increase to her baseline of votes. This is how affirmative action may come to our elections.

The Obama camp fired back that they were now expecting to get a larger bump themselves as this would then qualify Obama as a member of both the Black minority (no longer even the majority minority) and also a member of the white minority in the Chicago area. A spokesperson for the Obama camp said that there were internal deliberations on whether they should file a separate suit or try to include themselves in Hillary’s case.

Chief Justice Roberts has not provided any indication on whether or not the court will consider the case. There is some discussion that if they courts will not hear arguments, Hillary may take her case directly to the House and Senate in an effort to change the law. President Bush has already said he will veto any bill dealing with assigning delegates based on anything other than the will of the people.

I was driving to work yesterday morning and Fox News was on the XM. I think “The Cost of Freedom” was on when I heard Ben Stein say that universal health care was a “moral imperative.” At first, I thought he was joking, but then he went off on some class warfare rant about the rich and waiting lists for Bentleys and country clubs. I was stunned.

I don’t hear a lot from Ben Stein, but I have always heard he was more right than left. But when you combine this comment with his financial support of Al Franken’s campaign, it makes me wonder.

Let’s break down what Ben is advocating here. It sounds really good when he says that government provided health care is “a moral imperative” because the rich are rich enough and can spare another 5 percent (he actually said that). But here is what is going on in reality. It isn’t just the rich carrying a tax burden.

I go to work. I work 12 hours and I go home. For the work I contribute, I get money based on the number of hours I work and the amount I am paid per hour. That is my property. I earned it. But the government then comes in and takes a chunk of it, by force, before I ever touch it.

Let that sink in for a minute. The United States government comes into my life and takes my property without my consent. I do not turn my property over to the government willfully. They take it, by force of a gun.

When I tell that to people, generally they scoff. Then I ask them what happens if I don’t pay my taxes. I go to jail. What if I don’t want to go to jail? They make me. How? A guy with a gun shows up and takes me to jail.

Simple, I know, but that is how it breaks down.

Last year, they took everything I earned from January 1st to April 30th. That was Tax Freedom Day in 2007. After that, I actually got to keep what I earned.

The property of mine that was seized by the government was then combined with everyone else’s property, and divvied out to the various government departments. The budget that President Bush just submitted was $3,100,000,000,000 (that’s $3.1 trillion). That is a lot of property seized from the American people. Ben thinks it is “a moral imperative” that more be taken and redistributed to those who “need” it.

I know what you are thinking: The Congress is allowed to levy taxes, right? Right, it is, but I would argue that the taxes are to fund activities of the government and the only Constitutional role of the federal government is to protect the rights of its citizens from domestic threats and foreign invasion. As Paul A. Cleveland noted way back in 1994, when government-run health care was an issue:

Its primary role with respect to the economy is to punish people who use force and deceit for their own gain. History is testimony to the extent to which some individuals will inflict pain and hardship on others in order to obtain what they desire. Thus government’s primary role as an institution is to thwart this behavior by punishing the perpetrators of injustice. To that end, government uses force. Citizens are required to pay taxes to support the police function of government since society benefits from the ensuing order and peace which allow for civil relations among people.

Regrettably, this same force can be put to illegitimate ends. This occurs when the government begins to play favorites among the citizens by extending benefits to some while confiscating property or curbing the rights of others. The most obvious contemporary cases revolve around the many welfare programs established by the government. Benefits are extended to some by taxing away income from others. The costs of such benefits always exceed the costs of purchasing the benefits directly because of the bureaucratic overhead needed to administer the programs. Current health-care reform plans follow the same approach.

He is as right today as he was 14 years ago. There is no morality in taking from one to give to another.

National health-care insurance, or its mandated provision, is unjust. It is nothing more than a forced charity, which is no charity at all. In this vein we might flatter ourselves into believing that we are doing good works, but it simply is not true. True mercy is extended as a matter of voluntary choice. It is not forced. Government mandates which require some to provide for others is false philanthropy. It is fundamentally selfishness unleashed and it will thwart future prosperity. If health insurance is extended the quality of medical care will decline. The end result will be exactly the opposite of what such schemes purport to offer. Instead of provision and prosperity, pain and hardship will follow.

Instead of giving me the opportunity to honestly contribute to a charity that provides free health care, Ben would have my property taken by force for a program that will be far less efficient and cause more harm than good.

Ben’s “moral imperative” is immoral at its foundation. To take the property of one and give it to another by force is nothing less than theft, which is an immoral act. How can a “moral imperative” be moral if it is funded by immorality?

It can’t.

It’s that time of year – it’s tax time! At least that’s what the evening news tells me. Actually, paying taxes is a pretty constant event in this country. People most often think of paying taxes as the money the government takes out of your paycheck. While that is certainly the single biggest collective lump for most of us, it doesn’t even begin to cover all taxes that you pay throughout a typical year. Here’s a partial list showing just some of the ways the government takes money from us.

• Cigarette Tax
• Corporate Income Tax (passed on to the consumer)
• Dog License Tax
• Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
• Fishing License Tax
• Food License Tax
• Gasoline Tax
• Hunting License Tax
• Inheritance Tax Interest expense (tax on the money)
• Inventory tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
• Liquor Tax
• Local Income Tax
• Marriage License Tax
• Property Tax
• Retail Sales Taxes
• Recreational Vehicle Tax
• Road Toll Booth Taxes
• State Income Tax
• Telephone federal excise tax, universal service fee, local and state surcharges, minimum usage surcharge, usage charge tax.
• Toll Roads, Bridges, and Tunnels
• Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)
• Utility Taxes
• Vehicle License Registration
• Vehicle Sales Tax
• Well Permit Tax

Yes, you read that last one right. You have to pay the government to dig a hole on your own land. And you’d better have a permit for that septic tank as well. Remember, every time you make a doody, the government has it’s finger in it.

Tolls, Permits, Licenses, Fines, Surcharges… these are all little taxes that we all pay every day. I call them tollgate taxes because you have to pay them to make it through life. When you add it all up, you might be surprised at just how much of your money the government takes from you.

Item	Rate	Notes
Federal personal income tax	17%	Top 25% rate. It ranges from a credit up to well over 40%. Source
State & local income taxes	10.1%	State taxes range from under 6% to over 12%. Local taxes run from zero to 2.75%. Source,  source,  source
Sales tax	8.6%	Figure is the average rate. State sales taxes range up to 7% and local taxes run from zero to over 5%. Source,  source,  source
Social security & Medicaid	7.65%	Total rate is actually 15.3% since half is paid by the employer, but we’re ignoring that to be kind. Source, box 1
Federal corporate income tax share	3%	Based on corporate taxes being approximately 1/6 of personal taxes, and that they are paid by individuals in the final analysis. Source
Property tax	2.5%	Yearly average actual costs range from under $200 in Alaska to almost $1900 in New Jersey. Source
Fuel/gasoline tax	.5%	Approximately 23% of the 2005 gasoline price is for federal & state taxes. The federal excise tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. Per the CPI, about 6% of the average budget is for transportation. Estimated. Source
Other	5%	Includes estate tax, fees, licenses, inflation losses, inheritance, deficit allowance, gift, and others too numerous to mention. Estimated.

The Government Even Has A Tax For Illegal Drugs

Total tax percentage paid by the above average US citizen in 2005 is estimated at about 54% when you figure in all the miscellaneous taxes and fees.

Almost all the money that Americans pay in Income Tax goes to pay interest on the money that government borrows from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve isn’t part of the government either. Think of it as the worlds largest credit card company and the United States is the worlds stupidest teenager with no credit limit running wild in a shopping mall.

Doesn’t it make you feel all warm inside just thinking about the four months of the year the average taxpayer works just to keep Uncle Sam from pointing a gun at you. I know it fills me with a few emotions.

Now get back to work you wage slaves! Congress needs another pay raise.

Here’s a John Stossel report from 20/20 talking about how gun control does not reduce crime, but actually increases crime. It’s from last May, but it’s a great piece and the facts haven’t changed one bit.

“The first line of defense, is you.”