A Clash of Integrities: Moral and Religious Liberty in the Armed Forces

Heritage  "The repeal of the 1993 law prohibiting open homosexuality in the military poses significant risk for military service members and chaplains who, as matters of religious or moral conviction, hold to traditional values regarding marriage and sexual behavior. The report of the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Review Working Group and the steps taken to date to implement the repeal do not allay concerns that the religious liberty and free speech rights of these service members and chaplains will be compromised to the detriment of their military careers."

MSNBC  er, WAIT! What?

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Time for Cautious Judgment  "Current law is clear: Under the federal Defense of Marriage Act, marriage is solely the union of a man and a woman, and that applies fully to the armed forces. Certainly, the Obama Administration’s increasingly shameless attempts in federal court to undermine the Defense of Marriage Act and the current law on open service by homosexual persons inspires no confidence in the intentions of this report’s framers."

More here.  Many find it disgusting that a political party with a base that hates the military ("loathes", I believe, was the word Bill Clinton used.) would use it to show off before their antiwar supporters. The Democrat Party has many in it who would dismantle our military, yet they are the ones who now direct our military and set it's policies. Sickening.

Senate and President Obama to Blame for Partial Government Shutdown

Heritage  "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will get special blame, primarily because he has not allowed a full and fair debate on H.R. 1, the long-term spending measure that that would cut $61 billion from the budget for the remainder of this fiscal year. That bill also prevents the funding of elements of ObamaCare, Planned Parenthood and EPA Global Warming regulations.

"The President earned a percentage of the blame for his pledge to veto a House passed short-term one week funding measure, further increasing the likelihood of a federal government shutdown. If one studies the legislative history of the battle over funding the discretionary functions of the government for the remainder of the year, the blame clearly shifts to the United States Senate and the President."

Commander-in-Chief Turns His Back on America’s Military

Heritage  "The American military is engaged in multiple conflicts and humanitarian missions around the world, yet President Obama promised to veto legislation funding the troops for the remainder of 2011. This is a reprehensible political stunt, and it comes at the expense of our servicemen and women and the families they support."

MSNBC's Brewer Denounces GOP Bill to Fund Military Paychecks  She asks Rep Linda Sanchez (D-Ca), "How frustrated are you that members of the House, your colleagues – maybe across the aisle but colleagues nevertheless – are willing to see our military people forgo paychecks because they want to see the EPA hurt or they want to see Planned Parenthood hurt?" Who leaps at this personal invitation disguised as news...

A Chronicle Of Obama’s Failures

Big Peace  "As the Presidential campaign season begins, it is important to reflect on President Obama accomplishments after his first two years. Rather than rehash all his achievements and failures, a simple chart can be more effective in telling the story."

Posted by Sean Hazlett Apr 8th 2011 at 11:54 am in Economy, Energy, Foreign Policy, Obama
Comments (7)

After Ryan’s leap, a rush of deficit demagoguery

Charles Krauthammer  "Ryan’s overall plan tilts at every windmill imaginable, including corporate welfare and agricultural subsidies. The only thing left out is Social Security. Which proves only that Ryan is not completely suicidal.
"But the blueprint is brave and profoundly forward-looking. It seeks nothing less than to adapt the currently unsustainable welfare state to the demographic realities of the 21st century. Will it survive the inevitable barrage of mindless, election-driven, 30-second attack ads (see above)? Alternate question: Does Obama have half of Ryan’s courage?
"I think not (on both counts). But let’s hope so."

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/ericallie

Music of the American Civil War

Lincoln and Liberty - 1860 Campaign Song  From the Ken Burns documentary extra, "Songs of the Civil War".

American Civil War Music "Tinny electronic music, but if you want to know how each tune sounded, this is pretty extensive."

The Civil War Music Store.  "The top half is just ordering information. Scroll down and you will find sound bites of Union and Confederate songs."

Band Music from the Civil War Era and beyond.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwmhtml/cwmpres07.html

Law & Order & conservatives

I just surfed past "Law and Order, SVU" last evening and heard only the words "conservative bigot" spoken by Richard Belzer in the role of Munch. So I searched the words "conservative bigot law and order". Links included here are some of what came up.

Law [and] Order: Conservative Victims Unit  "This isn't the first time Law [and] Order writers have fantasized about murdering outspoken conservatives.  Last October, The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck was left shaken when an episode of Law [and] Order: SVU featured a character that was raped twice and then murdered by a serial killer.  The victim's name was Elizabeth Hassenbeck."

 Rush Limbaugh Called a Drug Addict in NBC's New Legal Drama 'Harry's Law' "As the show's star Kathy Bates argued for the legalization of drugs while her client was being cross-examined by a totally hapless district attorney, she claimed the idea was first raised by Republicans, "When the party had thinkers, before it was hijacked by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, a drug addict himself" "

Ramirez on the Obama Energy Policy

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/michaelramirez

Hamas moving toward war with Israel

Yid With Lid  "Why, then, is Hamas provoking a new war? Part of the answer, of course, is ideology.

Hamas believes that the deity is on its side, that victory is inevitable, and that martyrdom is a substitute for good military strategy and strength. Hamas is also indifferent to casualties, material damage, and the suffering of its own people. Its goal is total victory, Israel’s destruction, and the mass murder of Israeli Jews.

"But none of that is new. What is new is a shift in the strategic situation..." Barry Rubin

The Dry Bones Blog

Kingdom of Lies

Victor Davis Hanson "As far as Hollywood, goes, as I have said, I do not go to the cinema at all. The choices are meager. We can watch a George Clooney, Matt Damon, or Ben Affleck — multimillionaires all of mediocre talent — uncover some corporate or CIA conspiracy that threatens the environment (their employers and distributors are not corporate?)...."

 "I think I also understand that the support for 11 million illegal aliens arriving here from Mexico without English, legality, or education is not fueled by tribal and ethnic chauvinism. I know that to suggest that extending immigration consideration to a new cadre of 11 million Koreans, Chinese, Africans, and Europeans with graduate degrees and capital would be racist to the core. ....I have seen those demonstrating for amnesty deprecate the US and its flag while championing Mexico, and I think I am supposed to understand that screaming at the country you wish to stay in, while singing praises for the country you do not makes perfect non-sense, in Humpty-Dumpty word fashion."

Diversity Lane

Slopping Up the Obamamedia Drool

Nealz Nuze  "It’s hard, though, to even find the most mindless of progs who will say that Barack Obama is the paragon of fiscal responsibility. Until you trip across a Time Magazine senior correspondent named Michael Grunwald in some dark irrational wasteland. NewsBusters has this gem from Grunwald: "[Obama]'s been a paragon of fiscal responsibility compared with Bush, but he's still blamed for the megadeficits primarily created by Bush's tax cuts and the Great Recession.""

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/glennmccoy

Boortz cites this Wall Street Journal article by Karl Rove: Obama Versus Bush on Spending "In going after Mr. Bush's fiscal record, Mr. Axelrod unwittingly revealed why Democrats are losing. Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats have made a mess of the nation's finances and are desperate to pin the blame on someone else. It's not likely to work."

Famous Lincoln Quotes

Abraham Lincoln  At first Lincoln and America were reluctant emancipators, but slavery soon imposed it's own purposes on both our president and on this nation. America was largely indisposed to respect the humanity of the African-Americans here and paid for that sin with death and destruction. Our obtuseness was made manifest in the Jim Crow laws and attitudes of a century later.

A greatly fallen human race is rarely as honorable as the principles which it espouses and even Abrahan Lincoln had growing to do in that regard. His words reflect his growth as the Great Emancipator.

• "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." (House Divided Speech, June 16, 1858)
• They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up." (Speaking of Southerners, Springfield, Illinois in October, 1854)
• "When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government - that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith tells me that 'all men are created equal' and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another." (Springfield, Illinois, October, 1854)
• "I want every man to have the chance - and I believe a black man is entitled to it - in which he can better his condition, when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him. That is the true system." (Speech at New Haven, March 6, 1860)

 Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address pointed a grieving nation to the mystery of divine providence.

"He invoked a fiery biblical quotation: "Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!" (Matthew 18:7). Lincoln used Scripture this time as an indictment of slavery and a formal charge against the American people...."

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." Emphasis added. 

NPS: Antietam battlefield

"By saying American slavery, he asserted that North and South must together own the offense. Lincoln understood that the people of the South would never be able to take their full places in the Union if they alone were saddled with the guilt for what Lincoln asserted was the national offense of slavery"