For the first time in Oklahoma history, Republicans will control both houses of the state Legislature when the House and Senate convene in February. This creates a dramatic new opportunity to enact "center-right" policies that never made it past Democrats who controlled the upper chamber for 101 years.

The man in the middle for the two years Republicans shared powers with Senate Democrats is now the man at the top. Oklahoma City Republican Glenn Coffee, President Pro Tempore, outlined reasons he is optimistic, and the particular reason he is concerned progress may be limited.

Concerning lawsuit reform, he told me in a recent interview, "We’ve got to do something about the governor’s position. I am trying to find out if we have a chance of real reform through the legislative process, with the governor’s signature at the end, this year. If that is not achievable, it might be the right time to take a proposal directly to the people. Oklahoma needs tort reform, and we need it now."

The American Tort Reform Association, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization, recently placed Oklahoma on its 2008/2009 "judicial hellholes" watch list. Coffee is not predicting failure: "We are negotiating with the governor. I have a longstanding relationship with him from days we were both in the Legislature.

I respect him. I think on this issue he feels trapped. He gets some trouble, some heat, from the Left even for talking to us. Beyond that, he was simply adamant to exclude certain items from lawsuit reform that are actually terribly important to make it meaningful."

Coffee believes Gov. Brad Henry "knows this is important to the business community, and there’s a certain momentum for it even in the media. But I have a sense he feels caught in the middle and might feel it’s easier to say no than to find a way to say yes."

Elements of lawsuit reform, within reach based on recent sessions, include joint and several liability, restricting the percentage of tort judgments to a discernible percentage of fault. Beyond that, "Class action reform is what the working lawyers indicate is essential. Bringing in federal rules on summary judgment. Caps on non-economic damages, which both the medical and the business community consider fundamental." Coffee also supports "a certificate of merit that would apply to medical and business cases."

As for the "loser pays" concept, Coffee was candid: "I am for it. However, some of the business community argue it’s a sword for the other side but not a shield for our side. It’s certainly something worth talking about. It was not in the version that went to the governor last year, which we thought had a decent chance of getting his signature. So, it might be a bridge too far."

On other policy concerns, Coffee is hopeful about school choice proposals in the Senate, where a bipartisan majority last year backed scholarships to give greater choices to students in poor-performing schools.

"I am hopeful to get some bills through this year," Coffee said. "The scholarship program you’ve written about in the past is one. There is room for further improvements on charter school requirements. And, I believe that the longstanding proposal for deregulation of public school districts is something the governor might sign and even support."
The Senate Republican caucus was still establishing a timetable for key issue consideration at the time of our interview. Asked to rank his personal priorities, Coffee said, "Tort reform is a priority without question. Education reform, to include choice and a better environment for our charter schools. Accountability and openness in government, those are issues that have been important to me all the way through my career. We can do a better job to assure transparency and openness in government."

He continued, "Another priority, frankly, is transportation. The money situation may not allow us to do much in the way of new planning, but I believe it’s really essential to protect the gains we’ve made incrementally in repairing bridges and doing important road work. I believe we can and must move forward on market-oriented reforms to make health care more affordable to more of our working people and all our citizens. Of course, we’ll also be working hard on energy-related questions to do what the state can to assure strong growth in sources of energy and help to our energy sector."

It’s a new year, giving new hope to enact a new agenda for Oklahoma.

Editorial Analysis: Beside figuring out how he’ll weasel out of his recent arrest – and probable conviction – for trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s senate seat to the highest bidder, I wonder if the disgraced governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is contemplating the fates of Lee Harvey Oswald, Alexander Litvinenko, Vince Foster, Jim McDougal and Ron Brown – all of whom were summarily disposed of to keep them from talking.

Oswald, we know, was shot by Jack Ruby, a smalltime Dallas nightclub owner with suspected ties to the Mafia. The death effectively cemented the government’s case against the odd loner, and precluded any of the theories that tied Fidel Castro or the New Orleans mob or other numbers of people to being implicated in JFK’s assassination.

Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian State security service, turned dissident and writer. After he accused his superiors of assassinating the Russian tycoon Boris Berzovsky, he was arrested but eventually fled to England, where he wrote two books antagonistic to the former USSR. In 2006, he died from radioactive polonium-210, suspected of having been administered by the KGB.

The deaths of Foster (chalked up to suicide), McDougal (chalked up to a heart attack) and Brown (chalked up to a plane crash) joined a long list of mysterious deaths – known as the “Clinton body count” – that took place before and during the Clinton administration.

Foster was found dead in Ft. Marcy Park in Virginia on July 20, 1993. There was a curious absence of blood at the scene and the forensic photographs disappeared. Rumor had it that the conscience-stricken Chief White House Counsel was on the verge of testifying against the president over a scandal involving the Children’s Defense Fund.

McDougal was found dead on March 8, 1998, ostensibly of a heart attack, while he was in solitary confinement in an Arkansas jail, having been convicted of 18 felony counts that had to do with bad loans made by the bank he owned, Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan. He and his wife Susan were financial partners with Bill and Hillary Clinton in real estate dealings that led to the Whitewater scandal. During the case, prosecutor Ken Starr asked for a reduced sentence for McDougal because he was cooperating in the investigation.

Brown, a former DNC Chairman and Clinton’s Commerce Secretary, was scheduled to testify in a campaign-finance scandal related to one of his employees, James Huang, who had been a multimillion-dollar fundraiser for the Democrats but was also suspected of funneling money from the Chinese government to the Clinton campaign. In the first week of April, 1996, Brown delayed testifying to travel to Bosnia-Croatia for a trade mission. The plane crashed and all 34 people aboard were killed. Subsequent investigations found a hole in Brown’s head, which appeared to be made by a bullet. But the X-rays were stolen (sound familiar?) and the theory that he was murdered because he planned to testify against President Clinton went nowhere.

The Lesson: Dead Men Don’t Talk!

{mosimage}Is the self-serving, wheeling-dealing Blagojevich now shaking in his boots as he realizes that the same dirty politics he’s been playing for years, with the same thugs and hardball players like convicted felon Tony Rezko, domestic terrorist William Ayers, master manipulator Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and shakedown artist Jesse Jackson – all part of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Chicago Machine – will deal with him in the same draconian ways they’ve dealt with so many others? After all, the Chicago “body count” is formidable in its own right.

Will Blag promise prosecutors that he’ll sing like a canary to save his own hide? Come to think of it, will Rezko?

According to writer Larry Johnson, “Rezko provided the prosecutors information used to build the case against Blagojevich.” Johnson goes on to say: “Barack Obama is not sleeping well tonight… I doubt that David Axelrod is sleeping well either…Axelrod had close ties with Blagojevich. He ran his first campaign for the House. He very well may not see the inside of the White House as a Senior Advisor… Patrick Fitzgerald and the FBI could be sitting on some other tapes/wiretaps that are damaging to Obama. We also do not know what Rezko is saying at this point nor do we know what Blagojevich and Harris will spill…This scandal is not going away.”

If so, is Blag not worrying about a stray bullet or the American version of polonium-210 or a “suicide” notice or untimely “heart attack”? And is Obama not worried that his house of cards will come tumbling down?

WHY BLAG SHOULD BE QUAKING

Prosecutors of the investigation– led by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald – have called Blagojevich’s actions "a political corruption crime spree." Fitzgerald himself called the breadth and depth of charges against the governor “sinister” and “staggering.” FBI taps revealed that Blag planned to sell Obama’s senate seat for campaign cash, cushy jobs for himself and his wife, and perhaps being named a cabinet secretary in the Obama administration. The following is a tiny sample of the 76-page criminal complaint against 52-year-old Blagojevich and his 48-year-old Chief of Staff, John Harris. These are words Blag was caught saying on wiretaps:
·   "I’ve got this thing and it’s fxxking golden," he said about his prerogative of appointing a new senator. ”And I’m just not giving it up for fxxking nothing. I’m not gonna do it."
·   “is there a play here, with these guys, with her” [his wife] to work for a firm in Washington or New York at a significantly better salary than she is making now?
·   Blag wanted to know whether the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) could do something to get his wife a position at Change to Win [seven unions with six million workers] until he, Blagojevich, could take a position there.
Blag discussed the open Senate seat during a two-hour conference call in which various individuals participated….
·   In the call, he mentioned the Senate seat and the dynamics of a new Presidential administration with the strong contacts that he had in it, and asked: “Can [the President-elect] help in the private sector…where it wouldn’t be tied to him?”
·   Said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant believed to be on the call at that time) were telling him that he had to “suck it up” for two years and do nothing and give this “motherfxxxker [the President-elect] his senator. Fxxk him. For nothing? Fxxk him.”
·   After being told by Advisor A that a “President-elect…can do almost anything he sets his mind to,” Blagojevich said that he would appoint “[Senate Candidate 1 [ostensibly Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s first choice, and now his Senior Advisor] . . . but if they feel like they can do this and not fxxking give me anything . . . then I’ll fxxking go to [Senate Candidate 5].” Note: Candidate 5 is now known to be Jesse Jackson, Jr., currently a Representative from Illinois, who represents the southeast suburbs of Chicago].
·   Asked an Advisor(s), on November 11, 2008, whether “they” (believed the President-elect and his associates) could get Warren Buffett and others to put $10, $12, or $15 million into the 501(c)(4) organization. Advisor A responded that “they” should be able to find a way to fund the organization.”
·   Blagojevich and Harris conspired to demand the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members for editorials critical of the governor in exchange for state help with the sale of Wrigley Field, the Chicago Cubs baseball stadium owned by Tribune Co.

Not too subtle. In fact, a prosecutor’s dream! And why was Michelle Obama obliquely named on page 64 of Fitzgerald’s lawsuit against Blagojevitch, as PajamasMeida has reported?

WHY OBAMA MUST BE QUAKING
I haven’t mentioned David Axelrod, the chief strategist for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and recently appointed Senior Advisor to president-elect Obama. He, too, is a longtime operative in the Chicago Machine. But I have mentioned Blagojevich, Rezko, Ayers, Wright, Jackson, and Daley. Who is missing from this picture? C’mon… guess!

Of course, it’s Obama himself, the man who recently dodged a bullet of his own when, last week, the Supreme Court passed on a petition to declare him ineligible for the presidency by virtue of his having failed to produce an authentic, verifiable birth certificate that attests to the fact that he meets one of only three criteria of the U.S. Constitution for the job, namely that he be a natural-born citizen of the United States. Note: Another suit is due to be heard by Justice Scalia on 12.12.08, and several other suits are pending.

What, if any, is the connection between Obama, the convicted felon Rezko, and the soon-to-be-convicted Blagojevich?

On November 23, David Axelrod was asked by a reporter on a Fox affiliate in Chicago if Obama had expressed a preference for his Senate replacement.
"He has not. I know he has talked to the governor,” Axelrod said. ”There’s a whole range of names, many of which have surfaced. And he has a fondness for a lot of them.”

But the minute Blag’s indictment hit the news, Axelrod said he “misspoke.”

Misspoke? In such detail and with such intimate knowledge? As they say in my New York environs: Gimme a break!

James Taranto from the Wall St. Journal wrote: “One of these statements is false, but which one?”
As writer and editor of Newsmax Magazine, David A. Patten, has outlined, the roots of the Blag-Obama-Rezko relationships are long and deep.
·   Obama’s ties to Blag run primarily through Chicago slumlord and felon Tony Rezko.
·   Rezko helped both Blag and Obama rise in Chicago and Illinois politics.
·   Obama himself has credited Rezko with helping to his political career.
·   Rezko raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for both Blag and Obama.
·   Rezko was Obama’s second-largest individual contributor when he began his run for an Illinois state Senate seat in 1995.
·   Rezko was one of Obama’s biggest contributors when he ran for U.S. Senate in 2003 and 2004, and he was a member of Obama’s campaign finance committee.
·   In 2005, as news began to spread that federal authorities were investigating Rezko, Obama bought a house in Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood for $1.65 million. Rezko’s wife, Rita, paid $625,000 for a lot adjacent to Obama’s new home, and the two deals closed on the same day. Seven months later, Rezko’s wife sold one-sixth of her lot to Obama for $104,500.
·   In March 2008, Obama said Rezko had raised up to $250,000 to help underwrite his prior campaigns in Illinois – a much higher figure than had previously been reported.

What what are Rezko;s ties to Blagojevich? Patten reports that:
·   The FBI says between June 2001 and August 2004, Rezko raised over $1.4 million for Blagojevich’s political campaigns, according to the Los Angeles Times.
·   Rezko hosted Blagojevich’s first post-election party at his mansion.
·   Rezko’s June 2008 trial on corruption strongly implicated Blagojevich. Blagojevich allegedly discussed a state job for a donor, after that donor wrote a $25,000 check for his campaign. During the trial, prosecutors maintained that Rezko routinely arranged shakedowns while serving as a top Blagojevich adviser.
In all, prosecutors said, Rezko squeezed various companies for some $7 million in kickbacks. Following his conviction on 16 counts of fraud, money laundering, and aiding and abetting bribery, Rezko said federal authorities tried to pressure him “to tell the wrong things” about Obama and Blagojevich. The Sun-Times reported prosecutors pushed Rezko to cooperate in the corruption probe against Blagojevich.

So now we know why both Blag and Obama should be quaking. The arrested governor and the president-elect have been connected at the hip for decades!

One e-mailer wrote: “Blagojevitch is bloodless, resentful and ruthless – and a loose cannon! He could very well spill a whole lotta beans on both of the Obamas, in exchange for a lighter sentence from Fitzgerald. He’s only out for himself, and if he can shave five years off of a probable 10-year sentence in federal prison by giving up explosive information on the Obama duo, he might just do it.”

And, as David Nason has written in The Australian: “The longer this takes, the more the world will learn about the rotten political culture from which Obama has emerged and the more tainted his January 20 inauguration will be. But whatever short-term discomfort Obama might feel from a shakedown merchant stupid enough to get caught on a wiretap, it’s a walk in the park compared with the dangers ahead. This was clear when Fitzgerald…made pleas yesterday for anyone with information about corruption in Illinois to come forward. Not satisfied with getting the Governor, Fitzgerald intends to use the Blagojevich scandal to peel back whatever other layers of political corruption in Illinois he can find. Right now, the president-elect is clear. At his press conference, Fitzgerald said there was no evidence of misbehavior from Obama…It will all come down to where the concentric circles around Blagojevich and Obama overlap, but if his past record is any guide, this is where Fitzgerald, who already has the scalps of terrorists, Mafia kingpins and the likes of Conrad Black to his name, will be at his most aggressive.”

But one blogger was not so measured: “Barack Obama is now part of a cover up. He needs to be hauled before Congress and made to swear under oath…under the penalty of perjury. These are the same things which got Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton in trouble.”

THE HILLARY FACTOR
“What do the Clintons have on Obama?” asks Obama supporter Camille Paglia. “I must admit to puzzled disappointment with his recycling of Clinton era veterans, who reek of déjà vu. …Obama’s team may have underestimated the labyrinthine personal interconnections and habit-worn loyalties of that cliquish crew…both Clintons constantly view the world through the milky lens of their own self-interest.

“Given Obama’s elaborate deference to the Clintons,” Paglia continues, “beginning with his over-accommodation of them at the Democratic convention in August, a nagging question has floated around the Web: What do the Clintons have on him? No one doubts that the Clinton opposition research team was turning over every rock in its mission to propel Hillary into the White House. There’s an information vacuum here….”

Indeed, it is well known that Hillary is a good friend of Philip Berg, the Pennsylvania attorney who brought the first birth-certificate lawsuit against Obama. Coincidence?

And is it only me who thinks the timing of Blag’s arrest – after a three-year investigation! – is another “coincidence”?

More than one e-mailer has suggested to me that another of Obama’s acolytes, Rahm Emanuel – the Illinois Congressman who succeeded Blagojevich in the House and is now Obama’s Chief of Staff – may have leaked the Blag scandal to the FBI. But why would he do this? At the Clinton White House, he was initially a senior advisor, then Assistant to the President for Political Affairs, and then Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy – all lesser positions than the position he has now.

Why? Because loyalty runs deep. As one blogger put it: “I seem to recall Mr. Emanuel was working for the Clintons a few years ago. I guess it pays to have a Deep Throat in the White House if you are Hillary Clinton just waiting for the phone to ring with the words, `Madam President, are you ready for your close-up now?’"

Could we be witnessing a Clinton coup? Why have Obama’s cabinet and staff choices been overwhelmingly comprised of Clinton-era leftovers? What do the Clintons have on Obama?

If Obama survives the birth-certificate scandal and the Blag scandal, what other December or January Surprises – intended to sabotage his presidency – can we expect? And who will be pulling them out of her hat?

That will be a moot point if Blag blabs

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About the author: Joan Swirsky (www.joanswirsky.com) is a New York based author and journalist who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com.

It is my prayer that the true joy of this season will grow within your life throughout the coming year – whatever your faith may be.  The Tulsa Today staff includes many of different faiths.  This is not a religious publication, but a local news service of diverse views with the common purpose to advance the best interests of our community.  As publisher, I believe faith in God, regardless of what you perceive God to be, is good for the individual soul, every family, and the greater community.

Tulsa Today is comprised of Creative Conservatives (Democrat, Libertarian and Republican), but our critics (the Loony Leftists) attack our effort here and this publisher personally on matters of faith and public policy.  Here is the story of what happened one cold December night a few years ago in Tulsa. 

Local musicians were playing rock solid blues and, with friends, I went to hear them play.  Also present was a producer for the local PBS Radio affiliate KWGS and her friends.  Without my knowledge, the two groups decided we should compete in a game of pool.  I was selected to play for our crowd.  My opponent, I had never met.

Before the rack was finished, the first verbal slam came.
“The problems in the world can all be traced to religion,” the opponent said.
“Why don’t you go ahead and break,” I answered.
“There is no difference between George W. Bush and Islamic Terrorists,” he said as the break propelled balls about the table.
Well this is not what I planned to do this night I thought, but here we go again … another confrontation with a hater.  Usually, someone this deep in anger is just reflecting their own internal conflicts; rebellion against authority, sexual confusion, childhood and/or adult abuse, or other twisted internals.  Blame authority – claim victim-hood, it all gets so boring if not silly.
“Christians did not fly planes into the World Trade Center,” I answered.  “They did not attack the same buildings in ‘93 or bomb the barracks in Lebanon or the USS Cole, or declare war on civilization as we know it.”
“Religion is the bane of the modern world,” the opponent answered.
“Whatever,” I said while sighting the next shot off the bank.
“Religion should be outlawed,” he pushed further obviously growing angry that I was not fully engaged in answering his rage.
An obvious sign of a misspent youth, I bring a decently skilled stick to the game and enjoy playing pool, but this encounter was not fun and I have never been long in suffering fools.
“Religion should be against the law in America,” he declared again.
Ok, that did it.  Standing up straight with direct eye contact I answered, “I don’t know what your issue may be, but you apparently believe that man individually or mankind in general is your God.  That is as strong a faith as any other. 

I can appreciate that position, but I have met many men and women over the years and I choose to place my faith in God rather than the wisdom of men or mankind.  We will not covert each other nor do I desire to make such an effort so either take your next pool shot or we can take this outside, but one way or the other, this conversation is finished.”

He took his shot.  I ran the table and won the game.  The evening went on.

In retrospect, it appears that 2008 is not only the end of unbiased traditional journalism in America, but also the end of the 200-plus year truce between Americans of faith and secularism.  We have lived together and built a marvelous nation, but the foundation of this great country includes acknowledgement of God’s love, grace, and power.  It is obvious in our documents and immortalized on our monuments, but apparently the modern secularists have come to redefine our foundations and blame Americans of faith for the current war by Islamic radicals.  The how and why of that eludes me.

Here is the fact; Islamic radicals are engaged in the current world war to destroy all who believe seriously in other faiths AND in secularism.  Really read the Koran for more detail, but in short, if you believe strongly in any faith other than Islam, the Koran says you are an infidel and should be beheaded – just as Mohammad did to his enemies.  Islam is the only modern faith founded by a murderer that demands that religion and government be the same worldwide and that war (overt or covert) is a proper method to install such government.

Conservatism is not an ideology or specifically supportive of any one particular religion.  It is more a fundamental approach to life that features self-reliance and personal responsibility with disdain for government management of our individual freedoms, privacy and personal profitability.  Conservatives, in my best analysis, want government out of our bodies, minds, marriages, pocketbooks, bedrooms, churches and off the streets if we can figure out how to do that.
Faith should be celebrated.  Faith, with the exception of radical Islam, promotes peace and good-will towards others.  Faith builds stronger families and individual character and provides a common ground for moral and ethical standards that advance the common good.  As a Conservative and, in my case Christian, I enjoy decorations and celebrations during holidays of any and all other faiths.

Yes, the politically correct will be aghast that a Christmas message to readers would include notes on pool games and public policy (which come to think about it, may have more in common than apparent at first glance), but when it gets down to the basics, this message is for the secularists – a prayer for the nonreligious – may you understand that our common liberty in America is not threatened by individual faith – religious or secular.  Our common liberty is threatened by radical Islam – you know, those folks killing our sons and daughters anywhere they can find them overseas or at home.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for each awakening.

Editorial:  The biggest problem facing America’s conservatives isn’t our "progressive" president-elect or the liberal leaders controlling Congress.  It’s defeatism.

Liberal pundits such as the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne were quick to interpret the recent elections as "a definitive end to a conservative era."  A Google search for "death of conservatism" this week produced 57,900 hits.  It’s the new common wisdom.

But should America’s millions of conservatives be despairing? Of course not.  That’s what the Left wants the most.  "It is best to win without fighting," wrote Sun Tzu in "The Art of War."  "The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord."

Yes, the Republican Party (myself included) has let America down. But the roots of conservative principles run deep.  They are alive and well.  They need nourishment, not abandonment.

Solutions will not arise overnight, just as the problems did not.

America changed before its citizens ever voted for "change." Conservative icon Paul Weyrich wrote about that in 1999: First of all, we have assumed that a majority of Americans basically agrees with our point of view.  That has been the premise upon which we have tried to build any number of institutions, and indeed our whole strategy.  The second premise has been that if we could just elect enough conservatives, we could get our people in as congressional leaders and they would fight to implement our agenda.  We got our people elected. But that did not result in the adoption of our agenda. The reason is that politics has failed because of the collapse of the culture.

Weyrich was right.  To surrender traditional values and embrace hedonism is to avoid personal accountability – and responsibility for self is the fulcrum upon which self-governance pivots and an essential part of leveraging its power.

Weyrich linked this to the triumph of political correctness and its stifling influence. He urged people to drop out of the decadence of popular culture.
But that does not require political surrender.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suggested to the Conservative Political Action Conference this spring that the Washington-centric focus is also part of the problem: We should be developing a conservative action plan, at every level of this country, and not simply focused over and over again on arguments about the White House.  In a fundamental way, the conservative movement has to declare itself independent from the Republican Party.

Gingrich made clear he doesn’t mean a third political party, but to end the national confusion that hurts conservatism when it is wrongly equated with Republicanism.

Weyrich and Gingrich, although accurate, left out a critical component of what defined conservatism during its finest moment – optimism.  That spirit was as important to President Ronald Reagan as were his political principles.

Like its grass roots, conservative institutions are ready to rebuild. Surprising cultural victories such as reinforcing traditional marriage in California, Florida and Arizona show there is unexpected strength in the values that are intertwined with conservative principles.

The president of The Heritage Foundation, Dr. Ed Feulner, picked up on that hopefulness this week as he addressed a major meeting of supporters.  "Under the circumstances," he began, "I think it’s appropriate for conservatives to feel unhappy about the outcome of this election.  Very unhappy."

But, Feulner added: It isn’t as though we haven’t been in messes before. Turn your internal clocks back 30 years to the late 1970s.
·  Jimmy Carter was in the White House.
·  The Democrats held 61 seats in the Senate.
·  They controlled 67 percent of the House.
·  Our economy was hobbled by 12 percent inflation and 9 percent unemployment.
·  The top marginal income tax rate was 70 percent.
·  We were under an Arab oil embargo that compelled us to buy gasoline on odd and even days – when gasoline was available, and it often wasn’t.
·  Rather than encourage domestic oil production, our government was penalizing oil companies with windfall-profits taxes.
·  We were ordered to turn our thermostats up in the summer and down in the winter and to wear sweaters.
·  We were at the height of the Cold War.
·  Iran had been holding 52 Americans hostage for more than a year.
·  And yet those very circumstances enabled Ronald Reagan’s election.

Feulner counseled against the defeatism being urged by the left: "They will seize upon any pretext to announce the death of the conservative movement.  They’ve been doing it for decades.  But too many conservatives today are buying into that fallacy.  That is a dangerous mistake, because it will sap your will to fight."
Feulner rallied his supporters with accounts of Heritage’s 10-year "Leadership for America" plan, and an admonition to "Win one for the Gipper."

The attitude needed by conservatives is shown by another from Ronald Reagan’s treasure trove of stories, perhaps his very best one: A boy wakes up on Christmas morning to find a pile of horse manure under the tree.  Excited rather than upset, he grabs a shovel and digs into it.  "With all this manure," the boy says, "there must be a pony in here somewhere."

We still have ponies in America. If we dig in and work, we will find them

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About the author:
Ernest J. Istook Jr. is a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation – and host of the think tank’s satellite radio show "The Heritage Foundation Live" on XM Radio’s "POTUS08" channel. Istook also guest hosts for several national and local talk radio shows, including Bill Bennett’s "Morning in America" program and the Mark Levin Show.  Istook first joined Heritage in 2007 as a Visiting Distinguished Fellow, charged with examining the murky process of appropriations. He became a permanent member of the think tank’s staff later in the year. 

Before coming to Heritage, Istook, the grandson of Hungarian immigrants, represented Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District for 14 years. While on Capitol Hill, Istook served on the House Appropriations Committee where he also chaired several subcommittees, including Treasury, Transportation, and Special Agencies. He also was closely involved with national defense, homeland security, transportation, education, labor, social services, religious liberty issues and many other areas of government.

Prior to serving in Washington , Istook served in the Oklahoma Legislature, as a City Councilman and headed a state agency. In 2006, he was the Republican Party nominee for Governor of Oklahoma.  Before that, he practiced law and was a journalist.  Istook holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Baylor University and law degree from Oklahoma City University . He and his wife, Judy, have five children. Active in the Boy Scouts of America, he spent several years as a Scoutmaster and both his sons are Eagle Scouts.

Edit Note:  First posted November 13, 2008 by www.WorldNetDaily.com, reprinted with permission.

“The sun will come out tomorrow,” Little Orphan Annie sang in “Annie,” the long-running Broadway classic.

Editorial:  Well, on the morning of November 5, the sun wasn’t shining for over 55-million Americans, including me, who voted for a McCain-Palin administration. But the sun was blazing in another way for the historic election of Barack Obama as the first person-of-color to be elected President of the United States.

For those who witnessed, as I did, the violent racial strife of the 1960s, the assassinations of the most ardent advocates of minority civil rights, and also the redemptive messages and effective actions of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican, it is stunning to realize that, not 40 years after blacks were being murdered for aspiring to equality, a person-of-color has been elected to the highest office in the world.

And for those of us lucky enough to have also witnessed men walking on the moon, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the invention of the Internet, President-elect Obama’s election is yet another affirmation of the exceptionalism of America – its limitless opportunities, God-given freedoms, bountiful generosity, and the essential optimism and decency of its citizens.

For nearly two years, our electorate has watched and listened as the candidates presented their versions of the American Dream, explained or rationalized their past and current associations, and defended their stupefying verbal gaffes.

Like other conservatives, the American Dream I prefer is about small government, low taxes, a free-market economy, domestic-energy independence, a judiciary that strictly interprets the Constitution, and value for the life of the unborn. But the American electorate – besieged by a shaky economy and entranced by a charismatic “change” agent who stood for none of these values – strangely opted for a candidate who touts big government, high-taxes, strict curbs on domestic drilling (and the destruction of the coal industry), leftwing Supreme Court justices in the mold of Ginsburg and Stewart, and a remarkable distain for the value of in-utero infants.

It almost makes you believe that the people who voted for Obama have been living in an alternative universe.  After all, under the first six years of President Bush’s stewardship, the economy soared to heights previously unknown, consumer confidence was at an all-time high, unemployment levels were unprecedentedly low, and the affordability of both gas and food was never a topic of conversation. But from the minute Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006, the downward spiral began:
·  Consumer confidence plummeted.
·  The cost of regular gasoline soared.
·  Unemployment escalated by 10%.
·  Households saw $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate through stock and mutual fund losses.
·  Home equity dropped by trillions of dollars and untold numbers of homes are in foreclosure.
·  Food prices skyrocketed over 30% in 1 year.

In spite of this, our electorate selected a man who promises a trillion dollars in new spending and draconian tax hikes on the most productive members of our society. His election inspired plenty of dancing in the street – both here and overseas – but the stock market reacted by taking the greatest plunge in history after a presidential election. It’s going to take a whole lot of “hope” to get us out of this Democrat-created mess!

That said, if the Supreme Court decides that Mr. Obama meets the Constitutional mandate of being a legal citizen of the United States – an issue that has still not been resolved – I wish him good health, as well as wisdom and strength, in the daunting tasks that lie ahead of him.
If The Supreme Court Decides…?

At this point, Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s Clerk informed Philip J. Berg, the lawyer who brought the case against Obama, that his petition for an injunction to stay the November 4th election was denied, but the Clerk also required the defendants to respond to the Writ of Certiorari (which requires the concurrence of four Justices) by December 1. At that time, Mr. Obama must present to the Court an authentic birth certificate, after which Mr. Berg will respond.

If Obama fails to do that, it is sure to inspire the skepticism of the Justices, who are unaccustomed to being defied. They will have to decide what to do about a president-elect who refuses to prove his natural-born citizenship.

“I can see a unanimous Court (en banc) decertifying the election if Obama refuses to produce his birth certificate,” says Raymond S. Kraft, an attorney and writer. “They cannot do otherwise without abandoning all credibility as guardians of the Constitution. Even the most liberal justices, however loathe they may to do this, still consider themselves guardians of the Constitution. The Court is very jealous of its power – even over presidents, even over presidents-elect.”

Also remember that on December 13, the Electoral College meets to casts its votes. If it has been determined that Mr. Obama is an illegal alien and therefore ineligible to become President of the United States, the Electors will be duty-bound to honor the Constitution.

Giving Credit

Mr. Obama’s victory on November 4 has been attributed not only to his own personality and message of “change” and “hope,” but also to a highly efficient ground operation, an uncritical – indeed fawning – leftwing media, and the ability to raise a staggering $650 million (much of it from foreign sources, the names of whom have still not been reported). Also unreported, but a crucial part of his success, has been the heroic work done – historically – by Republicans.

It was a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, who sacrificed everything – including his life – to fight a Civil War that ended slavery.

As documented by Diane Alden for Newsmax.com:
·  During the Civil War, Republicans planned the most significant amendments ever to our Constitution and enacted – despite fierce opposition from the Democrats –  the 13th Amendment to ban slavery, the 14th Amendment to protect all Americans regardless of the color of their skin, and the 15th Amendment to extend voting rights to African-Americans. 

·  "Every man that wanted the privilege of whipping another man to make him work for nothing, and pay him with lashes on his naked back, was a Democrat. Every man that raised bloodhounds to pursue human beings was a Democrat. Every man that cursed Abraham Lincoln because he issued the Emancipation Proclamation was a Democrat," wrote Robert Ingersoll in 1876.

·  For its first 80 years, the Republican Party was the only one to provide a home for African-Americans. Until well into the 20^th century, every African-American member of Congress was a Republican. The same was true for nearly all state legislators and other elected officials.
 
·  In 1888, Republican Senator Aaron Sargent introduced the "Susan B. Anthony" Amendment to the Constitution, according women of all races the right to vote. Strong Democrat opposition to what would become the 19th Amendment delayed ratification until 1920.

But that’s ancient history, you say. Okay, how about the 20^th century?

·  In the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of their votes, while the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes. See here and here.

·  When President John F. Kennedy was a senator from Massachusetts, he could have voted for the 1957 Civil Rights Act pushed by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, but he didn’t. This Act only passed with the help of Republicans. After JFK was elected president, he failed to suggest any new civil rights proposals in 1961 or 1962.

·  In 1963, Kennedy decided to act on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but faced a filibuster by southern Democrats. Republicans favored the bill, which would have failed without their votes.

·  Hubert Humphrey, a member of Congress when Democrats held both houses of Congress, admitted that, “without the leadership and help of Republicans,” legislative efforts “would have been watered down or failed because of obstinate Democrats – i.e., the Dixiecrats.”

·  The fact that Democrats are quick to take credit for the Civil Rights Act and for the civil rights movement itself is both phony and a self-absorbed vanity,” Alden says.

·  The Republican Leader in the Senate, Everett Dirksen (R-IL), wrote the 1960 Civil Rights Act, and was the person most responsible for defeating the Democrat filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  The 1964 Civil Rights Act passed the House of Representatives with 80% Republican support but only 61% of Democrats. 

·  In the Senate, 82% of Republicans supported the bill compared to 69% of Democrats.

·  Similarly, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was supported in Congress by a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats. Democrats vigorously opposed Republican efforts to protect the civil rights of African-Americans, from Reconstruction until well into the 20^th century.  In much of the country, racist Democrats virtually destroyed the Republican Party, which did not become a force in those areas until President Reagan’s message of freedom and equality prevailed in the 1980s. Today, the Republican Party continues its historical commitment to civil rights at home and around the world.

·  In 2004, [America celebrated] the 150^th anniversary of the GOP as well as the 50^th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education – a watershed of the modern-day civil rights movement.  In May 1954, former Republican Governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Earl Warren, appointed Chief Justice by Republican President Eisenhower, wrote this landmark decision declaring that "separate but equal" is inherently unconstitutional. To help enforce this principle, the Eisenhower administration drafted the 1957 Civil Rights Act and guided it to passage over a Democrat filibuster.

The Four S’s

In Why Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican, Frances Rice, Chairman of the National Black Republican Association, tells us that, “in that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S’s: Slavery, Secession, Segregation and now Socialism.”

Rice continues:
·  It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws.

·  The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks.

·  The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860’s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950’s and 1960’s.
 
It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools.
·  Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman’s issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was President Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military.
 
President Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph who was a black Republican.
·  President Kennedy, through his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King.

·  In 1968, after riots broke out in Tennessee where a teenager was killed, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a "trouble-maker" who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

·  Although affirmative action now has been turned by the Democrats into an unfair quota system, affirmative action was begun by Nixon to counter the harm caused to blacks when Democrat President Woodrow Wilson in 1912 kicked all of the blacks out of federal government jobs.

It was Republicans who founded the historically Black Colleges and Universities.
·  Critics of Republican Senator Barry Goldwater who ran for president against Democrat President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, ignore the fact that Goldwater wanted to force the Democrats in the South to stop passing discriminatory laws and thus end the need to continuously enact federal civil rights legislation.
 
President Johnson, in his 4,500-word State of the Union Address delivered on January 4, 1965, mentioned scores of topics for federal action, but only thirty five words were devoted to civil rights. He did not mention one word about voting rights.Then in 1967, showing his anger with Dr. King’s protest against the Viet Nam War, President Johnson referred to Dr. King as "that Nigger preacher."

·  Contrary to the false assertions by Democrats, the racist "Dixiecrats" did not all migrate to the Republican Party. "Dixiecrats" declared that they would rather vote for a "yellow dog" than vote for a Republican because the Republican Party was known as the party for blacks. Today, some of those "Dixiecrats" continue their political careers as Democrats, including Democrat Senator Robert Byrd who is well known for having been a "Kleagle" in the Ku Klux Klan.

·  Republican Senator Strom Thurmond defended blacks against lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes imposed on blacks by Democrats. If Senator Byrd and Senator Thurmond were alive during the Civil War, and Byrd had his way, Thurmond would have been lynched.

“Today,” Rice says, “Democrats, in pursuit of their socialist agenda, are fighting to keep blacks poor, angry and voting for Democrats.” In 2004, they blocked passage of a bill to renew the 1996 welfare reform law that was pushed by Republicans and vetoed twice by President Bill Clinton before he finally signed it. They are opposed to school-choice opportunity scholarships that would help black children get out of failing schools, and they blocked Social Security reform, even though blacks on average lose $10,000 in the current system because of a shorter life expectancy than whites (72.2 years for blacks vs. 77.5 years for whites).
 
“Democrats have been running our inner-cities for the past 30-40 years,” Rice adds, “and blacks are still complaining about the same problems. Over $7 trillion dollars has been spent on poverty programs…with little, if any, impact on poverty.”

These are facts – you know those pesky little things that liberals abhor. But in spite of the Democrats’ historical racism, their abominable record in serving the needs of the black community, and their obvious inability to handle our economy, there’s a new Democrat in town, once again promising the moon.

Will The Sun Come Out Tomorrow?

Mark Alexander, the publisher of www.patriotpost.us, quotes George Washington, who said: "We should never despair. Our situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times."

Alexander, ala FDR, calls the election of Barack Obama “a date which will live in infamy … Liberals have elected a Socialist with deep ties to cultural and ethnocentric radicalism, and his executive and legislative agenda pose a greater threat to American liberty than that of any president in the history of our great republic.

“Obama has twice taken an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same." He has never honored that oath, and, based on his policy proposals and objectives, he has no intention to honor it after again reciting that oath on 20 January 2009. Obama seeks to, in his own words, "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution."

My perspective is not so bleak. We still have an influential conservative media, a growing number of exciting conservative stars on the political horizon, and an electorate that voted in huge numbers for a Republican candidate who was outspent by multimillions, shamefully savaged by a biased media, and distrusted by many of his fellow Party members. We won’t make that mistake again! And we won’t make the mistake of not reminding the electorate just how contributory we Republicans have been in fighting the Democrats to bring about true racial justice in our country.

Until and unless the socialists among us take away our rights, my country will always be America the Beautiful to me.

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About the author:
Joan Swirsky (http://www.joanswirsky.com/) is a New York-based journalist and author who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com.