What the FARC?

Once again, Nancy Pelosi is colluding with terrorists — and almost botched the recent Colombian hostage rescue to boot. Gateway Pundit has the angering details.

Previously Related: Out Of Line

The Basis For Our Pursuit of Happiness

232 years ago today, 56 men laid their lives on the line in a stand against tyranny and a quest for liberty.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

————————

The 56 signatures on the Declaration:

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock

Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

What Would Hugo Do?

“Liberation Theology” rears its ugly head in Hugoland:

Founders of the newly created Reformist Catholic Church of Venezuela, based in the western city of Ciudad Ojeda, say that supporting Chavez’s socialist ideals goes hand-in-hand with Christian aims of helping the poor.

“We don’t side with any political banner, but we cannot fail to recognize and support the socialist achievements of this government,” Enrique Albornoz, a former Lutheran minister who helped start the church, said in a telephone interview on Monday. “We back the social programs of this revolutionary government.”

A group of dissident Catholic priests, Lutherans, and Anglicans quietly formed the church several years ago, but its first three bishops were sworn in last weekend, Albornoz said.

Chavez’ hand is in this. First the establishment of a state religion, soon to be followed by the end of religious freedom for Venezuelans. Mark my words.

Harry Reid Makes Me Sick

No, you damned, dirty environmentalist idolator! It’s YOU that’s making this country sick.

Your partner in crime Nancy Pelosi is making families and independent truckers sick.

Your masters representing the Watermelon Brigade is making our economy sick.

Spare us the global warming bull. It’s SOCIALISM that’s ruining our country AND ruining our world.

We’ve got to stop voting for you and your ilk — which will be a giant step in healing our economy and healing our land.

Nevadans, do your duty in 2010 and send Harry “Krishna” Reid back to his commune in Searchlight, NV for good!

(link via Jim Rose)

DCT On The Road

I’m off to San Diego for some R&R with relatives. Blogging will be light this week.

Where Don Gilberg Stands

For once, I can finally agree on something printed in the Las Vegas Sun.

Loyal Sun readers know that [publisher Brian Greenspun] believes we should all pay our fair share of taxes to support the work of our government. Brian is half-right. What we really need is to hold our elected officials accountable for the money they waste, the pork they dole, and the obligation most politicians soon forget that they owe to the folks who employ them — we the people. Reds and Blues, D’s and R’s, remember those most sacred words. All elected officials work for us — the forgotten bums in the bleachers.

Side Note: Jim Gibbons, Hot Gubernatorial Mess

5-4, In Favor of the 2nd Amendment

Yesterday, I blogged about the first and second strikes pitched to citizens by the SCOTUS. Today the court scored an RBI with the Heller decision.

The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday that individual Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms, ending a ban on owning handguns in the capital in its first ruling on gun rights in 70 years.

The court’s 5-4 landmark decision — on whether the right to keep and bear arms is an individual or collective right — said the city’s law violated the second amendment of the US constitution which the justices said guaranteed citizens the right to keep guns at home for self-defense.

“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the second amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia in the court’s decision.

He added the court took seriously the problem of handgun violence in cities like Washington and said there were “a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns.”

“The enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home,” the court ruled.

This calls for a gun rights celebration — at the local range.

Justice for Jason Rimer

His parents, Stanley and Colleen Rimer, were arrested and charged with murder for leaving him in a vehicle for 17 hours in hot Las Vegas weather.

Update (6/26): R-J article

Strike One…Strike Two…

First came the 5-4 decision to grant enemy combatants Constitutional rights. Now, the SCOTUS hands down another 5-4 decision making the death penalty for convicted pedophiles unconstitutional.

The 5-to-4 decision overturned death penalty laws in Louisiana and five other states. The only two men in the country who have been sentenced to death for the crime of child rape, both in Louisiana, will receive new sentences of life without parole.

The court went beyond the question in the case to rule out the death penalty for any individual crime — as opposed to “offenses against the state,” such as treason or espionage — “where the victim’s life was not taken.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said there was “a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and non-homicide crimes against individual persons,” even such “devastating” crimes as the rape of a child, on the other.

Obviously, Justice Kennedy and the majority have never been in the shoes of a parent whose child was raped.

Although I don’t feel that a federal death penalty for rape is necessary, I strongly believe that the federal government should leave decisions for state penal violations to the individual states.

Now that the states can’t consider the death penalty for criminals with “short eyes”, the fate of such reprobates might rest solely with the internal moral codes of the general prison population.

Now, will there another 5-4 on the Washington D.C. gun ban to be handed down tomorrow?

Update (6/26): No strike three, thank God. D.C. residents (as well as all law-abiding Americans) can now use guns for self-defense.

Heiling Hands

Zombietime has filed a report on another protest (and counter-protest) outside the Marines recruiting office in Berkeley.

George Carlin, R.I.P.

While George Carlin will be remembered for the “Seven Words” sketch, his jokes from the 1972 album “FM and AM” are among my favorites (warning: mildly explicit language).

Update (6/24): Although I didn’t share Carlin’s cynicism on most issues, I’m agreement with his rant on environmentalism (NSFW). He was offensive to some, and philosophical to others. But to the bitter end, he made them mad, and he made them laugh.

(h/t: James Hudnall)

Tyranny Prevails

Another sad day for Zimbabwe.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said Sunday he is pulling out of this week’s presidential runoff because mounting violence and intimidation have made it impossible to hold a credible election.

Tsvangirai announced his decision about Friday’s election during a news conference in Zimbabwe’s capital after thousands of ruling party militants blockaded the site of the opposition’s main campaign rally in a now routine pattern of intimidation.

“We can’t ask the people to cast their vote on June 27 when that vote will cost their lives. We will no longer participate in this violent sham of an election,” he said. “Mugabe has declared war, and we will not be part of that war.”

He said it is the United Nations’ responsibility to make sure the people of Zimbabwe are protected from the violence now under way in the country

In Mugabe’s feeble, yet evil mind, if you can’t beat the opposition, kill them.

Marxism, truly defined.

The Corner’s Michael Leeden opines (h/t: Instapundit):

So why are we paying the U.N. anyway? I once called it the biggest criminal enterprise in the world. But it’s worse than that. Top-notch criminal enterprises protect their own.

Related: Help the Zimbabwe Opposition Now!

Because It’s Very Hot Outside…

…and I have nothing else better to do…

(background information)

Not only did he play the race card, he dealt it from the bottom of the deck

Pathetic.

Link via Hot Air, where HA reader Geronimo comments:

I would love to see a black President. Just not this left wing socialist tool.

My thoughts exactly.

Update (6/21): Apparently, he never left home without it (via baldilocks)…

Obtuse Obama

Barack Obama may have an Ivy League education and political smarts, but when it comes to dealing with foreign policy, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about — and that may have dire complications for the security of this nation.