Pondering Pandering

As the GOP wanders the wilderness searching for it's identity, the temptation is great to sink into demographics politics and special interest pandering for votes. This would clearly spell disaster for the party. Only by showing reverence for the Constitution and Declaration of Independence can the GOP return to the powerful message of Reagan, the last conservative President. As many have pointed out, Republicans don't need to move left, they only need to draw the center towards them. By espousing the ideals of limited government, personal responsibility, and individual liberty as spelled out by our Founding Fathers, this goal can quickly be attained.

Closing Gitmo? Don't Hold Your Breath!

The President is digging in on his decision to close Gitmo within a year. Instead of persuading Americans that he has a superior solution that will keep us safer, Mr. Obama falls back on nebulous arguments that somehow detaining terrorists in Cuba creates more recruits than detaining them somewhere else, or that friendly countries will be less willing to share intelligence with us because 240 killers are being held without the full rights of a U.S. citizen. Give me a break. The President further insinuates that Gitmo is some "bad experiment" cooked up by the Bush Administration to punish the terrorists, when Donald Rumsfeld bluntly described it as our "least worst option" to prevent admitted and proud murderers from re-entering the battlefield. How about if the politicians just shut up on the issue until they truly come up with a better solution that doesn't involve sending these elite soldiers of radical Islam to U.S. prisons, where they would find fertile recruiting ground among disaffected American criminals.

Let This Be A Warning!

Two seemingly unrelated events show a symmetry in squishing dissent. In Iran, an Iranian-American journalist was convicted of espionage after originally being arrested for buying a bottle of wine. After receiving an 8 year sentence, she has since had it reduced to 2 years suspended, and, hopefully, allowed to return to the U.S. The other event was the vitriolic "humor" during the White House Press Corps dinner Saturday night where Rush Limbaugh and Former V.P. Dick Cheney were savaged by the President and tv actress Wanda Sykes. Both incidents send the same message: be nice to us or else.... My conviction is that Americans will see through this mobster scare tactic from both regimes and support Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech in both Iran and the U.S.A.