Code of Ethics for Government Service

More food for thought. How is everybody doing?

Code of Ethics for Government Service

'Honey… It’s President Ron Paul – and It’s For You!' by William H. Huff

Excellent food for thought for those who respect the Constitution1

'Honey… It’s President Ron Paul – and It’s For You!' by William H. Huff

A Sure-Fire Argument on the Second Amendment

Excellent analysis of the context in which the Second Amendment was written.

A Sure-Fire Argument on the Second Amendment

Our Enemy, The Presidency by Anthony Gregory

Good food for thought. Anthony Gregory writes:

The president of the United States has far more power than any office in the history of humanity. It is trite even to make the comparison. The current president claims the right to detain, torture and kill anyone on earth and to start wars and occupations in any nation of his choice. He claims the right to levy taxes on anything, prohibit anything, mandate anything, spy on anyone, and demand that all jurisdictions on the planet bend to his will. While the laws of economics limit his actual power to alter reality, the pure destructive potential of the modern presidency is beyond unspeakable...

Americans shouldn’t look to the president for their self-respect, patriotism and cultural identity. The presidency in its current form is entirely too powerful and thus an inherently corrupting and inhumanely destructive thing. The presidency as it supposedly should be, under the Constitution, is a relatively humble office overseeing the executive branch, one of three composing a radically restrained government with very limited enumerated powers. Today, the presidency overshadows the other branches, the states, and all Constitutional and statutory limits on its power. In any event, why should 300 million people, and to a great extent the rest of the world, have to live under one all-powerful law enforcement official? The whole idea seems like some kind of insanity. How did this become the American way? If we are to restore our freedom, we need our compatriots to snap out of this trance...

Our Enemy, The Presidency by Anthony Gregory

Playing the Odds by David Calderwood

Like paying taxes (extortion by any honest view), this is yet another time that self-preservation requires us to play by the contemptible rules dictated by the slaves who surround us.

Playing the Odds by David Calderwood

If You’re Going to Lock and Load, You Should Talk the Talk by Greg Perry

Some great quotes!

by Greg Perry

These Lines Are Just Pure Fun

When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

They Want Your Guns

Never say "gun control" but instead, say "victim disarmament." I've seen the visceral effect this has on our enemies in public. It's as if somebody punched them in the stomach when they realize they've lost the moral high ground. – L. Neil Smith

The victim disarmament industry is filled with people who would rather see a woman raped in an alley and strangled with her own pantyhose than see her with a gun in her hand. – L. Neil Smith

The sophisticated and subtle tyrant will unarm his people, and store up their weapons, under pretence of keeping them safe. – Sir Walter Raleigh

Why do You Carry A Gun?

Because I think it is sociopathic to outsource my self-defense to others. – Bill Buppert

Because I think my wife would rather bail me out of jail than have to identify my corpse in a morgue. – James Robert Rodgers

Those Bad Guns!

An "assault" is an action that only an animated creature can engage in; inanimate objects, by definition, can't. – Peter W. Wickham, Jr.

In General

An armed society is a polite society. – Robert A. Heinlein

You can have freedom or you can have peace. – Robert A. Heinlein

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed. – Alexander Hamilton

The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun. – Patrick Henry

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own fall." – Sarah Brady (Correction: Hillary Clinton.) (Correction: Adolph Hitler in his Edict of March 18, 1938)

If You’re Going to Lock and Load, You Should Talk the Talk by Greg Perry

Progressive Recycling

Thomas E. Brewton writes, "Recycling is a modern-day liberal-progressive idol that is, like the idols of old, both ineffective and harmful."

Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy » Progressive Recycling

McCain sings 'bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran'

Source material for previous post.

The Raw Story | Unplugged McCain sings 'bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran'

GOP, R.I.P?

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation. He writes:

The conservatives are on firmer ground when they criticize McCain for his so-called campaign-finance reform. Every aspect of McCain-Feingold is without doubt a violation of freedom of speech, among other liberties. McCain has sanctimoniously insisted he’s only trying to take corruption out of politics — as though that were possible — but in fact he and his allies in this cause are mainly concerned with protecting incumbents from “negative” advertising. The floor debate in the Senate made that abundantly clear...

I wish the conservatives disagreed with McCain on more things. In my mind, one incident with McCain is enough to rule out supporting him, regardless of who his opponent is. When he stood in front of an audience and laughingly sang the old Beach Boys hit as “Bomb, bomb bomb/bomb, bomb Iran,” McCain should have been regarded as disqualified from holding any office in the land. If the United States attacks Iran, many innocent men, women, and children will be killed or maimed, just as they were in Iraq. Is that a laughing matter, Mr. McCain? ...

The same for when he called for increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq and said it would be fine if the troops stayed there for a hundred years or more...

GOP, R.I.P?

68 Senators Violate Their Oaths of Office

Jim Babka writes:

In keeping with the ideas expressed in our Declaration of Independence, our government was instituted with highly limited powers. The instrument that imposed these limitations was the Constitution, and it is this document that members of Congress swear an oath to defend.

One of the consequences of Constitutional limits on government power is that bad people are often permitted to get away with doing bad things. The government is categorically denied many of the powers that might aid it in the apprehension of criminals. For example . . .

There are hundreds of murderers running lose in America, and thousands of murders committed each year, that the government might be able to stop. The Constitution specifically prohibits government from doing all that it could do to save lives by catching murderers.

Were the Founders crazy? Were they stupid? No, they were not. The Founders knew that any government that has all the power it might need to optimize its apprehension of murderers, would also have all the power it needed to become a mass murderer.

The Founders knew, even in their time, that governments were, historically, the greatest killers of all. The history of the last century has only added to the evidence. Tens of millions of people were murdered in the 20th Century by governments that had too much power. Our Constitution protects us from this; so far...

But now, because criminals murdered thousands of people on September 11, 2001, many are eager to abandon their Constitutional protections...

Yesterday, 68 Senators violated their oaths of office. They voted to pass S. 2248, a new law designed to replace the so-called "Protect America Act." This bill violates the Bill of Rights . . .

DownsizeDC.org Blog | 68 Senators Violate Their Oaths of Office

Making Pot Legal -- the argument

Marijuana law reform is often presented by the activist community as a broad political concept (e.g., "Hemp can save the planet!"). It is not. At its core level, it is an effort to bring civil justice to millions of Americans who have been targeted, persecuted, and in many cases, have had their lives ruined for no other reason than the fact that they chose cannabis rather than alcohol to relax.

Making Pot Legal: We Can Do It – Here's How by Paul Armentano

Huckabee Takes Unfair Shots at Ron Paul - Markets - Market Features

Huckabee Takes Unfair Shots at Ron Paul

Banging Your Head Against a Wall by A.D Lelong

Excellent commentary on the Virginia Tech shooting.

Banging Your Head Against a Wall by A.D Lelong

Conservative Republicans Have Only One Choice in 2008 by Chuck Baldwin

Chuck Baldwin writes:

Let's cut to the chase: conservative Republicans have only one choice for President in 2008: Congressman Ron Paul of Texas. Unlike the GOP frontrunners, Paul is the real deal...

He has a twenty-year record as a conservative congressman that is virtually unblemished. Unlike the vast majority of congressmen and senators in Washington, D.C., Paul consistently honors his oath of office to support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States...

Ron Paul's commitment to the sanctity of human life goes beyond rhetoric...

In addition to being willing to stop the illegal alien invasion, Ron Paul is one of only a handful of congressmen that dares speak out against the emerging North American Union, NAFTA superhighway, and the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement, all of which are being promoted by the White House in concert with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)...

Because Paul truly supports the Constitution, he truly supports "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." Period...

Not ignorant of military matters (he is an Air Force veteran), Paul subscribes to a historical American approach of no entanglements with foreign nations. In fact, in the area of foreign policy, Ron Paul stands alone as a traditional, constitutional, American statesman...

Unlike his neocon counterparts, Ron Paul believes in an independent America. He believes that it is not America's responsibility to police the world. He believes America's political leaders are duty-bound to protect the interests of the United States, not the interests of internationalists. Accordingly, he opposed the unprovoked and preemptive invasion of Iraq. Time has certainly vindicated Dr. Paul's principled position...

If the United States government had listened to Ron Paul, we would not have lost nearly 3,500 American soldiers and Marines, spent over $1 trillion, and gotten bogged down in an endless civil war from which there is no equitable extraction. Furthermore, had we listened to Dr. Paul, Osama bin Laden would no doubt be dead, as would most of his al-Qaeda operatives, and we would be less vulnerable to future terrorist attacks, instead of being more vulnerable, which is the case today...

Should Ron Paul win the Republican nomination, he would almost certainly win the general election. His constitutional, common-sense ideals would be attractive to such a broad range of voters, I dare say that he would win a landslide victory, no matter who the Democrats nominated. Conservatives, independents, libertarians, union members, and even some liberals...

Face it: the big money interests, the Chamber of Commerce crowd, the international bankers and GOP hierarchy will never support Dr. Paul. He is too honest, too ethical, too constitutional, and too independent for their liking. Therefore, the only chance Ron Paul has of winning the Republican nomination is for every Christian, every conservative, and every constitutionalist within the GOP to get behind him.

Conservative Republicans have only one choice for President in 2008: Ron Paul.

Conservative Republicans Have Only One Choice in 2008 by Chuck Baldwin

Ten Reasons Why Ron Paul Can’t Win by Thomas Eddlem

Ten Reasons Why Ron Paul Can’t Win by Thomas Eddlem

Padilla Jury Opens Pandora’s Box by Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts writes, "There is little doubt that Padilla’s conviction, and probably also the convictions of the two co-defendants, is a terrible injustice. But the damage done goes far beyond the damage to the defendants. What the red, white, and blue "Padilla Jury" has done is to overthrow the US Constitution and give us the rule of men..."

"when law becomes a weapon, liberty dies regardless of the form of government..."

"The incompetent 'Padilla Jury' has done Americans and their liberty far more damage than will ever be done by terrorists, other than those in our criminal justice (sic) system..."

"The Padilla case was the way the Bush Justice (sic) Department implemented its strategy for taking away the legal principles that protect American citizens. Padilla is an American citizen. He was denied habeas corpus and his rights to an attorney and due process. He was tortured in an attempt to coerce him into self-incrimination. In treating Padilla in these ways, the US Department of Justice (sic) violated both the US Constitution and federal law. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Justice (sic) Department committed far more crimes than did Padilla..."

"The 'Padilla Jury' has opened Pandora’s box. Unless the conviction is overturned on appeal, American liberty died in the 'Padilla Jury’s' verdict."

Padilla Jury Opens Pandora’s Box by Paul Craig Roberts

Ron Paul: The Unoriginal Candidate by Rick Fisk

Rick Fisk writes:

Ron Paul would turn back the clock on many original ideas put forth by past Presidents. Wilson's income tax? Gone. The Iraq war and pre-emptive war, the two Bush additions to original Presidential thought gone as well. The department of Education? Homeland Security? Welfare? All Gone. No original idea would be spared from the boring veto pen of a Paul presidency

Ron Paul: The Unoriginal Candidate by Rick Fisk

More on Indiana's time zone

Jeremy (#76) wrote, "... you have to admit that this quote is irrelevant. Think of how much has changed since 1953... There has been a change in the country and these statistics have absolutely nothing to do with Central/Eastern timezone... think about all of the cities (and just land) in between Philly, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Denver, etc. Each of those cities are located pretty close to the middle of their respective time zones. Indianapolis is located at the edge of its time zone (whether that's Eastern or Central)..."

Thanks for your thoughtful comments Jeremy. I agree that we cannot make too much of the state's per capita income history. About all I make of it is that there was no apparent harm to Indiana's economy when the entire state was on one time zone and when we were on the same time zone as our western neighbors, and I doubt that it would do any harm to the state economically to return to that situation.

You accurately point out that the four cities that I picked as examples are each very near the central meridian for their respective North American time zones, as well as being near the same latitude as Indiana. Therefore, there are pretty representative of "normal" for our distance from the equator.

We were on year-round eastern standard time for so long, which was effectively central daylight saving time given our longitude, that it is really easy to lose track of what is typical for our latitude. During that time, we averaged about 45 minutes of DST year-round -- about 45 minutes of sunlight shifted from the morning to the evening.

The time zones were laid out so that places like these four cities that are near the central meridian for their time zone (75, 90, 105, and 120 degrees longitude) would set their clocks to match their local mean time (solar time averaged out over the year). Locations in the eastern half of the time zone would have their clocks up to 30 minutes slower than their LMT and those in the western half would have the clock up to 30 minutes faster than their LMT.

The mid-point between these meridians for eastern (75) and central (90) is 82.5 degrees. This natural boundary runs near the eastern edge of Michigan and Kentucky, and right down the middle of Ohio. It's pretty easy to see why Ohio asked the national government to move the boundary to their western border, so the entire state could be in a single time zone. It's harder to figure out why Indiana would have asked to have it moved even further west to divide us into two zones. Quite a few Hoosiers can attest how awkward it is to have the boundary running between the counties within a state.

"USDOT decides" (#83) wrote, "Time zones are decided by the USDOT, not a governor, not the legislature, and local politicians..."

While that is technically correct, the DOT certainly weighs heavily the input and requests of state and local politicians, as the duly elected representatives of the people, when they make these sort of decisions.

In 1967, for example, six years after the federal government had first divided us by moving half of Indiana from central to eastern time, Governor Branigan petitioned the DOT to place all of Indiana back in the central time zone.

http://www.indianalawblog.com/documents/Timezone.pdf

In their opening post (Docket OST-2005-22114-1), the DOT's position is, "The General Assembly and Governor of the State of Indiana have asked the Department of Transportation (DOT) to initiate proceedings to hold hearings in the appropriate locations in Indiana on the issue of the location of the boundary between the Eastern and Central Time Zones in Indiana. The General Assembly and Governor did not, however, take a position on where the boundary should be..."

The strong implication from the DOT is that if the General Assembly and Governor took such a position, the awkward county-by-county petition process would no longer be needed.

Bill
Thu, 12 Jul 2007, 7:12 am EDT

Ex-congresswoman enters race for Indiana governor - Topix

Ex-congresswoman proposes return to Central time for Indiana

I wrote:

Politics aside, I certainly like to hear anyone in a position of influence talking about trying to return the entire state to the central time zone again.

For my taste, and compared to average for our latitude, the sun sets about 45 minutes too late in the summer and rises about 45 minutes too late most of the rest of the year. Just check out Philadelphia, St. Louis, Denver, or Reno if you want to see what is normal for our latitude.

http://tinyurl.com/32orxx

On central time, our sunrises and sunsets are only about 15 minutes earlier than typical for our latitude.

Long Thompson said she also would consider seeking to move the entire state to the Central time zone. "It's pretty ridiculous when it's still daylight to almost midnight," she said.

Terry Martzall (#2) wrote, "... apparently the sun goes down later in northern Indiana because in central Indiana it is dark by 9:30 p.m.... if her definition of 'close' is 2 1/2 hours... perhaps we should review the other things she promises?"

It appears likely that Long Thompson was using hyperbole. Depending on whether you consider the daylight hours over at sunset, civil twilight, nautical twilight, or astronomical twilight, the latest daylight on June 28 in Indy on eastern daylight time was either 9:17, 9:49, 10:30, or 11:18 pm. Astronomical twilight is getting pretty close to midnight, although 10:33 pm is the typical astronomical twilight for our latitude that day.

Jeremy (#6) wrote, "For everyone who is in favor of being on central time, remember that means it will get dark between 3:30 and 4:00 PM during the winter. Do you really want to make winter days any shorter?"

Again, I guess it depends on what you mean by dark. The earliest sunset of the year is about Dec 8. On eastern time, the sun sets about 5:20 pm in Indy, with twilight at 5:50, 6:23, or 6:56 pm depending on which definition you use.

The typical latest sunset at our latitude (see Phila, Denver, etc.) is about 4:35 pm. On central time, the latest sunset in Indy would be 4:20, with twilight at 4:50, 5:23, or 5:56 pm -- only 15 minutes earlier than normal for our latitude.

As far as making the winter days shorter, that has nothing to do with the time zone. There are only 9 hours 21 minutes from sunrise to sunset in Indy from Dec 18 through Dec 25, no matter what time zone we are in. The only way to have longer winter days is to move closer to the equator.

"Come on Jill" (#58) wrote, "How embarassing (sic) for her that she has no ideas except to criticize Daylight Savings Time."

I didn't see any criticism of DST in this article -- only a comment about which time zone might be preferable for Indiana.

Central DST is still DST. It just shifts 45 minutes of sunlight from morning to evening instead of one hour and 45 minutes like eastern DST.

Bryan (#71) wrote, "People we are always going to have two time zones. We have had them for over 40 years and got along just fine."

Conversely, we had virtually a single time zone for over 40 years before that and got along just fine then too.

By the state's own figures (pdf page 7 of 44), Indiana's per capita income was 106.4 percent of the national average in 1953 (when most or all of the state was on central time year-round, and had been for decades). By 2006 this figure had dropped to 91.4 percent.

http://www.in.gov/iedc/pdfs/Strategic_Plan.pdf

Bill Starr
Columbus, Indiana
Wed, 11 Jul 2007


Ex-congresswoman enters race for Indiana governor - Topix

No, Mr. President: The Iraq War Is Not the American Revolution | The John Birch Society - Truth, Leadership, Freedom

Gary Benoit writes:

The president’s high praise of our modern-day citizen-soldiers who are willing to leave their homes and place themselves in harm’s way to defend our freedoms is well deserved. Tragically, however, through no fault of our soldiers, they are not being used to defend our freedoms, despite the president’s claims to the contrary...

Yes, our “men and women of the Guard” do stand ready to “fight for America.” Yet many of them have been maimed and killed in Iraq for reasons unrelated to defending our beloved country in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks...

If America were attacked by Iraq on September 11, then the Congress should have immediately declared war against Iraq. But that is not what happened. Iraq did not attack us, and Congress did not declare war.

In fact, as President Bush himself acknowledged on September 17, 2003, months after our invasion of Iraq was launched, “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th [attacks].” Even today, that admission may sound surprising to many Americans who mistakenly believe we went into Iraq because Iraq attacked us here. After all, in his public speeches, including his recent Independence Day speech to West Virginia’s Air National Guard, President Bush has repeatedly juxtaposed references to Iraq with that of 9/11. These juxtapositions have created the false impression that Iraq had attacked us, without the president actually saying it...

Today’s freedom-loving patriots who wear the uniform were deployed overseas to attack a country that did not attack us, and they are there now propping up a new regime that, unlike Saddam Hussein’s old regime, is closely aligned with Iran, a radical Islamic terror state identified by President Bush himself as part of an “axis of evil.”

“We must support the Iraqi government,” Bush declared in his July Fourth speech. Yet that government, which would never have come into existence without American blood and treasure, could prove worse than the admittedly despicable regime it replaced.

“If we were to quit Iraq before the job is done, the terrorists we are fighting would not declare victory and lay down their arms — they would follow us here, home,” Bush warned on July 4. But what job is supposed to be completed in Iraq? Originally, Bush repeatedly stated that we needed to go into Iraq to enforce United Nations Security Council mandates forbidding Iraq to possess weapons of mass destruction. But no WMDs were found. We also, according to Bush, needed to rid the world of Saddam Hussein’s regime, but Saddam Hussein is now dead. And now we supposedly need to prop up the new Iraqi regime in the midst of what has become a civil war, until such time as that regime can take care of itself.

President Bush may glowingly cite the American War for Independence and the Founding Fathers when he trumpets his Iraq policy, but the truth of the matter is that his Iraq policy runs totally contrary to the intent of the Founders when they fought the War for Independence and later drafted the Constitution.

Bush is not upholding American independence by launching an offensive war against a foreign nation. He is not defending our freedom by sending our troops abroad to put in place and then prop up an increasingly radical Islamic regime in the midst of a civil war. He is not even helping the victims of the civil war by doing that.

The Founding Fathers recognized the follies of interjecting ourselves into foreign quarrels and warned against it. “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,” George Washington wisely counseled in his Farewell Address to the nation.

In an Independence Day address in 1821, John Quincy Adams said: “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.”

Does that sound like a description of what’s happening in Iraq? It obviously does not sound like President Bush, who certainly is not on cue with the Founding Fathers.

Nor is President Bush emulating the Founding Fathers when he behaves like a king, sending the nation into war without a congressional declaration of war. The power to declare war, recall, was assigned to Congress — and Congress alone. The Founding Fathers assigned this power to Congress because they did not want a single man to be able to plunge the nation into war as Bush has done (and as other modern-day presidents have done before him).

Our modern-day citizen-soldiers should never have been sent to war against Iraq, and they should not be there now. If we truly want to celebrate the Founding Fathers who won our independence for us, and support our modern-day citizen soldiers who have been placed in harm’s way in Iraq, we would bring our soldiers home — now!

No, Mr. President: The Iraq War Is Not the American Revolution The John Birch Society - Truth, Leadership, Freedom