About Time: USN Establishes Anti-Piracy Command

Better late than never, I guess.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

U.S. Navy establishes anti-piracy command

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has established a unit to fight Somalian pirates in the Gulf of Aden.

U.S. Central Command has formed the Maritime Security Patrol Area, comprised of air and naval assets, to battle pirates from Somalia. MPSA has been augmented by warships from allied countries and operations would be directed by Combined Task Force-150.

"A force of coalition navy warships will patrol the area, and aircraft will fly in the airspace above," Centcom said.

The new U.S. navy unit was launched in August 2008. MPSA was said to have monitored, tracked and boarded suspected pirate ships.

Freedom of Speech on the 'Net: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

AUSTRALIA will join China in implementing mandatory censoring of the internet under plans put forward by the Federal Government.

The revelations emerge as US tech giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and a coalition of human rights and other groups unveiled a code of conduct aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy.

The government has declared it will not let internet users opt out of the proposed national internet filter.

Source.

On the corporate side, this is encouraging. Yahoo and Google's past cooperation with China's censorship efforts was analogous to a farmer being paid to spread agricultural pests and believing the deal was profitable for him. It's good to see that they've pulled their heads out of their asses and realized that taking a stand on the principles that make their livihoods possible is, *gasp!* , good for business too!

Australia... I just don't know what's wrong with them. Haven't they learned curtailing freedom is not the answer?

Linked: European Transplants Worry about Socialism

Credit goes to Uppity Woman, once again, for finding this article.

The protesters waving signs along College Avenue before Barrack Obama speak had more in common than just their opposition of the senator. Nearly half of them were foreign born.
***
“I lived under socialism and we were taxed hug amounts and it was going to people who did not work,” said Dijkstra, who moved to the United States in 2003. “That is part of the reason I fled home.”

Reminds me of an older post here.

Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.

Caught, But Not Prosecuted

It looks like 13 people got caught not only committing "registration fraud," but actually cast fradulent ballots. And the prosecutor is letting them go.

Thirteen campaign workers for Barack Obama yesterday yanked their voter registrations and ballots in Ohio after being warned by a prosecutor that temporary residents can't vote in the battleground state.

***

On Thursday, [prosecutor] O'Brien cut a deal with 13 out-of-staters, including four from New York, who tossed out their already-cast ballots and admitted they didn't meet residency requirements.

Cut a deal? YGTBFKM!!! Unless this deal includes prison time, this prosecutor is abdicating his duty.

Let's Raise Taxes During a Recession!

Linked: Obama Campaign Website Set Up To Accept Fictitious Names!

Check this out. Looks like the Obama Campaign deliberately omitted standard safeguards to prevent donations under false names.

This simply should not, and could not, happen in any business or any campaign that is honestly trying to confirm the legitimacy of its donors. Furthermore, I don’t see how this could possibly happen without some kind of help from a credit card company. Card companies as a rule simply do not alow any business to process credit card transactions where the name on the card doesn’t match the purchaser’s name.

In short, under the current Obama contribution system setup, any eager friend from any country can contribute unlimited amounts of money by simply making up fake names and addresses.

And Obama’s system is set up to facilitate this fraud. This is truly scandalous.

Image: The author's credit card statement after donating under the names John Galt, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Bill Ayers. As you can see, all of the transactions were processed.


From Uppity Woman (who herself is relaying from No Quarter).

API and the Michelle Obama Tapes

API's latest post says they need more time to go over the tapes to redact parts that may jeopardize national security?

What could Michelle Obama possibly have said that could jeopardize national security? Bullshit. Others have called shenanigans, and I'm inclined to agree. It's definitely put up or shut up time.

Thoughts on the Financial Crisis, From a Democrat

And by far the best article I've read this campaign season.

I'm just glad that someone in the business has the courage to speak up when something is going horribly, horribly wrong.

H/T: Neptunus Lex

Thoughts On the Looming Citizenship Scandal

Mountain Sage and America's Right have been following a lawsuit against Senator Obama and the DNC to force them to prove Obama is a "natural-born citizen" as required to be eligible for the office of President.

The lawsuit seems frivolous at first blush, although my perception did a 180 after reading that Obama filed a motion to stay discovery pending the outcome of the already-filed motion to dismiss. Staying discovery is somewhat extraordinary and is done to prevent undue expense; here, the most crucial discovery issue is simply turning over a birth certificate, which should be dispositive of one issue in the case, if not the whole thing. It's not about cost--they're acting like they have something to hide.

The suit is two-pronged. The first prong alleges the Senator is not a natural born citizen because he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii. The second prong alleges that the Senator was adopted by an Indonesian stepfather and therefore lost his US citizenship; and, that he is currently either a naturalized citizen (not "natural born") or not a US citizen at all.

In a telephone interview that is about to be released to major media outlet, Michelle Obama allegedly admits that Obama was adopted, making the factual case for the 2nd prong.

My take on this is that only the first prong is constitutionally meritorious. The Constitution does not define terms like "natural born citizen" or "naturalized citizen," so the argument that if he was naturalized he cannot be natural born is illogical. As far as I'm aware, this has never been litigated (and I don't have Westlaw or convenient access to a law library, so I'm not looking it up!) so the courts will get to interpret the meaning of natural born citizen as they see fit. I see no reason to define it in such a way that a person loses his/her status as natural born if his/her citizenship changes, at especially if that change was due to the decision of parents and not the individual in question. I must admit, however, that I have not fully researched this, so if there are source materials explaining the rationale for the citizenship requirement, written contemporaneously with the founding, that preclude my interpretation, then I would probably change my position.

Of course, the first prong is cut-and-dry, and I'm rather afraid that Obama isn't turning over the "vault" birth certificate to resolve this issue one way or another BEFORE the election. I do NOT want to find out he's ineligible after he's already been elected, as that would be a Constitutional crisis of the highest order.

As an aside, from the reports I've seen about this Michelle Obama interview, there is more to it than the admission of the adoption. Mrs. Obama apparently goes on a rant about the citizenship allegations being a plot by white racists and about questioning his patriotism. It's hard to judge tone on the printed page, but I get the impression that the remarks were paranoid and inflammatory, and may prove to be more politically significant than the admission.

Related posts: McCain's Citizenship and Eligibility

This Ad Sums It Up Perfectly

I just don't get how we are where we are right now.



This one's almost as good:

A Proposed Solution to Voter Fraud

And it can be implemented quickly.

Start with the common sense answer: require ID, like a driver's license, that has a valid current address that matches the registration. Some states, like Indiana, already do this (as Sara pointed out).

But the objection to an ID/address requirement is the plight of the homeless, who don't have an address. We need a way to let them vote that doesn't allow nefarious individuals to vote multiple times by registering fictitious people, allowing the individual to go from polling station to polling station voting under fake names. We need to make sure the homeless can vote, but only vote once.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Iraqi voter.



Easy. Cheap. And we can do it in time for this election.

Happy Birthday!

H/T to Eagle1 for the reminder.

Now, to send those apps off to NAVAIR...

Voter Fraud and Irregularities Watch Part II (updated)

Missouri officials suspect fake voter registration

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Officials in Missouri, a hard-fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states.

Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

1 VOTER, 72 REGISTRATIONS: 'ACORN PAID ME IN CASH & CIGS'

CLEVELAND - A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws.

Local 2 Investigates Dead Voters

Voting records show Alexis' mom, Gloria Guidry, cast her ballot in person near her South Houston home."It was just very shocking, a little unsettling," said Alexis Guidry.It's unsettling because Gloria Guidry died of cancer 10 months before the March Primary.

Vote Early & Often? -- 105% of Indianapolis Residents Now Registered to Vote

So we have 644,197 people eligible to be registered in Marion County/Indianapolis, and 677,401 people registered. Congratulations go to Indianapolis for having 105% of its residents registered!

Ohio SECSTAE Is Violating Election Law

A federal judge ruled this evening that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is breaking federal law by not giving county elections boards the chance to determine whether new voter registrations are fraudulent.

Update
Convicted Felons on the Rolls in Florida

More than 30,000 Florida felons who by law should have been stripped of their right to vote remain registered to cast ballots in this presidential battleground state, a Sun Sentinel investigation has found.

Many are faithful voters, with at least 4,900 turning out in past elections.

Another 5,600 are not likely to vote Nov. 4 — they're still in prison.

Of the felons who registered with a party, Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.

Two to one? Figures.

Update 2:

CBS Investigates ACORN

Joseph Borges, the registrar of voters in Bridgeport, Conn., says his office has been overwhelmed by bogus forms filled out with thousands of fake and duplicate names - two boxes alone packed with non-existent addresses - all submitted by ACORN.

Since June, election officials in at least a dozen states have raised red flags over more than 10,000 voter registration forms filed by ACORN. For example, in one Ohio county ACORN registered the same person 17 times.

ACORN Registers a 7-year Old

The Connecticut girl is 11 years too young - and nobody in her family knows how she ended up on a voter registration form submitted by ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

"Massive Fraud" in PA has completely compromised the integrity of the system

Retired Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Sandra Newman says that she is "not confident we can get a fair election" in the state come November.

...ACORN, submitted over 252,595 registrations to the Philadelphia County Election Board" with 57, 435 rejected for faulty information. "Most of these registrations were submitted by ACORN, and rejected due to fake social security numbers, incorrect dates of birth, clearly fraudulent signatures, addresses that do not exist, and duplicate registrations. In one case, a man was registered to vote more than 15 times since the Primary election."

Obama A Member of a Socialist Party in 1996??

Politically Drunk found a newsletter from the socialist "New Party" which stated that Obama was a member of their party at the time he was elected to the Illinois Senate. Source.

I'm going to hold off judgment until this is run down by closer to mainstream sources, but I'd be surprised if it turned out to be false.

The "new party" advocates an end to private donations in election campaigns, a government takeover of the banking system, socialized health care, "[f]ull employment, a shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal "social wage" to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and lifelong access to education and training," and ending unilateral military interventions.

H/T: Mountain Sage

Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).

The Truth Is Out There

TheMouthPeace has released another video. The message: Don't trust the media. Don't trust the politicians. Do your own research. And TMP has a few Google suggestions for you.

The Campaign According to BSG

It's hard not to notice the parallels between some of the key people in this election campaign and many BSG characters.

Senator Barack Obama=Gaius Baltar
Hope. Change We Can Believe In.
A relative newcomer to politics, Baltar wants to run on people's hopes, not their fears as his opponent Laura Roslin is doing. Baltar capitalizes on the social conditions of the time to seize an issue which resonates with the people--permanent settlement on the planet New Caprica. Obama uses the unpopularity of President Bush and the financial crisis to attract voters. Both Baltar and Obama are intellectual heavyweights, and have the ego to go with it. Baltar believes he's the chosen one, destined for greatness and an instrument of God. Obama believes he is our savior as well. Both men have been very careless about who they associate with and who they get advice from. Both men are chaismatic leaders, and very popular with the ladies.



Rev. Jerimiah Wright = Number Six

Barack Obama receives his spiritual advice from the Rev. Jerimiah Wright, who preaches that America's is evil and that it is responsible for causing the attacks of 11 Sept. 2001. Baltar's spiritual guidance comes from an apparition of Number Six, who tells Baltar that humans were responsible for their exile from Kobol because of their barbarism and brutality. Six inspires Baltar to enter politics and helps him discover God's plan for him.

William Ayers = Tom Zarek
William Ayers and Tom Zarek are both former domestic terrorist who now seek to influence politics through other means. In both cases, the other means has involved grooming a presidential candidate.







President George Bush = Admiral Helena Cain

Both are very strong leaders who respond forcefully in a crisis. Both seek to channel anger into the warfighting effort. Both are prone to excess in the use of executive power and are known to bend the rules. More specifically, Bush allowed Kaleed Sheik Mohammed to be transferred to a jurisdiction outside the US so that he could be tortured to gain intelligence; and this was successful. Cain ordered the torture of her Cylon prisoner, Gina, to get intelligence; Gina became suicidal enough to give up critical intelligence about the nature of the Cylon Ressurection Ship.




Governor Sarah Palin = Lee Adama

Both are bright, promising young leaders who rise through the ranks quickly. Palin quickly progressed from city councilwoman to mayor to Governor, and may soon become Vice President. Lee Adama started his military career as an arrogant pilot, but was quickly given command of the Galactica's air wing and went on to command the Battlestar Pegasus. Governor Palin is best known for taking on corruption in her own party, and has already defied running mate John McCain on drilling in ANWAR and pulling the campaign out of Michigan. Similarly, Lee Adama has a strong moral compass, openly defying President Roslin by committing her to hold elections:

Apollo: Madam President, with respect, you're serving out the remainder of President Adar's term. When that term is up in seven months, the law says there's an election. I o­nly committed you to obeying the law. Roslin: You are not authorized to make any deal... Adama: You sound like some kind of a lawyer... Apollo: I swore an oath... to defend the articles. The articles say there's an election in seven months. Now, if you're telling me we're throwing out the law, then I'm not a Captain, you're not a Commander and you are not the President. And I don't owe either of you a damned explanation for anything.

Lee Adama went on to make enemies of both his father and President Roslin by participating in the defense of Gaius Baltar.

Senator John McCain = Admiral William Adama


Both are veteran pilots of a prior war that now find themselves setting policy and strategy. Although fierce and determined, there are some lines they will not cross to accomplish their missions. McCain opposes waterboarding and similar arguably cruel, inhuman and degrading forms of interrogation. Adama talked Roslin out of stealing an election and often acts as her conscience, and defied Admiral Cain when she convicted two of Galactica's crew for murder (despite the fact that the "victim" had been raping a prisoner at the time he was killed). Adama and McCain also both have failed first marriages.

Voter Fraud and Irregularites Watch

Stories about possible fraud are adding up. I'll periodically post new topics under this tag to create a sort of link-archive of potential fraud or other irregularities.

Older links:

Bad Voter Applications Found
14 Sep 2008

Several municipal clerks across the state are reporting fraudulent and duplicate voter registration applications, most of them from a nationwide community activist group working to help low- and moderate-income families.

The majority of the problem applications are coming from the group ACORN...

1,100 Voter Cards Suspect County Clerk Notified N.M., Federal Officials
17 Sept 2008

More than 1,000 new voter registration cards received by the Bernalillo County Clerk's Office in advance of the November general election might be frauds, the county clerk said Tuesday.

Maggie Toulouse Oliver said she has notified prosecutors in state and federal law enforcement agencies about the problem.

And today's...

ACORN office in Vegas raided in voter-fraud probe
7 Oct 2008

A Nevada secretary of state's office spokesman said Tuesday that investigators are looking for evidence of voter fraud at the office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN.

No one was at the ACORN office when state agents arrived with a search warrant and began carting records and documents away.

Secretary of State spokesman Bob Walsh says ACORN is accused of submitting multiple voter registrations with false and duplicate names.

The raid comes two months after state and federal authorities formed a task force to pursue election-fraud allegations in Nevada.

The Record Obama Doesn't Want You to Know About

Slowly the facts are starting to accumulate about the period of time between Obama's college years and the beginning of his term in the Illinois Senate.

One of his efforts was apparently a campaign to undermine the constitution through paid-for law review articles, which, he hoped, would have created a result opposite of what was reached in Heller this summer (which he now claims to support).

During Obama’s tenure, the Joyce Foundation board planned and implemented a program targeting the Supreme Court. The work began five years into Obama’s directorship, when the Foundation had experience in turning its millions into anti-gun “grassroots” organizations, but none at converting cash into legal scholarship.

The plan’s objective was bold: the judicial obliteration of the Second Amendment.

Joyce’s directors found a vulnerable point. When judges cannot rely upon past decisions, they sometimes turn to law review articles. Law reviews are impartial, and famed for meticulous cite-checking. They are also produced on a shoestring. Authors of articles receive no compensation; editors are law students who work for a tiny stipend.

In 1999, midway through Obama’s tenure, the Joyce board voted to grant the Chicago-Kent Law Review $84,000, a staggering sum by law review standards. The Review promptly published an issue in which all articles attacked the individual right view of the Second Amendment.

In a breach of law review custom, Chicago-Kent let an “outsider” serve as editor; he was Carl Bogus, a faculty member of a different law school. Bogus had a unique distinction: he had been a director of Handgun Control Inc. (today’s Brady Campaign), and was on the advisory board of the Joyce-funded Violence Policy Center.

Bogus solicited only articles hostile to the individual right view of the Second Amendment, offering authors $5,000 each. But word leaked out, and Prof. Randy Barnett of Boston University volunteered to write in defense of the individual right to arms. Bogus refused to allow him to write for the review, later explaining that “sometimes a more balanced debate is best served by an unbalanced symposium.” Prof. James Lindgren, a former Chicago-Kent faculty member, remembers that when Barnett sought an explanation he “was given conflicting reasons, but the opposition of the Joyce Foundation was one that surfaced at some time.” Joyce had bought a veto power over the review’s content.

H/T: The Real Barack Obama

A Time To Choose

The last few days, I've been griping to friends and family about the possibility of a sweeping defeat--not just the White House, but the Congress to, and what that would mean. My frustration, I told them, stemmed from the feeling that our backs were against the wall. Not so for the other side. For one thing, even if socialist policies weren't implemented on the national level, they could it could still be done on the state level. That way, we could choose based on our own beliefs whether we wanted to be a part of a socialist state or a free state. Consent of the governed is, of course, one of our fundamental principles. But they want to do it on a federal level, to cram it down our throats (or more accurately, to take our labor and property from us) whether we like it or not. So they give us no such option. And if the United States doesn't flip over to European-style socialism, they still have other foreign states to choose from, if that's what they really believe in. Again, if we don't hold the line, we have no such option.

If freedom dies here, that's it. Game over.

I was poking around the intertubes and found that someone else had expressed this same view, but much more eloquently. I shouldn't have been surprised who it was.

[I]t has been said if we lose that war, and in doing so lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.

I know we've still got a month to go and a lot can change in that time. We'll probably even see a change in the polls thanks to the debate undoing some of the media spin over the last few weeks. But I can't help the feeling that even if we win this time, we've still lost. Because as much as socialism has been discredited, we the People, collectively, no longer have the character necessary to be free men and women. If we did, then promises about what the government could "provide" to us would not win votes. If we did, then we wouldn't have passed a "bail-out" of businesses without so much as having a public discussion about why, and which, businesses had a legitimate claim to taxpayers' money.

I don't want to abandon all hope just yet, but I don't want to paint a naively optimistic view of the future, either. A permanent socialist majority is a possibility in the medium-term. And if that were to come to pass, it would mark a fundamental change in the nature of our Republic.

But it's not lost yet.

Grace and Class

Right up there with the flags incident.

What turns people into this?

H/T: Neptunus Lex

Palin/Biden Debate and Public Expectations

CNN's Navarette had this to say about the debate:

As the debate wrapped up, I was pulling into a parking lot for an evening speech to a local Democratic club. The person who greeted me shook his head and suggested that Palin had faked-out her critics by weaving a caricature of an airhead. Then, underestimated, the lipstick-wearing pit bull mauled poor Joe Biden.

Could be. The conversation brought to mind the classic film, "The Hustler." The late Paul Newman pretends to be dreadful at pool, and then, with his mark on the hook, clears the table.

Don't look now, Democrats. But you've been hustled.

We've also seen a trend of early polls from both left-leaning CNN and right-leaning FNC (and I'm sure many others) showing that Palin exceeded expectations. But, what I disagree on is this "hustle" notion. Expectations weren't low because Palin hustled anyone. Expectations were low because there was a deliberate propaganda effort in the MSM which was successful, I'm sure, "beyond their wildest expectations." So successful that even voices on the right were bamboolzed.

The bottom line is that the picture of Palin that's been painted in the MSM has been very, very different from the real Palin we see on live, unscripted, unedited TV. If that isn't proof positive that we're not being given the news straight, I don't know what is. The fact of the matter is that the MSM has collectively engaged in a deliberate effort to destroy her in any way they can. Early efforts were not very well thought out--they got too personal and it backfired, fueling her popularity. But, once the MSM caught their breath and thought things through, they shifted to a strategy of re-defining her identity. She would no longer be the immensely popular maverick governor with accomplishments in ethics reform and energy infrastructure. She would be the radically right wing, dangerously ignorant no-nothing. And to accomplish that, lies were circulated about book banning, CNN lied about the authority of commanders-in-chief of the National Guard, and the press pulled a bait-and-switch gag to try to fool people into thinking she forced rape victims to pay for evidentiary medical exams. As if that wasn't bad enough, they deliberately edited the interview with Charlie Gibson to protray her as unknowledgable and ultra-right wing. And over the last week, instead of seeing the entire Couric interview, we're being fed spittets of Palin being caught in gotcha moments (which I might add, were bad questions to begin with... "tell us what McCain has done to regulate Fannie May besides the bill he sponsored to regulate Fannie Mae? How the hell can you ask a question and demand that the response not include the answer!?!?!). How do you suppose they decide which clips are newsworthy and which are not, hmmm? And then the comedians took over to take the message to the masses of people that don't watch the news on a regular basis.

The scary part is that it worked. Not against committed Dem's, we know where they stand and that's fine. But it's scary that the middle bought it too, because by now they should know that they can't get their news from the network news, CNN, or MSNBC and expect to get the whole picture. (Nor should they believe they could get both sides all the time from FNC, but in this instance, they would have.) And it's scary because they started to change conservative minds as well. For the people that weren't too worried about the power of the slanted MSM in the age of FNC and the internet--myself included--we have been proven horribly, horribly wrong.

They've succeeded in convincing America that someone isn't who she really is by manipulating the information we have. Perception has become unhinged from reality to serve a political end.

I suppose next thing we'll be convinced of is that "we are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia."

Straight, But Not Narrow (Minded)

Senator McCain has become the first GOP nominee to be interviewed by a gay publication. As someone who is dismayed about the degree of influence the religious right has on the GOP and our politics as a whole, I find this development to be quite refreshing.

The Senator does try to walk a fine line and equivocates at times, but he also articulates some very clear principles, such as the Federalist principle that family law issues should be left to the states, that people should not be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation, that sex-ed should be based on scientific data of what works, that "criminal sentences for terrible crimes should [not] be longer because of the views of the perpetrator or the identity of the victim," and that courts should not legislate from the bench.

I think the most significant aspect of the interview is that it tries to build a bridge of inclusiveness between the straight majority GOP community and the LGBT community, by emphasizing common values. In particular, I think the best part of the interview would be better directed at the social conservatives who seem to believe that gay people are morally inferior to "good Christians":

I had the humbling experience of speaking at Mark Bingham’s funeral after the attacks on Sept. 11. Mark had supported me during the 2000 campaign. Unfortunately, I barely knew him, but our country learned about him after 9-11. He was one of the heroes on 9-11 who tried to retake control of United Flight 93. His efforts along with the other brave patriots could have saved hundreds of lives. I honor and respect Mark. Memories of his sacrifice and the other victims from 9-11 motivate me everyday to make sure we keep our nation safe from the terrorists who want to attack our way of life because freedom is a threat to their message of hate.

Here’s what I said during his eulogy:

I love my country, and I take pride in serving her. But I cannot say that I love her more or as well as Mark Bingham did, or the other heroes on United Flight 93 who gave their lives to prevent our enemies from inflicting an even greater injury on our country. It has been my fate to witness great courage and sacrifice for America's sake, but none greater than the selfless sacrifice of Mark Bingham and those good men who grasped the gravity of the moment, understood the threat, and decided to fight back at the cost of their lives. (The full eulogy is available at tampabaycoalition.com/files/0921McCainPR.htm)

This is the civil rights issue of our time, and the GOP needs to get on the right side of it.

Arming Yourself With Facts

The Mountain Sage has taken the time to link each and every article in Burning Down the House. Check it out. H/T: The Real Barack Obama.

UPDATE: Sage has also provided links to all the articles listed in another MouthPeace video.

As a bonus, here's a short history lesson from FNC, posted to the same site.