I know there was some talk about the Department of Homeland Security’s terrorism report released yesterday, and the report was not mentioned here.  I was waiting for someone who I could understand to publish a logical anaysis of the report.  Well, Fox News has an article by Judge Andrew Napolitano, their legal analyst, listing the six things he considers the most important in the report.  According to Judge Napolitano:

1.  The document lists no names, has few footnotes, and names few sources.

2.  The document was not supposed to be released to the public.  The document claims its purpose is to deter, prevent, or repond to terrorist attacks against the United States.

3.  The report sees the current economic situation as fertile breeding ground for extremist groups to attract returning veterans, people who support gun rights, people who fear an African-American President, or people who fear “Jewish financial elites”.

4.  The document does not comply with many Supreme Court decisions regarding freedom of expression and free speech rights.  The document makes it clear that the government is watching both public and private behavior.

5.  The document is very concerned with certain opinions that support things such as state’s rights.  The document is only concerned with opinions that do not support strong central government.

6.  This report represents a government that keeps tabs on everyone–not a government that allows freedom of expression and free debate.

Generally speaking, the document is aimed at the political right.  No mention is made of the ELF terrorists who burned down auto dealerships in California last year, or burned construction sites.  No mention is made of the anarchists who show up every time the G-12 or G-20 or G-whatever meets.  No mention is made of the internet hate speech against George Bush or the movie made about his assasination (during his Presidency).  The report itself is not a serious work of national defense–it is a political hack-job aimed at political opponents.  We need to vote very carefully in the Congressional elections next year to make sure this type of thinking does not get institutionalized into the government.  Our freedom of speech is in danger.  We are entering a period in our country where it is legal to burn the American flag, but not legal to protest abortion.  That is not a place I want to be.

The American Thinker posted an article today by Humberto Fontova regarding the relaxing of restrictions on Cuban-Americans to visit or send things to relatives still in Cuba.  Mr. Fontova points out in the article:

An FBI investigation in South Florida this summer, for instance, turned up a Medicare Fraud scandal totaling $142 million. The Benitez brothers, Carlos, Jose and Luis, who arrived in Miami in 1995 from Cuba, are accused of being responsible for $84 million of this swindle. “Thirty-three of the 36 fugitives whose names have been released by authorities are Cuban immigrants,” reported the Miami Herald, “most of whom came to the United States during the past 15 years. Half of these (including the Benitez brothers) have fled back to Cuba to escape prosecution, using their Cuban passports.””

One of the things pointed out in the article was the fact that due to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, Cubans who arrive in this country and apply for political asylum are able to become citizens much more quickly than other Hispanic immigrants.  The article points out some of the abuses of this system and some of the abuses of the freedom to send money to Cuba that led to restrictions being put in place in 2004.  The article is worth reading just for these details. 

The Harvard Crimson published an article today by Eric W. Baum on the effects of sunspots on climate change.  According to Willie Soon, a researcher affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Harvard College Observatory, solar radiation from sunspots has a major effect of earth’s climate, and the recent decrease in sunspot activity is probably related to the cooler temperatures earth has experienced in recent years.

I don’t claim to understand all of this, but I do know that to cripple our economic system in the name of unproven science is not a wise move.  Global climate science is still in its infant stages, and for us to think that we have the ability to change the weather is more than a little arrogant.  I think all of us have a responsibility to respect our environment, but I don’t think we need to let our environment rule us!

The CBS TV outlet in Vermont is reporting on the Vermont legislature’s move to make text messaging sexually explicit pictures of yourself not a crime if you are under eighteen and the person receiving the text is under eighteen.  The legislature will hear more testimony on the subject later this week.  Currently teenagers texting sexually explicit pictures among themselves can be charged under child pornography laws.  I am not going to comment on the law or the possibility of the law, but there are some aspects of this we need to look at.

What has happened to the concept of dating that a girl would even consider sending explicit pictures to her boyfriend or other male friend?  Have we totally lost the idea of valuing girls and women for something other than sex?  Whatever happened to the idea of spending time with a member of the opposite sex as a teenager and simply enjoying each other’s company and enjoying common interests?  What have we done to the value of all people when the behavior of explicit texting is commonly happening among our teenagers?  The fact that the issue of ‘sexting’ is being legally addressed should be a wake-up call to us all.  Best wishes to anyone raising a teenager in this atmosphere!

Ari Fleisher wrote an op-ed piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Online explaining why our system of government works better when everyone pays income taxes.  Under the current system, Ten per cent of the people in America make more than $ 92,400 a year.  They pay 72.4% of the nation’s income taxes.

The article points out that: 

“As a result of the 2001 tax cuts enacted by a bipartisan Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, the share of taxes paid by the top 10% increased to 72.8% in 2005 from 67.8% in 2001, according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).”…

“According to the CBO, those who made less than $44,300 in 2001 — 60% of the country — paid a paltry 3.3% of all income taxes. By 2005, almost all of them were excused from paying any income tax. They paid less than 1% of the income tax burden. Their share shrank even when taking into account the payroll tax. In 2001, the bottom 60% paid 16.3% of all taxes; by 2005 their share was down to 14.3%. All the while, this large group of voters made 25.8% of the nation’s income.”

Ari Fleischer is proposing an income tax system where everyone pays some income taxes.  If that were the case, everyone’s taxes would go up and down according to increases or decreases in federal spending.  Everyone would have a stake in how much to government was spending.  We would not have the situation that we have now where everyone at all levels is trying to ‘outsmart’ the tax code either by loopholes or the underground economy.

The complete Internal Revenue Code is more than 24 megabytes in length, and contains more than 3.4 million words; printed 60 lines to the page, it would fill more than 7500 letter-size pages.   This needs to change.  Right now the tax code is the product of effective lobbying of Congress by ‘special interest groups’, we need Representatives and Senators who have the courage, integrity, and ability to change the way taxes are collected in America!

According to the Chicago Business, Illinois will receive more than 12 percent of the road and bridge projects approved so far by the U.S. Department of Transportation in the stimulus package.  According to the article:

“At a televised appearance Monday before about 50 DOT employees, President Barack Obama announced that 2,000 projects nationwide had been approved by the agency since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act became law Feb. 17.

“Just 41 days ago we announced funding for the first transportation project under ARRA and today we’re approving the 2,000th project,” Mr. Obama said. “I am proud to utter the two rarest phrases in the English language: Projects are being approved ahead of schedule, and they are coming in under budget.””

There are fifty states in the United States.  There are fifty states where people pay taxes to the federal government.  If money were allocated simply by how many states there were, each state would get 2 percent of the money.  In 2007, Illinois paid $135,458,089,000 to the federal government in taxes.  The state ranked fifth in the amount of money collected and paid to the government.  It just seems an amazing coincidence that the President’s home state is receiving a lion’s share of the stimulus money. 

Just as a side thought, how can a project not started yet be under budget?

Attend you local tea party–this is part of what the tea party movement is about.

One of the charges most often made against the George Bush Administration was that they were ‘arrogant’.  To me, one of the definitions of arrogance is ignoring the advice of the people who may actually understand any given situation.  That is what I believe is happening with the Obama Administration’s changes being made to our relationship with Cuba.

The Hill posted an article this afternoon about the changes President Obama is making in terms of travel to Cuba and money and goods that can be sent to Cuba.  The largest Cuban-American population in this country is located in Florida.  Two Congressmen from this area, Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Representative Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), have both come out strongly against the changes being made.  The two Representatives have released a statement that “Unilateral concessions to the dictatorship embolden it to further isolate, imprison and brutalize pro-democracy activists, to continue to dictate which Cubans and Cuban-Americans are able to enter the island, and this unilateral concession provides the dictatorship with critical financial support,”   Lincoln Diaz-Balart was born in Cuba and fled the country with his family after Fidel Castro’s revolution.

I have no opinion as to what is right in this situation.  It might be wise, however, to listen to the people with the closest ties to Cuba and what is happening there.

The New York Post has a good wrap-up of the events off the coast of Somalia during the past few days.  The article points out that the pirates had threatened to kill the captain of the Maersk Alabama and had AK-47’s pointed at his back.  At that point, we had no choice but to take their threats seriously.

I am reminded of all the Peanuts cartoons where Charlie Brown is up at bat at the end of a baseball game.  His thought is that he can be the hero or the goat.  President Obama was in a similar (although much more serious) situation.  Had one of the pirates reflexively pulled the trigger on the gun he was holding, we might be in a very different situation.  I believe President Obama did the right thing by giving the USS Bainbridge the freedom to act quickly in the situation.  I am thrilled that the hijacking and kidnapping ended the way it did.

According to the New York Post article:

“Buccaneers operating out of lawless areas of Somalia increasingly have been chasing and seizing commercial ships operating under the flags of several nations, holding the crews and vessels hostage for millions of dollars. There currently are more than a dozen ships and 230 sailors — none of them Americans — being held hostage in the region.”

The pirates’ response to yesterday’s events is to say that they will increase their level of aggression against French and American ships (the French recaptured a private yacht recently, killing two pirates and one hostage).  The pirates are not justified in practicing piracy, and they are not justified in threatening to kill people, or killing people.  The only answer to the problem of piracy is the one Thomas Jefferson employed during the early 1800’s.  Send in the armed forces (in his case the US Marines) to wipe out their bases and eliminate any pirates that get in the way of that effort.  The world needs to unite and repeat that action.  If the world is not willing to do it, America needs to do it and require other countries impacted by the pirates to help finance our actions. 

Howie Carr has an article in today’s Boston Herald about the state program in Massachusetts that gives taxpayers the choice of paying state income tax at the current rate or at the higher rate we had under Michael Dukakis.  It’s getting close to April 15th, many people have filed their tax returns, and there are some statistics on how this choice is working out.

As of now, roughly 2.1 million state residents of Massachusetts have filed their taxes.  Of those 2.1 million, exactly 802 opted to pay at the higher, voluntary 5.85 percent rate.  That’s about1/25th of one percent.  If, as Joe Biden, has said, “Paying higher taxes is patriotic”, I guess we are not a very patriotic state.  The statistics show that the total amount of extra taxes paid by these 802 people were $ 77,845.  Based on this number, those people who paid extra taxes had an average taxable income last year of $20,000 per taxpayer.  The heck with the extra tax payments, I want to know how you live in Massachusetts on $20,000 a year and then have extra money to put into taxes.

I have a better idea–cut the spending!  Reduce the number of state workers–if private businesses are cutting employees, why isn’t the state reflecting the trend?  Why did our State Representatives get raises this year when many of the people they supposedly represent did not?  Massachusetts does not lack money to run the state, it lacks wisdom in the spending of the money it has.  It’s time we begin to think about electing people who have that wisdom.

The Los Angeles Times ran an article this morning that shows the need of the government to rethink some of the ways it tries to help people escape poverty and achieve financial success.  The article cited the federal government’s Dollar Homes program as an example of good intentions gone bad.

The program began in 1998 with the intention of clearing the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s books of foreclosures and providing affordable housing to lower income people.  The plan was that local governments would buy the homes for $1, fix them up and resell them at a discount to poor families, who would get a chance to put down roots in the community.  According to the article, that’s not what happened:

“More than 2,300 homes have been sold by HUD for $1 each nationwide, with 326 in California. Nearly half of the homes in California were bought by companies or individuals who typically resold them at a much higher price. Only 15% were sold to nonprofit housing groups such as Habitat for Humanity, records show.”

The article sites one specific example of the program’s failure:

Those are words I am rather surprised to find myself saying, but all of us need to thank the President for his actions in the pirate hostage situation.  I am partial to Power Line Blog because I like the logical way they approach things, but needless to say, the story is all over the internet.  It is detailed well at Breitbart.com.  The bottom line seems to be that when the skipper of the USS Bainbridge saw an AK-47 pointed at the back of Captain Phillips, who was tied up, he decided to act.  The action he took (telling the snipers to fire was not without risk–when snipers shoot people in this type of situation, the gun they are holding can be discharged due to the reflex actions of the person shot–thank God this did not happen).  The US Navy snipers did their job and took out each of the three pirates remaining on their little boat with one shot each.  There are some really positive aspects of this operation in addition to the rescue of the captain.

Up until now, the pirates had not attacked American ships.  The Maersk Alabama was the first attempt at getting a ransom payment out of America.  It did not go well for the pirates.  During the same week, their hijacking of a French private yacht also did not go well.  The French special forces took the yacht back, killing two pirates and one hostage.  This week the pirates have lost six pirates–five killed and one taken prisoner by the United States.  Not a good week for their enterprise.  The ships passing through the area have lost one civilian.

There needs to be a global response to piracy.  Whether it comes from the UN or some alliance of the countries that use the targeted shipping lanes, action is necessary.  Until piracy becomes unprofitable, it will continue.

Happy Easter and Happy Passover!!!

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  Albert Einstein

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  George Santayana

Power Line has posted an article which states that the FBI is preparing criminal charges against the Somali pirates.  Boy, I’ll bet they’re shaking in their boots.  The Justice Department has said that it would favorably consider prosecuting such apprehended pirates.  Wow, I’m impressed.

This is one of those times I feel like yelling, “Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life down here!”

We have two examples of history to choose from.  The first is the Thomas Jefferson model which went in with the Marines and wiped out piracy for hundreds or years.  The second is the Bill Clinton model of dealing with the first attack on the World Trade Center.  We put the blind sheik in jail, Osama Bin Laden split his sides laughing, and went on to plan the attacks of September 11th.

National security is not a joke or a game.  It has to be taken seriously.  Diplomacy is nice, but there will always be some people who respond only to force.  Chamberlain tried diplomacy with Hitler.  It looked good, but many people died because of his efforts.  I am looking for the Winston Churchill of our time.

According to the British newspaper the Telegraph, MI5 agents had been watching a group of terrorists who were planning major attacks on shoppers in England in the next few days before they moved to arrest them.  The attacks were planned for the Easter bank holiday, which is one of the busiest shopping days of the year in England.  Police are currently looking for the bomb factory where the explosives were to be assembled.  According to the article:

“All but one of the men arrested were Pakistani nationals who came to Britain on student visas. This suggested a possible new tactic by al-Qaeda, which had previously used British-based extremists who travelled to Pakistan for training.”

Several of the people questioned in connection with this plot have been from the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Part of the timing of the planned plot was that the terrorists consider Easter as the most significant Christian holiday for an attack.

Terrorism is a very serious matter, and to treat it lightly is to welcome terrorist attacks.  President Obama has stopped referring to the “War on Terror” and is beginning to follow the Clinton Presidencys’ model of treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter.  This is a serious mistake that will result in the deaths of many innocent Americans and innocent people in other countries.

Nick Adenhart, Los Angeles rookie pitcher, was killed on Thursday by a drunk driver.  This is a senseless tragedy and our sympathies go out to his family.  The accident and its aftermath are reported at NBC Los Angeles Sports.  The driver, Andrew Thomas Gallo, 22, responsible for the accident is charged with three counts of murder as well as drunken driving charges.

I have a few observations on this tragedy.  Mr. Gallo did not get up Thursday morning and say, “Today I am going to kill a Los Angeles pitcher.”  What happened is the result of some very bad choices made one at a time as the day progressed.  Mr. Gallo made the choice not to drink responsibly, and as a result of this, three people are dead, and Mr. Gallo’s life is ruined.  He will most likely go to jail, and he will have to live with this event and the guilt from it for the rest of his life.  What a waste!

Nick Adenhart had no idea when he got up Thursday morning that this would be his last day on earth.  The lesson here for all of us is that life is fleeting and we are not in control.  The only positive outcome for this senseless tragedy would be for all of us to make sure every day when we get up that we are at peace with God and those around us.  We may never get another chance to say “I love you” to the people we care about. 

Again, my sympathies and prayers go out the the family of Nick Adenhart and the families of the other two people killed.

American Thinker has a post today citing a BBC report that Thursday, French commandos raided a French sailboat, which pirates seized Saturday off the coast of Somalia.  According to the article:

“two pirates and a hostage were killed in the operation and three others taken prisoner.  This is the third time in recent memory French commandos have been used to free hostages held by pirates in the region.”

Where are all the liberal American politicians that keep saying we should follow the example of the French?

The American Thinker article ends with this quote: