Brendan Eich - 4-7-2014

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

The liberal left within the body politic has on more than one occasion proven their intolerance and desire to limit free speech to only that with which they unilaterally find acceptable. Their media sycophants have willingly chosen to collaborate in this devastating example of cowardice. It is a national disgrace.

Before proceeding, a quick refresher on the wisdom and brilliance of the framers and founders in the construction of the United States Constitution:

The First Amendment -

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

With that in mind, consider the case this week of Brendan Eich, the CEO of Mozilla. Mr. Eich was forced from his position, in the company he helped found, because of a contribution to supporters of California’s’ Prop 8, which delineated marriage as being between one man and one woman. His contribution was made public, five years AFTER he made said contribution, and on that basis, the company bowed to the hysteria brought on by the ignorant liberal left and forced him out.

One of the intriguing tidbits is that Mr. Eich, at the time of his contribution, agreed exactly with the position of then Senator and President-elect Barack Obama. The silence on that fact is deafening.

Of course, Mr. Eich is now labeled as intolerant, a homophobe and a hater of people. Absent from those baseless accusations is the fact that Prop 8 PASSED by a sizeable majority of the people in California.

Sadly, however, when the liberal left targets a citizen exerting his right to freedom of speech with whom they disagree, the result is a forgone conclusion.

The American people must unite and stand firm against these assaults upon the touchstone of liberty – the right to express ones’ opinion without fear of recrimination.

To complete the travesty of this weeks events, presented below is the entirety of the post from the new CEO of Mozilla. Please read it carefully and note the use of the word ‘equality’.

Where was the tolerance for Mr. Eich and his opinion, an opinion, again, shared by a majority of thr California electorate?

To wit:

Over the past few days we have been asked a number of questions about Brendan Eich’s appointment as CEO. This post is to clarify Mozilla’s official support of equality and inclusion for LGBT people.

Mozilla’s mission is to make the Web more open so that humanity is stronger, more inclusive and more just. This is why Mozilla supports equality for all, including marriage equality for LGBT couples. No matter who you are or who you love, everyone deserves the same rights and to be treated equally.

We realize that not everyone in our community or who uses our products will agree with this. But we have always maintained that as long as you are willing to respect others, and come together for our larger mission, you are welcome. Mozilla’s community is made up of people who have very diverse personal beliefs working on a common cause, which is a free and open internet. That is a very rare and special thing.

Mozilla has always worked to be a welcoming community, committed to inclusiveness and equality for all people. One voice will not limit opportunity for anyone. That was true yesterday and will be true tomorrow. Our Community Participation Guidelines state:

The Mozilla Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone. It doesn’t matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you: we welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they interact constructively with our community, including, but not limited to people of varied age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views.

Our culture of openness extends to encouraging our staff and community to be candid about their views on Mozilla’s direction. We’re proud of that openness and how it distinguishes Mozilla from most organizations. Most of all, we want to ensure that all Mozilla users and community members know how deeply committed we are to openness and equality for all people.

* Deleted from above: “and to outline a series of actions we are taking to reaffirm this position”
Note – we deleted this text as it was from an earlier draft of this post. We are still considering a series of actions but in the interests of announcing our position this weekend we decided to narrow the scope and shorten this post.

Dr. Patrick Moore - (Global Warming pt. 2)

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

The intent of the blog post this week was to focus on the nature of what is driving the current policy debate on  ‘climate change’.  The discussion was going to center upon the fact that a UN report on the scientific data behind global warming released in September indicated that global surface temperatures have not increased for the past 15 years, but scientists who believe climate change due to man is occurring say it has merely paused because of several factors and will soon resume.

In other words, what was once called global warming has been changed by political necessity to the new term ‘climate change’, so that any negative weather event can be ascribed to mans’ damaging of the planet.

However, an intriguing event this past week has necessitated a change in the blogs’ focus.

Dr. Patrick Moore, who was a co-founder of Greenpeace testified this week in Washington on the fact that there is indeed no true science in what the Obama administration is now terming the greatest weapon of mass destruction, the aforementioned ‘climate change’.

Dr. Moore left Greenpeace when, as he describes, the organization made the conscious decision to move to the political left in an attempt to help drive its own agenda.

The Madison Conservative herein presents an abbreviated list of comments made by Dr. Moore during his appearance before the Senate committee.

There is a link at he bottom of the post for those who wish to read the entire presentation. It is fascinating reading.

Selected Highlights of Dr. Patrick Moore’s Feb. 25, 2014 testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

 “Today, we live in an unusually cold period in the history of life on earth and there is no reason to believe that a warmer climate would be anything but beneficial for humans and the majority of other species. There is ample reason to believe that a sharp cooling of the climate would bring disastrous results for human civilization.

Humans are a tropical species. We evolved at the equator in a climate where freezing weather did not exist. The only reasons we can survive these cold climates are fire, clothing, and housing…It is “extremely likely” that a warmer temperature than today’s would be far better than a cooler one.

Earth’s Geologic History Fails CO2 Fears: ‘When modern life evolved over 500 million years ago, CO2 was more than 10 times higher than today, yet life flourished at this time. Then an Ice Age occurred 450 million years ago when CO2 was 10 times higher than today. There is some correlation, but little evidence, to support a direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature through the millennia. The fact that we had both higher temperatures and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main cause of global warming.’

On UN IPCC’s 95% confidence in man-made global warming: ‘Extremely likely’ is not a scientific term but rather a judgment, as in a court of law. The IPCC defines “extremely likely” as a “95-100% probability”. But upon further examination it is clear that these numbers are not the result of any mathematical calculation or statistical analysis. They have been “invented” as a construct within the IPCC report to express “expert judgment”, as determined by the IPCC contributors.

Why does the IPCC believe that a virtually identical increase in temperature after 1950 is caused mainly by “human influence”, when it has no explanation for the nearly identical increase from 1910-1940?

What we do know with “extreme certainty” is that the climate is always changing, between pauses, and that we are not capable, with our limited knowledge, of predicting which way it will go next.”

It is a rather lengthy read, but for those concerned about the farce that is this administration’s policies on ‘climate change’, here is the link to the entirety of Dr. Moore’s testimony:

http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=415b9cde-e664-4628-8fb5-ae3951197d03

Ignorance

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

There were two unrelated news stories that came across the wires this past week that, were they not indicative of absolute ignorance on the parts of the individuals involved, would be fodder for comedians the world over.

The first article was a report on an address made by Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee.

Here is the edited summation of her remarks, culled and confirmed from various news sources:

“We will be answering the call of all of America because people need work and we’re not doing right by them by creating work. And I believe this caucus will put us on the right path and we’ll give President Obama a number of executive orders that he can sign with pride and strength.

In fact, I think that should be our number one agenda. Let’s write up these executive orders — draft them, of course — and ask the president to stand with us on full employment.”

Consider this for a moment. There are 435 members of the House of Representatives. Rep. Lee is a member of that body. Congress has the constitutional responsibility to create legislation. The Congress is the arm of government that the framers and founders bestowed with the power to write the laws under which the nation would live. The reasoning for doing so is extensive, but one pf the major reasons were to forbid power to be consolidated solely within the presidency. Rep. Lee, who has taken an oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution is gleefully expressing the hope that the president will act unilaterally, and that the Democratic caucus should help with such a Constitutional coup.

The breadth and scope of such petty political ignorance should be alarming to the American electorate.

Such stupidity must be called out before the American people.

The second article concerned a federal judge who ruled that Virginia’s law declaring that marriage is a union between one man and one woman is unconstitutional. There has been an uproar over the decision, based upon the fact that the law was enacted after a legally held statewide ballot vote. There are many on the political right who believe that a federal judge should not be able to overturn the results of a fair ballot election.

That is a fair enough argument, but that is not what immediately concerns the Madison Conservative, although this issue will indeed be discussed at a later date.

What IS of concern, and should worry the people of this judges’ jurisdiction is to be found in her written decision. (you can read the entire opinion handed down today here.:

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/edva-ssm-opinion.pdf)

Herein is the pertinent part of Judge Arenda Wright Allen’s decision:

"Our Constitution declares that 'all men' are created equal. Surely this means all of us," Judge Allen wrote on the first page of her opinion.

A fine sentiment coming from a FEDERAL judge, invoking the words of the framers and founders in explaining her decision to vacate the will of the Virginia electorate.

The problem?

The Constitution doe NOT declare that all men are created equal, despite what the judge may believe.

The document that includes that phrase is the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. The Declaration is to be treasured as an integral part of American democracy, but it DOES NOT have any weight in the context of delineating the protections of the people from the government.

A federal judge making such a mistake should not be sitting on the bench, and should absolutely not be deciding issues of such magnitude.

The American people must demand better, and accept nothing less than the best from our judiciary and our elected officials.

Mr. Beale - The Face of Bureaucracy ?

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

Amidst all of the hysteria and political hyperbole of the recent fiscal nonsense, there occurred something that neatly encapsulates why America feels as it does about those in Washington D.C. who have been entrusted with the guidance of this nation.

There are indeed issues to be discussed relative to the recent actions of Congress & the President over the partial government shutdown. Sadly, all that truly happened is a delay of the entire fiasco – it will return after the first of the year, so there is time for the Madison Conservative to address those subjects.

However, sometimes absurdity is a perfect salve for the wounds of politics.

Consider this following headline:

A former federal official refused to testify before a House committee Tuesday. Invokes Fifth Amendment right

That healine does not do justice to the story. In a time when the political class was meandering on about ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ government workers, there was one who was indeed ‘non-essential’. This one person in no way should be considered to encapsulate the normal government employee, but he does do a magnificent job of portraying the general belief of the American electorate about who is minding the store.

Here’s is a part of an opening speech given by the ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (MD). The first part of his commentary relates to how the Republicans forced the shut-down and generally are to blame for the woes of the planet, but then he got to the point. It is a classic, and would be delightfunny if it were not true.

To wit:

With that said, let me turn to today’s hearing.

I want to begin by thanking Inspector General

Elkins and his deputy, Patrick Sullivan,

In addition, I want to acknowledge the role of Administrator McCarthy in finally revealing this fraud, which lasted decades. I know we will discuss the Inspector General’s concerns about how quickly his office received a referral, but I believe the IG will agree that had it not been for Administrator McCarthy, this fraud may never have been uncovered.

Mr. Beale’s betrayal of the public trust for his own personal enrichment is truly shocking in its scope, duration, and sheer audacity.

Mr. Beale defrauded the Environmental Protection

Agency for decades—under both Republican and Democratic administrations—by claiming he was a covert operative for the CIA.

One senior EPA official during the Bush Administration actually approved Mr. Beale’s request to work offsite one day a week so he could participate in an “inter-agency, special advisory group working on a project with the Directorate of Operations at the CIA.”

This was no ordinary ruse.

In addition to lying to senior EPA officials across multiple

administrations, Mr. Beale also duped his own family members, his friends, and even his own lawyer.

Mr. Beale did not come clean to his own criminal defense attorney until investigators arranged for a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in order to finally confront him about his lies.

But that’s not all Mr. Beale lied about.

According to the Inspector General, Mr. Beale also lied about contracting malaria and serving in Vietnam —all to obtain a handicapped parking spot. Mr. Beale also lied on travel vouchers about where he was going and why he needed to go there so he could visit his family in California.

Simply put, Mr. Beale was a con artist, and the American taxpayers were his mark.

As public servants, we must always remember that we serve the people.

Mr. Beale flouted one of the most basic tenets of government service — it’s not your money, it’s the taxpayers’ money.

Mr. Beale’s actions are an insult to the thousands of hardworking and dedicated public servants across the country and an insult to our CIA agents around the world.

While Mr. Beale was claiming to work at Langley and pretending to go on secret missions overseas, real intelligence agents were hunting down Osama bin Laden and battling al Qaeda in the most dangerous places in the world.

Mr. Beale’s impersonation of a CIA agent forced our nation’s law enforcement and intelligence officials to spend their scarce time and resources uncovering his fraud instead of combating real threats around the globe.

This is truly reprehensible.

I am gratified that justice has been served and that Mr. Beale will pay for his fraud.

Profiles in Courage and in Cowardice - A Commentary

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

There are times when it is appropriate for the Madison Conservative to step out of its analytical stance and head off into the realm of personal commentary.

This Saturday necessitates that action.

Before addressing the title of this post, however, a quick aside that provides a wonderful example in contrasts.

This past week saw a group of World War II veterans say to hell with a barricade that was preventing them from visiting the open air World War II memorial in Washington D.C., closed due to the government shut-down. No one has yet explained how an open air memorial can be closed, but that is for another day. These men, visiting the Memorial on what are called ‘Honor Flights’ pretty much sums it all up nicely. These men are men of honor, men who deserve the title ‘hero’, men who exemplify the term courage under fire, and their stance of removing the barricades and pushing past the security officers encapsulated the event nicely. These heroes had no patience for cowardice, political or otherwise. They were intent on honoring their fallen brothers, and the thought that politicians playing games would somehow impede their final mission was unacceptable.

So they acted as heroes act – they took positive action to achieve their goal.

The fact that this administration, that our commander-in-chief would allow the barricades to be erected borders on political cowardice.

This nation has had a sacred compact with our service men and women from America’s founding. We do not allow petty political gamesmanship to dishonor our veterans.

What is little known or addressed is the fact that due to the petty budgetary politics currently in play, the cemetery in Normandy, France is being neglected, a victim of the government shutdown.

America does not treat her heroes this way – it is a disgrace and the President should be taken to task and be asked how he has allowed it to happen.

His failure to do so must be accepted as evidence of his abdication of duty as commander in chief.

So we have the acts of heroes this week in Washington, and this Saturday we have the anniversary of murdered active duty seamen and the subsequent acts of true cowardice by the then sitting president in response to those acts of war.

To wit:

{ed. note. I am the son, grandson and nephew of World War II veterans, and a proud Navy vet myself}

The USS Cole bombing was a suicide attack against the United States Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Cole on October 12^th 2000, while it was harbored and being refueled in the Yemen port of Aden.

Seventeen American sailors were killed, and 39 were injured.

The terrorist organization al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack.

For those who may have somehow forgotten, al-Qaeda are the terrorists who less than a year later were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

President George W. Bush has been long held accountable by the political left for being somehow responsible for not doing more to prevent the attacks.

The liberal left should examine the facts before making those claims, but to do so would require honest thought.

The reason al-Qaeda was able to plot the 0/11 attacks was due solely to the cowardice, the raw unadulterated cowardice of President William Jefferson Clinton, he of the impeachment, of the convicted charge of perjury, the abdication of his law license as a result, as well as the $90,000 fine for lying under oath, while as president, to a federal judge.

And for repeatedly molesting a woman not much older than his daughter.

This is the man the liberal left idolizes fondly as a great president.

William Jefferson Clinton took no action as a result of the USS Cole attack.

What constitutes an act of war more than murdering active duty sailors, on an active duty naval vessel?

Clinton took the cowardly response of assuring “that the guilty would be brought to justice”.

This is what President Obama has claimed on several occasions in response to acts of terror, most notably in the case of the September 11^th attacks on our embassy in Libya.

An assault on our embassy, where the ambassador and three brave American service men were murdered, sounds an awful lot like an act of war.

President Obama has promised that the guilty would be punished.

Uh-huh.

It is surely hoped that he will not follow the Clinton model of cowardice under fire.

The American people must take note of Clintons’ cowardice, and hold President Obama to the same standard.

We must honor our veterans, past, present and future.

Putting up barricades to memorials and letting those who murder our military walk free is not the way to honor those who honor us by their service.

I will continue to use this platform to remind anyone who will listen that Clinton was a coward. There is little worse than can be said than to denote a commander as a coward, but Clinton has earned it.

The American people must pray that President Obama does not earn the disgraced sobriquet of coward.

Hypocrisy Unleashed - 9-29-2013

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

In the current state of idiocy that is the debate on budgets and debt limits, the founding fathers gave us the clear path to resolving the issues, answers found within our founding government document, the United States Constitution.

Consider this piece contained within Article 1 Section 8, relative to the authority bestowed upon the legislature:

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

The founders and framers had reason to be wary of the practice of having standing armies, so their reasonable and sensible response was to mandate that funding for such national needs were to have them judiciously reviewed every two years.

It is sad to believe that we have gotten to the point where lazy and intellectually challenged politicians have become so enamored of ‘comprehensive’ packages of legislation, with no though given to future review.

It is this insistence of such ‘comprehensive’ legislation that has led us to the current state of fiduciary foolishness.

There should be no gamesmanship played over the fair faith and credit of the nation, but no one seems to be questioning why we continue to face such a continual state of financial firestorms.

It is thus disillusioning to hear the President and Senate Leader Reid professing that their stance on no negotiations on such issues as the debt limit is somehow based upon their ‘principles’.

It would seem a reminder to both men is in order.

To wit:

Harry Reid, March 2006

“If my Republican friends believe that increasing our debt by almost $800 billion today and more than $3 trillion over the last five years is the right thing to do, they should be upfront about it. They should explain why they think more debt is good for the economy.

How can the Republican majority in this Congress explain to their constituents that trillions of dollars in new debt is good for our economy? How can they explain that they think it’s fair to force our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren to finance this debt through higher taxes. That’s what it will have to be. Why is it right to increase our nation’s dependence on foreign creditors?

They should explain this. Maybe they can convince the public they’re right. I doubt it. Because most Americans know that increasing debt is the last thing we should be doing. After all, I repeat, the Baby Boomers are about to retire. Under the circumstances, any credible economist would tell you we should be reducing debt, not increasing it.Democrats won’t be making argument to supper this legalization, which will weaken our country. Weaken our county.”

Well put, Senator. Yet, it is now acceptable to you to take the opposite opinion while railing about the ‘anarchists’ on the other side.

And speaking of hypocrisy, sadly:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. … It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies.”

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaking on the Senate floor in 2006 just before he voted against raising the debt ceiling.

The Blogging Press

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

The freedom of the press, the voice of the electorate, is one of our most sacred constitutional tenets and protections.

The first amendment, as written:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It is clear, succinct and lacks any ambiguity. It does not quantify ‘the press’ in any manner.

It is therefore troubling to consider the following composite of information, drawn from various sources, demonstrating that the First Amendment is under assault, again: (the acquired information is reprinted here in a different font throughout the post)

The first version of a media shield law that handily made it through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday defined for the first time what constitutes a “real reporter” deserving of extra protection versus what Sen. Dianne Feinstein called a “17-year-old blogger” who doesn’t deserve a legal shield.

That Congress is attempting to define “journalist” at all in order to expand protections after a number of high-profile leak cases and ensuing Justice Department prosecutions  suggests that the law would subvert a free press by giving institutional advantage to government-approved media outlets.

In its attempt to define who’s a journalist and who’s not, is the US Senate trying to say that Thomas Paine, a corset-maker, wouldn’t have deserved the same protections from government heavy-handedness as a newspaper publisher like Ben Franklin?

While Mr. Paine eventually edited magazines in the United States, he’s best known for his pamphleteering days, when he self-published “Common Sense,” one of the American Revolution’s most poignant calls to arms. Modern bloggers, the Madison Conservative among them, see themselves as the inheritors of the pamphleteering tradition, and many wondered on Friday whether Paine would be covered under the proposed law.

The bill simply adds extra protections against being forced to testify about sources for established reporters and freelancers with a “considerable” amount of publishing experience. It also allows a judge to make a declaration as to who’s a journalist and who’s not in an attempt to build the shield as wide as possib

“All we’re doing is adding privilege to existing First Amendment rights, so there is, logically, zero First Amendment threat out of this,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, (D) of Rhode Island.

Any assault, in any form, against the press is a dangerous omen. Tyrants often start their reigns by commandeering the media, and doing so  for what they deem ‘the public interest’.

Congress must not be allowed to determine what is and what is not ‘the press’. The internet has given voice to society in ways never before seen, but the public must be allowed to determine what they deem to be viable press and what they deem to be nonsense.

Delineation by a government as to what constitutes ‘the press’ is a harbinger of ill intent.

The American people must not surrender their rights and responsibilities to a free press.

The First 39 of 55.

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

This week is of grand historical consequence for the American people, but it is assured to escape any acknowledgement of sustentative note.

That is sad, because this week holds the anniversary of the seed of the greatest country the world has ever known.

Consider the following 39 names:

Washington, George, VA

Franklin, Benjamin, PA

Madison, James, VA

Hamilton, Alexander, NY

Morris, Gouverneur, PA

Morris, Robert, PA

Wilson, James, PA

Pinckney, Chas, SC

Rutledge, John, SC

Butler, Pierce, SC

Sherman, Roger, CT

Johnson, William Samuel, CT

McHenry, James, MD

Read, George, DE

Bassett, Richard, DE

Spaight, Richard Dobbs, NC

Blount, William, NC

Williamson, Hugh, NC

Jenifer, Daniel of St. Thomas, MD

King, Rufus, MA

Gorham, Nathaniel, MA

Dayton, Jonathan, NJ

Carroll, Daniel, MD

Few, William, GA

Baldwin, Abraham, GA

Langdon, John, NH

Gilman, Nicholas, NH

Livingston, William, NJ

Paterson, William, NJ

Mifflin, Thomas, PA

Clymer, George, PA

FitzSimons, Thomas, PA

Ingersoll, Jared, PA

Bedford, Gunning, Jr., DE

Brearley, David, NJ

Dickinson, John, DE

Blair, John, VA

Broom, Jacob, DE

This week marks the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution of the United States. On September 17, 1787, these 39 men were the first of the eventual 55 signers of our founding document.

The signers, founders and framers of that august document had the audacity to construct a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Their overriding focus was the government could only function by the consent of the governed.

The Constitution is a limitation on the powers of government, which by definition is the definition of the freedoms reserved by the people.

This week, the Madison Conservative would ask that you reflect on the bravery of those original 55 signers, and of the significance of that day, 226 years ago this very week, when the sense of the American spirit was put to paper, when the hopes and dreams of freedom were given voice for posterity.

In an era of ad hominum attacks from all sides, it would be of use for the American people to pause and consider the gift of the Constitution that has been offered for them, and their posterity.

For those who believe that there is little anyone can do to affect positive change, please re-read those 39 names and reconsider your opinion on the futility of action.

We the People indeed.