Free Republic

Grand Old Partisan Malcolm A. Kline, November 9, 2009 In his acceptance speech, Virginia’s governor-elect, Bob McDonnell, may have quoted the founding fathers more extensively than the last four U. S. presidents combined have in their entire political careers. But then, he also may have made more such references than many teachers do in their working lifetimes. Among pedagogues, a notable exception to this trend is Colleen A. Sheehan, author of James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government. “Our core of self –government has been on the wane for a century and grows weaker every day,” Sheehan told an...

LifeandLibertyReport.com “It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.� – Psalm 118:8 It may shock some these days to know that our American form of republican government was founded in a belief that men are intrinsically wicked power-mongers, but it’s true. “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,� Lord Acton famously said a century after our nation’s founding, but the men who framed the American republic already understood this truism well. This knowledge was rooted in their understanding of the Bible, of history, and of fallen human nature. Which is why they set up...

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. - Thomas Jefferson Background Back in the late 1700’s when our independence from Britain was declared, the colonies had some idea of what they didn’t want in a ruling government. They envisioned a limited government that would protect individual rights and liberty and that would rule by majority. Since then, the federal bureaucracy has evolved from its creation as a protector of liberty and individual rights to securing our welfare and...

Federalist #10: Debated Point by Point: Madison’s Argument: The people won’t allow themselves to be oppressed. RESUMING the subject of the last paper, I proceed to inquire whether the federal government or the State governments will have the advantage with regard to the predilection and support of the people. Notwithstanding the different modes in which they are appointed, we must consider both of them as substantially dependent on the great body of the citizens of the United States. I assume this position here as it respects the first, reserving the proofs for another place. The federal and State governments are...

A Declaration of Restoration /July 4th 2009/ When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a governing body they have created, which has turned tyrannical and detrimental to the peace and safety, and the very existence of the nation of the People who established the governing body, and to return to a previously established form of self governing under the Laws of Nature and Natures God as entitled therein, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which...

Article I Section 8, Federalist No. 45, and the Tenth Amendment - the usurpation of power by Congress It is difficult to understand how our national leaders can pass many of the laws they do given they have no authority to do so. It is also difficult to understand how everything seems to have been turned upside down -- what use to mean one thing now means the opposite. Well, here are the facts regarding the intent of the Constitution and how politicians attempt to convince us they are operating within its confines. US Constitution Article I - The Legislative...

You may have seen this quote; it is on many Internet sites - all conservative: "Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government." I could not find a context for the quote, nor a source. So I started asking the experts. Sources at James Madison University and the University of Virginia (that specializes in the papers of James Madison) know nothing of this quote; and both are suspicious of the wording - they say it is not Madison-like....

Who Are the Best Keepers of the People's Liberties? National Gazette, December 22, 1792 Republican. — The people themselves. The sacred trust can be no where so safe as in the hands most interested in preserving it. Anti-republican. — The people are stupid, suspicious, licentious. They cannot safely trust themselves. When they have established government they should think of nothing but obedience, leaving the care of their liberties to their wiser rulers. Republican. — Although all men are born free, and all nations might be so, yet too true it is, that slavery has been the general lot of the...

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been interpreted as guaranteeing a right to bear arms. Wisconsin, where deer hunting is hard-wired into the state's DNA, respects that right. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives agree on the point. Indeed, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Congressman Dave Obey, D-Wausau, are among the steadiest defenders of gun rights at the national level. We respect their reasoned positions, as we do those of Congressman Tom Petri, R-Fond du Lac, and former Gov. Tommy Thompson. But we do not respect the bizarre claim that the Second Amendment can be read to include...

I will add, as a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, that they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. If it be...

I am a big fan of Madison Police Chief Noble Wray. The man must walk a tightrope between an ultra-liberal Common Council, an increasingly restive population of crime and quality of life victims, and — I suspect — the better instincts of his own uniformed officers. Nonetheless, the chief whacked a hornet's nest when he was quoted in Monday's Wisconsin State Journal thusly: In some cases, long-time residents of some neighborhoods are afraid of young blacks and Hispanics who are not breaking the law. In those cases, the newcomers to a neighborhood may need to adjust their behavior, and long-time...

Madison police would enlist parental permission to search for guns in their children’s bedrooms in one part of a multifaceted plan outlined Thursday by Mayor Dave Cieslewicz. The search and seizure proposal is one of a long list initiatives — some new and some old — that Cieslewicz wants examined in the wake of a sharp increase in gun violence on the south and west sides of Madison this year. “We’ve got to be tough,” Cieslewicz said. “We’ve got to pull every enforcement lever we have to deal with people who deal drugs and people who fire guns.”

In 1861, a melancholy Englishman named Benjamin Walker settled in Madison and built a medieval castle for his home. Two round turrets framed a square tower. In each turret was an octagonal sitting room, one decorated in red and the other in green. Carved marble mantels topped the fireplaces and gilt-framed oil paintings decorated the walls. A massive oak table and chairs, elaborate candelabras, and fine china furnished the dining room. Walker built a stone barn behind the castle and an underground tunnel to connect the two buildings. Walker was recalled as "a dark, glowering, silent man" who spent most...

Madison - Firefighters poured water on the gold-colored dome of the Jefferson County Courthouse in Madison as flames engulfed the 154-year-old building Wednesday evening. But the dome and the courthouse's central tower appeared to be severely damaged. Fire crews from across southern Indiana and northern Kentucky were called to the scenic Ohio River city to battle the blaze that was reported about 6 p.m. Smoke billowed hundreds of feet into the air and flames shot out the top of the building. Video on Louisville, Ky. television station WHAS showed inmates shackled and kneeling outside the jail adjacent to the courthouse,...

When our family moved to Wisconsin in the mid 1960s, Dad found us a little two-story Cape Cod in the village of Maple Bluff. By all appearances it was a perfect starter home for an insurance claims man and his wife, featuring a backyard big enough to punt a football in and an elm tree with a swing, all within walking distance of Lakewood Elementary School. But my folks, swept up in the civil rights and anti-war movements, soon discovered they were out of step with some of their new neighbors in the conservative suburb on Lake Mendota's northeast shore....

The Mike Church take on the Simon & Garfunkel classic, "Mrs. Robinson"

The state Department of Justice is investigating allegations of improper conduct by Madison Ald. Mike Verveer in his former job as a prosecutor for the Dane County District Attorney’s office, the Wisconsin State Journal has learned. District Attorney Brian Blanchard confirmed he asked for the investigation in late October, the same day his office received a complaint about Verveer’s conduct as a prosecutor and Verveer began an unpaid leave of absence. That investigation is ongoing, Assistant Attorney General Kevin Potter wrote in response to a request by the newspaper under the state’s open records law for documents relating to the...

The people can never wilfully betray their own interests; but they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act. short context: It adds no small weight to all these considerations, to recollect that history informs us of no long-lived republic which had not a senate. Sparta, Rome, and Carthage are, in fact, the only states to whom that character can be...

MADISON-- WIBA 1310 AM radio talk show host Vicki McKenna recently welcomed former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino onto her show to discuss the second trimester abortions he once performed regularly while practicing in Troy, New York. Levatino estimates that he performed 9 to 10 abortions per week at his OB practice over the course of eight years, including 1,200 D&E (Dilation and Extraction) procedures that are used to abort pregnancies in the second trimester. McKenna interviewed Levatino today on “Up Front” because of plans to establish a clinic at the University of Wisconsin's Madison Surgery Center which would perform the...

During the course of the Bush/Cheney interregnum, millions of Americans resisted the worst excesses of a lawless and irresponsible administration that led this country into wars of whim, sanctioned torture and extraordinary rendition, embarked upon a spying regimen that made a mockery of the right to privacy, and destroyed the system of checks and balances that was supposed to protect the republic from monarchical abuse. Each year during a period of democratic decline that was so aptly anticipated by Jefferson with his 18th century reference to "the reign of the witches," we honored Most Valuable Progressives -- groups and individuals...

Call this a case of liberalism via central planning gone wild. In one of the most politically left-of-center cities east of Berkeley, Calif., ideas put forth at city hall in Madison, Wis. would dramatically limit free enterprise and personal liberty, all in the name of environmental sustainability. According to the “Broad Strategies” section of a meeting agenda recently posted on the City of Madison Web site, an ordinance being considered would force city zoning to account for and mitigate climate change. ..more..

In what may be the beginning of a campaign to talk soldiers out of deploying to Iraq, 12 peace activists were fined Monday in federal court for trespassing last summer at Fort McCoy in west central Wisconsin. Members of Voices for Creative Nonviolence were arrested in August by base police at the main gate of the 67,000-acre military installation during a walk from Chicago to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. The activists said they wanted to "dialogue" with soldiers to tell them their Fort McCoy Training would leave them woefully unprepared for what they would face in...

In light of the ongoing naval battles with Muslim pirates operating from Somalia.... America has been fighting Islamists for longer than many realize. Even before independence was declared, American ships were pirated, and their Christian crews enslaved, by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the “Dey of Algiers”—an Ottoman Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.... Lacking the ability to project U.S. naval force in the Mediterranean, America tried appeasement. In 1784, Congress agreed to fund tributes and ransoms in order to rescue U.S. ships and buy the freedom of enslaved American sailors....

RFFM.org NEWS -- by Dan Gura, Associate Editor CHICAGO, IL -- The Springfield Nativity Scene Committee (SNSC), in conjunction with the Chicago-based Thomas More Society, announced the Nativity scene which made history as it stood in the Illinois state capitol building in Springfield was a total success and the group intends to make the project an annual affair. The group also announced it has received inquiries for legal and logistical assistance from residents in Iowa and Wisconsin who would like to put up similar religious displays next Christmas season. “Things couldn’t have gone better,” said Dan Zanoza, Chairman of the...

It is much easier to look backwards, to examine all of those plans, decisions and safeguards which could have been crafted a little better, if we had only known then, what has proven so expensive now. Accordingly, it is also stunning, and downright humbling, for us beneficiaries in that distant future, to now appreciate just how much effort, foresight, and stark brilliance, obviously went into the proposals, conflict and eventual agreement by those of the past who got so much so right. And yet if we are to do our part now, as they did theirs then, we must begin...

When deer hunting season opens this weekend, Wisconsin’s poor deer hunters are going to be at even more of a disadvantage than usual in their annual attempt to match wits with highly intelligent animals. This year, deer hunters are going to be burdened by carrying heaping armloads of guns into the woods with them. Deer hunters and other gun lovers have been absolutely terrified ever since Nov. 4 that President-elect Barack Obama is going to swoop down on their homes and confiscate all their guns. In a panic, thousands of gun owners have raced to their nearest gun dealers to...

Thanks to one of those “quirks” in the U.S. Constitution, Sen. Hillary Clinton technically is not eligible to be the Secretary of State -- because of a pay raise. This technicality is not unique to Clinton. According to Article

[NOTE - This politically-correct article is posted here so you can see the garbage coming from Madison, Wisconsin this Thanksgiving. Pay attention to the dates referenced. Rush also referenced it today, so i thought I'd post it here for your perusal. Not to be read too soon after eating cookies, or you'll lose them.] ******************************************************* Everything you know about the "first" Thanksgiving is wrong. Plymouth Rock. Pilgrims. Perseverance. Big feast. Happy Indians sharing in the bounty. According to "award-winning" filmmaker Patty Loew, it's all bunk, except maybe the part about eating turkey. Early settlers were so hungry they ate about...

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands; they may a point teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation...

A tremendous letter in its entirety, Jefferson was concerned with the unrest in the United States. Here is the whole letter. The latin translates to "I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude." Thomas Jefferson To James Madison Paris, Jan. 30, 1787 DEAR SIR, -- My last to you was of the 16th of Dec, since which I have received yours of Nov 25, & Dec 4, which afforded me, as your letters always do, a treat on matters public, individual & oeconomical. I am impatient to learn your sentiments on the late troubles in the Eastern...

One of my favorite commenters, Madison Man, just happens to have an office window overlooking the scene: The time is 10:30 a.m. Notices for the event said that the "doors" would open at 9:00 and the event would begin at 10. Not quite a hotbed of Michelle-love, is it?

Who’s Afraid of Political Elites? by: Daniel Smith, September 02, 2008 Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity often scourge the “liberal elites.” Michael Savage joins them. However, as an independent, he also scourges the “country club” and “checkered pants” conservative elites. Given the popularity of their respective talk shows, it appears Americans share a disdain for political elitism. A democratic, populist, anti-aristocratic thinking pervades the general population. The foregoing reveals a great American irony, though. Simply stated, the Constitution created an elite form of government. Examine the following quotations from Federalist No. 10, written by James Madison: Hence, it clearly appears,...

Ten years ago today, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, causing a devastating loss of life and signaling that the United States faced new and more serious terrorist threats abroad and potentially at home. That potential became a reality on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked, causing an even more devastating loss of life and sending an even clearer signal regarding the necessity of a smart and focused response to a challenge that could no longer be ignored. Unfortunately, President Bush did not get the message. He and his neoconservative advisers...

“[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” —James Madison

Can you be an obscure, self-indulged, theory-laden, post-modern scholar and manage to be an effective university president?  University of Wisconsin at Madison is hoping “yes.� It has picked Biddy Martin, Cornell provost and women’s studies professor, as its new chancellor. Her best-known work is a little something called Femininity Played Straight, which features chapters entitled “Sexualities without Gender and Other Queer Utopias� and “Teaching Feminism.� The one review that Amazon.com has picked up on the book is truncated to a single sentence, though it pretty much sums up the obtuseness of Ms Martin’s field: “Martin's eccentric use of the body...

MADISON, WI -- There was a time when residents in this liberal college city would greet homeless people by name. They'd stop to chat with Scanner Dan, the grizzled guy with a walkie-talkie buzzing at his hip as he asked for change. They'd offer odd jobs to a man known as Snowball, who was rumored to have been a smuggler for the Chicago mob during Prohibition. Then two violent slayings in less than three months shook residents in the state capital, which is also home to the main campus of the University of Wisconsin. Both victims were stabbed in their...

Protesters demonstrated Thursday against a coal-powered power plant proposed by Alliant Energy Corp. at Cassville, heartened by an environmental impact statement by state officials that said the proposed plant was "not the least cost option under any scenario." That statement, in a draft EIS by the Public Service Commission and the Department of Natural Resources, fueled protests by more than 70 environmentalists -- some on bicycles -- chanting "No more coal," prior to Alliant's annual shareholder meeting at the Alliant Energy Center. Protesters were joined by Thomas Sanzillo, a financial analyst who said that coal prices are likely to rise...

A former University of Wisconsin-Madison lecturer who taught that the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is running for Congress. Kevin Barrett says he will officially announce his challenge to Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Kind on Monday. Barrett says he will make the announcement before a Kind town hall meeting and then ask the congressman "some pointed questions." Barrett says he is running as a Libertarian and will be calling for an investigation into the terrorist attacks. He calls the official version of what happened a "load of hooey."Barrett is also urging voters to throw all Democrats...

Hundreds of Americorps members will join forces with the Natural Resources Foundation and the state DNR to attack invasive plant species in Sauk County on Wednesday, May 14. "From what we can tell, this is going to be the largest single largest one-day volunteer event to combat invasive species in Wisconsin history," said Kelly Kearns, plant conservation manager for the Department of Natural Resources. "Invasive species don't just threaten the beauty of Wisconsin's lands and waters, they also cost us millions of dollars each year," she said. The invasive plants to be combated on May 14 include garlic mustard, buckthorn...

MADISON, Wis. — The slaying of a college student in a downtown neighborhood frequented by beggars has forced this liberal city to ask a difficult question: Has Madison been too nice to the homeless? A debate over the city's friendly treatment of its transient population had been under way for months, but last week's killing of University of Wisconsin student Brittany Zimmermann started something of a backlash against the homeless. Police have arrested dozens of transients on unrelated charges as part of the investigation, but none are considered suspects in the death. The city also announced plans Wednesday to confront...

JEFFERSON — A penniless transient who spent more than 10 years in an Illinois prison for sexual assault was charged today with killing a Cambridge real estate agent by beating her with a fireplace poker at least nine times and strangling her with her own scarf Tuesday evening.James A. Hole, 34, whose last address was an apartment he shared in Brookfield, Ill., was charged with first-degree intentional homicide, arson and burglary with intent to commit sexual assault in Jefferson County Circuit Court.

Losing Brett Favre is hard enough, but what if the Green Bay Packers lost their home field advantage? Global warming could remove those icy cold days and snowstorms that tend to benefit the Pack if they're playing against a team more accustomed to warm weather. An analysis by Environment America found that cold weather teams won more than 65 percent of their home games played from November through January against warm weather teams from 1998 through 2005. And though all cold weather stadiums saw average football season temperatures rise during the past seven years compared to the previous 30 years,...

As an education reformer, I read about education every day. I read about ways to hold institutions of higher learning accountable for their education curriculum, I read about how important it is to have highly qualified teachers, and I read how students not receiving an equitable education should be afforded the right to attend private schools or charter schools with the tax dollars set aside for public education. While all of these are noble ideas, none of them address the real problem with education. The real problem is that nowhere is it written in the Constitution or the Bill of...

I had a recent opportunity to have some holiday cheer and briefly talk politics with two longtime conservative associates; one a Mike Huckabee leaner and the other a Fred Thompson guy. The arguments (paraphrasing) went like this: Huckabee guy: Huck is the one who can truly re-energize the Christian Conservatives in the party, he has a good sense of humor, presents himself well and his personality surely will attract moderates, not scare them off. His recent ‘surge’ is evidence of a winning political ear, which we will need to beat Hillary. He also was a successful governor from a Southern...

According to "Devilstower", a blogger on the DailyKos website, human rights are more important than national security. She explains, “Even if it was sure to be lost in a terrorist attack today, my life is not worth the Constitution. The life of my child is not worth the Constitution.” This same blogger believes that presidents Bush, Roosevelt, and Lincoln set aside their duty to uphold the Constitution in exchange for the illusion of security. “Devilstower” seems to have missed the whole idea behind instituting a Constitution, which is that government is instituted to protect the peoples’ right to life, liberty...

Another battle over separation of church and state may be on the horizon with a proposal scheduled to go in front of an Assembly committee Wednesday. The issue? What to call the tree that sits in the State Capitol during the holiday season. Currently the tree is referred to as a "holiday tree," but the resolution that will be brought to the Committee on State Affairs would rename it as the Wisconsin State Christmas Tree. Michael Schoenfield, legislative aide to Rep. Marlin Schneider, D-Wisconsin Rapids, who is sponsoring the resolution, said the state should refer to the tree as a...

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison participated in a small "revolution" against British weather-monitoring practices In 1790, Thomas Jefferson began his tenure as America's first Secretary of State in the cabinet of George Washington. In this role, he would wrestle with a host of issues facing the struggling new republic, including such weighty matters as neutrality or engagement should England undertake a war of conquest with Spain for Louisiana. But politics and government represented only one side of the life of the man who would become known as one of America's most cerebral presidents. Among other pursuits, Jefferson had an abiding...

Science Daily — In a molecular tour de force, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have provided an exquisitely detailed picture of natural selection as it occurs at the genetic level. Writing Oct. 11, 2007 in the journal Nature, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Sean B. Carroll and former UW-Madison graduate student Chris Todd Hittinger document how, over many generations, a single yeast gene divides in two and parses its responsibilities to be a more efficient denizen of its environment. The work illustrates, at the most basic level, the driving force of evolution."This is how new capabilities arise and new...

The intersection of West Washington Avenue and South Park Street in front of University Audio was the noisiest corner on the isthmus Tuesday afternoon. Half of the cars that went through the intersection, it seemed, made the effort to honk at a small band of anti-war protesters holding signs urging them to do so. Fred Reames, 67, a retired UW-Madison professor of mechanical engineering, held two signs: "Support our troops!" and "Bring them home! Now!" "It's an immoral war which is accomplishing nothing," Reames said. "We are killing a lot of people we shouldn't be killing." The protest was one...

The owner of a Madison (WI) Mexican restaurant is suing two pro-immigrant groups that helped organize pickets outside his business to protest his employment practices. David Herrera, owner of La Hacienda Inc., on South Park Street, contends the demonstrations have interfered with his business and customers. He's asking a judge to make the protesters tone down their tactics. The suit filed this week names the Immigrant Workers Union, the Interfaith Coalition for Workers and two protest leaders. The groups are part of a coalition that advocates for immigrant workers. The groups have organized the pickets since last month at La...