Presumptive nominee John McCain is back to his old ways -- speaking to La Raza and promising comprehensive immigration reform. Can conservatives trust McCain? Should we start a movement to dump him from the ticket? Let us know what you think.

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5/16/2008

Barack Hussein Obama has come unglued because of something President Bush said. In a speech to Israel's Knesset, Bush said... 

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Monday, May 19

Richard Collins - 9:30AM
Founder of the premier Hillary Clinton educational website StopHerNow.com Collins has declared StopHerNow.com’s mission accomplished and how now launched Stop-Him-Now.com to do the same to Sen. Obama.

FIND INFORMATION on how to carry The Lynn Woolley Show in your market.

LOGICAL ITEMS for Logical people. If it is not found here, it's not logical.

The Death of Talk Radio?
A politically-powerful liberal-left movement seeks to silence conservative media personalities. This book analyzes the threat from the perspective of veteran talk show host Lynn Woolley and media analyst and critic Cliff Kincaid.

Clear Moral Objectives
*Special Price*
Finally, here's a book that examines the nation's twelve big challenges in clear, logical terms -- no spin and no parsing of words.

The Last Great Days of Radio
*Special Price*
A mixture of humor, wit, and nostalgia, this memoir follows one radio career from a small station in a small market all the way to the largest radio newsroom in Texas -- and back again.

Wes Riddle's Horse Sense
September 24, 2007

The United States signs international agreements with other countries, but we don’t call them treaties so that we can avoid Senate ratifications as required by the Constitution.  In the same way, you probably realize that we fail to declare wars anymore, no matter the length or degree of military commitment.  Yet we marvel at the consequences: how we could get in a war on bad intelligence and faulty pretext; how we would manage to prosecute and win like the United States, only to lose national credibility and strategic objectives by performing the aftermath like the United Nations; how politicians should all second guess and point their fingers, as if they bore no responsibility for debate or a decision to go in and stay there—because in fact they shirked that responsibility  in the first instance.  The two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina was August 29th.  Yeah we weathered the storm, as it were, but performed the aftermath like a Third World Country.  It occurs to me our Congress resembles the hapless Iraqi regime more than we care to imagine! 

    State legislators have reported that the border of Texas with Mexico has been regularly violated, as armed vehicles cross the Rio Grande to provide security for illegal drug trafficking and whole convoys carrying the poisonous stuff to our youth come across the border.  Yet there is hardly the hue and cry one would expect, no not from independent Texans or patriotic Americans, not a peep from the Governor or the President—none like in the days of Pancho Villa, when Blackjack Pershing took out after him into Mexico!  And we deign to offer this brand of democracy to the Middle East and the rest of the world, as if they should even want it.  Oh give me the Republic instead; or a home where the buffalo roam, instead of senators in airport lavatories.  It makes you wonder if there isn’t a connection between the inconvenient loss of character displayed by so many of our leaders and representatives today, and the “conveniently constitutional” approach they take to actual governance.  The Founders believed that character lay behind not only good statecraft, but also maintenance of the liberties they bequeathed to us.   

    There is perhaps an inverse lesson to be drawn from experience in Iraq.  That is to say, that despite the military success of the surge strategy there has been no progress on the political front there.  Indeed, the reason for the surge was to buy a breathing space in terms of security for the Iraqi regime to make political headway.  While the security situation on the ground has improved and the rate of American casualties has actually declined, there is less political unity and stability in Iraq than there was before the surge began!  It was nearly a foregone conclusion the commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, General David Petraeus, as well as and other military brass would testify before Congress and show evidence of military success.  It is true, so far as it goes.  It should have been almost as certain, however, that the Iraqi regime would score miserably when it came to meeting the political benchmarks set by Congress and the administration.  All the talk and “revelations” coming out this month will give politicians of both parties the cover they’ve been looking for, in order to reduce American troop levels before the next election—all the while declaring victory, or at least the end of a good college try.  The inverse lesson to learn is that political rot at home will not stave off the day of reckoning that is sure to come, whether or not we have the most powerful and professional military force in the world—which we do.  Moreover, political expedience and political consensus that comes at the expense of constitutional scruples, conceivably jeopardizes military readiness at home and strategic flexibility to face emerging threats abroad.  The destruction of constitutional underpinnings is leaving these United States perilously adrift and at risk in the world, neither the Republic we once were, nor quite as yet the competent empire.  For the sake of liberty, we can at least be grateful for the latter shortcoming.  For the sake of liberty further, we should begin to elect leaders of character next year and into the future, men and women who care about the Constitution whether or not its dictates and procedures are convenient.

_____________________
Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors
from West Point and Oxford.  Widely published in the academic and opinion
press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican
Primary.  Email: wes@wesriddle.com.