Quote of the day – Charles Krauthammer

The worst thing about this [START]  treaty, however, is that it is simply a distraction. It gives the illusion of doing something about nuclear danger by addressing a non-problem, Russia, while doing nothing about the real problem – Iran and North Korea. The utter irrelevance of New START to nuclear safety was dramatically underscored last week by the revelation of that North Korean uranium enrichment plant, built with such sophistication that it left the former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory “stunned.” It could become the ultimate proliferation factory. Pyongyang is already a serial proliferator. It has nothing else to sell. Iran, Syria and al-Qaeda have the money to buy.

The Washington Post

Obama’s dream of a nuclear free world is naive and childish. Why he’s called the man-child president, I suppose.

It’s like the old bumper sticker – “when they outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have them.”  This is no different except for the power of the weapon.

We’ll disarm and set an example for — who? The Iranians or the North Koreans? Hugo Chavez? And we all know that this is the ultimate Chavez dream. These are the true nuclear threats. As Krauthammer says: who lays awake nights worrying about what the Brits are doing with their nukes? We worry about the rogue nutcases out there.  And no matter what we do, they are not going to disarm – not one iota.

But this is the typical leftist utopian fantasy: a world free of nuclear weapons  – oh, and also polar bears hugging us in our driveways.

Forget the birth certificate. Is Obama a ‘natural born’ citizen or not?

In Aaron Klein’s book The Manchurian President, in the chapter entitled “Eligibility” he makes a good case regarding Obama’s citizenship status.

What is a natural born citizen? The Constitution never really defines that and it’s not clearly defined in the Federalist Papers, either. Does natural born mean that you have to be born on American soil? Or does it mean that you have to be born of parents who are American citizens?

You might remember the to-do made over McCain’s birth in Panama… on an American naval base. It was such a big deal that the Senate passed a resolution on April 30, 2008 that stated John Sidney McCain III, being “born to American citizens on an American military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1938 … is a ‘natural born citizen’ under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution…”

(Why such a resolution was required of a great war hero and nothing about Obama’s circumstances was ever addressed by Congress, is an entirely other topic.)

I believe that ‘natural born’ means being born to AMERICAN CITIZENS – two American citizens. I think the Senate believed that, too if you read their resolution for McCain, as I do.

When Obama was born, his father, or the man  the claims as his father, was Kenyan. In 1961, the year of Obama’s birth, Kenya was part of the British Crown. Obviously, Obama, Sr. was not an American citizen.  And Obama, nor anyone in his circle dispute that fact. But because the definition of ‘natural born’ is so obscure and not clearly defined in the Constitution, and because as Klein and I both admit, we are not Constitutional lawyers, there probably won’t be any case brought against this.

We must ‘go back and fetch it’ for our children’s sake

“There’s an African word, sankofa,” Joan continued, “that kept coming back to me during my walk. It means ‘go back and fetch it.’  Step back into the past and bring it to the present, so we don’t make the same mistakes. That’s what I learned on the Underground Railroad. We have to keep our past alive.”

America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story by Bruce Feiler

Another fascinating book that I recommend.

Feiler tells the American story and our connection to the great leader, Moses in ways that most of us have never known or thought of. The Joan (Southgate) in the quote, is a descendant of American slaves and it goes without saying that the story of Moses and the Exodus has great meaning to her and her ancestors, just as it did to the Pilgrims who sailed across their own Red Sea to arrive at their own Caanan.

Joan’s quote struck a real chord with me. We have allowed too much of our history to be rewritten or completely forgotten. We have let go the greatness of our nation and the great men who created it.

Some time ago I read a book about Valley Forge. In the winter of 1778, Washington had begged Congress for supplies for his ragtag troops but none came. Finally, he lamented “that unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place … this Army must inevitably … Starve, dissolve, or disperse, in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can.”

The suffering these men endured that winter, many dying of typhus and pneumonia, really is incomprehensible to me as I sit on my soft sofa in a heated home with my computer, cell phone and HDTV. It’s hard for me to even imagine the sacrifice of these farmer/soldiers, 232 years later.  Who were these men and why did they leave their farms and homes to fight for independence? Did they realize the cause and the importance of it? Was life so intolerable for them under the British and their heavy taxation, to give up all for this?

Valley Forge is only one great moment in our story. There are so many moments in our history that cannot be forgotten or misunderstood or rewritten by those with a nefarious agenda. We have opted out our responsibility to those who teach our children their own false truths.

We must go back and fetch it before it’s completely lost, for the future of our children and our nation.