by J. F. Kelly, Jr. | Coronado

One of the least inspiring national debates in recent memory is the ongoing brouhaha over whether or not a new Islamic Center and mosque should be built in the Ground Zero neighborhood of Manhattan. By now, you’ve heard most and perhaps all of the arguments, pro and con, but indulge me for a few moments while I offer mine.

I am already weary of reading about it, but the issue hasn’t gone away and probably won’t soon, whether or not the center is ever built at the proposed location. If it does actually get built there, which I doubt, one can imagine a less than happy future for it. It would inevitably be viewed by many, rightly or wrongly, as an enduring insult to the memory of the innocent victims and heroic first responders who died at the hands of Islamic terrorists on that fateful day in 2001.

Why, then, would sponsors and supporters of this project persist in their demands to build in this location? Polls show that an overwhelming majority of the respondents oppose it. Are they all bigots? Perhaps some. Most of them, however, acknowledge the right of members of any religion to build churches, temples, mosques or synagogues wherever they wish, subject to zoning laws and regulatory approvals that apply to everyone. This is a right, it should be noted, which is not reciprocated in many Muslim countries. Their objection lies in building a mosque at this location, an action they feel is insensitive, provocative and disrespectful to the victims, their relatives and loved ones and to survivors.

Common sense would suggest that an alternate location, removed from the Ground Zero area, be selected if only for good public relations purposes. New York Governor David Patterson has even offered state land for this purpose. Why build a 15-story edifice near a location that some consider hallowed ground and who will view the structure as a monument celebrating a defeat inflicted on America by Islamist terrorists? What good in terms of combating Islamophobia and promoting tolerance toward Muslims can come from a project such as this? Why go through the demonstrations and work stoppages, rights also protected by the Constitution, by the way, which likely would mark the construction process.

If the issue were purely religious freedom, there are more appropriate battlegrounds. Protests against the building of mosques and Muslim community centers have sprung up all over America, notably in California, Tennessee and Wisconsin, with little notice by the media. Religious freedom and Islamophobia are clearly issues in at least some of these cases. The issue in Manhattan, on the other hand, is not religious freedom. The issue, rather, concerns respect for the emotions and grief of millions of Americans who witnessed a horrendous attack that equaled the attack on Pearl Harbor in significance, devastation and shock effect.

The symbolic significance involved here is obvious. It has been a custom for Islamists to build mosques at the sites of important victories. Erection of a new Islamic Center near Ground Zero would forever be seen, rightly or wrongly, as an in-your-face expression of Islamic militancy and anti-American sentiment. It would be like building an American monument to Harry Truman at ground zero in Nagasaki.

There is deep-seated emotion involved here but is it fair to dismiss it all as Islamophobia? Even conceding that some of it may be, why do you suppose it exists? Isn’t it because, with few exceptions, the major terrorists attacks against the United States and Western nations have been plotted and executed by Islamists, some of them U.S.-born? This is not a justification for discrimination against loyal Americans of the Muslim faith, but it certainly explains why Islamophobia exists. Surely, it is a great concern among American Muslims who should be aware that that it is a perception among many Americans that moderate Muslims have too often been reluctant to publicly condemn those who terrorize and hate in the name of Allah, preferring instead, to shift the topic to American and Western provocations.

As columnist Charles Krauthammer recently noted, liberal defenders of unlimited rights are quick to assign labels to those who disagree with them. If one opposes same-sex marriage, one must be a homophobe. A phobia is, by definition, an irrational fear.( I personally know of no one who opposes same sex marriage who is actually afraid of homosexuals.) Similarly, if one opposes construction of a new Ground Zero mosque, one must be a bigot. Such name-calling is the last resort of one who has run out of rational arguments that can be argued on the basis of facts and evidence.

Many loyal Americans of the Muslim faith must surely wish that the controversy would go away. It won’t so long as supporters of what would forever be characterized as the Ground Zero Mosque continue to trivialize and mischaracterize the valid emotions and motives of the more than two-thirds of Americans who oppose this project.

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copyright 2010 J.F. Kelly, Jr

J.F. Kelly, Jr. is a retired Navy Captain and bank executive who writes on current events and military subjects. He is a resident of Coronado, California.

If you thought this column was about oil, you’re going to be disappointed. Drill is a word that also means a practice or exercise in preparation for the real thing – think fire drill or the endless “drills” conducted on ships to prepare the crew for battle or emergencies. But as it relates to the California Legislature, even this definition is far too charitable.

In Capitol parlance, “drill” is best described as an empty exercise to prove some political point unrelated either to the merits of some legislative act or to the chances that it will actually pass.

With that as a framework for discussion, the odds are very high that Tuesday will bring us a “Budget Drill.” Make no mistake, the sides in the budget battle are still miles apart and, more practically speaking, language hasn’t even been drafted yet. So the chances of actually getting a budget this week remain zero.

Still, the Democrat leadership will apparently put up a budget proposal which, even if it garners a simple majority vote in each house, will fall woefully short of the two-thirds vote necessary to pass a budget. That plan might even include an illegal effort to raise taxes with a simple majority vote similar to the scheme of a few years ago with a convoluted swap between a gas tax and a gas “fee” that would have meant billions in higher taxes. In the Orwellian world of Democrat finance, the billions in higher taxes were not higher taxes because of the label affixed thereto. Governor Schwarzenegger rightfully vetoed that “drill” by the afternoon of the same day it cleared the Legislature.

The motivation behind this budget drill for the tax-and-spend majority party is purely political. They are hoping that this empty exercise will somehow enhance the chances of Proposition 25 passing. This proposal would lower the two-thirds vote to pass a budget to a simple majority as well as have all other kinds of anti-taxpayer ramifications.

While it may be true that a budget drill will focus public attention (however briefly) on the normal state of political dysfunction in California, there is an old saying: Be careful what you wish for. It is just as likely that a drill of this sort will reinforce in voters’ minds that the Democrat agenda is one chock full of higher taxes. Recent polling and actual election results (Blakeslee v. Laird) strongly suggest that the public will react to the song of higher taxes like Simon Cowell reacts to a rank amateur.

For their part, the Republicans may pull a drill of their own. Again, with no hope of passage, they could very well use the Governor’s budget – proposed weeks ago – as a template for a no-tax-hike budget. This would show voters that it is possible to resolve the lack of a budget with a plan that inflicts no more damage to already reeling taxpayers.

In the context of Proposition 25, the two competing budget plans likely to be introduced this week could have an illuminating effect on the debate leading up to the November election. With the legislature as an institution at all-time record low approval ratings, do voters actually believe it is the process that is the problem, or the members of the Legislature themselves? And how will voters react when they find out that it is the politicians (and their special interest paymasters) that put Proposition 25 on the ballot?

For the vast majority of citizens in California, the lack of a budget has few real world consequences. While voters seem resigned to a state of perpetual budget gridlock, the real pain comes from high unemployment, a crushing tax burden and a Kafkaesque regulatory climate. Budget drills do nothing to address the real problems with California but, even at their worst, they may help define which side is closer to the attitudes and values of the voting public in November.

So drill, baby, drill.

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copyright 2010 Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association

Jon Coupal is an attorney and president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — California’s largest taxpayer organization with offices in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

by Burt Prelutsky | Los Angeles

Those on the left have made every attempt to tar those on the right as racists.  They have done it so often and so ineptly that by now I doubt if even the rabid likes of Chris Matthews, Joy Behar and Rachel Maddow, take it seriously.

As far back as last March, when the Tea Party members gathered in Washington to voice their objection to ObamaCare, we all saw the way the liberals choreographed the event in order to make the patriots appear hostile to blacks.  It was so simplistic, I assume that either Rahm Emanuel or David Axelrod came up with the plan.  It consisted of having only the pinheads from the Black Congressional Caucus enter the House by the front steps while Nancy Pelosi and her white colleagues all snuck in using the tunnel.

The leftists counted on the Tea Partiers employing racial invective, and when that didn’t happen they simply lied and said it had.  They insisted that Emmanuel Cleaver had been spat upon and that the infamous n-word had been hurled at John Lewis 15 times.  Oddly enough, even when a $100,000 reward was posted for visual or audio confirmation, not even Keith Olbermann or Ellis Henican stepped forward to claim the prize.

I’m not suggesting that there were no catcalls from the crowd, but does anyone, including Juan Williams, believe the catcalls wouldn’t have been even louder and more pointed if Nancy Pelosi or Henry Waxman had dared run the gauntlet of outraged, over-burdened, tax-paying patriots?  But of course even if Pelosi and Waxman had shown their faces, the lap dog media would have condemned the Tea Party members as a pack of misogynistic anti-Semites!

Speaking of the left-wing media, I believe I’ve finally figured out the explanation for Marc Lamont Hill’s frequent appearances on Bill O’Reilly’s show.  He serves to make Alan Colmes seem almost rational.

The media, together with the DNC, have taken advantage of Obama’s race to insist that all objections to his radical agenda are the result of racism.  What they fail to deal with is how it was that 52% of American voters, all of whom knew his racial makeup, cast their votes for him in 2008, while if the election were held today, the polls indicate that he would lose if he were running against Romney, Gingrich and Huckabee, and be in a dead-heat with Palin.

Another fact that refutes the claims that anti-Obama sentiment is race-based is that his personal approval numbers are significantly higher than those regarding his policies.  Feeling as I do about his character, I’m at a loss to explain the dichotomy, but perhaps a lot of people can’t help but empathize with his pathetic efforts on the golf course.

The truth is, the man who vowed to be our first post-racial president, has proven to be the most racial president since Wilson.  But whereas Wilson, who remains a hero to  liberals, was blatantly anti-black, Obama has shown his own true colors in the opposite direction.  In his first 18 months, he has played the race card in connection with the Cambridge police incident; in defending the openly racist Eric Holder; and in refusing to prosecute the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation.  What’s more, in his constant pandering to the left-wing NAACP, ACORN and the SEIU, he has gone overboard in expressing his appreciation for the 91% of the vote blacks handed him in his campaigns against both John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

I happen to think that Obama’s decision to sue Arizona over its anti-illegal alien bill was a political miscalculation of enormous proportions.  For one thing, most Americans — and I’m going out on a limb and include Democrats and even Hispanics who are here legally — don’t like the idea of the president of 50 states using the authority of the federal government to attack one of them.  He’s not a schoolmarm and he has no business making Arizona sit in the corner as if it were a recalcitrant child.  What’s next, a  redesigned flag with just 49 stars?

Judge Bolton ruled exactly as one would expect a Clinton appointee to rule.  Common sense would say that when the federal government refuses to enforce its constitutional obligation to defend our borders, thus forcing the individual states to do so on their own, it verges on lunacy to rule on the side of the feds.  But, obviously, when Obama says, “I know it’s my job, but I refuse to do it,” he can expect nothing but high-fives from the corrupt media, Hispanic racists and agenda-driven judges.

The fact of the matter is that, by a wide majority, Americans don’t believe it is either moral or even possible to deport the millions of people who are already here illegally, but they want a very high wall — perhaps even a double wall, with an alligator-infested moat in between — erected at the border.  After that, reasonable people can decide on the status and future of those already here.  But any other policy (aka “comprehensive immigration reform”) would be premature, and would only play into the hands of Democrats trolling for votes, unions trolling for additional dues and Republicans trolling for the next best thing to slave labor.  So, to paraphrase President Reagan, I say, “Put up the wall, Mr. Obama.”

A bonus is that the remainder of the stimulus money could finally be spent on what Obama promised us when he picked our pockets for the trillion dollars back in 2009; namely, shovel-ready jobs.

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copyright 2010 Burt Prelutsky

Television scriptwriter, former humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine.

by Burt Prelutsky | Los Angeles

Every so often, one of my readers who has apparently dipped once too often into the cooking sherry wonders why I don’t run for Congress.  The short answer is that I don’t want to ever again wear a necktie.  I also don’t wish to spend my life going hat-in-hand begging for campaign contributions.  Worse yet, what if I actually won the election and then had to listen to Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank mouth off endlessly?  Between her nursery school delivery and his lisping, I’m sure I’d soon be popping Excedrin like peanuts.

Instead, I prefer staying home and telling everybody in Washington how to do their jobs better.  So, for openers, I would make it a law that every bill would contain only a single item.  No more piling on.  No more legislation that contains, say, funding for the military with tax dollars for ACORN or an unnecessary bridge or airport named after some partisan hack.  As things stand now, every appropriations bill comes loaded with a ton of political pork.  When called on it, the weasels in both parties get to say, “Well, I had to support the troops, didn’t I?”

Conservatives who automatically deny that the Arizona immigration law is racially-based are lying.  Of course it is, in just the same way that a border wall would be.  How can it not be when the millions of people who have snuck into the U.S. are all Hispanics?  It makes as much sense to deny that the war on terrorism is directed at Islamics.  The problem is that those who favor open borders accuse the rest of us of being racists.  That’s the big lie they love to promote.  Americans, after all, have no trouble living and working with Hispanics who are here legally.

If the illegals pouring in were Swedes, Germans or Poles, our opposition, which is based on principles and the law, would be the same.  The difference is that the very same hypocrites who favor open borders today are the ones who would change their tune overnight if the aliens weren’t Hispanic.  The ugly, but unvarnished, truth is that they’re the racists.

Of course the number one racist in America is the fellow who spent 20 years soaking up Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s vicious attacks on white Americans.  It’s probably not a coincidence that Barack Obama is also the biggest liar who’s ever sat in the Oval Office.  In fact, if his nose grew like Pinocchio’s every time he told a fib, they probably would have had to leave Joy Behar and Sherri Shepherd in the wings in order to make room for the presidential shnoz on “The View.”

The latest proof that in looking for a role model, Obama snubbed George Washington and patterned himself, instead, on a used car salesman was his announcement that he was “surprised, disappointed and angry” when Scotland released Lockerbie bomber Abdel al-Magrahi.  It seems that Richard LeBaron, Obama’s deputy head of the U.S. embassy in London let Scotland know a week ahead of the event that the U.S. preferred that Magrahi receive compassionate release than that he be locked up in a Libyan prison for what was supposed to be the final few weeks of his life.  The only surprise is that apparently the change in climate did wonders for his health, and Magrahi is now expected to live at least another ten years!

The U.S. government had tried to keep LeBaron’s letter secret on the alleged grounds that it would prevent “frank and open communications with other governments.”  I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like a married man begging his mistress not to spill the beans, lest it prevent future frank and open communications with his wife!

According to Bedford Fall’s George Bailey, every time a bell rang, an angel got his wings.  If it worked the same way with lies, an entire division of angels would owe a debt of eternal gratitude to the prevaricator-in-chief.

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copyright 2010 Burt Prelutsky

Television scriptwriter, former humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine.

by J. F. Kelly, Jr. | Coronado

Eager for a foreign policy victory to bolster its sagging popularity at home and in the world, the Obama Administration is launching a new round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The prospects for success, never great in the past, are even poorer today. Still, the consequences of failure are not enormous because none but the hopelessly naïve believe that these talks will succeed where previous ones have failed utterly to resolve anything other than the shape of the conference table and the seating protocol.

Why should these talks succeed when previous ones have failed? Have conditions changed for the better since the last talks? Indeed, circumstances are less favorable for talks now than in the past. The land that would constitute an independent Palestine is split into two separated territories: Gaza governed by Hamas, a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel, and the West Bank, governed by the Fatah Party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas is opposed to the talks for starters. How can the final borders of a proposed Palestinian state be resolved at this time under these conditions?

On the Israeli side, Benjamin Netenyahu is a tough leader who cannot be expected to retreat on key issues like the so-called right of return for Palestinian refugees, control of East Jerusalem which both sides want and the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Officials in his government have reportedly already stated that they don’t believe it possible to reach a final peace deal, presumably because of these non-negotiable issues. One was quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying, “No one really thinks the peace talks will succeed. But this is how the world judges us, and so we have no choice but to go through with the dance.”

With these conditions and sentiments prevailing, it is folly for President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to put the prestige if the United States on the line once again to act as broker for a deal that is bound to fail. When will the leaders of the United States learn to view the world as it is instead of the way it wishes it were? Wishing doesn’t make it so.

The way this part of the world actually is at the moment is not very encouraging. Iran, also pledged to Israel’s destruction, is marching irrevocably toward acquiring a nuclear capability. The Obama Administration and other Western governments, who have held this to be unacceptable, have failed to stop this looming threat. This is Israel’s main worry and priority right now and it should be ours. It is not a convenient time to make happy talk about a peace process that, even if successful, could create another state hostile to Israel in its immediate neighborhood

Nevertheless, Mr. Netanyahu and his ministers will acquiesce to U.S. wishes and participate in talks that will go nowhere. They will do so because they perceive that this is the price of continued U.S. support, however tepid of late. In short, we are being humored.

The Palestinians have stated before repeatedly that the right of return by Palestinians who left Israel when it became a nation is non-negotiable. Netanyahu will never accept this because he and anyone who is not blind to the facts knows that with the Arab birthrate being what it is, it would mean the end of the Jewish homeland that Israel was created to be.

But the basic issue standing in the way of a durable peace that would result in an independent Palestinian state is the deep-seated hatred that many if not most of the Palestinians have for the Jews and a stubborn refusal to recognize Israel’s legitimacy and right to exist in the Middle East. Throughout the years, that hatred and prejudice has been taught and nourished among young Palestinians. It has manifested itself in rock-throwing, suicide bombing and rocket attacks on Jewish civilians.

Until this hatred is replaced by tolerance, a process which may take generations, the “peace process” and “roadmaps to peace” are just empty terms. Until Israel’s Arab and Muslim neighbors learn to not only accept Israel’s right to exist but to respect them as neighbors, U.S. efforts to broker a deal for an Independent Palestine are a waste of our time and prestige and a distraction from more immediate problems.

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copyright 2010 J.F. Kelly, Jr

J.F. Kelly, Jr. is a retired Navy Captain and bank executive who writes on current events and military subjects. He is a resident of Coronado, California.

by Burt Prelutsky | Los Angeles

When it comes to liberals, there are simply not enough hours in a day for one person to record all of their mischief.  Speaking for myself, even if I had a staff the size of Mrs. Obama, I’d probably still fall behind.

For instance, liberals love to pretend that “separation of church and state” appears in the Constitution, although I’m sure that most of them are aware that the words only appeared in a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association.  What’s more, they in no way contradicted the First Amendment, which merely prohibited the federal government from establishing a state religion, such as existed in England. But on the other hand, when attacking the Second Amendment on the grounds that the Founders only wanted guns in the hands of “a well regulated militia,” those same liberals never bother mentioning that it was Jefferson who said “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms” and “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

Next, I hope that once all the primaries are over, conservatives will suck it up and vote for the victorious Republican candidate in November.  I know it won’t always be easy, but it is essential that Nancy Pelosi loses the speakership, and the only way that happens is if the Democrats lose control of the House.

I’m aware that on a few occasions over the past 18 months, a few Republicans have lost their minds and voted with the liberals.  In one case, it was the two ditzy women from Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, voting for the stimulus bill.  More recently, Scott Brown, who is the closest thing to a Republican who could have gotten elected in Massachusetts, joined the two ladies to vote for Obama’s financial regulation bill.  It disgusted me as much as anyone that the three New Englanders jumped ship to aid and abet the enemy, but at least they have voted the right way more often than not, which is more than you could expect of the Democrats they defeated in their last elections.

It’s not just that liberals all vote the wrong way, but when it comes to sheer, blatant ignorance, you can’t beat them when they get up a head of steam.  Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, for instance, claimed there were two Vietnams existing peacefully side-by-side, North and South Vietnam.  Of course even if there were two such nations, we’d know them as East and West Vietnam.  When the error was called to her attention, she naturally said she’d misspoken.

I guess it’s thanks to omnipresent technology that when they put their stupidity on display these days, politicians no longer insist they’ve been misquoted.  Now, thanks to videos, open mikes and cell phone cameras, they have instead to insist that their lies, gaffes and absurdities, are all the result of misspeaking.

So it was that when Rep. Hank Johnson claimed to be worried that the island of Guam might tip over if too many American servicemen were stationed there, he quickly explained that he’d misspoken, as did Wisconsin state supervisor Peggy West after she’d taken Arizona to task for its immigration bill when, as she insisted, it doesn’t even share a border with Mexico.

There are subtler forms of stupidity on the Left.  We have Barack Obama declaring a six-month moratorium on off-shore drilling, thus doing everything in his power to destroy the Gulf’s economy, while at the same time refusing to drill in Alaska or the lower 48, and, for good measure, sending two billion dollars to Brazil to help them finance, of all things, off-shore drilling.

To take liberal stupidity to its logical extreme, we have Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank, three of the schmoes most responsible for causing the financial meltdown, concocting a 2,500-page financial regulation bill.  When someone asked me if I thought the three stooges had actually read the bill, I said I was certain that they had at least carefully scanned it.  After all, how else could they be certain that their favorite lending institutions, the infamous Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, would be excluded from any and all regulations?

Next on Obama’s agenda is likely to be cap and trade, which would do to American energy what British Petroleum did to Louisiana’s pelicans.  Considering that Obama recently appointed that eminent proponent of wealth distribution, Dr. Donald Berwick, to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, I assume he will appoint Fred Flintstone to be energy czar.

Finally, no dirty laundry list of moronic liberals would be complete without Nevada’s number one sourpuss.  It was Harry Reid who insisted that although it was possible, though highly unlikely, that somewhere there might be illegal aliens working in the construction trade, it certainly wasn’t happening in his home state.

In a related story, the Senate majority leader also announced that there were no hookers in Las Vegas.

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copyright 2010 Burt Prelutsky

Television scriptwriter, former humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine.

by Burt Prelutsky | Los Angeles

I have long been intrigued with the final words uttered by those on their actual or figurative deathbeds.  The trouble, of course, is that you never know if the words were spontaneous or rehearsed, whether they were really spoken aloud or were conjured up after the fact by someone who hoped to gain for himself a piece of anonymous immortality by acting as a  giving-up-the-ghost writer.

While I have no way of vouching for their authenticity, I regard the following farewells as among the most memorable.

Henry Ward Beecher said, “Now comes the mystery,” although I would have thought “Now comes the solution to the mystery” the more appropriate assumption on the part of the notable preacher.

Heinrich Heine, a rather presumptuous fellow even for a German poet, insisted, “God will pardon me.  It is his trade.”

Humphrey Bogart mused, “I should have never switched from Scotch to martinis,” although a wiser decision regarding his vices would have been to kick the nicotine habit before it kicked him.

Luther Burbank, the noted horticulturist, might have been expected to come up with something a little more flowery than “I don’t feel good” if he had only known how just far from good he really felt.

Dylan Thomas, who seems to have been a rather competitive sort of fellow for a sot, boasted, “I have just had 18 whiskeys in a row.  I do believe that is a record.”

Robert E. Lee, a military genius who never wasted ammunition or words, took his leave with the brisk “Strike the tent.”

Another Civil War general, John Sedgwick, while commanding Union forces at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, put southern snipers in their place by telling his cowering troops, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance” a moment before they put him in his final resting place.  It was Gen. Sedgwick’s misfortune that the Rebs didn’t happen to be hunting elephants that day.

Oscar Wilde confessed that he and his wallpaper were fighting a duel to the death and “One or the other of us has to go.”  Alas, the wallpaper won and got to hang around a while longer.

When a French priest urged Voltaire, a committed atheist to renounce Satan, the old philosopher replied, “This is no time to make new enemies.”

A very witty line, but in strictly practical terms, it’s hard to beat convicted murderer James W. Bridges, who, when asked if he had a final request before facing a firing squad, replied, “Why, yes, a bulletproof vest.”

Still, when it comes to send-offs, you’d have a go a long way to top the one that Charlotte McCourt’s family came up with recently.  After the passing of the longtime Nevada resident, her children published an obituary that read: “We believe that mom would say she was mortified to have taken a large role in the election of Harry Reid to the U.S. Congress.  Let the record show that Charlotte was displeased with his work.  Please, in lieu of flowers, vote for another more worthy candidate.”

In my own case, I plan to get to work immediately on some amusing, yet profound and touching, final words.  My greatest fear is that before having the opportunity to deliver them, I will slip in the shower and in that nano-second prior to fatally conking my head on the porcelain, I will take leave of the world with an inexcusably trite “Whoops!”

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copyright 2010 Burt Prelutsky

Television scriptwriter, former humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine.

by J. F. Kelly, Jr. | Coronado

America is the land of freedom and justice for all as we have learned through faithful recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These freedoms were earned and defended by the blood and sacrifices of patriots and we hold them sacred. But the wise men who assembled that hot summer in Philadelphia two and a quarter centuries ago knew that there were limits on those freedoms as there must be in every complex, ordered society.

The constitution that emerged was an elegant document, brilliant in its simplicity and yet intentionally vague in some respects, leaving parts open to interpretation. The drafters knew that times and circumstances would change and that the country would change to deal with them. The future need for amendments was foreseen and the procedure for accomplishing them was established. Slavery became recognized for the evil that it was. Women attained equal suffrage. The right of free speech and the right to bear arms were codified. In all, the Constitution was amended 27 times as society and its values changed with the times. We even repealed an amendment (XVIII) with another (XXI), ending prohibition.

We have learned to accept reasonable limits on our freedoms. The right to free speech does not presume the right to incite riots or panic. The right to bear arms does not include the right to flaunt reasonable restrictions on their use. Freedom and liberty for all does not mean that those who break our laws cannot be incarcerated. Neither should those who plot and inflict terror on us be permitted to use our freedoms in plotting to destroy us.

The world is much different today than it was when our constitution was drafted or, for that matter, since most of the amendments were ratified. The United States is very different also from the young, sparsely settled country it was at that time. We have become a magnet for much of the earth’s downtrodden but our ability to accommodate them is no longer limitless. Our freedoms, sadly, are now being abused to the detriment of our society and economic wellbeing in ways that our founders and early leaders could not have imagined.

Nearly a century and a half have passed since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment which reads, in part, that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. The timing of this amendment with respect to the Civil War, Section 2 of the amendment which pertains to the apportionment of representatives and the fact that the preceding amendment (XIII) abolished slavery, makes it rather obvious that the intent was to grant full citizenship and representation to slaves and their American- born children.

The drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment could hardly have imagined that their amendment would become the basis for awarding citizenship to babies born to foreign citizens, whose allegiance was to a country other than the United States, who happened to be in this country at the time of delivery. If the mother is in this country illegally, in violation of our laws, and if the father is not a U.S. citizen, why should that child be considered a citizen? No other country, to my knowledge, has an entitlement so bizarre that it encourages people to violate our laws.

Those who defend what they call birthright citizenship argue that a child should not be punished or denied a right because of the transgressions of a parent. But the infant has no say in this matter. The mother makes the decision on its behalf. And why should foreign citizenship be considered a punishment anyway?

We now learn that eight and one-third percent of all babies born in the United States are born to mothers who are here illegally. That’s 1 in 12 births, the vast majority of which are born to Mexican citizens who are here illegally in violation of our laws. The practice now seems to be catching on in other countries where tour guides reportedly offer to make arrangement for pregnant women to have their babies here. Clearly, this can’t go on forever. It is the unintended consequence of an amendment ratified for another purpose in 1868 when illegal immigration across the border with Mexico was not even remotely an issue.

The Fourteenth Amendment needs to be amended to end this anchor baby epidemic which is a flagrant abuse of our freedoms. It cheapens the value of the citizenship that legal immigrants work hard to achieve. Tell your representatives in Congress that you want it changed.

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copyright 2010 J.F. Kelly, Jr

J.F. Kelly, Jr. is a retired Navy Captain and bank executive who writes on current events and military subjects. He is a resident of Coronado, California.

by J. F. Kelly, Jr. | Coronado

Federal District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, in ruling that California’s Proposition 8 violates equal protection provisions of the U.S. Constitution, wrote that “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay man and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.” The opinion advances the argument that marriage is a right that should not be denied to anyone on the basis of sexual orientation.

Proposition 8, however, does not deny the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Rather, it affirms the centuries-old definition of marriage as a social and legal institution under which a man and a woman establish their decision to live as man and wife. The California Supreme Court upheld the right of Californians to reaffirm the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. So gays and lesbians are not being deprived of the right to marry by Proposition 8, so long as the marriage is between a man and a woman, whatever their sexual orientation.

The issue, then, is the definition of marriage. It has always referred to a union between a man and a woman. Why should we care? Because marriage and the family is the basic social institution in any civilized society. Moreover, it is a religious event of deep significance for all traditional religions. It is only in recent years as permissiveness and promiscuity have spread throughout the Western world, creating an anything-goes, do-whatever-feels-good atmosphere, where any form of sexual behavior must not only be tolerated but be accorded respectability, that same-sex marriage was even talked about in polite society.

Equal rights for gays have been incorporated into the law of the land for some time now and acceptance of homosexual relationships has followed. But gays and lesbians want more than just acceptance. They want society to elevate their lifestyle to the same degree of wholesomeness and respectability as the heterosexual or straight lifestyle.

A few but significant barriers remain. One is the armed forces which cling, albeit tenuously, to the “don’t ask-don’t tell” policy. Striking down this policy and permitting homosexuals to serve openly in the armed forces is their number one objective. Achieving this goal will permit them to say that the federal government now considers homosexual behavior as normal as heterosexual behavior. The second barrier to full acceptance is the definition of marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. But this barrier will not easily be overcome because a majority of people in most regions deeply believe in that definition for moral, religious and cultural reasons.

If the definition of marriage is expanded to include unions other than between a man and a woman, where might it end? Why not allow marriages between consenting first cousins or siblings? Why not multiple spouses or marriages between adults and children as permitted in some cultures?

Opponents of same sex marriage are being demonized as bigots and there are those who, in fact, are bigots. But bigotry is not the issue here, Judge Walker’s opinion notwithstanding. Neither are equal rights a valid issue. There is no economic or legal advantage that same-sex marriage would provide that cannot also be provided by properly crafted civil union agreements, properly enforced by the state.

Since the California Supreme Court upheld the right of Californians to reaffirm the traditional definition of marriage as in Proposition 8, it is the height of arrogance for an obscure, unelected judge to defy the public will and overturn that right. Moreover, his opinion was insulting and demeaning, citing, as he did, “evidence” of bigotry and prejudice where none existed. Examples include “findings” such as “moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same sex couples are different from opposite sex couples.” Really? Obvious physical differences come quickly to mind.

Judge Walker is quick to dismiss those religious and moral views as if they were totally insignificant superstitions. But they are the views of most traditional religions and they are deeply held by the followers of these religions. They cannot be dismissed as bigotry.

Such examples of judicial and federal overreach validate the growing belief on the part of many that judges and federal elected and appointed officials couldn’t care less what a majority of the people think and wish. They know what’s best for the people and they view their role as imposing their enlightened social views on the ignorant masses knowing that eventually, little by little, the public will get used to them and come to accept them. It is this sort of overreach that is alienating the people from their government and fostering a resurgence of states’ rights movements.

CRO

copyright 2010 J.F. Kelly, Jr

J.F. Kelly, Jr. is a retired Navy Captain and bank executive who writes on current events and military subjects. He is a resident of Coronado, California.

by Burt Prelutsky | Los Angeles

The worst thing about the oil leak, assuming you don’t live and work in the Gulf, was having to keep viewing the same stuff on TV day in and day out for months on end.  It got so bad, I began seeing the undersea footage, the oily pelican and Thad Allen, in my dreams.

Speaking of Mr. Allen, if he’s retired from the Coast Guard, why does he get to wear his uniform on camera?  I always thought veterans only got to take their uniforms out of mothballs for parades.  Apparently, Mr. Allen wears his to the supermarket.

With the 24/7 media attention that’s been devoted to the ecological disaster, it is easy to regard the leak as the worst thing that’s ever happened to the environment.  But even now it only ranks as about the 35^th worst oil spill in the past hundred years.  Something else that we should not lose sight of is that the Gulf is a magnet for hurricanes, just as California is one for earthquakes and New York City is one for Islamic terrorists.  That means that bad stuff is always going to be happening and if people are going to live in such places, they have to accept the risks.  British Petroleum will not always be around to pay for the cleanup.

The leak has led to Obama’s declaring a 6-month moratorium on deep sea drilling, which should pretty much finish off the Gulf’s economy for the foreseeable future, unless Judge Feldman’s ruling stands.  On the other hand, our president did send $2 billion to Brazil to help finance deep-sea oil exploration by Petrobar, a company in which George Soros had recently invested.  And, yes, Brazil is the very same country that recently joined with Turkey in proclaiming its alignment with Iran’s Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

A lot has been said and written about Obama’s handling of the crisis.  None of it has been good.  Even some of his erstwhile acolytes have taken him to task.  I can understand their disillusionment.  The man did announce, after all, that with his election, the earth would be healed and the oceans would recede, and nary a word about oil pollution.  The magnitude of the leak has certainly confirmed that BP knew what it was doing when it sank a well there.  Unfortunately, the leak also emphasizes how stubborn and short-sighted Congress has been in its refusal to drill in Alaska or anywhere else that is currently inhabited by caribou, jackrabbits, elk, snakes or snails.

The fact is, Obama has brought it all on himself.  When he was courting us, he spoke of transparency and of uniting the right and the left; he rhapsodized about a post-racial America and an America that would be respected around the world.  Well, I guess we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves if we bought the lies.  Even someone as bright and successful as Sandra Bullock fell for Jesse James’ line of bull hockey.

I almost feel sorry for the president.  I mean, it must seem as if God, Himself, is pulling the rug out from under him.  After all, it was only five years ago that all the left-wing creeps, including Obama, were mugging George Bush over his handling of a natural disaster and, suddenly, we have Obama tripping over his own feet in the same general area.

Understand, I don’t blame him for ignoring the disaster in the early days.  After all, the media had given him a pass for ignoring the recent flooding of Nashville.  They had ignored it, too.  But once the oil leak became bigger news than North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean ship, bigger news than the unholy Muslim flotilla and even bigger news than the arrest of Joran van der Sloot, I would have assumed that Obama would have done all in his power to give the illusion of competence and concern.  Instead, he golfed and partied while Governor Jindal’s request for material and equipment were ignored.  We had the Coast Guard ordering skimmer ships shut down because they didn’t have a prescribed number of life jackets on board.  We had offers of assistance from Norway, Holland and 11 other nations, being refused because of something called the Jones Act, for no other reason than that Obama didn’t want to upset the maritime unions and their insistence that only ships flying the U.S. flag — and employing U.S. union crews! — be allowed to function in U.S. waters.

The way I see it, British Petroleum was the perfect boogeyman for liberals.  After all, their executives owned yachts and either spoke with snooty English accents or referred to “small people.”  Red meat, indeed, for congressional committees chaired by the self-righteous likes of Henry (”I voted to continue funding ACORN because they do a lot of good work”) Waxman.

The bonus is that BP has very deep pockets, so that Obama can grandstand and demand that the company pay everyone on the Gulf more money than they would have ever made renting motel rooms and fishing.

After insisting that there will be a six-month moratorium on off-shore drilling, which would do far more long term damage than the oil leak, Obama then tried to turn the screws on BP, by insisting they pay all of the laid-off oil crews, not just those working for British Petroleum, for income he, himself, was causing them to lose.  Even BP finally had enough, and said they would pay their own workers, but not Exxon’s or Shell’s.

If Obama had gotten away with it, I’m sure he planned to solve America’s unemployment ills by forcing BP to put the other 20 million out-of-work Americans on the company payroll.

I submit that there is one consolation for Barack Obama.  If much more crud is released into the Gulf of Mexico, this two-bit messiah might actually be able to walk on  water.

CRO

copyright 2010 Burt Prelutsky

Television scriptwriter, former humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine.