U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter, Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee, has written a new pamphlet, “We the People: Wide Awake for Our Newest Birth of Freedom,” in which he clearly and succinctly explains the challenges, duties, and principles the Republican Party currently faces.You can order it, here, or download it in PDF form, here.
An excerpt:
We Are Wide Awake
They were “Wide Awakes” – Americans marching through sleepy hamlets for candidate Abraham Lincoln and the cause of human freedom. They were “Republicans!”
Today, Republicans continue to embrace our enduring duty to:
1. Expand human liberty and self-government;
2. Conserve our cherished way of life and its foundations of faith, family, community and country;
3. Empower Americans to achieve constructive, necessary change; and
4. Defend America’s national security
And we act upon five permanent principles:
1. Our liberty is from God not the government;
2. Our sovereignty is in our souls not the soil;
3. Our security is from strength not surrender;
4. Our prosperity is from the private sector not the public sector; and
5. Our truths are self-evident not relative
Check it out – with very little fanfare, and basically through word of mouth, and the internet, tens of thousands of these pamphlets have been distributed.
Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable; understanding, as President [Kennedy] said, that “civility is not a sign of weakness.” Now, I am the first to confess I am not always right. Michelle will testify to that. (Laughter.) But surely you can question my policies without questioning my faith, or, for that matter, my citizenship. (Laughter and applause.)
Challenging each other’s ideas can renew our democracy. But when we challenge each other’s motives, it becomes harder to see what we hold in common. We forget that we share at some deep level the same dreams — even when we don’t share the same plans on how to fulfill them.
He also employed the civility card to promote the stalled health care bill and other favorite liberal causes:
We may disagree about the best way to reform our health care system, but surely we can agree that no one ought to go broke when they get sick in the richest nation on Earth. We can take different approaches to ending inequality, but surely we can agree on the need to lift our children out of ignorance; to lift our neighbors from poverty. We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are — whether it’s here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.
That’s all well and good, but why did I get the feeling that this lack of civility of which he speaks, was aimed not so much at the Democrats but at Republicans?
This would have been a good time, (since he was on the subject of civility), to chastise people who call tea partiers “tea-baggers”, and other abhorrent terms, but then, he would be chastising himself, and the people close to him, and the Democratic party’s cable news arm, MSNBC. So we didn’t hear anything about that.
The Obama administration revealed to the surprise of many on Tuesday that they had gained the cooperation of family members of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab to help get the Christmas Day him talking.
They claim that the cooperation has led to actionable intelligence that “could help prevent terror attempts on U.S. soil”.
The revelation is part of an aggressive attempt by the White House to push back on Republican claims the Obama administration mishandled the terror investigation, with AbdulMutallab being read his Miranda rights shortly after he began cooperating with investigators.
In other words they are in acute CYA mode.
In releasing the new information, senior administration officials were direct about saying they’re trying to show the case has been handled properly and the Obama administration is doing all it can to keep the country safe from future attacks.
One of the senior administration officials said, “We are in a very active war against al Qaeda” and “very experienced individuals who know what they’re doing” are handling the interrogations well, despite the charges by Republicans.
Marc Thiessen at The Daily Caller explains why this news does not in any way justify the Obama administration’s handling of the Christmas bomber.
That anyone can consider five weeks of utter silence from this high-value terrorist as a success is stunning. Abudulmutallab was supposed to be vaporized along with Northwest Flight 253. The moment al-Qaida learned that he had survived and was in U.S. government custody, they began taking countermeasures to cover his tracks.
Every hour, every day, every week that went by gave them precious time to close bank accounts, e-mail addresses, phone numbers he knew about, and shut down training camps, safe houses, and other intelligence leads he could have given us. Terrorists he knew about have been put into hiding, and other leads that were hot in the days immediately following his capture have since gone cold. The intelligence he possessed was perishable. Each moment that passed that he was not speaking meant lost counterterrorism opportunities.
The mishandling of Abdulmutallab’s questioning is an intelligence failure of massive proportions. And it highlights the problem with the Obama administration’s approach to terrorist interrogation. The administration’s approach is built on a law-enforcement model unsuited for the challenges of the war on terror. Here is why:
Have you heard about the 12 year old kid, Zack, from NJ, who was given a zero on a school test because he didn’t buy into global warming b.s? He called into the Mark Levin Show, last week to tell his story.
His mother called back several days later to give Levin an update about her meeting with the principle, and the tearful teacher (and her union rep).
(sorry – the video has been taken down – Deb).
They can keep trying to push the global warming baloney on kids, but the cat is out of the bag, now, thanks to Climategate. It’s not gonna fly, anymore. There are too many other Zacks out there. Are they going to flunk them all?
Nice Deb 