AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Walter, I'm sorry but you are arguing something entirely different than I am arguing and I am unable to help you understand. Perhaps somebody else can.

North Texas congressman helping sponsor "birther bill"
(By Trish Choate, Wichita Falls Times-Record, June 29, 2009)

A North Texas congressman is among three Texans cosponsoring the so-called “birther bill” requiring presidential candidates produce a birth certificate to prove they meet constitutional requirements to be president.

U.S. Rep. Randy Neugebauer’s support for the bill and comments about President Obama’s status as a natural born citizen drew fire from a liberal pundit who pronounced the congressman’s constituents “idiots” for electing him.

Does Neugebauer, who represents Young County and part of Archer County, doubt Obama’s U.S. citizenship?

“I don’t have the documentation one way or the other,” the Lubbock Republican said in a telephone interview. “And so my assumption is that he is a natural born citizen, that hopefully the appropriate people checked that.”

Neugebauer and the bill’s author, Rep. Bill Posey of Florida, contend there’s nothing partisan or politically motivated about House Resolution 1503.

They pointed out that issues arose about both Obama and the Republican contender for president, U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

“It’s not about President Obama,” Posey, a Republican, said. “It’s not about me. It’s not retroactive.”

A Texas government professor isn’t buying it.

“I think some of them are milking the situation for the upcoming election,” said Laurence “Casey” Jones of Angelo State University in San Angelo.

The frightening thing is lawmakers are legitimizing assertions of rightwing “birthers” who question Obama’s citizenship, said Jones, who teachers classes on the Constitution.

He sees no legitimate need for the bill.

“Anyone in Washington knows what’s already required to be president,” Jones said.

Intelligence officials conduct extensive background checks before presidents take office, he added.

Wichita Falls’ congressman said he’s fine with setting up filing requirements for presidential, Senate and House candidates.

“For all three, there are requirements in the Constitution,” U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, said. “And so if you want to set up a documentary requirement for them, then I’m fine with that.”

Thornberry said he thinks the issue has partly been fueled by Internet rumors about Obama that turned out to be false.

Posey said he’s building on his history of election reform begun as a Florida state senator after the rancorous 2000 presidential election.

Posey thought legislation requiring presidential candidates to produce a birth certificate would be a simple solution to citizenship issues.

“Most of the public thinks it’s the law now,” Posey said.

His bill has been referred to the Committee on House Administration.

A casual conversation on the House floor led to Neugebauer and two other Texas Republicans " U.S. Rep. John Culberson of Houston and U.S. Rep. John Carter of Round Rock " becoming co-sponsors.

Texans made up half of the bill’s six cosponsors Monday.

“The requirement is there in the law up front,” Carter spokesman John Stone said. “So all of our candidates in the future should respond and present the documentation up front, and then there can’t be any of these type of charges.”

Court cases challenging both candidates’ citizenship sputtered.

McCain was born to U.S. citizens on a military installation in the Panama Canal Zone. Obama was born in Hawaii, but rumors about his status haven’t died in spite of his Hawaiian birth certificate posted on the Internet.

That could be because World Net Daily and some conservative bloggers are still trying to raise doubts.

On the other side of the political spectrum, Posey said liberal bloggers have called him a “tin hat” and a “wing nut.”

“Some people have just taken it as an opportunity to create this warfare that I guess makes them look like a reporter or something, that they have created an issue,” Posey said. “But none of the articles that you read were objective.”

MSNBC “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann awarded Neugebauer a bronze “Worst Person in the World” award Wednesday.

“The people that elected you are obviously idiots,” Olbermann said on his show. “That does not mean everybody else is.”

Olbermann’s dander was up following Neugebauer’s answer to Lubbock radio host Chad Hasty’s query: Did the congressman believe Obama is a U.S. citizen?

“You know, I don’t know,” Neugebauer told Hasty last week. “I’ve never seen him produce documents that would say one way or the other.”

“Congressman Neugebauer has full confidence in the intelligence of the residents of the 19th Congressional District,” Neugebauer spokeswoman Michelle Ozanus said. “He knows they can make up their own minds regarding this legislation.

Jones said those who can, should diffuse a situation like that produced by the “birthers.”

He always tells his students they have rights to free speech.

But they also have a responsibility.

“Freedom’s not the right to do what you want, but it’s the power to do what you should,” Jones tells his classes.

July 1, 2009
Let's Do Something -- Anything
By David Harsanyi

Facts. Costs. Consequences.

Who cares?

We're in the middle of pretending to save the planet, baby.

If it's about helping "the environment," suspend reason and salvation is yours. As I'm sure you've heard a lot of smart and compassionate folks tell you lately, doing something -- anything! -- is better than doing nothing.

So the House did something. It passed a "cap and trade" bill that would ration energy, destroy productive jobs, levy the largest tax increase in United States history and, for kicks, penalize foreign trade partners who fail to engage in comparable economic suicide.

Now, assuming there are no speed-reading clairvoyants in the House, no one who voted for the 1,200-page bill -- plus the 300-page amendment dropped the morning of the vote -- possibly could have read it.

And any scum-sucking scoundrel who points out that "doing nothing" already includes spending billions on renewable energies and living under thousands of regulations is, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman shrewdly noted, a traitor to humankind.

Speaking of doing nothing: Though it has the potential to stagnate the economy, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, according to the Environmental Protection Agency itself, would not create any reductions in emissions by 2020. The piddling impact of the bill is documented across the ideological spectrum.

So after the House passed the bill, I, curious about the particulars, sent a query to Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Colo., because hers was one of the votes that put the bill over the top. Markey had been on the fence regarding cap and trade, so surely, she gave the bill a thorough once-over before voting. Not surprisingly, I received no reply.

When I later caught Markey swinging at softballs on television, I realized that she probably had been too busy boning up on her talking points to take the time to slog through 1,500 pages of a radical and generational shift in energy policy.

As terrible as this bill is -- and America's only hope is that a more reasonable Senate will kill it -- Markey and others have mastered the art of passing environmental legislation. Throw in "green jobs" or a "new energy economy" and you are golden. What kind of insensitive monster is going to stand in the way of a windmill?

If you're really in a fighting mood, drop a line about "energy independence" -- and don't we love to hear that one? But do not under any circumstances, as Markey did, stray from your script to offer this remarkably ill-informed myth: "We are now beholden," Markey claimed, "to unstable governments in the Middle East for the majority of our oil."

MORE HERE:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/01/lets_do_something_--_anything_97252.html

As this has absolutely nothing to do with conservative values or ideas, wouldn't it have been more appropriate on the Obama thread?

To me, raising issues about Obama's citizenship is in the same vein as suggesting Obama will cause our grandchildren to live under sharia law.

But then that might give credibility to the article you posted which, in my opinion, was intended to denigrate conservatives.

Liberal numbnuts will continue to take that line out of context and try to make it into something Sowell did not say or intend and they will laugh and giggle and slap each other on the back and congratulate each other for their cleverness.

Oh and my definition of 'numbnut':

1) Thinks personal insults, ad hominem, or clever 'put downs' is valid debate and makes him/her look smart, intelligent, credible, and/or funny.

2) Frequently disrupts the flow of conversation with non sequiturs, straw men, red herrings, and/or irrelevant information, or nitpicks one phrase, term, or word to ensure that no discussion of an interesting topic can take place.

3) Spams the thread with frequent disruptive multiple long, wordy copy and pastes from highly biased sources that are as often as not unsourced and unlinked.

4) Refuses to articulate a valid rebuttal or his/her rationale for a point of view but take every opportunity to discredit or dispute the person or source and/or the way that a point of view is expressed.

And yes, we have numbnuts from both the left and right.

Yes it did.