Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of our Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, will be on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews this afternoon (around 5:40PM EST) discussing this Washington Post story on PEW’s latest research regarding fewer undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Tune in and watch what is sure to be a spirited debate!

Obama does not understand why the majority of Americans resist his policies. Today, the Washington Post's Charles Lane points out Obama's explanation for why Americans showed up in large numbers for Glenn Beck's rally on the National Mall last weekend:

I -- I do think that it's important for us to recognize that right now, the country's going through a very difficult time, as a consequence of years of neglect in a whole range of areas. Our schools not working the way they need to, so we've slipped in terms of the number of college graduates, you know?

A financial system that was not, you know, operating in a way that maintained integrity and assured that the people who were investing or who were buying a home or were using a credit card weren't getting in some way cheated. We had a health-care system that was broken and that was bankrupting families and businesses. All those issues are big, tough, difficult issues. And those are just our domestic issues. That's before we get to policy issues in two wars. And a continuing battle against terrorists who want to do us harm. So, given all those anxieties -- and given the fact that, you know, in none of these situations are you going to be fix things overnight. It's not surprising that somebody like a Mr. Beck is able to stir up a certain portion of the country. That's been true throughout our history.

Lane comments:

This was such a silly political unforced error that I have to assume Obama committed it out of sincere belief. He appears persuaded, intellectually, that things like bad credit-card regulation and low college graduation rates lead mechanically to irrational populist resentment. He is not a Marxist or even a socialist. But he is what you might call a historical materialist, in that he clearly thinks economic trends are the main determinants of political thought and behavior.

In fact, Lane claims that those who disagree with the President do so on a more fundamental level than money and finances. They disagree on the level of values and their vision of America:

Plainly, the people who flocked to his banner of “hope” in 2008 weren’t just in it for a few extra GDP points. And for all their opportunism, rancor and obtuseness, I take Beck, Palin, and their followers seriously when they say they're sincerely troubled by the loss of “traditional” American values -- as they imagine them, to be sure -- and seek some kind of “restoration” of spiritual and cultural greatness. It’s not the lack of progress, as Obama defines it, which threatens them -- it’s progress.

Of course, when the President's concept of "progress" is actually regressive economics, the reasons for Americans to agree with him become even fewer.

Ralph Benko, policy advisor to APP, has an op-ed in today's Washington Examiner where he looks at the liberal-left's attempt to subvert religious rights by delegitimizing them:

President Obama’s recent formulation, “Freedom of Worship” has the religiously serious aghast.  It telegraphs a subversion of faith — by defending a right not in question, the right to conduct religious feasts and fasts and ceremonies, and downgrading religion’s heart, values.

The First Amendment interdicts the making of laws prohibiting the free exercise of religion.  The president now replaces a strong and constitutional word, “Religion,” with a weak and chic one, “Worship,” which is religion defined by esthetics, not ethics.  Implication: the Constitution protects our steeples and liturgy, not religious values.

No wonder the nonpartisan Pew Research Center finds that only one third of Americans believe our president to be a Christian.  To which the White House replies:  “The president is obviously a Christian.  He prays every day.”  This response is a non sequitur.  Devout Moslems and Jews pray every day too. The president’s rhetorical dilution of faith makes claims of “obviously” ring inauthentic.

The political elites shamelessly are in the process of “defining devotion down” to liturgy — hey kids, totally up to you to decide whether the priest faces the altar or the congregation, knock yourselves out — and delegitimize the right to advocate for laws reflecting religiously informed values.  A delegitimized right collapses, which is the objective of its adversaries. [Continue reading...]

Emmett McGroarty, director of our Preserve Innocence project, has been appearing frequently on nationally-syndicated radio shows this summer, promoting parental rights and keeping Americans aware of the current threats to childhood innocence in our schools.

Here are some of his appearances:

• April 27th - "Mickelson in the Morning". Topic: Preserve Innocence – Gov. Culver rescinding Core Curriculum
• May 26th - "Mickelson in the Morning". Topic: Preserve Innocence goals in Iowa
• June 21st - "Open Line" with Randy Ray Renshaw. Topic: Preserve Innocence
• July 13th - "Afternoon News with Elvis Polo". Topic: Preserve Innocence report
• July 14th - "Lars Larson Show". Topic: New Innocence Report – necessity of it now especially since Helena, Montana now has sex ed class for kindergartners
• June 16th - "News & Views" with Larry Bates and Chuck Baker. Topic: Preserve Innocence’s work against Iowa’s Core Curriculum
• June 24th - "The Janet Mefferd Show". Topic: Planned Parenthood’s graphic sex demonstration
• July 23rd - "The Meeting House" with Bob Crittenden. Topic: Preserve Innocence’s new report and Helena, MT school district teaching sex education to kindergartners
• July 23rd - "Bev Smith Show". Topic: Preserve Innocence Report and Helena, MT school district  teaching kindergartens sex education
• July 26th - "News & Views" with Larry Bates and Chuck Baker. Topic: Preserve Innocence’s new report and school district in Helena, MT teaching kindergartners sex education
• August 4th - "In the Fight" with Matt Freidman of American Family Radio. Topic: New Innocence Report tying in the Helena, MT school district teaching kindergartens sex ed
• August 21st - "American Radio Journal" with Lowman Henry. Topic: Government cheapening parenthood and education reform

You can find out more about these topics on the Preserve Innocence website.

Matthew Franck and Gwen Brown have a fascinating article in the Public Discourse today which claims Americans appear to accept same-sex marriage more than they really do, perhaps because they believe it to be more widely accepted than it really is.

One of the reasons behind this state of affairs is the social phenomenon of group-think, which Franck and Brown explain as the "Seinfeld Effect." Here is some more basic anecdotal evidence to support their claims:

A CNN/Gallup poll released on August 11 found that 52% of respondents supported and only 46% opposed same-sex marriage—a result widely trumpeted as the first time a majority expressed this view. But in an important finding, a North Carolina firm called Public Policy Polling discovered that its method of automated polling or “robo-calls,” in which respondents interact on their phone with a computer-controlled interview system rather than a human interviewer, yields significantly higher numbers of Americans who oppose same-sex marriage.

The robo-call technique has been pioneered by pollster Scott Rasmussen, who has racked up an impressive record of accuracy in the highly competitive business of predicting election outcomes. Using this same system, Public Policy Polling—whose head actually favors gay marriage—found in a poll released on August 13 that a mere 33% of respondents favored same-sex marriage, while a full 57% opposed it. (This is a result the firm’s head deplored, but defended as accurate nonetheless.)

What’s going on here? If we take both polls as accurate, each in its own way, then we can say that one-tenth (or more) of Americans oppose same-sex marriage but are extremely hesitant to say so to another person, even a stranger conducting a telephone survey. Yet they will express their disapproval in the complete anonymity of a “robo-call” survey—or, from what we have seen so far, the voting booth.

[Continue reading to learn about the "Seinfeld Effect."]

The Nanny State is upon us:

Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.

More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That's up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007.

"Virtually every Medicaid director in the country would say that their current enrollment is the highest on record," says Vernon Smith of Health Management Associates, which surveys states for Kaiser Family Foundation.

The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. "Private physicians are already indicating that they're at their limit," says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers.

More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years.

Caseloads have risen as more people become eligible. The economic stimulus law signed by President Obama last year also boosted benefits. (USA Today)

Notice that the entitlement state promises to continue expanding, as the effects of Obamacare, stimulus spending, and extended unemployment benefits roll out.

This week Alfonso Aguilar of our Latino Partnership was on a segment of the Tavis Smiley show on PBS, explaining why Latinos are a natural fit with a conservative political party:

I think this was a very dynamic and informative conversation.

Ryan Anderson writes at Public Discourse that Obama’s stem-cell policy is not only contrary to sound reason and good science, it violates the law:

A year and a half ago, when President Obama signed his executive order funding embryo-destructive stem-cell research, I argued in The Weekly Standard that he was perpetuating a needless stem-cell war, that his decision was “bad ethics, bad science, and bad politics.” Add “bad law” to the list. Earlier this week, Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Obama’s stem-cell policy runs afoul of federal law.

... Bad ethics, bad science, bad politics, and bad law. Normally it takes only three strikes to be out. But not even this fourth will mark the death knell for this deadly science: while the ruling temporarily halts the federal funding of embryo-destructive stem-cell research, it does nothing to prevent the destruction of human embryos in privately funded research. There is no law forbidding embryo killing, and there never has been. And despite what some excitable commentators have said, there has never been a ban on embryonic stem-cell research. Yet this injunction is a step toward restoring taxpayer-supported scientific research to its morally upright place. [Continue reading...]

Bleak news about the economy, as the summer Congressional recess winds down:

The government is about to confirm what many people have felt for some time: The economy barely has a pulse.

The Commerce Department on Friday will revise its estimate for economic growth in the April-to-June period and Wall Street economists forecast it will be cut almost in half, to a 1.4 percent annual rate from 2.4 percent.

That's a sharp slowdown from the first quarter, when the economy grew at a 3.7 percent annual rate, and economists say it's a taste of the weakness to come. The current quarter isn't expected to be much better, with many economists forecasting growth of only 1.7 percent.

Such slow growth won't feel much like an economic recovery and won't lead to much hiring. The unemployment rate, now at 9.5 percent, could even rise by the end of the year. (AP)

Politico's Arena is hosting a discussion today basically asking "who's to blame for the economic slowdown" - our Latino Partnership's Alfonso Aguilar was invited to respond:

This Tuesday, for the first time, pro-life Americans succeeding in passing a parental-notification law using the citizen-initiative process.

Michael New, writing at National Review Online, reveals why the importance of this milestone shouldn't be missed:

The story got a little lost in the excitement of the primaries, but the pro-life movement made history on Tuesday night when voters in Alaska approved Ballot Measure 2, a parental-notice law, 55–45 percent. This marks the first time that the pro-life movement has used the citizen initiative to pass a parental-involvement law. (The other 29 parental-involvement laws currently in effect were all enacted through the legislative process.)

Pro-lifers haven’t historically had much success with initiative campaigns. Efforts to enact a parental-notice law in California in 2006 and 2008 both failed by narrow margins. In the late 1990s, attempts to use the citizen initiative to enact partial-birth abortion bans in Maine, Colorado, and Washington were also unsuccessful. One reason these attempts so often failed was that pro-lifers often have difficulty raising enough funds to run a credible campaign.

As it happened, opponents of the parental-notification law (notably Planned Parenthood affiliates and the ACLU) raised about $800,000 for their campaign, five times as much as supporters.

Nevertheless, the pro-Measure 2 campaign may have overcome the long-odds by the rising trend in pro-life grassroots support:

Gains in pro-life public sentiment likely played a role as well. In May 2009, for the first time ever, a Gallup poll showed that a majority of respondents were willing to describe themselves as pro-life. That spring, a number of other polling organizations showed a substantial increase in the number of people either willing to identify themselves as pro-life or willing to support greater restrictions on abortion. Indeed, many of the previous efforts to enact pro-life laws through the initiative process failed by relatively narrow margins. As such, these recent gains in public support might have well produced the margin of victory for pro-lifers in Alaska on Tuesday.

This is indeed encouraging news for other national and local grassroots efforts.

Bad news from New Jersey - or is it bad news from Washington?

Gov. Chris Christie this morning acknowledged the state made a clerical error that blew its chance at winning $400 million in federal money for schools, but he blamed Obama administration bureaucrats for not giving New Jersey a chance to correct the mistake.

“This is the stuff, candidly, that drives people crazy about government and crazy about Washington,” Christie said at a news conference after an unrelated bill signing.

Christie slapped two thick three-ringed binders on the podium containing more than 1,000 pages of the state's “Race to the Top” application and appendices, noting that just one piece of paper contained the error. [NJ.com]

Here is the video - classic, classic Christie:

In other words, government inefficiency and incompetence in Washington, DC has resulted in a state being treated unfairly. Shouldn't localities have more autonomy from the behemoth of the federal government and the Department of Education?

h/t: Cubachi

Despite having his name on the health care legislation passed earlier this year, Senator Max Baucus now admits he hasn't read it either:

Judy Matott asked Baucus if he would work to improve Libby’s image, and then asked him and Sebelius, “if either of you read the health care bill before it was passed and if not, that is the most despicable, irresponsible thing.”

Baucus replied that if Libby residents assembled an economic development plan, he would do what he could to help, and he took credit for “essentially” writing the health care bill that passed the Senate.

“I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill. You know why? It’s statutory language,” Baucus said. “We hire experts.”

Heaven forbid, that a Senator waste his time reading his bill!

In politics, it's important to retain a sense of scale:

Mark Tapscott writes for The Examiner:

Expect to hear a lot about how much the Iraq war cost in the days ahead from Democrats worried about voter wrath against their unprecedented spending excesses.

The meme is simple: The economy is in a shambles because of Bush's economic policies and his war in Iraq. As American Thinker's Randall Hoven points out, that's the message being peddled by lefties as diverse as former Clinton political strategist James Carville, economist Joseph Stiglitz, and The Nation's Washington editor, Christopher Hayes.

The key point in the mantra is an alleged $3 trillion cost for the war. Well, it was expensive to be sure, in both blood and treasure, but, as Hoven notes, the CBO puts the total cost at $709 billion. To put that figure in the proper context of overall spending since the war began in 2003, Hoven provides this handy CBO chart (above) showing the portion of the annual deficit attributable to the conflict. [Continue reading...]

But even the chart doesn't put things completely in context, for instance:

"Iraq War spending was not even one quarter of what we spent on Medicare in the same time frame."

In other words, yes, wars are expensive. But out-of-control entitlement programs and unsustainable, unfruitful stimulus spending initiatives are more expensive.

Dr. Robert George, founder of the American Principles Project, issued this statement in response to Judge Lamberth's ruling against a proposed policy to federally fund embryonic stem cell research:

"Judge Royce Lamberth’s decision declaring unlawful President Obama’s funding of research using human embryos that have been killed for the purpose is correct and long overdue. The Obama administration’s policy violates the so-called Dickey Amendment that expressly forbids the use of federal funds for 'research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.'

The Obama Administration’s claim that the Dickey Amendment permits federal funding of research using stem cell lines derived from human embryos that have been killed using private funds was never plausible.  To misinterpret the Amendment in this way is to suggest that Congress enacted it for purposes of establishing a meaningless bookkeeping procedure.  The obvious purpose of the Amendment—the intent of Congress—was to protect human embryos and to honor the right of taxpayers not to be implicated in the deliberate taking of innocent human life."

For further comment or to request an interview with Dr. George, please contact Jameson Cunningham with Shirley & Banister Public Affairs at (703) 739-5920 or (800) 536-5920.

Last Friday our founder Robert George was on Jim Bohannon's nationally-syndicated radio program Late Nights, discussing the one year anniversary of the Lockerbie bomber Al-Megrahi's release.

You may listen to the full audio of Dr. George's appearance here.

Here is the summary of the show posted on Jim Bohannon's website:

One year ago the man convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland - an act that killed 270, including 189 Americans - was released from prison on humanitarian grounds. Supposedly, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was cancer-ridden and was unlikely to live for another three months. Over the objections of the United States, al-Megrahi was sent home to Libya, where he was given a hero's welcome, including being met upon his arrival by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. With the convicted killer still very much alive, the U.S. today called for his re-extradition and re-incarceration, amid new reports that oil giant BP may have lobbied Scottish authorities about the release because of an oil deal with Libya. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently postponed plans to hold hearings on the Megrahi release, due in part by Scotland's refusal to allow its public officials to appear before the committee. One question being asked by some is whether the U.S. government has any complicity in the convicted man's release. We'll discuss the odds of al-Megrahi ever spending another minute behind bars with Dr. Robert George, founder of the American Principles Project.

You may read APP's press release, which features more comment and calls for action from Dr. George here.

Back in June our founder Robert George wrote for National Review Online that "[just] like Sherlock Holmes's dog that didn't bark in the night, liberals have been strangely silent about Obama's comments on marriage."

Here in late August, the Left is beginning to wake up.

Richard Just, the executive editor of The New Republic, has published a column entitled "Disgrace - Obama’s increasingly absurd gay marriage position" where he calls on Obama to be the liberal leader they expect him to be on same-sex marriage:

"[Obama's] pattern [on same-sex marriage] can only be described as illogical and cynical. Obama argues that he is against gay marriage while also opposing efforts like Prop 8 that would ban it. He justifies this by saying that state constitutions should not be used to reduce rights...

... Obama appears to be saying that it is fine to prohibit gay people from getting married, as long as the vehicle for doing so is not a constitution. Presumably, then, he supports the numerous states that have banned same-sex marriage through other means, without resorting to a constitutional amendment? If so, he might be the only person in the country to occupy this narrow, and frankly absurd, slice of intellectual terrain."

[Continue reading...]

Even Mr. Just, however, is unwilling to apply the label of 'bigot' to the President. Other members of the Left, however, feel free to apply this offensive label to individuals who are opposed to legalizing same-sex marriage. So they are still giving the President special treatment.

But who knows, maybe Mr. Just and his friends are just getting started.

Weekend inspiration from a President who strove to preserve and promote the American founding in his term of office:

Our press release issued today on the one-year anniversary of the Lockerbie Bomber al-Megrahi's release from prison and flight back to Libya.

Lockerbie Anniversary

The thought struck me: if our U.S. economy was a stock portfolio traded on Wall Street, and President Obama was your stock adviser, would you re-hire him after evaluating his performance so far?

New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed to a nine-month high last week, yet another setback to the frail economic recovery.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 500,000 in the week ended August 14, the highest since mid-November, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 476,000 from the previously reported 484,000 the prior week, which was revised up to 488,000 in Thursday's report. [CNBC]

Because, for all intents and purposes, President Obama is managing our economy.

Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage in her column of this week:

Normally, when a lower court judge finds a new constitutional right never before acknowledged by any federal court except his, he is modest and reasonable enough to stay his decision, recognizing that higher courts will have the final say. But Walker's behavior from start to finish in this case has not been normal or usual for a judge.

... To give you an example of how extreme Walker is, he ruled that orientation is a protected class subject to strict scrutiny -- ignoring no less than 10 higher-court decisions to the contrary. He doesn't contest, distinguish or disagree with these binding precedents. He literally ignores their existence.

This is very odd behavior for a federal judge.

[Continue reading...]

Meanwhile, Prof. Christopher Kaczor has several more devestating lines of logical critique:

San Francisco Judge Vaughn Walker’s recent decision to overturn Proposition 8 (which reads in its entirety: “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California”) has intensified discussion of same-sex marriage. The judge’s ruling rests on several claims that merit further examination.

[Continue reading...]