Dakota Beacon

Least Tern & Piping Plover protectors, Recreation Interests, flood plain residents (I am in all three categories) ... they all have one thing in common...special interest dispensation at the expense of the number one purpose of the federal Missouri River dam system...FLOOD CONTROL.

Flood control dams are the only civil engineering projects for which I am ashamed of my profession. Egypt & China should be ashamed of Aswan and Three Gorges respectively ...just as we should be ashamed of all of our high dams.

Looking back to the summer of 2010, forecasts of the La Nina predicted winter extremes and spring floods. One story carried in USA Today 10/22/2010 foretold weather extremes in 2011. Reduced precipitation and higher temperatures for most of the southern United States would spark drought and wildfires. The Northern Plains, however, would see more storms, precipitation and flooding. This story was right on target.

So much for the prognostication of manmade global warming. One might just as well believe in misfortune brought on by shooting an albatross as in anthropogenic climate change. I prefer the science of the meteorological explanation of Southern Oscillation.

The stakes in the next election are enormous. The Medicare reform contest could be the one for all the marbles.

The trustees of the Medicare system recently reported that the program will go broke in the year 2024—five years sooner than was projected just last year. The millions of Americans who have been counting on Medicare to be a reliable, stable guarantor of affordable healthcare in their senior years should be asking themselves, ‘Who is responsible for this predicament?’ The short answer is ‘lots of people,’ but let’s start by looking in the mirror.

There’s something intellectually, morally, indeed stunningly vacuous about global elitists who admire a womanizer specifically for finding time to womanize. But hip liberals—we know them when we see them—don’t just admire, but in fact idolize the world’s DSKs, those “high-profile political figure[s]” who “find time” away from issuing noble but absurd pronouncements to engage in low-profile debauchery.

Some people don't mind a little constitutional sophistry in a good cause; and for liberals, centralizing all power in the federal government is always a good cause. Since most Americans don't know or care what the Constitution says, let alone what their ancestors thought it meant, the great liberal snow job has been very successful.

The hyper-regulatory state is unrepublican. It strikes at one of the most basic pillars of free society: equality before the law. When you replace “law” with “regulation”, equality before it is one of the first casualties. In such a world, there is no law, only a hierarchy of privilege more suited to a sultan’s court than a self-governing republic.

Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve has laid the charges, connected the leads, and now stands ready at the detonator.  America waits.

Take it back, Rush!  He is no more "Irish" than he is "Hawaiian".  He is a fraud wherever he goes.  But the American people are the goats who elected him.  Don't call him "Paddy"

What we shall see is that in every case the choice was one that could not fail. (1,a) To ramify the authority and power of the EXECUTIVE government—its power, that is to rule by decree and rules and regulations of its own making.” (2,b) To strengthen its hold upon the economic life of the nation; (3,c) To extend its power over the individual; (4,d) To degrade the parliamentary power {Congress}; (5,e) To impair the great American tradition of an independent, Constitutional judicial power; (6,f) To weaken ALL other powers—the power of private enterprise, the power of private finance, the power of state and local government. Garrett does name it here, but the power of the free American individual is the first power that must be tamed by making him/her a “ward” of the WELFARE STATE.  With enough time, since 1934, it can and has been done: we have 26 year old toddlers who are happy to be on their parent’s health plans; we have senior citizens vacationing on cruise ships happy that their grand children are financing it; to quote Winston in 1984, “I LOVE BIG BROTHER!!”

Perhaps you have heard the United States described as the ‘Saudi Arabia of coal, in addition to our immense coal deposits, the United States contains gigantic natural gas deposits. Yet, there is even more good news: “Besides being the Saudi Arabia of coal and potentially natural gas, we may become the next ‘Saudi Arabia’ of oil.”

We have under our feet the world’s greatest treasure trove of energy supplies…. We just need the freedom to go get it.

Thankfully, this year Earth Day received little more than a passing mention. Maybe Earth Day is now properly dismissed as a jest and an afterthought. To believe that mankind can alter the progress of earth’s ages is the height of arrogance and folly.

It seems that the root problem was that NDSU genuinely lacked proper budget planning, and decided to put that deficiency on the backs of students.  

The legislature and the Governor should be insisting that the Board of Higher Education impose budget oversight at NDSU, clearly they are not prepared to manage their own finances.  

When the Supreme Court says that governments have no right to prohibit the killing of innocent babies, it sets itself up as an idol in opposition to God. When people say that the Supreme Court has approved abortion and that is the end of the story, they are as guilty of idolatry as those who bow down before golden calves.

A court not bound by the chains of truth will hand out falsehoods that will spread like cancer. If those infected believe that truth should not bind the court, they too become idolaters.

If Senator Schumer succeeds, our right to freely and efficiently communicate about police activity will diminish in a way that is effectively insulated from First Amendment challenge. Privacy and freedom be damned. There are drunk drivers to catch.

Charles Schumer’s crusade is presenting Americans with a grand display of progressive arrogance.

Does anyone else out there tremble for our country, in the hands of a government whose leadership is so inane, so incompetent?  Rush Limbaugh, who, for some reason, seemed surprised at Netanyahu’s public comeback, is quite right about one thing:  the so-called Republican “leadership” should be taking notes.  This is what “standing up” looks like.  This is what it looks like when a leader has a spine and a brain.  On the other hand, when he doesn’t he embarrasses his own country and his own people and makes fools of us all.  If what the Democrats give us is Obama, we are now asking Republicans, what will YOU give us?  What we need is our own Benjamin Netanyahu.

Back when he was still the officially designated Next President of France and not an accused rapist, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was glimpsed at the annual IMF soccer tournament wearing a T-shirt emblazoned “YES, WE KAHN!” (Monsieur le directeur was not participating in the game: The field he likes to play requires more horizontal exertions, as even the deferential and protective French media have begun belatedly to acknowledge.) In consciously mimicking the slogan of another and very successful presidential candidate, the IMF boss and Socialist Party candidate improved upon it – or, at any rate, made it more accurate. “Yes, We Can”? Er, no, actually, you can’t. But yes, he Kahn!

Uunprecedented level of state largesse, Portage la Prairie - Manitoba, Minnewaukan, it’s time for Betting to stand aside, Tolna Coulee, ND is a major exceptionamong states, union members there are nervous, the worst thing and the best thingm, “you never feel sorry for an insurance company, a bank or government”, wolves quickly finished off six of the deer, Whitey’s tradition and name, Delay, delay, delay, the “cliche” award, “snacking”, DAKTOIDS

Public schools are teaming with Planned Parenthood to perpetuate the myth that immorality and illegitimacy can be cured by showing high-schoolers how to use condoms.  But for decades, sex education failed to achieve the originally-stated goals of reducing unwanted pregnancies and sex-related disease.  Planned Parenthood-style sex education produces promiscuity and social decay.  Teens teaching “sexuality” to other teens won’t stop the rot.  Reversing our youth’s moral slide can only be achieved by parents with values despised by “experts” like John Goodlad and Planned Parenthood.

Religion, in its essence, is a matter of falling in love with the divine. Like other passionate loves, it tends to excess. It can easily become fanatical, which is especially frightening to people who have never had the experience. But I do know this: the human without the divine is never fully human.        

And this is typical of leftists.  They persecute traditionalist students in thousands of schools and universities nationwide (see Campus-Watch.org), and, when occasionally caught with their hands in the commie jar, don’t even have the guts to come on camera and defend their “beliefs.” 

Something else that can only exist in a relativistic universe is the spiritual disease that today wears the label “liberalism.”  Get people to believe in Truth, and it will die as surely as fungus that is exposed to the light.

Americans face a choice: reduced long-term prosperity caused by tax increases to fund entitlements, a bankrupt government, or reducing entitlements to avoid tax increases and bankruptcy.  While nearly 90 percent of us acknowledge the problem, only about a third seem open to taking action.  Is such thinking rational?

No, but also yes.

Over the last several weeks there has been a lot of noise coming out of Washington D.C. regarding the potential to jack up energy taxes, a move which would only further exacerbate the problem of high gas prices.

North Dakota's retiring Senator, Kent Conrad has tied himself into a few of these plans.

If, as Tea Party patriots and activists we are not up to this hard decision we need not call ourselves patriots or activists any longer.  The road is plain to see.  We see what lies ahead in either direction.  I suggest, and strongly, that we make our intentions known in time for the present "leadership" to act responsibly with knowledge of these intentions, and if they do not, proceed, full speed ahead.

In all fairness, we cannot criticize these men for not playing the “card” they hold in their hand if we are too weak to play the card we have in our hand.  The only card we have is our willingness to remove these men from office if they do not act as responsible leaders.

At last, the sights and sounds of spring arrive.

For some, the webcam video of the eagles nest at Decorah, Iowa, might be the epitome of bird watching. The raptor camera catches every move of the two adults and three baby eaglets. However, nothing compares to the live bird show outside my kitchen window.

The property tax did not arise as an addendum to the Ten Commandments.  Its function and purpose has changed in many ways since the founding of this country.  Over the next several months proponents of repealing the property tax will present their case.  It will be presented clearly and openly.  Difficulties will be encountered in implementing the repeal, but we will not claim that it will be a simple matter, but it is entirely possible.  You will not be presented with a Lloyd Omdahl snow job.