Dakota Beacon

Absent real reform, the property tax program is simply destined to cost more and more each Session.  The Legislature must evaluate new ways of to make local governments more accountable and appreciative of what the Legislature does for them by shifting local government burdens onto the state's books.

Local government must make a good faith effort to reduce their own property tax property taxes as part of the state's efforts to do the same.

The United States cannot force these states to change, but Washington should make religious persecution part of its human-rights dialogue with other nations. Equally important, Americans should support and pray for the oppressed around the world.

Religious liberty is the proverbial canary in the mine. If a state won’t respect this most basic freedom of conscience, it isn’t likely to respect people’s lives and dignity in any context.

His straightforward reasoning went like this. If voters were willing to elect public “servants” who would take care of them in exchange for a bit of their freedom, that was their choice. His choice was to recoup at least some of what the government had taken from him in taxes by claiming his share of benefits as soon as possible. After all, he argued, he had worked long and hard while the government took more and more of his income. Why shouldn’t he get something in return?

He claimed he felt no guilt from transgressing the old American ethic of getting ahead through hard work. He indicated he understood a new ethic, an overriding unspoken ethic, affirming the right to live off one’s fellow man. This was his subtle observation of the public mind-set.

The hysteria fanned by the hyperbolic catastrophism of the ‘carbon klatch’ and a sensationalist press have created a ‘Ready Fire Aim’ mentality, pushing the nation and the world toward drastic action, before cost-effective capture methods and energy alternatives are established and operational – based on a blind faith

A chronic state of crisis, readers suggested that the IHS should be abolished, sustain a positive business climate, proceed with caution, public administrator and guardianship services, Remarkable Run Ends for Team North Dakota, the “heart” landed lightly on his feet, You would think they might notice, new diesel tractor engines, an expensive boondoggle, for disobeying road closures, more frequent competency tests for older drivers, Fighting Sioux nickname, State Dairy Queen

That the Democrats took a thumping last November is obvious. In the House of Representatives, over 60 seats changed from Democrat to Republican. Less-remarked upon, however, was the equally dramatic switch to pro-life legislators, which, not coincidentally, accompanied that Democrat-to-Republican shift.

In short, the Democratic Party, which was already heading down this path, now has preciously few pro-lifers in the House or Senate. We’re approaching the point where you can count them on two hands, potentially one hand. Alas, I say this with regret. I honestly do. I’m a pro-life Republican, but I know that the parties, and what they stand for, change over time. I’m far more concerned with the lives of unborn babies than political lives of Republicans.

Three years ago, I witnessed a cocktail-sipping San Francisco area Sierra Club attorney sit and hold court with enthralled listeners.  The attorney described the pleasure that she derives from inflicting economic pain on manufacturers and sending "messages" to consumers of capitalists' products.  I wondered aloud if her computer, refrigerator, TV, phones, and air conditioners were powered by electricity.  Court spectators chuckled.  But the jab flew over the head that sported the up-tilted chin, spittle-flinging lips, and angry eyes peering down a nose with nostrils flaring each time the brain recalled a legal victory over planet-hating wretches.

It seems that our neutered, post-Christian culture just can’t do enough to vindicate Muslims’ accusation of Western decadence.  And the latest affront to common sense and Truth is an attack upon the family: The State Department will remove the terms “father” and “mother” from passport applications and replace them with “gender neutral terminology.”

Insofar as government is going to be involved in influencing the family, it has a duty to not undermine familial health.  The family is the central building block of civilization, and nations rise and fall with its fortunes.  And as with obesity and other physical problems, familial anomalies will inevitably exist (e.g., single-parent households).  But this doesn’t mean they should be normalized.

I’m delighted to see the left wring its collective hands over an entity with no single leader, no headquarters, no “bullseye” at which they may aim.  I’m pleased to watch them waste time and resources trying to identify a single monolithic Tea Party movement, try to portray certain Sarah Palin types as the de facto leader, and throw the same old Alinsky playbook at the straw man they’ve created.  All the while they’re motivating us even more, the average citizen-turned-activist who continues to fly under their radar.  We’re out here in numbers, we’re resolute in our cause, and we’ll make our presence known during every legislative session and election cycle.

How did the “Minot Mafia” react to the Dakota Beacon article?  It moved, through the Minot city attorney, seeking a GAG ORDER prohibiting this writer from discussing, writing about, or making public comments about the claims, defenses and evidence in the case.

American liberals have enthusiastically celebrated the passage of a law requiring the Armed Forces to recruit homosexuals. The celebration in some cases (for example, Rachel Madow, liberal host at MSNBC) is so excessive that one has to wonder if homosexuality will replace abortion as the cardinal defining principle of contemporary American liberalism. Even the Republican liberals joined on this issue.

While the Democrats in the congress of the United States are holding hearings on seizing our nation's 401Ks to cover the budget shortfall in the socialist Social Security and Medicare programs, the liberal leaders of Europe have already made up their minds.

It is not an anti-intellectual bias against “book-learning” we’re seeing. It is contempt for indoctrination disguised as education. It is respect for real competence, measured by success in the essential wealth-creating work of any civilization: making stuff, growing stuff and moving stuff around.

And it is exactly what the Tea Party supporters have been loudly and plainly stating in a manner that requires no interpretation or search for deep psychological meaning, a distrust of the elitist assumption they are more fit to run our lives than we are.

From researchers who use/destroy human embryos in an attempt to find cures for all that ails us, to perhaps one day fetal tissues grown from cells taken from our own body to replace, say your kidneys, “this is the natural consequence of deciding that human life has no dignity,” said Wesley Smith, a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. 

Patients right now, some unknowingly, are using ten vaccines and three high-tech bio-drugs that contain voluntarily aborted babies’ cell lines. Scores more of these so-called designer drugs are on the way.

With governments going broke, we literally cannot afford politics as usual. We face financial ruin accompanied by some catastrophic mix of monetary breakdown, economic collapse, and social unrest. When a maniac is about to drive the car you are in over a cliff, you don’t make a deal to reduce your speed from 60 mph to 30 mph; you either stop or proceed onward to your doom.

OIL, OIL, OIL, OIL BOOM CONSEQUENCES, ELECTION ROUT, KELLEY IS NOT A FIGHTING SIOUX, VALLEY CITY HAS AN “OH, OH” MOMENT, WE CAN’T KEEP MEETING LIKE THIS, THE STRANGE FATE OF EARL POMELOSI, “IT’S VERY EMBARRASSING” -- INTERIM PRESIDENT DICK HANSON, OIL IS PAVING THE WAY, SOMALIS ARE COMING

While our focus should be winning a war, Democrats turned our military into a liberal social experiment by repealing “don’t ask don’t tell”. Conrad and Dorgan voted ‘yes’.

Kent Conrad promised North Dakota “one of the most significant lame-duck sessions in the history of the United States” and helped Democrats deliver.

Democrats showed you who they really are. Never forget.

End of the year recaps, with the pundits and TV talking heads, now warn us in ominous tones that the coming 112^th Congress will, in their view, not accomplish much because there will be insurmountable gridlock. If only. We can pray that it will be so. Stop these people before they commit another atrocity--please!

On the heels of a recent Sunday magazine profile of Glenn Beck, The New York Times published a roundtable discussion among six scholars on the issue of President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson has become a popular Beck target, and has suddenly emerged as a hot topic in our current politics.

My take on Wilson, however, is very different from what I'm hearing from Beck or from scholars on the left or right, whether pro-Wilson or anti-Wilson. It relates to a crucial aspect of Wilson that needs to be better known and which, dare I say, might even prompt Beck to amend his view—slightly perhaps.

Nothing that could reconcile the flat-out Marxist-Leninist Obama was in his college days with the man he supposedly is today.  There’s no one who says, “Yeah, man was he was a radical guy in his youth, and I just couldn’t believe how he became disenchanted with his old ideas.”  There are no stories about a great epiphany, an overseas trip that opened his eyes or a personal tragedy that inspired growth.  There’s nothing to explain how a radical Marxist became a reasonable politician.  And if there is such an explanation, it’s the most elusive of missing links.

Flood outlook for the Red River Basin, Fargo annual rainfall has averaged 24 inches, statewide winter storm emergency, U.S. Highways 52 and 281, telepharmacies, About 36,000 Indians live in ND, man camps, Perch Express, Business leaders in Bismarck are upbeat about 2011, Josh Duhamel a movie and TV actor born in Minot, This is America, Bowden-Fessenden 9-man football team, Spiritwood Station, dramatic shifts in relative business activity in ND

Remember always, dear reader, especially all my dear friends at AARP: Ehrlich’s, Gore’s, Obama’s and every “share the wealth” advocate in history, has ALWAYS thought in terms of world conquest—because they understand very well, that as long as there is a place where freedom exists, men will seek it. Remember, also that  2+2=4 and H2o makes water, NO MATTER WHAT IT SAYS ON THE UNTEATHERED BALLON FLOATING IN THE BREEZE OF CONSENSUS OF OPINION

Tea Party folks – start ordering your burqas now.  The supply might be insufficient! I see some marketing opportunities here and a cottage industry of burqa making - the capitalist system at its very best!

Thank you President Barak Hussein Obama for providing exactly the hope and change America needs.

The election is over and the people have spoken.

Preamble of the U.S. Constitution.

Andrew Jackson.

Billy's sixth wife?

The fact is that the United States isn’t as democratic as we’d like to think it is. We cherish the idea that the vox populi (the voice of the people) predominates over the will of privileged elites; that government is subordinate to the people (that it serves the people, rather than ruling them); that those in positions of governmental power should be accountable to the people from whom they derive their authority; that government is, essentially, ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ Is that the kind of system we have today? Let’s see.

The Tea Party movement and its millions of supporters have high hopes that the recent elections will rein in runaway government. Would-be reformers will also have to deal with the larger, permanent, unelected powers that aren’t accountable to the people. Elected officials come and go. Perhaps the greatest damage to democracy has been the tremendous amount of power amassed by ‘the permanent government,’ the unelected federal bureaucrats.