Dakota Beacon

Paul Williams was introduced, along with his talented longtime accompanist, Chris Caswell. He began the evening with the salutation “My name is Paul and I am an alcoholic.” (Mr. Williams has been sober for the last 23 of his 73 years). “I write love songs that are basically codependent anthems.”

In this first of a four-part series on upcoming Supreme Court rulings, Dr. John Sparks examines an important freedom of speech case. Sparks, a constitutional law professor at Grove City College, begins his series with a look at a persistent grandmother who has dedicated herself to trying to convince women entering abortion clinics to consider other alternatives. But, does a Massachusetts law violate grandma’s free speech?

Beneath the cultural decline lies a more serious malady. We have arrived at the trivialization of American public discourse.

. . . The siblings were separately adopted as infants; the 50-year-old adoptions are unexplained; new favorite hockey player; You’re the worst Norwegian; Heidi Heitkamp is attracted to cameras and microphones; Jenkinson proposed no solutions; the eight Bakken counties should secede; Oil companies in ND use multi-well drilling pads; ND counties gained almost 5,000 residents; No more “Stop-n-Go”; Bernie Huss (88) tried everything; But Harold was a striver; the Minot Daily News sneered; The ND prison population is increasing; DAKTOIDS . . . . 

Little good comes from ambiguous laws that will continually be interpreted and reinterpreted by an ever shape-shifting judiciary. And these laws almost always benefit the left.

If our elected officials would in humility stop trying to engineer fairness, step back and let Americans create wealth, the middle class could thrive again.

In a world short on spiritual and intellectual order, everything becomes believable. Too many people are willing to believe anything offered because there is no basis to question, no basis to doubt. There is lacking an integrated conception of the world.

Happy Presidents Day! As we celebrate today, there are many lessons to be learned from our past leaders. In his article that first appeared at American Spectator, Dr. Paul Kengor looks at a relatively unknown speech by President Ronald Reagan which offers deep insight and an important message on religious tolerance.

 . . . say what you will about the Indians, they fought the good fight. They didn’t invite millions of unassimilable foreigners into their lands, give them special privileges, and then justify it all by saying that they were just here to do jobs Indians wouldn’t do (like colonize Indians).

. . . The Grand Forks Lamoureux twins; Lamoureuxs lead rout of Swiss; Snuff out the birthday candles; ND’s U.S. senators have different styles; The AFB is still “big dog”; Minot was always a railroad town; man camps; out-of-state drivers in traffic accidents; Jack Zalecki’s lexicon of insults; The Greatest Generation; a time of large families and little schooling; Polaris, Arctic Cat, Ski-Doo and Yamaha; DAKTOIDS. . . .

Sanford Health has become the abortion enabler of North Dakota. This raises interesting ethical questions for North Dakota's population.....if you are providing any money for any reason to Sanford Health are you a party to killing unborn children?

Senators John Hoeven and Heidi Heitkamp and Congressman Kevin Cramer all proclaimed victory after voting for the $1 TRILLION piece of legislation. Of course, this is money we don't have. It means more expenses for taxpayers and higher costs for consumers.

. . . ND became a state in February 1889; Essential Air Service will pay about $10,000 a day; no more merrymaking on the Perch Express; UND’s Energy and Environmental Research Center; Stern was a community and business leader; In 1999, Bobby Vee received the Rough Rider Award; the high price of propane; Dean Michele Reid walked away with $300,000; Dean Michele Reid walked away with $300,000; from Minneapolis to Mogadishu; structural racism and white privilege; rubber track systems which convert pickups into snowmobiles; The Diedes died; DAKTOIDS . . . .

We need sort of an Amish jihad, a deep love of the good and hatred of the evil that translates into action. But there is a prerequisite for this, and it brings us to something both the Amish and Muslim jihadists have in common.

They believe in Truth.

Truth be told, Obama's Affordable Care Act, euphemism that it is, was never intended to "fix" America's health care system. The thirty-or-so million people without health care became the distraction for the real intent.

Self education will also be key to reversing the trend within our own country from protectionism to socialism so as to prevent the subsequent natural progression to communism and fascism, as predicted by Freiderick Bastiat in his 1850 classic “The Law” (three stages of “legal plunder”, protectionism, socialism, and communism) and by Frederich A. von Hayek in his 1944 classic “The Road to Serfdom” (fascism, the exaltation of nation and race through dictatorial suppression of opposition, is the fourth stage reached after communism has proved an illusion).

ND has a unique culture of human kindness; Almost all of ND’s interstate highways closed; Westbound passengers will take buses; “Millionaire” is defined at least two ways in ND; North Dakota cropland values; wealth and jobs to North Dakota; wealth and jobs to North Dakota; Red River Water Supply Project; Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund; What’s the fastest growing state in the country? some are trying to escape criminal pasts; Operation Pipe Cleaner snared 22 people; Call it heavy-duty shoplifting; over 100 employees in blue shirts chanted “Sell, sell, sell!” a lifetime interest and prowess in athletics; “It will rot your brain.” she was arrested for being drunk and disorderly; Want a lawn bag looking like a NFL helmet?

In the CNN story, a major public university is evaluating the reading skills of its college athletes using a test (WRAT) that is considered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education to be insufficiently diagnostic in assessing the reading skills of third, fifth, and eighth grade homeschooling students.

And consider the implications of the inborn-SSA justification. After all, the same social scientists who tell us SSA is congenital also say that sociopaths are born and not made. Now, if, further, someone was born with homicidal instincts, would this give him license to commit murder?

If we want to put wood chips in the gears in the form of ordinances and court rulings against the common sense and natural law of the marketplace we will have accomplished nothing but distortion which leads to shortages, which mean higher prices and less choice and poorer quality.  Competition, on the other hand, works for abundance, reasonable prices and higher quality.  Isn’t that what we should really want?

There’s no point in Cramer bashing these watchdog organizations because they are calling him out on his votes.  As we’ve seen it’s not some rogues at Heritage Action, it’s virtually every Conservative organization that scores votes in Congress!

Kept in perspective, Christianity in general, and Christians in particular, have always faced challenges both from within and without. If Christianity is diminishing in the United States under federal auspices, it is flourishing elsewhere.

. . . These were the worst conditions I’ve ever set up in; Alberta clippers; Class B kids; the four most famous Nodaks; Welk is historically important; there is increasing evidence of large cash gifts; Sloppy dress breeds sloppy thinking; Basin retirees are scurrying out the door withe their lumps; a nitrogen fertilizer plant near Jamestown; Twin Cities have the highest disparity in the nation; knuckleheads are out in full force; Tex Hall, Chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes; 75 percent believed ND was headed in the right direction; top must see place; DAKTOIDS . . . .

Beyond being language-focused, classical education trains the young person's mind in three parts. The mind is supplied with facts. It then proceeds to organizing those facts with logic. The mind is then prepared to express conclusions derived from logic.

. . . I never forget, it’s not my money; it’s yours; anything can have significance to a group or individual; Little Red Hen; hobbled the Little Red Hen; ND’s booming economy; oil is a fact of life in North Dakota; overwhelming the state’s usual good judgment; It is more than money and a job; It got too cold for me; oil boom produces jobs which are male-dominated; a crash program to train physician assistants and nurse practitioners; Run for it, Mr. Chief Justice! Editors of the Forum woke in a distinctly cranky mood; the most drunken metropolitan area in the nation; It was just alcohol; An arts project dubbed “Destination Corridor” is moving forward; DAKTOIDS . . . .

He concludes with an ominous warning: 'Like an ever-widening sinkhole, NSA's surveillance technology will continue to expand, quietly pulling in more and more communications and gradually eliminating more and more privacy.' Three decades later this pronouncement feels uncomfortably prescient: we were warned."

They want to be admired by the boss. They want to be his confidantes. They want to be the one he trusts to get the job done. You can get into a lot of trouble like that.

Wherever you stand on pot legalization, about legitimization there should be no debate. A nation that does not maintain stringent social prohibitions (in the least) against chemical dependency will not likely remain strong and vibrant.

The Fed is a rogue entity. As I mentioned in my article about Ben Bernanke, the Fed has arrogated to itself arbitrary powers to create however much money it wants and buy whatever financial assets—whether government, private, or even foreign—it chooses.

Cloward & Piven taught that America could only be destroyed from within. Only by overwhelming the system with debt, welfare, and entitlements could capitalism and the America (sic) economy be destroyed."