It’s hard to say what is more irritating about the “Violence is never the answer” nonsense, the stupidity or the insincerity of it.  It’s much like the mantra “Our strength lies in our diversity.”  It’s something people say because it’s a repeated big lie that has become “truth” and is politically correct; it’s a reflexive platitude uttered politician-like because that’s what “experts” are expected to say.

The reality is that, like amputation and many other unpleasant things, physical force has its place.  After all, to paraphrase Chesterton, violence is not the best way to settle differences.  Sometimes, however, it is the only way to prevent them from being settled for you.

Once again we have more declassified files on Ted Kennedy producing yet more unsettling questions. As readers of my previous columns and books know, Ted Kennedy made a confidential outreach to Soviet despot Yuri Andropov in May 1983, evidenced by a stunning KGB memo. The goal was to undermine Ronald Reagan’s defense policies and, in my view, Reagan’s re-election prospects as well.” Now, “[a]nother round of declassified FBI files on Senator Ted Kennedy has been released. Fittingly, in Kennedy’s case, they once again raise all sorts of questions, from the moral to the political to issues of national security.”

At long last, two years after Senator Ted Kennedy’s death, pause to investigate some hard questions? This latest FBI file begs yet more answers on the doings of Ted Kennedy.

The excessive spending that has resulted from the evolution of the “tax revenue trough” demands consideration of removal of enough “legs” to return the levels of taxation to a “stool”. The first choice of many residents of North Dakota, as reflected in the last legislative session, is to shorten the property taxation leg. But a group of imaginative North Dakotans is securing signatures toward the elimination of property taxes, a move felt by big-spending legislators that are hell-bent on re-election, to be too much, too fast.

We all know the king was a fool – no, actually insane.  While standing there naked he allowed himself to believe he had been given a beautiful suit.  Sadly it existed only in his imagination.  America’s voters have fallen for the same swindle Grimm’s tailors sold the king in this famous fairy tale.  America’s politicians are nothing but swindling tailors.  The tragedy is what’s happened to America isn’t a fairy tale.

In the last seventy years regulating risks to health and safety dominated public policy debates. Lamentably, pursuit of improving our lives generally entails risks.

Contrary to the sentiment of moral do-gooders, living in a technologically advanced country that uses industrial chemicals, nuclear energy and a lot of carbon fuels is healthier than living in a poor, non-industrialized country that uses little technology, few chemicals and a minimum of carbon fuels.

Unfortunately, risks which cannot be prevented (earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes), happen. Sadly, those risks which can be prevented (multiple stimulus packages, overwhelming debt, printing money to pay for excessive debt), aren’t.

In 1964, federal handouts to needy Americans constituted a mere 1.2% of our gross domestic product. Only 7% of babies were born into broken families.

Indeed, a staggering 71% of black babies are now born out of wedlock. That’s a Black culture-killing 218% explosion in illegitimacy over four decades.

The “war on poverty” must be phased out. Otherwise poverty may score an overwhelming victory.

The quake was felt hundreds of miles away and the tsunami rippled south to North Africa, north to England, and all the way to North America. Modern studies rate this quake at 9 on the Richter scale—the same as the revised magnitude of the one that just hit Japan. Records show that … the Lisbon earthquake on All Saints Day in 1755 ranks as one the worst natural disasters in modern history when measured by loss of life and destruction of property. As with all great events, natural or otherwise, people always seek to explain its cause and meaning. The Lisbon event is no exception. Yet, there was something unique about explanations of it at the time, and strikingly, for generations to come.

By the time you read this, President Obama will be taking a well-deserved break from the 54^th hole of today’s scheduled golf game and the grueling responsibility of picking out his Final Four priority high-speed rail projects on ESPN by relaxing on a beach in… Libya? Japan? No, Brazil. Oh, here he is now:

“Tall and tan and young and lovely
The boy from Spendaholica goes walking
And when he passes
Each one he passes
Goes ‘Aiiieeeeee…’”

The 2010 census data for ND, African immigrants arriving in Fargo and Grand Forks, sensible thinking, average compensation is on the rise, BNSF Railway, a Texan murdered a Texan in Minot, The F-M Symphony, Minors shouldn’t be in bars, proposal to abolish the Board of Higher Education, a loud, politically correct minority, UND President Robert Kelley, Dry Lake Township

On February 23, 2011 the Fargo Forum published reporter Patrick Springer’s article entitled “Family Planning Faces Funding Cuts”. I would contend that this article was either poor reporting or propaganda. The article begins with the subheading “Advocates: GOP playing politics”. In so doing the author has set the predicate that Republicans are not serious or perhaps are manipulative and want to make family planning unpaid for by the Federal Government.

Does Patrick Springer not know that this is all about abortion and just has not done his homework before contacting and interviewing? Or, is he a propagandist who purports to be a journalist? My experience and the evidence presented above indicates to this author that it the later case.

In a word, homosexual special interests focus on sex and benefits first, and mission accomplishment second.

Lost in the conversation is the current segregation of heterosexual service personnel. If practicing homosexuals should not be segregated, then why segregate heterosexuals in separate facilities? Why not combine everyone into single facilities and save money?

In North Dakota, state senators are considering a bill that would put the government in direct competition with private enterprise by guaranteeing bonds to finance a pipeline project designed to deliver water to the oil industry. The proposal is called the Western Area Water Supply Project (HB 1206) and would pump water from the Missouri River to be sold to cities and oil companies. While the state may have a legitimate role in facilitating the delivery of potable water for human consumption, it has no business selling it to the oil industry when individual  entrepreneurs are already doing it or building the infrastructure to do it better and more efficiently.

Planned Parenthood and the Infanticide crowd can not argue facts....they must deceive to keep the blood $$$$$$$$$$$$ rolling in.

According to Webster, at the moment of conception the fertilized egg is in fact human and a being. Of that there is no doubt.

Thus, according to Black's Law, a human being is a PERSON. Furthermore, that PERSON is a CHILD.

Schiller is being heavily criticized for these comments, as is NPR and elite liberal thinking in general. Schiller, NPR Foundation president and vice president for development (until these comments), is the Left’s latest exhibit in smearing the Tea Party movement as bigots, racists, fascists, Hitler-ites, followers of Attila the Hun, Torquemada, Genghis Khan, or whatever other handy demon. Yet, what’s telling about Schiller’s comments is their lack of factual basis, an even greater sin from a man whose business, and erstwhile employer, is the reporting of facts.

NPR’s Ron Schiller is the extremist when it comes to Tea Party views.

The Indian and the White Guy, with no restrictions, no current polls, proper level of funding for higher education, potential Congressional limits on ethanol subsidies, Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposal to steeply increase taxes, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Amtrak rail service, a bar is one of the few places to eat, Fargo Forum view of the Legislature, The Daily Beast, DAKTOIDS

How mean-spirited are House Republicans? So mean-spirited that they would end federally-funded cowboy poetry! Last Tuesday, Harry Reid, the Majority Leader, took to the senate floor to thunder that this town ain’t big enough for both him and the Mean-Spirited Kid (John Boehner). “The mean-spirited bill, HR 1 …eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts,” said Senator Reid.

Well, because these days, what doesn’t? Once upon a time, the cowboy embodied the rugged individualism of the frontier. In Harry Reid’s world, he embodies dependency without end.

Europe’s years of experience shows that multiculturalism has not lived up to its claims. It did not create the panacea of a harmonious society celebrating diversity. In stead, Europe’s experience proved multiculturalism to be destructive of the host society while preserving and isolating the perpetrating culture.

It was 65 years ago, March 5, 1946, when Winston Churchill delivered his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in Fulton, Missouri. It was a speech that rocked the world and changed history. By then, Churchill was no longer British prime minister... Churchill and his work, however, were hardly finished. He had been called upon to save Western civilization at the start of the decade, when Hitler’s Germany was at the gates. Now, he saw new vandals, equally dangerous, already inside the gates, and colored red. Stalin was their dictator.

It took the rest of the world a while to awaken to Churchill’s reality. When it did, it recognized the prime minister as a political prophet. But on March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill was a voice in the wilderness.

A politically correct way to circumvent the rule, Buffalo Chips to the House, the Fighting Sioux vote, Is this progress?, United Tribes Technical College, education in fields such as automotive technology, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the city is schizo, ND’s low unemployment rate, average ND annual wage in 2009 was $45,200, Cirrus Industries of Duluth, Old bombers and new tankers, Hess Corp., developing self-esteem

Public employee salaries should track market conditions as much as possible.  The debate should be over whether that is happening, not whether public employees are making too much or too little.

What’s south of Europe’s border? Why, it’s even livelier. In Libya, there are presently one million refugees from sub-Saharan Africa whose ambition is to get in a boat to Italy. There isn’t a lot to stop them. Between now and mid-century, Islam and sub-Saharan Africa will be responsible for almost all the world’s population growth – and yet, aside from a few thousand layabout Saudi princes whoring in Mayfair, they will enjoy almost none of the world’s wealth.

In what amounts to a high-stakes game of ‘chicken,’ the big spenders always win, because the fiscal conservatives always blink. They know that a majority of the public fears the disruption of a government shutdown today more than they do a potential major upheaval at some unspecified date in the future. We fiscal conservatives have come across like the boy who cried, ‘Wolf!’ We have warned about the perils of red ink for years, but Armageddon hasn’t come. I think we will be proven right eventually, but we can no more foretell when the federal debt will blow up than one can predict which straw will break the camel’s back.

All personal names and location names have been altered for reasons that should be obvious. This is a recent message home to families from a Company Commander. It is offered to provide readers with insight into the bravery of our soldiers and the sacrifices they make toward our national security and the freedoms we too often take for granted.

Imagine that you’re a young adolescent boy.  Like many your age, you’re shy around girls, perhaps to the point at which even talking to one might make your heart race.  You also like sports, so you go out for your school’s wrestling team.  Then, lo and behold, you’re at a meet, and something hits you like a load of bricks.

Your opponent is going to be a girl. 

You’re going to have to grapple with her.  In front of spectators.  Touching—and being touched in—intimate places. 

There are a bunch of objections I could raise to these statements. Primarily, however, the problem with [Howard] Dean’s comments on the ‘purpose’ and ‘job’ of government is the complete lack of qualification. Dean gives a definition of government that is a leftist definition, provided by a modern liberal/progressive. Howard Dean cannot, logically, honestly, factually, categorically argue that his definition is anything beyond that.

What Howard Dean offered was an expansive modern ‘progressive’ definition of government, that’s fine, but his terms need to be identified as just that…. No, I’m not calling Lawrence O’Donnell and Howard Dean communists, but I am calling them Leftists and redistributionists. That’s what they are, as is their definition of government. Their definition is, first and foremost, theirs—not America’s.

Over the past twenty years I've often written about "the Hive" - my nickname for the informal body of opinion comprising liberals, socialists, outright Communists, and various other strains of "progressive" opinion.

Like an odor, such folk are easier to sense than to define. They include assorted activists for specific causes, as well as more passive enablers, especially in the news media. The Democratic Party is their chief American organ.

USA Today Report Says North Dakota State-Employees Make Marginally More Than The Average Worker