Dakota Beacon

Frankly, what our country needs in not this tainted brand of "American Exceptionalism, but truly exceptional Americans.

Rather than address these issues, our political class outlaws incandescent light bulbs; tells us how much water we can use to flush our toilets; mandates what our kids can eat at school lunches; regulates what our kids must and must not study; and the list goes on.

Obamacare established the Independent Payment Advisory Board. This board of 15 non-elected bureaucrats will control health care costs by denying medical treatment that physicians would otherwise recommend. This rationing board plans to cut Medicare payments by 33% from what insurers now pay doctors and hospitals. This is one reason doctors are leaving the profession and others will no longer accept Medicare patients.

“Grove City College is made up of quality people and programs. As measured by SAT scores, the quality of our student body is on an upward sloping curve. Our challenge is to get the best quality students and give them the best quality education. Clearly, we are attracting well-balanced students. If we were going for SAT scores alone we would become an educational boutique and that’s not what we’re going to do. At the end of the day, it is quality that will prevail. That’s exactly what we’re about at Grove City College and I think we’re doing a first class job,” said the trenchant Larry.

And after robbing them of moral judgment and creating a visceral craving for vice, I’d fill their heads full of anti-Western, anti-Christian — in fact, anti-goodness — ideas in college classrooms. When I was done with them, they’d not only possess the discernment of a man in the midst of a drug-fueled orgy, their egos would be so bloated they’d consider their ignorance wisdom.

. . . the state’s tallest building and largest office tower; Bismarck is also dreaming big; we’re becoming more of a regional center like a Devils Lake; Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame; Titan Machinery is a $2 billion ag and construction equipment company; Were you thinking of getting into farming? Political extremists prepare for battle in Leith; Scheels will purchase the plane, but make it available to NDSU; she likened her personality to a house cat; her pets included a bobcat, an owl and an antelope; Amtrak’s Empire Builder; DAKTOIDS . . . .

Who's to say how many of the people calling were angry Conservatives? We'll never know and it really doesn't matter. What matters is this government has been stunned. Ceausescu's heard the angry mob.

There are many, at least millions and likely billions of people who believe there can be a baby inside, as well as outside, a womb. For many of those people, an abortifacient (a pill that, if taken by a pregnant woman is lethal to the fetus) is ... "a chemical that kills babies".

Such self-serving moral posturing is hardly pastoral. It ill serves - and even perverts -- the Church's mission to "go and teach all nations"; it misinforms the public, scandalizes good Catholics; and is thoroughly lacking in charity

Sequestration was intended to bring federal spending under control. The unintended consequence, or so it appears, was to hollow out America's armed forces drawing America down to the level of a second rate world power in a very dangerous world.

We know that justice still eludes the families of the dead and wounded. We also know that as of January 2013 former Secretary of State Clinton does not believe it worthwhile to pursue those who were responsible for the security collapse, stating simply, “what difference at this point does it make.”

When it comes to a decision as to whether to support a man who uses poison gas on his opponents or whether to support those opponents who see reason to dance in the streets when one of our ambassadors is raped and murdered or one of our cities is viciously attacked, or our marathon runners are blown up, I guess the right answer is, “WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?”

To overflow with vice is to be vicious. That's what I too often see at the ballpark. Certain fans can be not only mean but craven. Imagine the cowardice . . .

. . . interim chancellor of the ND University System; Say hello to new chancellor Shane Goettle; “hit the ground running”; Sometimes the practice backfires; Often, they also import crime; Somalis are particularly difficult to integrate; a growing Somalia gang threat; the steepest decline in the nation; The majority of the cited anglers were nonresidents; Kilber did the same thing again on I-94; news about ND’s pension liabilities; ND’s pension liabilities may be over 50 percent funded . . . .

We can change that.  Only we can do that.  And the only way we can do it is to use the stick and the carrot given us by our Founders. 

This might be a war worth being branded an Isolationist for not supporting. If ObamaCare hasn't given you a thrill up your leg and you're not pro- amnesty, you've already been called every other bad name there is and, against those, “Isolationist” may well be the nicest thing anyone calls you this year.

Recently, former President Jimmy Carter went on record saying that the U. S. "no longer has a functioning democracy." Had U.S. leaders, both in the government and media, honestly pondered the serious implications of such pronouncements by seasoned diplomats and politicians, they would have been in less of a rush to condemn Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, or Julian Assange.

The astute reader might wonder what these results mean. Perhaps it is those parents who have established good relationships with their teens who find it easier to speak with them about drug use. These parents see very positive results, not because they dialogued about alcohol, but because they had already established positive relationships. Are the good results dependent upon the dialogue or on the positive relationships?

Walter Williams, the respected black economist, argues, "If we put ourselves in the shoes of racists who seek to sabotage black upward mobility, we couldn't develop a more effective agenda than that followed by civil rights organizations, black politicians, academics, liberals, and the news media. First, weaken the black family, but don't blame it on individual choices. You have to preach that today's weak black family is a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and racism."

The road from "rid the world of evil!" to "have we learned nothing?" is a long, hard slog. And Cal still has a ways to go: his piece fails to mention the terror, exile, and death that Bush's wars have visited on Christians throughout the Middle East. Nor does he allude to the virtually unanimous opposition among Christian leaders there to Obama's proposed support of the rebels allied with Al Queda in Syria.

The Kennedy administration’s first priority was plausible deniability. The result was total failure.

 The Syrian situation illustrates the deficiency of international leadership  the US offers the world with an unvetted president like Obama.

Few in today’s civil rights community will admit it, but the Reagan administration rescued civil rights law from the political and constitutional dead end of quotas and racial redistribution.

. . . Tempest in a teapot? the evil festering in Leith; AFBs in the region are going through a rough patch; reversal of business that flowed to China; Northern Plains Nitrogen; Alcatraz of the Rockies; a 3-car crash on Hwy 52; Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments; stop the MCAs; The tribes operate under their own banking laws; The water is not fit to drink; Orton was a member of the “Greatest Generation”. . . .

Progress toward a good thing is good. Progress toward a bad thing is bad. Progress for the sake of progress is one of the worst superstitions of the modern world. For six days, God made progress in his creation until he created his best creature. On the seventh day, God rested.

Of course, things will get worse, not better - because everyone is afraid to ask the forbidden question:

Do freshmen seem to know less with every passing year because of the decline of public schools they come from - which have been under government control for decades?

Clark loved that moment. He and Reagan met with John Paul II in June 1982, where they discussed their mutual goal of taking down the Soviet empire. Clark used to tell me that he once heard that no words in Scripture are repeated as often as “Be not afraid.”

They look for the right euphemisms to conceal their true beliefs. They explain and reassure and attempt to assume a conservative mantle in order to identify with most Americans.

But the first part of that speech, wherein King speaks of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, is not as well-known but deserves to be. That portion demonstrates King’s commitment to the conception of justice held at the American founding.

We must realize that the doctrine of the faith is not democratic, that the struggles for religious freedom and accommodation in America are not universal, and that the secular Protestant conformity demanded by the triumphnt Republican Party in the late nineteenth century is unhealthy