Dakota Beacon

I’ve spent some entertaining moments observing birds from my kitchen window as they visit the array of feeders I’ve set for them. I’ve wondered if they also find me equally entertaining on the other side of the glass as I sip my coffee. Surely, they must.

No doubt, some women would make good riflemen or tank gunners, and the Armed Forces can make changes to adapt to women in those positions. This fact, however, is beside the point. The Armed Forces will have better infantry, artillery, armor, cavalry, ranger, and special forces units if they are not required to make adjustments contrary to nature.

You first must have principle to begin with. When you believe in Truth — either explicitly or just in the sense of operating under the assumption that there is a transcendent “right” — it will be your yardstick for behavior and decision-making. This is when the head can intervene and begin to compete with the seductive heart. It’s when you’re more likely to tell an errant friend, “Look, you know I like you, but what you did there was wrong.” What, though, if you’re a relativist and thus don’t believe in transcendent morality? What then will be that yardstick for behavior and decision-making?    There is only one thing left: emotion.

It was a very gracious gesture, and pure Truman. Truman saw a wrong by his fellow Democrat, FDR, and strived to correct it, regardless of his party loyalties.

All will seem sustainable, until it is not.

The bell will ring when some event shocks people into the recognition that: (a) the lack of real wealth creation accompanied by continuous, massive debt accumulation can never be reconciled; and (b) the political will does not exist—and may never exist—to call a halt to the debt accumulation and/or do what is necessary to enable an acceleration of real wealth creation

. . . Valley Prosperity Initiative; Shirvani isn’t at fault here; Shirvani “deserves more than nine months; $180,000 per resident; the living conditions of the oil boom; a nitrogen fertilizer plant costing over $1.1 billion; growing number of homeless; Result: gun smuggling; 1983 killing of two federal marshals; integrating Somalis into Swedish society; she has been charged with felony theft;  $124 million for a new facility; eye-popping increase in ND farm values; ND housing starts; there is still no shortage of fools; DAKTOIDS . . . .

Until now, Americans had little or no reason to fear their government. That is no longer true.  Since 9/11, the growth of America's internal police force, the amount of surveillance of non-criminal citizens, the interception of our private electronic correspondence, and the invasion of our financial records are unprecedented. 

We Americans need to fear our own government and its demonstrated inability to reduce crime.

For liberal Democrats, conservative Republicans should never use their faith to disagree; only liberal Democrats enjoy such freedoms. I could give a thousand examples illustrating the point; I’ve written entire books doing so. For now, however, here are some particularly salient examples involving Obama, liberals, and healthcare reform:

When those in power mutilate truth, the welfare of the people is at risk. Think of what all the illiberal movements—whether fascist, socialist, communist, environmentalist, or progressive—have in common. All exalt state power at the expense of the individual rights of liberty, property, and ultimately life itself. In the effort to attain that power, they also commit depredations on truth, as George Orwell warned in “1984.”

I believe that it may simply be the result of taking liberalism — or, to be precise, the relativism central to it — to its logical conclusion. After all, if what we call right and wrong is simply man’s preferences and thus doesn’t really exist, it makes no sense to have a conscience.

The problems in higher ed will not go away, and spending $600,000 to chase another Chancellor out of the state will not solve the problem.

There is no need for Caucasians to fall victim to what author Shelby Steele calls “white guilt.” White guilt refers to a sense of individual or collective guilt felt by some Whites for America’s racial history. In its sickest version, ”white guilt” is often used by liberals to politically induce Caucasian-Americans to support affirmative action and redistribution of wealth (reparations).

The caterwauling from the supporters of pre-birth infanticide/eugenics is amazingly comical. Characteristically they will never, never, never ever go near the reality of human embryology. So if they know so little about science, how else might they be factually impaired? In the case of pending North Dakota law they do not know their geography. If they seemingly have mastered so little basic knowledge, is there any basis to believe anything they claim…..NO. The Red River Women’s Clinic is 1,660 feet west of sister city Moorehead Minnesota where office rent is lower and abortion control laws are much more accommodating to destroying the unborn. All they have to do is move east and carry on. It is just like relocating across town except that there is a river to cross. Always…..FOLLOW THE MONEY!

. . . “The Luckiest Place on Earth”; crass social aspects of the oil boom; Beautifully written piece; no comments to air quality regulators; discovering oil makes you smarter; this cold could kill you; Sunday in Oil Country; His conviction will almost certainly be appealed; “a  good Samaritan”; penalties handed out to ten NDSU football players; ND border cities are rubbing their hands; the high number of January deaths; much needed reforms in the university system; one of the great intellectual minds; protest against wolf hunting; DAKTOIDS. . . .

. . . ideas, incentives, leadership, and providence or luck.

 A recent book by Daniel Stedman Jones, “Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics” (Princeton University Press, 2012), touches on all of these factors.

When new institutions and corporations emerge, it is always difficult to find the proper measurement to appraise them. In the early years of the information technology revolution, it was a hard task to estimate the value of a company—and as the Facebook IPO showed, it is still a challenge. At almost the same time of the emergence of this revolution, another more modest “industry” was about to take off: public policy think tanks.

Chairman Menendez recognized the looming threat: intensive questioning of Mrs. Clinton might expose the administration's lies on Benghazi, or induce her to lie again. So Menendez arbitrarily cut each senator's questioning time in half, reducing the usual ten minutes to five. This overt rescue mission facilitated Madame Secretary's filibusters and turned the hearing into a high-handed farce

In 2010, North Dakota voters approved the establishment of the Legacy Fund, a constitutionally mandated state savings account that would collect 30% of all oil tax revenues.  The fund, however, did not have a defined purpose.

As written, HCR 3018 is a very good start to defining what the Legacy Fund should be used to fund.  It would place $10 million each biennium from the interest and earnings of the Legacy Fund into a college scholarship fund for North Dakota high school graduates.

Representative Carlson and the others are correct about where the earnings (tuition reduction) and where the interest of the fund should be directed, the only questions are how to achieve a safe level of return on investment, and the scale to which the fund will be directed

Amash’s problem isn’t McCain’s joke — it’s his own dirty mind.

Richard Gamble shows in his recent book, “In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth” (Continuum, August 2012), that the common assumption of this phrase being employed continuously and frequently from Winthrop to Reagan is false.

There is no requirement in our Constitution or anywhere else for a Republican National Committee.  This was a creature of the party members.  It is, rather, a monster we created.  It is time to put a stake in its wicked heart and start over.

On “60 Minutes” December 11, 2011, Obama openly stated, “What I am not going to do is wait for congress.” He is consolidating his power by ignoring the inherent system of checks and balances between the three branches of government. His aggressiveness is less veiled today.

How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career t

And we put a little human in a human box not because we’ve been brainwashed with some arbitrary social construct but because he was born in a human body, and it’s better for everyone if is he is socialized as a human than trained as a ferret.

Jamestown is a rural community that depends on the rural people coming to Jamestown to do business and spend their money here.  It also strives to be a hub of importance for the people in the smaller communities that surround us and reaches beyond the borders of Stutsman County.  Why is the city and the county commission bent on antagonizing them?  How about the city playing nice with the rural people and try not to control them through extraterritorial zoning authority and usurping territory. 

Ambulance Evidence No. 3:  2012

 “Having an abortion is safer than receiving a penicillin shot,” Tammi Kromenaker, Director of The Red River Women's Clinic told the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 29, 2013 in her testimony in opposition to SB2305 the bill designed to improve the level of medical care for clinic patients. She also made the claim that, “Abortion care is one of the safest medical procedures in the United States,”

Less than 1 percent of surgical abortion patients experience a “major complication,” said

Ambulance Evidence No. 2:  2010 - 2011

 “Having an abortion is safer than receiving a penicillin shot,” Tammi Kromenaker, Director of The Red River Women's Clinic told the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 29, 2013 in her testimony in opposition to SB2305the bill designed to improve the level of medical care for clinic patients. She also made the claim that, “Abortion care is one of the safest medical procedures in the United States,”

Less than 1 percent of surgical abortion patients experience a “major complication,” said

Ambulance Evidence No. 1:  1996 -2009

 “Having an abortion is safer than receiving a penicillin shot,” Tammi Kromenaker, Director of The Red River Women's Clinic told the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 29, 2013 in her testimony in opposition to SB2305 the bill designed to improve the care proided to women at the clinic. She also made the claim that, “Abortion care is one of the safest medical procedures in the United States,”

Less than 1 percent of surgical abortion patients experience a “major complication,” said