Dakota Beacon

Does anyone else out there tremble for our country, in the hands of a government whose leadership is so inane, so incompetent?  Rush Limbaugh, who, for some reason, seemed surprised at Netanyahu’s public comeback, is quite right about one thing:  the so-called Republican “leadership” should be taking notes.  This is what “standing up” looks like.  This is what it looks like when a leader has a spine and a brain.  On the other hand, when he doesn’t he embarrasses his own country and his own people and makes fools of us all.  If what the Democrats give us is Obama, we are now asking Republicans, what will YOU give us?  What we need is our own Benjamin Netanyahu.

Back when he was still the officially designated Next President of France and not an accused rapist, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was glimpsed at the annual IMF soccer tournament wearing a T-shirt emblazoned “YES, WE KAHN!” (Monsieur le directeur was not participating in the game: The field he likes to play requires more horizontal exertions, as even the deferential and protective French media have begun belatedly to acknowledge.) In consciously mimicking the slogan of another and very successful presidential candidate, the IMF boss and Socialist Party candidate improved upon it – or, at any rate, made it more accurate. “Yes, We Can”? Er, no, actually, you can’t. But yes, he Kahn!

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Public schools are teaming with Planned Parenthood to perpetuate the myth that immorality and illegitimacy can be cured by showing high-schoolers how to use condoms.  But for decades, sex education failed to achieve the originally-stated goals of reducing unwanted pregnancies and sex-related disease.  Planned Parenthood-style sex education produces promiscuity and social decay.  Teens teaching “sexuality” to other teens won’t stop the rot.  Reversing our youth’s moral slide can only be achieved by parents with values despised by “experts” like John Goodlad and Planned Parenthood.

Religion, in its essence, is a matter of falling in love with the divine. Like other passionate loves, it tends to excess. It can easily become fanatical, which is especially frightening to people who have never had the experience. But I do know this: the human without the divine is never fully human.        

And this is typical of leftists.  They persecute traditionalist students in thousands of schools and universities nationwide (see Campus-Watch.org), and, when occasionally caught with their hands in the commie jar, don’t even have the guts to come on camera and defend their “beliefs.” 

Something else that can only exist in a relativistic universe is the spiritual disease that today wears the label “liberalism.”  Get people to believe in Truth, and it will die as surely as fungus that is exposed to the light.

Americans face a choice: reduced long-term prosperity caused by tax increases to fund entitlements, a bankrupt government, or reducing entitlements to avoid tax increases and bankruptcy.  While nearly 90 percent of us acknowledge the problem, only about a third seem open to taking action.  Is such thinking rational?

No, but also yes.

Over the last several weeks there has been a lot of noise coming out of Washington D.C. regarding the potential to jack up energy taxes, a move which would only further exacerbate the problem of high gas prices.

North Dakota's retiring Senator, Kent Conrad has tied himself into a few of these plans.

If, as Tea Party patriots and activists we are not up to this hard decision we need not call ourselves patriots or activists any longer.  The road is plain to see.  We see what lies ahead in either direction.  I suggest, and strongly, that we make our intentions known in time for the present "leadership" to act responsibly with knowledge of these intentions, and if they do not, proceed, full speed ahead.

In all fairness, we cannot criticize these men for not playing the “card” they hold in their hand if we are too weak to play the card we have in our hand.  The only card we have is our willingness to remove these men from office if they do not act as responsible leaders.

At last, the sights and sounds of spring arrive.

For some, the webcam video of the eagles nest at Decorah, Iowa, might be the epitome of bird watching. The raptor camera catches every move of the two adults and three baby eaglets. However, nothing compares to the live bird show outside my kitchen window.

The property tax did not arise as an addendum to the Ten Commandments.  Its function and purpose has changed in many ways since the founding of this country.  Over the next several months proponents of repealing the property tax will present their case.  It will be presented clearly and openly.  Difficulties will be encountered in implementing the repeal, but we will not claim that it will be a simple matter, but it is entirely possible.  You will not be presented with a Lloyd Omdahl snow job.

After the war Churchill admitted that "we lie in the grip of even worse perils than those we have surmounted." Only in hindsight did he perceive what the scorned "isolationists" had foreseen from the first.

Hero of the twentieth century? The historian Ralph Raico offers a sterner judgment: "Winston Churchill was a man of blood and a politico without principle, whose apotheosis serves to corrupt every standard of honesty and morality in politics and history."

Anyone who loves America will love its Constitution. If we need to amend it we can. If we return to its formulae - guided by the intent as expressed voluminously by the framers – we will have a solvent, strong, proud and just nation worthy of the Founders and of the patriots who have sacrificed and died for her. If you get one of these inane chain letters in YOUR email, think about your fathers, grandfathers, their wives and mothers, and your own brothers, sisters and the men and women defending this nation today. Don’t just delete it, send your own message on to your mailing list to stand firm and protect the Constitution which has guided and preserved America since 1787.

With a 76% increase in ongoing state funding since 2003, the only reason that universities think they need to stick it to the students with higher education is because there is no one in the system to protect the student's financial interests. 

NDTA views students as Future Taxpayers, and as such will continue to track this situation.   

Lawyers didn’t win the battle of Yorktown or Gettysburg. Lawyers didn’t land on the beaches of Normandy. In times of war, it’s best to put our freedom in the hands of soldiers rather than in the hands of condescending lawyers who sit in the lap of luxury in air conditioned rooms while try to convince us of how brilliant and compassionate that they are.

It’s time for Democrats to apologize to our troops and veterans and leave our military alone.

 “The president is targeting more than the wealthiest. In fact, in his desperation, he is apparently now prepared to impose heavier tax burdens on middle-income Americans as well. How? In a recent speech he stated that he wants to raise the ‘cap’ on Social Security.”

American conservatives’ problem with RomneyCare is the same as with ObamaCare – that, if the government (whether state or federal) can compel you to make arrangements for the care of your body parts that meet the approval of state commissars, then the constitution is dead. For if conceding jurisdiction over your lungs and kidneys and bladder does not make you a subject rather than a citizen, what does?

United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck has an annual budget of $30 million and about 340 full-time students -- that’s an annual cost of about $88,000 per student.  To put it in a harsher light, the two-year college graduates about 110 students annually -- roughly $270,000 per graduate.  Don’t worry, it’s only federal money.

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The solution to the problem of soaring prices of food and fuel lies in Washington,” he concludes. “If Congress, the president, and the bureaucracies would restore free markets in food and fuel markets, prices would come down. If Bernanke and the Fed would quit expanding the supply of Federal Reserve Notes, upward pressure on prices would be diminished. It’s that simple, economically.

The average taxpayer doesn't mind spending so much when they know that it is saving someone else money, especially students.  These corporate welfare programs end up costing both taxpayers and students, and have very little to show for the money. 

It is the job of educators to “change the thoughts, feelings, and actions of students.”[1]  So proclaimed psychologist Benjamin Bloom, originator of Outcome-Based Education.  The U.S. Department of Education was created in 1979, setting the stage for Bloom’s decree only two years later.  In the 1980s, the already ugly transformation of America’s schools gained momentum.

Many of today’s K-12 and university classrooms serve as laboratories in which instructors breed minds poor in knowledge and logic but rich in political correctness.  Morally bankrupt values like “tolerance” and “diversity” are recurring themes.  Such conditioning often aims to create “citizens of the world,” despite there being no planet-wide entity of which people can become citizens.  But educators wedded to utopian visions have no time for such mundane reality.  Time is precious.  Students must be conditioned to join the “global community.”

"When you go to Washington to serve the people who elected you, you'd better be sure of who you are."  - Michele Bachmann

Great music isn’t here to make us smarter, it’s here to give us pleasure. There is an endless variety of great music to encourage the soul, to cultivate the love of the beautiful.

My purpose in listening to great music is to explore, cherish and savor something I enjoy and not be distracted from that pleasure with detail or disruption.

Diversity, multiculturalism, and social justice zealots, as well as other self-appointed fairness police think it their job to force very different people to interact with one another. In other words, voluntary, profit-motivated interaction is bad, even if the profit motive really does bring very different people together. High-minded forced interaction is good, even if the high-mindedness really does set people at each others’ throats as a result of focusing on differences which would otherwise have remained utterly irrelevant.

So goes the “reasoning” inside the head of the typical progressive social engineer.

What Would Jesus Cut?’ That is the question asked by the left-leaning Christian organization, Sojourners, in its campaign of the same name. It is a most appropriate question given the battle over the budget and given this time of year, not long after the most holy holiday of the year for Christians. A fundamental problem with Sojourners’ program is the assumption that what ‘we’ do must be done by the state. It is a large and not logically necessary leap from ‘We are called to be charitable to the poor,’ to ‘A righteous society will have an extensive welfare state.’