Dakota Beacon

The American political left has always wanted more and more control of education through the centralization of power to the Federal Government. In the early 1990s they tried to push Outcome Based Education on the nation but people figured out what the real deal was and it was rejected. But the leftist/socialist/progressives just keep on trying. Common Core Standards (CCS) is the latest push to have as much of the decision making for all students as possible to come from Washington D.C. by way of bureaucratic dictate, regulation manipulation, and likely financial rewards and penalties. The proponents keep circling back to “rigorous standards”, “preparing to compete in the 21st century”, “accountability”, and all sorts of buzzword mumbo jumbo that sounds great. The technique by the implementers is to keep circling back to the standards and inferring that anyone who does not agree with implementing the CCS is supporting substandard education. But that argument about the CCS is a distraction as the standards are the veneer covering the Trojan Horse. 

This lack of regulation would be welcome if the promise could be believed, but nature abhors a vacuum. We need to understand the dangers that would be involved if international regulation replaces us.

In truth, you are not free to disagree with liberals on this issue. They won’t let you. They will compel you. They will see you in court, in bankruptcy, maybe even in jail.

Liberals tolerate only what they agree with.

"A Rare Triple Treat in the Reagan Tradition"

This helps explain why entities prescribing “equality” — such as the early French republic and all the Marxist killing-field regimes — become the worst tyrannies. Since equality is wholly unnatural, its mullahs must violate man’s nature, must trump it and twist it, in an effort to pound their sinister square peg into the round hole of reality.

As Republicans gather in Minot this week for their state convention I wanted to share something I wrote for one of the greatest Republicans ever!

While Barack Obama’s recent telephone conversation with Russian president Vladimir Putin about the Crimean standoff has been widely reported, the exact substance of the discussion has remained a mystery.

That is, until now.

Not only were the state exchanges and the federal web site not fully operational, many who were hired to help citizens navigate the complex health insurance application system were never properly vetted through background checks. Consequently, many criminals and scam artists have been hired, with federal tax dollars, to “help” people sign up for government health insurance.

"The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any."

The meeting held in Bismarck on the evening of March 27th, 2014 as claimed by the Bismarck-Mandan Chamber of Commerce (Chamber) to be to discuss the “facts and fallacies of Common Core” according to their meeting announcement. How accurate is this claim? In town halls, school board meetings, and a majority of open informational meetings the public is allowed to directly ask questions of “officials” with give and take in a conversational manner so the dialog results in coherent, sequential communication. That is not how it is done in a guided manipulated setting designed to give the appearance to those not familiar with the technique of the controlled outcome process. 

  We don’t need good-soldier cops — we need good-citizen cops.

The down-your-throat-whether-you-want-it-or-not liberalism of Washington DC has come to Bismarck.

"...[P]lanning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and...essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible." (p. 70)

. . . ND has two teams in the NCAA Division 1 basketball tournaments; the third phase of Operation Winter’s End; Fargo’s first 2014 homicide; Grand Forks is coming to life; the outlook is not as good in rural GF County and surrounding counties; a small cloud over the Grand Forks economy; rents in North Dakota boomtowns; Watford City was little more than a junction on Highway 85; The planned CHS Spiritwood (near Jamestown) nitrogen fertilizer plant; Agriculture in Ukraine resembles ND; Keystone XL pipeline; The Minot Daily News is the lightweight; DAKTOIDS. . . .

Now we have a presumably elected parliament ready to weigh in on the question (already answered by the cabinet) of whether a nine-year-old child should be made to bear children for the disposal of a middle-aged pedophile and at his convenience. 

Customers that transfer money to Somalia, al-Shabab fundraising in Minnesota, a proposal to scrap the teacher skills test in Minnesota, public misconception that convenience store holdups happen weekly, upcoming TV series built around the 1996 film “Fargo", Do Nodaks gloat too much?, a N.D. shortage of health care workers, Williston School District has 128 homeless students, Not bad for a Hamlet boy, DAKTOIDS

“Tocqueville said it in 1835, and it’s as true today as it was then: ‘Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is more needed in democratic societies than in any other.’”

". . . A lot of news articles are putting my quote in of me saying he would put Jews in Ghettos as the reason he went off. He actually went off well before that. I literally asked him if a law was passed to put Jews in the Ghettos, would you? He literally said, "Now you are being silly...but if it’s the law, I enforce it; I don't make them."

Finally, the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action maintains that Proposal 2 is a type of racial classification and therefore cannot stand. Quite the contrary, Attorney General Schuette maintains that Proposal 2, as passed by the citizens of Michigan, is racially neutral.

Obama’s faith has been very controversial and misunderstood.

Where does the time go? I note the fine print on March 9. Daylight saving time! Holy cow! Some genius with too much time on his hands figured we might "save energy" by starting daylight saving time earlier than ever.

Now, if only some genius would devise a way to run oil well pumps using wind energy we'd have it made. Theoretically it's possible.

We all support clean air and water but that is not what this is about.

I respectfully disagree with the criticisms being launched at the proposed cuts to the DoD budget. Cutting troops and antiquated weapons systems does not represent a threat to the United States on two grounds: fiscal responsibility and grand strategy.

This administration’s desire to make it easier for people not to work and to live at taxpayer expense makes no economic sense. It reduces the amount of wealth produced and keeps people from ascending the ladder of individual economic progress. Politically, though, it makes a lot of sense to Obama and his progressive allies.

. . . The sun will shine brightest on North Dakota; it will soon have a population of 60,000;  Dazzle in Grand Forks? cautions about the future of the ND oil industry; sky-high rents in Williston; the housing situation in western North Dakota; hence oil trains blow up; Bakken shale wells deplete rapidly; ND will host $1 billion of road construction; TAT’s oil revenues have become so large; everything they want with no questions asked; ND leads the nation in well-being; Father of the “World’s Largest Buffalo” died; dumped 45,000 pounds of cheese; Philippine health professionals in ND; DAKTOIDS . . . .

They somehow think that supporting the granting of just some groups “protected status” — and thus leaving other groups, apparently, “unprotected” — gives them moral high ground in trying to discriminate against yet other groups by forcing them, but not others (e.g., those opposing and denying service to traditionalist legislators), to violate their deeply held convictions. Only a twisted mind could consider this justice.

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.