Dakota Beacon

They are now required by their own city government to share the fate of those who would have lived quietly and humbly in single-wide mobile homes but weren’t allowed - hoist by their own petard, as it were.   It awaits to be seen what the good folks in New Jersey will do.  Some of them are clinging to their properties more or less as a legacy of defiance of the government’s power to confiscate what rightfully belongs to them, on principle.  They are worthy of our deepest respect.  These people are not expecting to make a killing on this.  They expect to lose for every day they hold out, but they do recognize a principle when they see it and they do have the right sort of attitude about what is best “for the community as a whole”.  And that is the freedom to enjoy ownership of our own property, as God and John Adams intended. 

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Director Nihad Awad sent a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking for “an agency-wide investigation of the use of outside trainers who offer hostile, stereotypical and grossly inaccurate information about Muslims and Islam to our nation’s security personnel.” Awad calls the trainers “fear-mongers.” The director doesn’t much clarify what is meant by “hostile” and “inaccurate,” but the man does do a great deal of obfuscating.

In his Farewell Address on January 11, 1989, Ronald Reagan spoke these words, “Almost all the world’s constitutions are documents in which governments tell people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which ‘We the People’ tell the government what it is allowed to do. ‘We the People’ are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I tried to do these past eight years.”

President Reagan understood the US Constitution with his heart as well as his head. He had internalized the principles our Founding Fathers had succinctly captured in that great document. In exercising those principles as President, he became a great leader and among one of our greatest presidents.

Teacher Pay Issues on a Micro-economic Scale

The foolhardy action of the last legislative session to increase the burden of school boards by a factor of about two-thirds in funding the teacher retirement fund was a short sighted action that will have huge negative economic repercussions in the future. The session repeated the mistakes of California instead of learning from them.

It was 24 years ago, in June 1987, that Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech calling on Mikhail Gorbachev to ‘Tear down this wall.’ In 1990, a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the foundations that had undergirded world politics for decades were likewise crumbling, John Mearsheimer penned his celebrated article: ‘Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War.’ In the years since, the article has come to embody a specific, nostalgic lament. Yet, viewing Mearsheimer through the prism of today’s circumstances, one must ask: is it really the Cold War that we miss?

Yes, we miss the Cold War. But what we miss far more are leaders who unabashedly trumpet American exceptionalism and who are willing to recognize a fundamental distinction between good and evil.

As a meteorologist and climate scientist, the article " DENNIS PATRICK: "WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE." rings loudly with a message of legit atmospheric science vs the absurd notion, using the manipulation of facts to give the impression that we completely understand, can model and then forecast climate out to 50 years.

Although a brilliant salesman, he's got a lemon with this one and I can't fathom he can make it to the finals. His game-plan is to drown out all the others with kabillions and be the last guy standing by convention-time.  I don't think he can do it.

Editors Note: Thomas Roeser died last Sunday, this is one of his last columns.

Herein lies the full horror of American politics in the death throes of the republic: A Congressman has nothing better to do of an evening than Tweet his crotch to coeds, but he requires an “office” with “staffers” to “put out” “statements” on the subject.

When Weiners have staffers, it’s very difficult to have limited government: You cannot have a small state run by big Weiners. If you require an “office” to issue “statements” about your Tweets, it’s hardly surprising you’re indifferent to statist bloat elsewhere.

In the end, the Congressman was not so “distracted” that he wasn’t able to vote to raise the debt limit. Confronted by his Twitpic, one is tempted to channel Mae West: Is that a debt-ceiling increase in your Fruit of the Looms or are you just pleased to see me? Alas for America, it’s both.

I kept signaling for the curveball, or the knuckleball, or the changeup, but he just wanted to bring that heater. On one pitch, the batter swung and missed, the ball hit my foot, ran up my shin guard, and went 70 feet up in the air and hit a car outside the park. The ump called it a foul, the batter smirked, Bob rolled his eyes, and I grimaced with pain.

The chemistry that tips the emotional lefty pool tables so the balls roll toward Obama caused Rahm Emanuel to get himself kicked out of the lunatic 3rd World insane asylum in the White House after he used 4-letter words to tell the incumbent to change his ways from the concept there is no patriotism but global--and rush to the relatively bucolic order of Chicago Squid politics to keep his sanity. Emanuel's not Weird just a Squid pragmatist weasel born without a moral core.

Editors Note: Thomas Roeser died last Sunday, this is his last column.

Least Tern & Piping Plover protectors, Recreation Interests, flood plain residents (I am in all three categories) ... they all have one thing in common...special interest dispensation at the expense of the number one purpose of the federal Missouri River dam system...FLOOD CONTROL.

Flood control dams are the only civil engineering projects for which I am ashamed of my profession. Egypt & China should be ashamed of Aswan and Three Gorges respectively ...just as we should be ashamed of all of our high dams.

Looking back to the summer of 2010, forecasts of the La Nina predicted winter extremes and spring floods. One story carried in USA Today 10/22/2010 foretold weather extremes in 2011. Reduced precipitation and higher temperatures for most of the southern United States would spark drought and wildfires. The Northern Plains, however, would see more storms, precipitation and flooding. This story was right on target.

So much for the prognostication of manmade global warming. One might just as well believe in misfortune brought on by shooting an albatross as in anthropogenic climate change. I prefer the science of the meteorological explanation of Southern Oscillation.

The stakes in the next election are enormous. The Medicare reform contest could be the one for all the marbles.

The trustees of the Medicare system recently reported that the program will go broke in the year 2024—five years sooner than was projected just last year. The millions of Americans who have been counting on Medicare to be a reliable, stable guarantor of affordable healthcare in their senior years should be asking themselves, ‘Who is responsible for this predicament?’ The short answer is ‘lots of people,’ but let’s start by looking in the mirror.

There’s something intellectually, morally, indeed stunningly vacuous about global elitists who admire a womanizer specifically for finding time to womanize. But hip liberals—we know them when we see them—don’t just admire, but in fact idolize the world’s DSKs, those “high-profile political figure[s]” who “find time” away from issuing noble but absurd pronouncements to engage in low-profile debauchery.

Some people don't mind a little constitutional sophistry in a good cause; and for liberals, centralizing all power in the federal government is always a good cause. Since most Americans don't know or care what the Constitution says, let alone what their ancestors thought it meant, the great liberal snow job has been very successful.

The hyper-regulatory state is unrepublican. It strikes at one of the most basic pillars of free society: equality before the law. When you replace “law” with “regulation”, equality before it is one of the first casualties. In such a world, there is no law, only a hierarchy of privilege more suited to a sultan’s court than a self-governing republic.

Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve has laid the charges, connected the leads, and now stands ready at the detonator.  America waits.

Take it back, Rush!  He is no more "Irish" than he is "Hawaiian".  He is a fraud wherever he goes.  But the American people are the goats who elected him.  Don't call him "Paddy"

What we shall see is that in every case the choice was one that could not fail. (1,a) To ramify the authority and power of the EXECUTIVE government—its power, that is to rule by decree and rules and regulations of its own making.” (2,b) To strengthen its hold upon the economic life of the nation; (3,c) To extend its power over the individual; (4,d) To degrade the parliamentary power {Congress}; (5,e) To impair the great American tradition of an independent, Constitutional judicial power; (6,f) To weaken ALL other powers—the power of private enterprise, the power of private finance, the power of state and local government. Garrett does name it here, but the power of the free American individual is the first power that must be tamed by making him/her a “ward” of the WELFARE STATE.  With enough time, since 1934, it can and has been done: we have 26 year old toddlers who are happy to be on their parent’s health plans; we have senior citizens vacationing on cruise ships happy that their grand children are financing it; to quote Winston in 1984, “I LOVE BIG BROTHER!!”

Perhaps you have heard the United States described as the ‘Saudi Arabia of coal, in addition to our immense coal deposits, the United States contains gigantic natural gas deposits. Yet, there is even more good news: “Besides being the Saudi Arabia of coal and potentially natural gas, we may become the next ‘Saudi Arabia’ of oil.”

We have under our feet the world’s greatest treasure trove of energy supplies…. We just need the freedom to go get it.

Thankfully, this year Earth Day received little more than a passing mention. Maybe Earth Day is now properly dismissed as a jest and an afterthought. To believe that mankind can alter the progress of earth’s ages is the height of arrogance and folly.

It seems that the root problem was that NDSU genuinely lacked proper budget planning, and decided to put that deficiency on the backs of students.  

The legislature and the Governor should be insisting that the Board of Higher Education impose budget oversight at NDSU, clearly they are not prepared to manage their own finances.  

When the Supreme Court says that governments have no right to prohibit the killing of innocent babies, it sets itself up as an idol in opposition to God. When people say that the Supreme Court has approved abortion and that is the end of the story, they are as guilty of idolatry as those who bow down before golden calves.

A court not bound by the chains of truth will hand out falsehoods that will spread like cancer. If those infected believe that truth should not bind the court, they too become idolaters.

If Senator Schumer succeeds, our right to freely and efficiently communicate about police activity will diminish in a way that is effectively insulated from First Amendment challenge. Privacy and freedom be damned. There are drunk drivers to catch.

Charles Schumer’s crusade is presenting Americans with a grand display of progressive arrogance.

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.