Dakota Beacon

Since there have been lots of earlier films about Christ, you might expect Gibson's critics to name one that got it right - showed just the proper degree of torment - or at least admit that the earlier, softer versions failed to do justice to the horror of nailing a man to a cross.

Their party leaders flagrantly ignored legitimate constitutional objections (and numerous other criticisms) raised by opponents. These objections were so well-placed that they now hold the potential to place a dagger in the heart of their prized legislation.

During the last decade, several major cultural trends—especially increased anxiety, the prominence of our entertainment culture, the impact of the therapeutic worldview, and concerns about the breakdown of the family and the impoverishment of personal relationships—have shaped American views of heaven.

Such metaphysical abstraction threatens not merely to further stretch, but finally to break the Framers' structural design that for 225 years has preserved individual liberty and served as a check on unlimited federal power.

Darth Veder aside, here’s the plan. Stock up on birdseed. You can never have too much birdseed on hand. As a rule, the greater variety of birdseed offered, the greater the variety of birds will visit the feeders

Montana murder case has ND parallels; “a rat’s nest.”;  serial tax evader; Fargo and Bismarck were on the list of flagged school districts; communities formed protective shells; Four-year programs have been overemphasized; “They’re shackled by money, power and greed,”; Mall of America; What if there is a TV adaptation of “Fargo?”; rodeo queen seminar; it’s too early for a swim; Her family reflects ND migration patterns; DAKTOIDS

The author/activist discovered the long-term Marxist crusade to tear-down the United States did not end (as many Americans assumed) when the Berlin Wall came down.

Aside from the Soviet empire and the 100 million people killed at the hands of Communist brutality, Marxism has always had its cultural warriors. Nothing impedes their advance so much as the United States of America.

Our enemies long ago concluded that bringing the U.S. to its knees would involve control of the culture - the everyday lives, and the everyday thoughts, of the citizens.

The framers and those who ratified the Constitution withheld from Congress a plenary police power to enact any law that it deems desirable. Instead, the powers granted to Congress in Article I of the Constitution are limited and enumerated. The 10th Amendment emphasizes this structure by affirming that all powers not given to Congress "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

But has anyone mentioned that he will hold office either way until at least late January of 2013? He will either be a re-elected incumbent or a lame-duck. What is to prevent him from delivering whatever he wants to the Russians before he leaves office and the new guy is sworn in?

We need to be liberated from such dogmatic thinking. We need to be enlightened that local governments will function much better with alternative taxing methods.

Opposition to contraception has been considered to be an eccentricity of Catholics for well over a half century. This is in large part because the opponents of contraception have not evangelized effectively. They have not proclaimed in the public square that contraception is contrary to God's plan for families. They have not told people that the old Episcopalian marriage ceremony was literally correct in explaining why God blessed the institution. They have not spoken about the multiple layers of harm that contraception engenders: harm to the spiritual and emotional lives of those who practice it, harm to the society of so many irresponsible single women and men, and harm to the country from a falling birth rate.

Catholics, in particular, should be telling everyone that contraception is wrong, just as they tell everyone that racism is wrong.

Gingrich has run a really odd campaign, highly negative against first one and then another of his rivals. It would remind one of Roller Derby. He has no cohesive following and can’t possibly win nomination at this point. His viability evaporated several months ago with poll numbers dropping so far as to preclude any margin of error saving him. He is intelligent and pragmatic. He's no Don Quixote. So why does he persist?

Where is the logic in the argument that property tax is the only way to maintain local government control? That is not even an argument because we all know that there are alternative taxing methods to property taxes. We all know that we sustain our State Government with our income taxes. How come the opposition can’t fathom that our local governments can be sustained in a similar way?

What is audacious is Biden’s indefensible claim. But, then, what else can the administration point to with pride? Doubling the national debt in three years? Half-a-billion dollars wasted on Solyndra? The Chevy Volt subsidized at $240,000 a copy?

“Property Tax Revolution” makes some good points. Abolishing property taxes certainly protects home and land ownership from state confiscation for unpaid taxes. It makes a really good point in that repealing the property tax would potentially curtail funding of special interest groups. And, it makes a really, really good point in that abolishing property taxes would probably slow the growth of government

Physical and mental are two wholly different and separate realms which materialistic dialectic cannot bridge. The only way out is to realize that the mind is not the product of the brain, but rather it is the user of the brain.

So many Americans have succumbed to political correctness that they are divorced from reality. In their thinking, America encounters cultural challenges accruing no ill effects

Democrats will look for pockets of discontent, the party is looking in the rear view mirror. “the North Dakota way”, the votes are in ND, the money is elsewhere, Tex Hall likes broad gestures, the largest residence in ND, new university system chancellor Hamid Shirvani, ND’s prosperity comes with a cost, Housing is tight in the Oil Patch, a 700-mile one way drive, Spend it or give it back, Mandan is becoming more like California, they could easily be seen as victims of hardship, she farmed and outlived two husbands, DAKTOIDS

The wisdom of the founders came not because they were smarter or wiser that we are today…it came from the fact that they were very personally under the thumb of British tyranny and knew from such first hand experience how such tyranny may be prevented… resulting in the birth of our constitution and its subsequent amendments.

A fundamental misunderstanding of that distinction by many, if not most, Americans today is, in large part, what has led us down the road of creeping socialism and the “equality that is poverty itself”. What Greece faces now… we shall face sooner than we think if we do not better educate our children regarding the founders’ wisdom.

Democrats and their media relentlessly attack Republican women like Sarah Palin. She is everything a “feminist” is supposed to be except she is not a Democrat.

If individuals don’t believe that their vote is meaningful, there will be less desire to turn out to vote. If candidates don’t believe it’s worthwhile to invest time and money in a state campaign, voters won’t get information and may not be mobilized by campaigns.

State's Attorney Richard Riha	Assistant State's Attorney Cynthia Feland	Assistant State's Attorney Lloyd Suhr

Prosecutors evidently separated the wheat from the chaff when providing discovery to defendant Sandy Blunt and gave him only the chaff. The Burleigh County State's Attorney's Office seem to have PREFERENTIALLY PROVIDED to and PREFERENTIALLY WITHHELD from Blunt materials from four criminal investigation reports authored by Special Agent (SA) Michael Quinn of the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) during the fall of 2007.

186 pages of documents that had little if anything to do with the question of the alleged crime were provided to the defendant. Four law enforcement reports and 142 pages as well as a 1.25 hour long audio recording were not provided. The withheld documents and recording were material to the charges and substantiated that the crime that Blunt was being tried for did not exist. And the Burleigh County prosecutors knew it!

Even our aesthetic tastes are increasingly formed by forces of which we know little. It can't be good for the soul to be subject to so much calculating hype and promotion.

Well, if a major law-enforcement agency is producing fraudulent evidence for the purposes of damaging a sitting president, wouldn’t that warrant investigation, too? The undeniable, irrefutable fact here is that there is smoke. And we need to find out who started the fire.

The president’s statement about America having only 2 percent of oil reserves is misleading. The size of our reserve is actually quite vast, but the percent of the world’s oil we have is far less important than the amount we produce. The United States accounts for at least 6 percent of global production of petroleum—a figure that would be significantly higher had President Obama’s party not been impeding and restricting domestic petroleum production for years.

Which of the two—Romney or Santorum—is a more forceful, eloquent spokesperson for the issues that Obama and Axelrod will use to define and malign him?

Even though he did not intend it, Dawkins' statement brings out starkly the intuitive implausibility of evolutionary theory.

Patrick and his converts were known for their strength in doing battle with the strongholds of paganism in this country now known for a long history of faith-based struggle and conflict.

Applebee’s was easily the best restaurant, “the largest and most beautiful restaurant now operating in Grand Forks”, “What North Dakota Could Teach California”, Does the bitterness remain? Who is the true fool? $5.5 billion anti-missile facility, they just want people to be comfortable, Carrington’s Dakota Growers pasta business, Standing Rock Tribal Council Chairman Charles Murphy, statewide vote on the Fighting Sioux nickname, the laughing stock of the sports world, the lives of part-time farmers, DAKTOIDS

Nat Cole's personal life was probably far more interesting, but nobody cared much about it, and he liked it that way. He was content to be an entertainer, and he took pride in his work without losing his modesty.