Dakota Beacon

Threats and intimidation of decision-makers are not acceptable.

Apologizing to the enemy reflects a gross misunderstanding of the purpose and realities to which “we the people” commit our armed forces in our national interest. We go to war with regret, but without debasing ourselves in what are, essentially, meaningless expressions of hand wringing.

The big winners of Saturday’s Great Statewide Debate are Cramer, for his independent and confident assertion of Constitutional values, and Sand and Sorum for being there, trusting the people enough to put their case before them - and their grace in showing North Dakotans the respect they deserve, even if the other two candidates did not.  

So Higher Education must, by its very nature must always have as it highest goal, the seeking, the never-ending search for the truth, the excellent, the honest, about humanity. When it abandons this quest for greatness in the truly great things, and seeks values in numbers and mass instead of intrinsic self-worth, it has become dysfunctional. 

Today a larger percentage of Americans live in poverty than before Democrats began their “war on poverty”. This is by design.

Under the Obama regime the Party lives on. Glimmers of Marxism should be evident to any moderate who lived during the 1930s through the 1980s.

The hypocrisy of the press on this issue is staggering. All a Republican needs to do is mention God and secular liberals go wild.

. . . the name is honorable, not abusive; DSU should be reformed, not punished; there are dark figures lurking in the shadows; your money goes much further in ND; his path to priesthood was not a straight line; three young farm brothers from Starkweather; limited government and more freedom; Are 18:1 grants too generous?  bravos to the Carrington Cardinaires dance team; Consider avoiding ND if you have FCAS; And Corvettes? Yup, those too; failed miserably; DAKTOIDS

No, it's hard to make a melodrama out of a slow process. The government is less like a bank robber who storms in with ski mask and pistol than like a timid little bank clerk who quietly, over the years, embezzles a large fortune without setting off alarms or getting caught.

Tax Foundation memo outlines ways to improve North Dakota's tax climate - will the legislature and governor listen?

America’s convention center business has been declining for two decades. The 126 million attendees in year 2000 fell to 86 million attendees in 2010. Meanwhile, the amount of convention space has increased from 40 million square feet in 1990, to 53 million square feet in year 2000, and to 70 million square feet in 2010. A former member of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority lamented last year that “Logic rarely has a place in the convention business.”

Local officials have changed their sales pitch, saying that convention centers should no longer be judged by how many hotels rooms, restaurants, and local attractions they help fill. Now the expansion of convention center facilities can “demonstrate to the world that we have unlimited confidence in our city and what it can do, not only as a convention destination but as the center of the most important trends in hospitality, science, health and education.”

The US does not live in a vacuum; we do live in a dangerous world fraught with risk. Here are the primary risks facing the US today in relative order of priority but not necessarily in order of occurrence. Multiple scenarios could evolve

“Freedom prospers only where the blessings of God are avidly sought and humbly accepted,” Reagan maintained. “The American experiment in democracy rests on this insight.” He said the discovery of that insight was the “great triumph” of the Founders. Indeed it was.

Have you noticed that most of those people against Measure 2 (Property Tax Elimination) are on the receive and spend side of property taxes.  As far as I can tell, they are the ones that ride in the wagon.  The average property tax payer could be considered the horse that pulls the wagon. 

…. Many of you have been attacked for being single-issue activists or single-issue voters. But I ask: What single issue could be of greater significance?” Reagan said that if one is unsure precisely when life begins, one should err in a way that protects rather than robs life: “If there’s even a question about when human life begins, isn’t it our duty to err on the side of life?”

Discussions will revolve around Measure #2 on the June Ballot

That is to say, just as there is no such thing as "personal" morality, neither is there such thing as the group variety.  To say otherwise is to wax relativistic – as the left will – and implies that morality doesn't really exist; only personal preference does.  Morality, however, if it is anything but a confusing synonym for taste, refers to an absolute, universal and eternal standard for behavior that transcends not only individuals and groups, but man himself. 

 The beauty of our form of government, our Constitution, our law, is that we are “a nation of laws, not of men”, meaning that we are not a personality cult, but a rational people governed by ONE LAW for ALL. The best guarantee of good law is that it is applied evenly across the boards. Bad law, on the other hand, gets to survive if the powerful are exempted from it and it applies only to the weak. If we are to have laws that are acceptable to the “important” or the “strong”, they must apply equally. There is great danger in these special exemptions.

Once again in America we are faced with a choice-it is a time for choosing. Just as Ronald Reagan spoke to a nation with many challenges and much at stake, so there are candidates touting solutions to the situation in this country today.

There is a reason why we have Supreme Court justices who have contempt for the document that is supposed to be their guiding light and a president who wipes his feet on the Constitution as he goes where no statist has gone before: they are following a trajectory that the nation was set on a long, long time ago.  They simply represent the latest version of republican decline: anti-constitutionalism 9.0. 

DSU was a “diploma factory”; the campus was administratively dysfunctional; issues at DSU raise numerous questions; Yah, sure, ya betcha; “Fighting Sioux”; “I kind of like that logo. What do you think?”  the Brazilian Bombshell; A tall tale? If so, it’s a good one; racially-tinged Jamestown murder trials; Cave fingered Howard; Western ND has changed and become a less safe place; Bismarck is changing; DAKTOIDS . . .

Although it was arguably unjust to make Catholics pay for two school systems, the policy was a blessing in disguise. The parochial schools took nothing from the government, and so they remained free to teach the whole truth without restraint from it.

Have “abortion rights” become so sacred to liberals that they are willing to sacrifice conscience exemptions at the altar of Roe v. Wade? Do they really want to head down this road? I suggest they stop and think hard about what they’re advocating.

It is wrong to think that Obama caved in to political pressure when he announced an “accommodation” at midday on February 10. In fact, he has no authority to either mandate or compromise. In reality, he is hacking away at our First Amendment liberties to promote the “change” he envisions.

A law against homosexual marriage today is no more an instance of bigotry or prejudice than the laws against polygamy that the United States enacted in the 1800s.

96 percent of blacks supported Obama in 2008.  Although, few are as honest as Jackson, who clearly is proud that he never lets politics get in the way of his bigotry.

If History consigned the founding era to a status of historical irrelevance, who can say that progressivism, which is also a product of historical evolution of ideas, will not suffer the same fate? In short, why should we not believe that progressivism was simply the product of a bevy of severely misguided statists who, at the beginning of the 20th century, believed that a sort of benevolent totalitarianism was the wave of the future?