cornerstone

Herman Cain is coming under serious fire; so serious it could destroy his chances at winning the nomination:

The first signs of real damage to Herman Cain's campaign emerged Thursday as his position on abortion -- that he is personally anti-abortion but believes it's "not the government's role ... to make that decision" -- began to register with conservative Iowa activists.

But I really got to give Cain credit on this. A cornerstone of Republican ideology has been smaller government and keeping them out of our lives, yet another cornerstone has been outlawing abortion. The two issues conflict one another greatly. How can you claim to want smaller government and larger freedoms, yet say that women aren’t allowed those freedoms when it comes to their health? It’s hypocrisy in the grandest form.

So hats off to you Herman for saying what you believe. Sadly though you are part of a party that doesn’t like that. They only want their red meat and sound bites. True beliefs and feelings are not for them.

I really wish our country would make such bold moves:

Finland has become the first country in the world to make broadband a legal right for every citizen.

From 1 July every Finn will have the right to access to a 1Mbps (megabit per second) broadband connection.

Finland has vowed to connect everyone to a 100Mbps connection by 2015.

In the UK the government has promised a minimum connection of at least 2Mbps to all homes by 2012 but has stopped short of enshrining this as a right in law.

The Finnish deal means that from 1 July all telecommunications companies will be obliged to provide all residents with broadband lines that can run at a minimum 1Mbps speed.

And yet where I live (20 miles north of Cincinnati), you can go 1 mile from my house and be in an area that does not have broadband.

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it until someone listens; unless America embraces the cornerstone of the 21st century economy, our economic future will remain bleak. The problem is that we have to many dinosaurs making our laws and they don’t realize that their inability to adapt is killing us. We really need to follow what the Finns have done and embrace the technology that will continue to mold our future.

A cornerstone of the right has been to remove social programs from the government and have the private sector handle them – most notably the churches. Having churches run programs that should be a part of any government is a very serious threat to our form of government. It would be hard to have a separation of church and state when the church can further deepen their claws into the fabric of our government.

Today we get a perfect example of why this is a threat:

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

The Catholic church can now use these social programs as a tool to hold governments hostage. This is very scary. Imagine if Bush had his way and all federal social programs were taken over by outside organizations like the Catholic Church. Our Congress would hear things like “ban abortion or we are gone” or “federally ban gay marriage or we are gone”. This kind of behavior could actually be classified as a form of terrorism.

A simple solution to problems like these is removing the tax free provision given to the church. If the church feels it can optionally give back to communities based upon the legislation in that area, then there is no reason for them to remain a tax free haven. Instead it’s time for the IRS to start collecting from them. The church has been crossing the line of separation more and more recently and it’s time for them to really contribute back to our nation. The tax money collected from churches could be earmarked solely for things like social programs and health care.

Dede Scozzafava is a Republican candidate for NY-23. Last night she held a dinner and afterwards someone from her campaign called the police on John McCormack from the Weekly Standard. Here’s what he says about it:

I spotted Scozzafava later as she was walking to the parking lot, and asked her: " Assemblywoman, do you believe that the health-care bill should exclude coverage for abortion?" She didn't reply. I asked her twice more. Silence.

After she got into her car, I went to my car and fired up my laptop to report the evening's events.

Minutes later a police car drove into the parking lot with its lights flashing. Officer Grolman informed me that she was called because "there was a little bit of an uncomfortable situation" and then took down my name, date of birth, and address.

"Maybe we do things a little differently here, but you know, persistence in that area, you scared the candidate a little bit," Officer Grolman told me.

This sounds like a misunderstanding is all, but let’s look at how Malkin responds to this:

Radical leftist Dede Scozzafava can’t stand the heat

I just read through Scozzafava’s issues page on her campaign site, and nothing strikes me as her being a “radical leftist”. As matter of fact items like these speak the speak the opposite:

I can't say that this comes as any shock:

In the six weeks since lawmakers approved the Treasury's massive bailout of financial firms, the government has poured money into the country's largest banks, recruited smaller banks into the program and repeatedly widened its scope to cover yet other types of businesses, from insurers to consumer lenders.

Along the way, the Bush administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package.

Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed.

"It's a mess," said Eric M. Thorson, the Treasury Department's inspector general, who has been working to oversee the bailout program until the newly created position of special inspector general is filled. "I don't think anyone understands right now how we're going to do proper oversight of this thing."

Isn't that irony? We got into this mess because of a lack of oversight, a cornerstone of the GOP platform, and now the mess is getting even worse after the government got involved - because of a lack of oversight. If people can be so trusted to do the "right thing" without oversight, then why do we have laws and law enforcement?