Just in case you need a reason to be thankful that we're no longer under the rule of Great Brittain...

Here's a headline from The Daily Mail.

Sharia law SHOULD be used in Britain, says UK's top judge

Praise God for our founders and their desire for self government.

We are drinking from wells we did not dig

My pastor used this phrase this morning to describe our veterans. (He had heard it Friday night at a Veteran's Day event.) It accurately describes the times in which we live. We are blessed to live in a free nation today because so many American Veterans have sacrificed their time, their treasure, and their lives for this purpose.

Nowhere in history can you find a nation that (in the comparatively short span of a little over two hundred years) secures and provides freedom for all its citizens, has been blessed with an incredible level of prosperity, and assists other countries in pursuing both of these.

What a blessing to live in the United States of America, made possible in large part by American Veterans.

If you can read, thank your teacher.
If you can read in English, thank a veteran.

UPDATE - Google, for the first time, has honored America's Veterans.

Freedom

The Light Bulb family is on vacation all week visiting, among others, my dear brother and sister-in-law in Missouri. Well, we couldn't visit the Show Me state with grade-school children and not see the Gateway Arch, also known by its official name as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. As we explained to the little Light Bulbs, the arch represents our nation's expansion westward. It's the symbolic door through which we as a nation walked on our journey west.


Eero Saarinen's design, a stainless steel catenary arch covering reinforced concrete, represents (at least to me) the strength our growing nation would seek and develop by being a freedom-preserving democracy. Wind will not fell it, nor will rust corrode it. The same is true for our democracy. There is little chance that outside elements could destroy the United States. But destruction from within is an unfortunate possibility.

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger.
— Daniel Webster

The left hand and the other left hand say "yes" to tax cuts through gritted teeth

A $1.8 billion tax cut package passed in the Defeat-ocrat-controlled House of Representatives yesterday by a vote of 360-45.

Yes, you read that sentence correctly. The House of Representatives, which is controlled by Cut-and-Run-ocrats, and led by Bug Eyes Pelosi, overwhelmingly passed a measure to provide one billion, eight hundred million dollars in tax cuts over the next ten years.

But Mr. Light Bulb, how can this be?

Well, it all has to do with the wisdom of our Founding Fathers and their creation of the most incredible, human-inspired document the world has ever seen, the Constitution of the United States. They foresaw a time when our country, having grown in size and population, would need some sort of sanity check for ill-considered ideas that the population-and-short-term-of-service-based lower house of our national legislature would propose. That sanity check would be to force them to agree with the state-and-long-term-of-service-based upper house before a bill is enrolled and sent to the chief executive for his signature and passage into law.

Huh?

The House of Representatives and the Senate have to agree on the bill before they can send it to the President.

Oh. And...

And the Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, are doing their job well.

The House vote displayed the influence the Senate's Republican minority can have on congressional legislation. House Democrats had demanded a minimum wage bill without any tax provisions. Senate Democrats insisted that without some tax relief, the minimum wage would lose necessary Republican backing.

You Defeat-ocrats want an unemployment-increasing minimum wage hike? Fine. You're not going to get it without some compromise. Of course, the House and Senate still have a ways to go before the President sees this.

Passage of a wage hike for the lowest-paid workers now depends on how quickly the House and Senate work out differences between their tax packages. The Senate tax breaks - worth $8.3 billion - are more than four times bigger than the ones passed in the House.

God bless you, James Madison.

Forty years ago today...

Our nation experienced a great tragedy. We were in a race with the Evil Empire to reach the Moon before them. Our greatest minds and most experienced pilots were focused on getting there first. But in our rush to be first, important things were overlooked, and three Americans were killed; Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Today, they were remembered at Cape Canaveral.

"Each of these individuals knew they were part of something larger than themselves," said Mick Ukleka, chairman of the Astronaut Memorial Foundation. "The risk was not reckless. It was well thought out. But it is dangerous."

They are heroes we should never forget.

Happy Constitution Day

Two hundred and nineteen years ago today our basic form of government was codified in our nation's Constitution. Today it is the longest serving charter for self government in the world.


September 17 is the actual Constitution Day (the anniversary of its signing), but because it falls on a weekend it will be observed tomorrow, among other places, by all schools that receive federal funding. (Did you know that? I didn't.) So make sure to ask your child tomorrow afternoon what they've learned about the Constitution.

July 20, 1969

One of the few things our government has done well has been to put men on the Moon. America first accomplished this feat on this date in 1969 with less space ship computing power than a present-day caluclator.


It's good to remember good things.

Independence Day

Our nation turns 230 years old today. Happy Birthday America!

When I think of what it took to win the freedom I far too often take for granted, I am so humbled. Here are the first, second, and last paragraphs from the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

...

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The men who signed this document knew they were jeopardizing their very lives, yet they signed it still. They placed freedom and their future nation, our nation, above themselves.

John Adams words to his beloved Abagail the day after signing are both prescient and sobering:

The second day* of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore.

You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toll, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not.

Have a great Fourth of July.

* The delegates voted July 2 to approve the Lee Resolution on Independence. The Declaration was voted on July 4.

Memoral Day

Today we remember those who have given their lives in service to our country. We would not have the freedoms that we enjoy and take for granted if it were not for their sacrifice.



Because of you, I'm free.