Saturday, March 31, 2007

Jerusalem Post Claims US Will Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities on Good Friday

10 Least Economically Free Countries

10. Guinea-Bissau

Guinea-Bissau’s economy is 45.7% free. It scores well in fiscal freedom and somewhat well in monetary freedom. Significant restrictions on foreign investment combine with domestic regulations and an inflexible labor market to create a business-hostile climate. Corruption is so rampant that the informal market (mainly diamonds) dwarfs the legitimate market.

9. Angola

Angola’s economy is 43.5% free. The country has attained a moderate degree of economic freedom despite a devastated infrastructure and a fledgling government. But inflation is high, regulation chokes business, investment is basically unwelcome, government size is excessive, corruption is crippling, and political influence mars the judiciary.

8. Iran

Iran’s economy is 43.1% free. Its economy scores well in only one of the 10 factors measured: fiscal freedom. Overall tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is significant. Iran’s economy is unfree in many ways. High tariff rates and non-tariff barriers impede trade and foreign investment alike. Corruption is rampant, and the fair adjudication of property rights in a court of law cannot be guaranteed.

7. Republic of Congo

The Republic of Congo’s economy is 43% free. It does not rank strongly in any category, but it does score moderately well in monetary freedom and fiscal freedom. Very low inflation and stable prices give Congo a positive monetary score. The government interferes extensively with market prices. The weak rule of law jeopardizes property rights.

6. Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan’s economy is 42.5% free. It scores well in fiscal freedom, freedom from government, and trade freedom. A non-transparent regulatory system discourages both local businesses and foreign investment. The national financial market is unsophisticated, and most operations are dominated by the state. The judicial system is wholly controlled by the state, and corruption pervades the judiciary and civil service.

5. Burma

Burma’s economy is 40.1% free. It scores well in fiscal freedom, freedom from government, and trade freedom. As an autocratic state, Burma imposes severe restrictions on many areas of its economy. The almost complete lack of a judicial system means that domestic and foreign companies must negotiate directly with the government to resolve disputes.

4. Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s economy is 35.8% free. The government imposes an additional 3% AIDS surcharge on all taxes. Zimbabwe has transformed itself from the “breadbasket of Africa” into a starving, destitute tyranny. Expropriation is common as the political executive pushes forward with its resource redistribution-by-angry-mob economic plan.

3. Libya

Libya’s economy is 34.5% free. Business freedom, trade freedom, freedom from government, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, labor freedom and freedom from corruption are all serious problems. Oil dominates the economy, and the government dominates the oil sector. Corruption is rampant.

2. Cuba

Cuba’s economy is 29.7% free. Inflation is moderate, but government efforts to control all kinds of prices are pervasive. Business freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption and labor freedom are all weak. All aspects of business operations are tightly controlled and government-dominated. There are no courts independent of political interference.

1. North Korea

North Korea’s economy is 3% free. Business freedom, investment freedom, trade freedom, financial freedom, freedom from corruption and labor freedom are nonexistent. All aspects of business operations are totally controlled and dominated by the government. No courts are independent of political interference. Corruption is virtually immeasurable.

Source: Human Events

10 Worst Democrat Pork Add-ons to Emergency War Funding Bill

10. Allows transfer of funds from holiday ornament sales in the Senate gift shop
9. $3 million in funding for sugar cane

8. $3.5 million in additional funding for guided tours of the Capitol

7. $12 million for the Forest Service money which the President requested in the non-emergency fiscal year 2008 budget

6. $20 million for insect damage reimbursements in Nevada

5. $24 million in funding for sugar beets

4. $75 million for salaries and expenses for the Farm Service Agency

3. $165.9 million for fisheries disaster relief, funded through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

2. $40 million for the Tree Assistance Program

1. $100 million in funding for the 2008 national party conventions.

Source: Human Events

U.S. Attorney David Iglesias Dragged Feet Investigating Democrat Corruption in New Mexico

Texas: Nick Lampson Gets Quadruple Bypass

Virginia: Jim Webb's Gun-Toting Man-Servant May Get 5 yrs. in Prison

Man With the Funniest Laugh

Bobby Jindal's Rebuilding Plan for Louisiana

Giuliani Leads McCain by 20 pts.

Republican Presidential Primary Contenders


Mar. 22

Mar. 15

Mar. 1

Rudy Giuliani

35%

33%

34%

John McCain

15%

15%

19%

Newt Gingrich

11%

13%

12%

Mitt Romney

8%

10%

9%

Source: Rasmussen Reports
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 608 likely Republican voters, conducted from Mar. 19 to Mar. 22, 2007. Margin of error is 4 per cent.

UK: Conservatives Lead by 8 pts.

How would you vote if there were a general election tomorrow? Which party are you most inclined to support?


Mar. 15

Jan. 29

Dec. 12

Conservative

41%

39%

37%

Labour

33%

35%

36%

Liberal Democrats

17%

19%

18%

Scottish National Party /
Plaid Cymru

3%

3%

2%

Green Party

3%

1%

3%

UK Independence Party

1%

--

2%

Other

2%

4%

2%

Source: Ipsos-MORI
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 944 certain British voters, conducted from Mar. 9 to Mar. 15, 2007. No margin of error was provided.

Giuliani Would Make Pennsylvania a Red-State

If the 2008 election for President were being held today, and the candidates were (the Democrat) and (the Republican), for whom would you vote?

Rudy Giuliani (R) 46% - 42% Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)
Rudy Giuliani (R) 46% - 39% Barack Obama (D)
Rudy Giuliani (R) 48% - 39% John Edwards (D)

John McCain (R) 43% - 44% Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)
John McCain (R) 42% - 42% Barack Obama (D)
John McCain (R) 42% - 41% John Edwards (D)

Mitt Romney (R) 35% - 49% Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)
Mitt Romney (R) 29% - 48% Barack Obama (D)
Mitt Romney (R) 28% - 50% John Edwards (D)

Source: Quinnipiac University Polling Institute
Methodology: Telephone interviews to 1,187 registered Pennsylvania voters, conducted from Mar. 19 to Mar. 25, 2007. Margin of error is 2.8 per cent.

Iowa: Giuliani Ahead for GOP; 3 at Top for Dems

Voting intention - 2008 Iowa Republican caucus


Mar. 2007

Jan. 2007

Rudy Giuliani

25%

19%

John McCain

19%

17%

Mitt Romney

11%

5%

Fred Thompson

7%

--

Tommy Thompson

5%

1%

Sam Brownback

3%

1%

Mike Huckabee

2%

1%

Tom Tancredo

1%

2%

Chuck Hagel

1%

2%

Newt Gingrich

--

13%

Condoleezza Rice

--

9%

George Pataki

--

1%

Undecided

22%

22%

Voting intention - 2008 Iowa Democratic caucus


Mar. 2007

Jan. 2007

John Edwards

27%

27%

Hillary Rodham Clinton

25%

16%

Barack Obama

23%

17%

Joe Biden

3%

3%

Bill Richardson

3%

1%

Dennis Kucinich

1%

1%

Chris Dodd

1%

--

Tom Vilsack

n.a.

16%

John Kerry

n.a.

3%

Undecided

15%

13%

Source: Zogby International
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 404 likely Republican caucus voters in Iowa, and 506 likely Democratic caucus voters in Iowa, conducted on Mar. 28, 2007. Margin of error is 4.6 per cent.


France: Sarkozy 28, Royal 27

Who would you vote for in the presidential election?


Mar. 27

Mar. 20

Mar. 13

Nicolas Sarkozy

28%

31%

29%

Ségolène Royal

27%

24%

23%

François Bayrou

20%

17%

21%

Jean-Marie Le Pen

12%

13%

13%

Olivier Besancenot

4.5%

4%

3%

Arlette Laguiller

3%

2%

2%

Marie-George Buffet

2%

4%

3%

Philippe de Villiers

1%

1%

2%

José Bové

1%

2%

2%

Dominique Voynet

1%

1%

1%

Gérard Schivardi

0.5%

0.5%

0.5%

Frédéric Nihous

--

0.5%

0.5%

Run-Off Scenarios

Sarkozy v. Royal


Mar. 27

Mar. 20

Mar. 13

Nicolas Sarkozy

51%

54%

51%

Ségolène Royal

49%

46%

49%

Source: BVA / Orange
Methodology: Interviews with 958 registered French voters, conducted on Mar. 26 and Mar. 27, 2007. No margin of error was provided.


Canada: Harper 41, Dion 17

Which of these two leaders would make the best prime minister of Canada?


Mar. 28

Mar. 7

Stephen Harper

41%

35%

Stephane Dion

17%

19%

Neither

32%

30%

Not sure

11%

16%

Do you approve or disapprove of Stephen Harper’s performance as prime minister?


Mar. 28

Mar. 7

Approve

40%

37%

Disapprove

39%

41%

Not sure

21%

22%

Do you approve or disapprove of Stéphane Dion’s performance as leader of the opposition?


Mar. 28

Mar. 7

Approve

18%

19%

Disapprove

44%

39%

Not sure

37%

42%

Over the course of the past month, would you say your opinion of Stephen Harper has improved, stayed the same or worsened?


Mar. 28

Mar. 7

Improved

25%

21%

Stayed the same

49%

50%

Worsened

22%

22%

Not sure

4%

7%

Over the course of the past month, would you say your opinion of Stéphane Dion has improved, stayed the same or worsened?


Mar. 28

Mar. 7

Improved

11%

9%

Stayed the same

47%

43%

Worsened

30%

29%

Not sure

12%

19%

Overall, do you think Canada is headed in the right track, or the wrong track?


Mar. 28

Mar. 7

Right track

36%

43%

Wrong track

38%

35%

Not sure

26%

23%

Source: Angus Reid Strategies
Methodology: Online interviews with 2,056 Canadian adults, conducted from Mar. 20 to Mar. 28, 2007. Margin of error is 2.2 per cent.

Time Magazine's 4 Presidential Matchups

If the election for president were held today and the candidates were (the following), and you had to choose, for which of these candidates would you vote?

Giuliani v. Rodham Clinton


Mar. 26

Mar. 12

Feb. 2007

Rudy Giuliani (R)

50%

47%

47%

Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)

41%

43%

44%

Giuliani v. Obama


Mar. 26

Mar. 12

Feb. 2007

Rudy Giuliani (R)

45%

43%

47%

Barack Obama (D)

44%

44%

42%

McCain v. Rodham Clinton


Mar. 26

Mar. 12

Feb. 2007

John McCain (R)

48%

43%

45%

Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)

42%

44%

46%

McCain v. Obama


Mar. 26

Mar. 12

Feb. 2007

John McCain (R)

45%

41%

42%

Barack Obama (D)

43%

44%

46%

Source: Schulman, Ronca, & Bucuvalas (SRBI) Public Affairs / Time
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,102 registered American voters, conducted from Mar. 23 to Mar. 26, 2007. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

Friday, March 30, 2007

McGovern Burdens Hillary With Endorsement

Pennsylvania: Bobby Casey About to Reveal if He Lied About Being Pro-Life

Book on Banned Cartoons Bans Mohammed Cartoon

Why Democrats Will Regret Inventing Gonzales Scandal

50% of Voters Won't Vote for Hillary

If Hillary Rodham Clinton was the Democratic nominee for president, which is closest to the way you think?


All

Men

Women

I definitely would vote for her

15%

13%

17%

I probably would vote for her

22%

22%

21%

I probably would not vote for her

11%

11%

10%

I definitely would not vote for her

39%

44%

35%

I wouldn’t vote at all

3%

2%

3%

Not sure

11%

8%

13%

Source: Harris Interactive
Methodology: Online interviews with 2,223 American adults, conducted from Mar. 6 to Mar. 14, 2007. Margin of error is 2 per cent.

Zogby: Thompson Increases Giuliani Lead Over McCain

If the 2008 Republican primary for president were being held today, and the candidates were (the following), for whom would you vote?


Mar. 2007

Feb. 2007

Rudy Giuliani

27%

29%

John McCain

13%

20%

Fred Thompson

9%

--

Mitt Romney

9%

9%

Ron Paul

3%

--

Tommy Thompson

1%

--

Mike Huckabee

1%

--

Tom Tancredo

1%

1%

Duncan Hunter

1%

1%

Sam Brownback

--

4%

Newt Gingrich

--

7%

Condoleezza Rice

--

7%

Other

--

4%

Not sure

28%

19%

Source: Zogby International
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 376 likely Republican voters, conducted from Mar. 22 to Mar. 26, 2007. Margin of error is 5.0 per cent.

Hillary 32, Obama 22

If the 2008 Democratic primary for president were being held today, and the candidates were (the following), for whom would you vote?


Mar. 2007

Feb. 2007

Hillary Rodham Clinton

32%

33%

Barack Obama

22%

25%

John Edwards

13%

12%

Bill Richardson

2%

5%

Joe Biden

2%

2%

Dennis Kucinich

1%

--

Wesley Clark

--

1%

Other

--

3%

Not sure

24%

20%

Source: Zogby International
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 432 likely Democratic voters, conducted from Mar. 22 to Mar. 26, 2007. Margin of error is 4.8 per cent.

Canada: Conservative Lead Grows to 17 pts.

If a federal election were held tomorrow, which one of the following parties would you vote for?


Mar. 28

Mar. 7

Feb. 27

The Conservative Party,
led by Stephen Harper

39%

38%

40%

The Liberal Party,
led by Stéphane Dion

22%

28%

26%

The New Democratic Party
(NDP), led by Jack Layton

17%

15%

15%

The Green Party,
led by Elizabeth May

11%

7%

8%

The Bloc Quebecois,
led by Gilles Duceppe

10%

11%

10%

Or, some other party

1%

1%

1%

Provincial Breakdown


BC

Alta.

Sask. /
Man.

Ont.

Que.

Atl.

The Conservative Party,
led by Stephen Harper

39%

63%

45%

39%

33%

28%

The Liberal Party,
led by Stéphane Dion

23%

12%

17%

31%

11%

38%

The New Democratic Party
(NDP), led by Jack Layton

23%

10%

22%

16%

12%

28%

The Green Party,
led by Elizabeth May

13%

12%

16%

13%

7%

6%

The Bloc Quebecois,
led by Gilles Duceppe

--

--

--

--

36%

--

Or, some other party

2%

3%

1%

1%

--

--

Source: Angus Reid Strategies
Methodology: Online interviews with 2,056 Canadian adults, conducted from Mar. 20 to Mar. 28, 2007. Margin of error is 2.2 per cent.

New Jersey: Former Democrat Assemblyman Arrested

The second crooked NJ politician to go down in one day.
2 down...and all the rest of them to go.

New Jersey: Democrat State Senator Indicted

Thursday, March 29, 2007

UK: David Cameron's Personal Blog

ACLU Against Free Speech if it's Religious

Thailand: Swiss Man Gets 10 Years in Prison for Defacing King's Image

Ethiopian Troops Killed by Islamo-Fascists in Somali Capital

South Africa Seeks to Let Zimbabwe Thugs off the Hook

China Wanted US Submarine Secrets to use Against Taiwan

'Time' Surprised GOP Has Early Edge for 2008

Hillary Continues Slow Slide

Support for potential 2008 Democratic presidential nominees, among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who are registered to vote.


Mar. 25

Mar. 4

Feb. 2007

Hillary Rodham Clinton

35%

36%

40%

Barack Obama

22%

22%

21%

Al Gore

17%

18%

14%

John Edwards

14%

9%

13%

Bill Richardson

3%

1%

4%

Joe Biden

1%

3%

1%

Wesley Clark

1%

2%

1%

Mike Gravel

--

1%

--

Chris Dodd

--

--

1%

Other

--

1%

--

None

2%

3%

1%

No opinion

4%

4%

3%

Source: Gallup / USA Today
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 493 Democrats or Democratic leaners, conducted from Mar. 23 to Mar. 25, 2007. Margin of error is 5 per cent.

Giuliani Up by 9 pts.

Support for potential 2008 Republican presidential nominees, among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who are registered to vote.


Mar. 25

Mar. 4

Feb. 2007

Rudy Giuliani

31%

44%

40%

John McCain

22%

20%

24%

Fred Thompson

12%

n.a.

n.a.

Newt Gingrich

8%

9%

9%

Mitt Romney

3%

8%

5%

Sam Brownback

3%

1%

3%

Tommy Thompson

2%

2%

2%

Ron Paul

1%

n.a.

n.a.

Tom Tancredo

1%

1%

1%

Mike Huckabee

1%

--

2%

Duncan Hunter

--

1%

1%

George Pataki

--

1%

1%

Jim Gilmore

--

--

2%

Chuck Hagel

--

--

1%

Other

2%

2%

1%

None

3%

3%

2%

All / Any

1%

--

--

No opinion

9%

8%

7%

Source: Gallup / USA Today
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 424 Republicans and Republican leaners, conducted from Feb. 9 to Feb. 11, 2007. Margin of error is 5 per cent.

Americans Don't Trust Saudi Arabia, Egypt

Do you think Saudi Arabia is a reliable and trustworthy ally of the United States in the war against radical Islamic terrorism?

Yes

11%

No

65%

Not sure

24%

Do you think Egypt is a reliable and trustworthy ally of the United States in the war against radical Islamic terrorism?

Yes

24%

No

46%

Not sure

32%

Source: McLaughlin & Associates / Zionist Organization of America
Methodology: Telephone interviews to 1,000 American adults, conducted on Mar. 25, 2007. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.

Sweden: Leftists Ahead

Which political party do you prefer in national politics?

Opposition Parties (Centre-Left)

49.6%

Workers’ Party - Social-Democrats (S)

38.0%

Left Party (Vp)

5.8%

Environmental Party - The Greens (MP)

5.8%

Governing Alliance (Centre-Right)

46.2%

Moderate Rally Party (M)

26.2%

Centre Party (C)

7.7%

People’s Party Liberals (FpL)

6.7%

Christian-Democrats (KD)

5.6%

Source: Skop
Methodology: Interviews with 1,100 Swede voters, conducted from Feb. 25 to Mar. 15, 2007. No margin of error was provided.

Will Edwards Drop Out of Presidential Race?

As you may know, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential candidate John Edwards, has had a recurrence of cancer. Do you think John Edwards will eventually withdraw from the presidential campaign because of his wife’s illness, or not?

Will

38%

Will not

50%

No opinion

11%

Source: Gallup / USA Today
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,007 American adults, conducted from Mar. 23 to Mar. 25, 2007. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

France: Sarkozy up by 5.5

Who would you vote for in the presidential election?


Mar. 27

Mar. 24

Mar. 17

Nicolas Sarkozy

30.5%

30%

29.5%

Ségolène Royal

25%

25.5%

25%

François Bayrou

18.5%

19%

21%

Jean-Marie Le Pen

13%

13.5%

12.5%

Olivier Besancenot

3.5%

3%

3.5%

Marie-George Buffet

2%

2%

2%

Arlette Laguiller

2%

2%

2%

José Bové

2%

1.5%

1.5%

Philippe de Villiers

1.5%

1%

1.5%

Frédéric Nihous

1%

1%

0.5%

Dominique Voynet

0.5%

1%

0.5%

Gérardi Schivardi

0.5%

0.5%

0.5%

Run-Off Scenarios

Sarkozy v. Royal


Mar. 27

Mar. 24

Mar. 17

Nicolas Sarkozy

53%

53%

52%

Ségolène Royal

47%

47%

48%

Sarkozy v. Bayrou


Mar. 27

Mar. 24

François Bayrou

52%

53%

Nicolas Sarkozy

48%

47%

Source: Ipsos / SFR / Le Point
Methodology: Interviews with 1,110 French adults, conducted from Mar. 24 to Mar. 27, 2007. No margin of error was provided.

New Jersey: Indictment of High Level Public Official Likely

Louisiana: Saints May Leave After 2010

You Can Shop at Real Kwik-E-Marts!

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Advice From George Orwell

Politics and the English Language

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad—I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen—but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative samples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

  1. “I am not, indeed, sure, whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.” — Professor Harold Laski (essay in Freedom of Expression)

  2. “Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes such egregious collocations of vocables as the basic put up with for tolerate or put at a loss for bewilder.” — Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossa)

  3. “On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?” — Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)

  4. “All the ‘best people” from the gentlemen’s clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror of the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoisie to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.” — Communist pamphlet.

  5. “If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak cancer and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion’s roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream—as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as `standard English.’ When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o’clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma’amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!” — Letter in Tribune

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery: the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged:

Dying Metaphors

A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically “dead” (e.g., iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a “rift,” for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would be aware of this, and would avoid perverting the original phrase.

Operators, or Verbal False Limbs

These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are: render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formation, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved from anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.

Pretentious Diction

Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers. The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words and phrases translated from Russian, German or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentatory and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one’s meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

Meaningless Words

In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, “The outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work is its living quality,” while another writes, “The immediately striking thing about Mr. X’s work is its peculiar deadness,” the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except insofar as it signifies “something not desirable.” The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet Press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

“I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

Here it is in modern English:

“Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3), above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations—race, battle, bread—dissolve into the vague phrase “success or failure in competitive activities.” This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing—no one capable of using phrases like “objective consideration of contemporary phenomena”—would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase (“time and chance”) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier—even quicker, once you have the habit—to say In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry—when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech—it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash—as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot—it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty-three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip alien for akin, making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means. (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning—they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another—but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you—even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent—and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing.

Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White Papers and the speeches of under-secretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases—bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder—one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

“While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find—this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify—that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning’s post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he “felt impelled” to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence that I see: “The Allies have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany’s social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a cooperative and unified Europe.” You see, he “feels impelled” to write—feels, presumably, that he has something new to say—and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence, to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defense of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.

To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a “standard English” which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outgrown its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a “good prose style.” On the other hand it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one’s meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. Afterwards one can choose—not simply accept—the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch around and decide what impression one’s words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

  1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

  2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

  3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

  4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

  5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

  6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don’t know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.

Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase—some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse—into the dustbin where it belongs.

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Ireland: Fianna Fáil Leads by 13 pts.

What party would you support in the next general election?


Mar. 2007

Feb. 2007

Jan. 2007

Fianna Fáil / Soldiers of Destiny (FF)

36%

38%

42%

Fine Gael / Family of the Irish (FG)

23%

22%

21%

Labour Party / Páirti Lucht Oibre (Lab.)

12%

14%

12%

Sinn Fein / We Ourselves (SF)

10%

7%

7%

Green Party / Comhaontas Glas (GP)

8%

8%

7%

Progressive Democrats /
Dan Pairtí Daonlathach (PD)

3%

4%

3%

Source: Red C / Sunday Business Post
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,078 Irish adults, conducted from Mar. 19 to Mar. 21, 2007. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

New Zealand: National Party Leads by 9 pts.

What party would you vote for in the next general election?


Mar. 2007

Feb. 2007

Oct. 2006

National

46%

46%

49%

Labour

37%

39%

36%

Green

7%

7%

6%

Maori Party

3%

3%

2%

New Zealand First

2%

2%

3%

ACT

2%

1%

1%

United Future

2%

1%

1%

Source: Colmar Brunton / One News
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,200 New Zealand voters, conducted from Mar. 19 to Mar. 22, 2007. Margin of error is 3.2 per cent.

France: Sarkozy by 1

Who would you vote for in the presidential election?


Mar. 23

Mar. 19

Mar. 17

Nicolas Sarkozy

26%

28%

26%

Ségolène Royal

25%

24%

24%

François Bayrou

22%

21%

22.5%

Jean-Marie Le Pen

14.5%

14%

14%

Olivier Besancenot

3.5%

4%

3%

Arlette Laguiller

2%

2%

3%

Marie-George Buffet

2%

3%

2%

Philippe de Villiers

2%

1%

1.5%

José Bové

1%

1.5%

2%

Dominique Voynet

1%

1%

1.5%

Frédéric Nihous

0.5%

0.5%

0.5%

Gérard Schivardi

0.5%

--

--

Run-Off Scenario

Sarkozy v. Royal


Mar. 23

Mar. 19

Mar. 17

Nicolas Sarkozy

52%

53%

51.5%

Ségolène Royal

48%

47%

48.5%

Source: Ifop / Le Journal du Dimanche
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 872 French registered voters, conducted on Mar. 22 and Mar. 23, 2007. No margin of error was provided.

'Global Warming' Farce: What Would Canadians Do?

What will you definitely do and what might you do in the next year in regards to the following:


Definitely
would do
in next year

Might do
in next
year

Would not
do in
next year

Would
never do

Replace all light bulbs
with energy efficient
bulbs

57%

34%

7%

2%

Spend less than 5
minutes in the shower
and no baths

40%

24%

16%

19%

Cut driving in half

19%

29%

33%

20%

Take public transit
every day

17%

11%

26%

45%

Source: Angus Reid Strategies
Methodology: Online interviews with 3,698 Canadian adults, conducted from Mar. 6 to Mar. 19, 2007. Margin of error is 1.6 per cent.

A Big Thank You to Senators Lieberman & Pryor

Thank you for voting in favor of our troops.

And an F-You to Senators Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Senate Stabs Our Soldiers in the Back, 50-48

Translation: A 'Nay' vote was anti-military, 'Yay' pro-military.

Statement of Purpose: To strike language that would tie the hands of the Commander-in-Chief by imposing an arbitrary timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, thereby undermining the position of American Armed Forces and jeopardizing the successful conclusion of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Alphabetical by Senator Name
Akaka (D-HI), Nay
Alexander (R-TN), Yea
Allard (R-CO), Yea
Baucus (D-MT), Nay
Bayh (D-IN), Nay
Bennett (R-UT), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Nay
Bingaman (D-NM), Nay
Bond (R-MO), Yea
Boxer (D-CA), Nay
Brown (D-OH), Nay
Brownback (R-KS), Yea
Bunning (R-KY), Yea
Burr (R-NC), Yea
Byrd (D-WV), Nay
Cantwell (D-WA), Nay
Cardin (D-MD), Nay
Carper (D-DE), Nay
Casey (D-PA), Nay
Chambliss (R-GA), Yea
Clinton (D-NY), Nay
Coburn (R-OK), Yea
Cochran (R-MS), Yea
Coleman (R-MN), Yea
Collins (R-ME), Yea
Conrad (D-ND), Nay
Corker (R-TN), Yea
Cornyn (R-TX), Yea
Craig (R-ID), Yea
Crapo (R-ID), Yea
DeMint (R-SC), Yea
Dodd (D-CT), Nay
Dole (R-NC), Yea
Domenici (R-NM), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Nay
Durbin (D-IL), Nay
Ensign (R-NV), Yea
Enzi (R-WY), Not Voting
Feingold (D-WI), Nay
Feinstein (D-CA), Nay
Graham (R-SC), Yea
Grassley (R-IA), Yea
Gregg (R-NH), Yea
Hagel (R-NE), Nay
Harkin (D-IA), Nay
Hatch (R-UT), Yea
Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Inhofe (R-OK), Yea
Inouye (D-HI), Nay
Isakson (R-GA), Yea
Johnson (D-SD), Not Voting
Kennedy (D-MA), Nay
Kerry (D-MA), Nay
Klobuchar (D-MN), Nay
Kohl (D-WI), Nay
Kyl (R-AZ), Yea
Landrieu (D-LA), Nay
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Nay
Leahy (D-VT), Nay
Levin (D-MI), Nay
Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea
Lincoln (D-AR), Nay
Lott (R-MS), Yea
Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Martinez (R-FL), Yea
McCain (R-AZ), Yea
McCaskill (D-MO), Nay
McConnell (R-KY), Yea
Menendez (D-NJ), Nay
Mikulski (D-MD), Nay
Murkowski (R-AK), Yea
Murray (D-WA), Nay
Nelson (D-FL), Nay
Nelson (D-NE), Nay
Obama (D-IL), Nay
Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Reed (D-RI), Nay
Reid (D-NV), Nay
Roberts (R-KS), Yea
Rockefeller (D-WV), Nay
Salazar (D-CO), Nay
Sanders (I-VT), Nay
Schumer (D-NY), Nay
Sessions (R-AL), Yea
Shelby (R-AL), Yea
Smith (R-OR), Nay
Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Specter (R-PA), Yea
Stabenow (D-MI), Nay
Stevens (R-AK), Yea
Sununu (R-NH), Yea
Tester (D-MT), Nay
Thomas (R-WY), Yea
Thune (R-SD), Yea
Vitter (R-LA), Yea
Voinovich (R-OH), Yea
Warner (R-VA), Yea
Webb (D-VA), Nay
Whitehouse (D-RI), Nay
Wyden (D-OR),

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Hamas Leader: Islam Will Conquer Entire World

Top 10 Democrat Strategies for 2008

Democrat Controlled Blogs Target Senator McConnell for Loyalty to Troops

Even Democrats Wonder if Hillary Can be Elected

Chuck Hagel: Insane or Just a Really Bad Old Man?

Spider Holes: 'Sanctuary Cities' for Illegal Aliens

    Alabama

  • Alabaster, AL

    Arizona

  • Phoenix, AZ

    California

  • Bell Gardens, CA
  • City of Industry, CA
  • City of Commerce, CA
  • Cypress, CA
  • Davis CA
  • Diamond Bar, CA
  • Downey, CA
  • Lakewood, CA
  • Los Angeles, CA
  • Long Beach, CA
  • Lynwood, CA
  • Maywood, CA
  • Montebello, CA
  • National City, CA
  • Norwalk, CA
  • Paramount, CA
  • Pico Rivera, CA
  • Sonoma County, CA
  • So. Gate, CA
  • San Diego, CA
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Vernon, CA
  • Wilmington, CA

Colorado

  • Aurora, CO
  • Commerce City, CO
  • Denver, CO
  • Federal Heights, CO
  • Fort Collins CO
  • Thornton, CO
  • Westminster, CO

    Connecticut

  • Springfield CT (Disputed)

    Florida

  • DeLeon Springs, FL

  • Deltona, Fl

  • Miami, FL
  • Sanford, Fl

    Illinois

  • Chicago, IL

    Massachusetts

  • Cambridge, Mass.

    Maryland

  • Baltmore, MD
  • Gaithersburg, MD
  • Takoma Park, MD

    Minnesota

  • Minneapolis, MN
  • St. Paul, MN

    New Jersey

  • Camden, NJ
  • Fort Lee, NJ
  • Jersey City, NJ
  • North Bergen, NJ
  • Trenton, NJ
  • Union City, NJ
  • West New York, NJ

    New York

  • Bay Shore, NY
  • Brentwood, NY
  • Central Islip, NY
  • Farmingville, NY
  • New York City, NY
  • Peekskill, NY
  • Riverhead, NY
  • Shirly/Mastic, NY
  • Uniondale, NY
  • Westbury, NY

    North Carolina

  • Charlotte, NC
  • Raleigh
  • Winston-Salem

    Oklahoma

  • Oklahoma City (de facto)

  • Tulsa

    Oregon

  • Portland, OR

    Texas

  • Austin, TX
  • Brownsville, TX
  • Denton, Tx
  • Dallas, TX
  • Ft.Worth, TX
  • Houston, TX
  • Katy, TX
  • Laredo, TX
  • Mcallen, TX
  • San Antonio, TX [Note: The Sanctuary status of San Antonio is under dispute so OJJPAC is researching the issue.]

    Utah

  • Provo, UT

  • Salt Lake City, UT

    Virginia

  • Fairfax County, VA (?)

Wisconsin

  • Madison, WI

Wyoming

  • Jackson Hole, WY

UK, France, Italy & Germany Unhappy With EU

Since your country became part of the European Union (EU) has life in your country become better, worse or stayed the same?


BRI

FRA

ITA

ESP

GER

Better

13%

19%

24%

53%

22%

Worse

52%

50%

47%

24%

44%

Stayed the same

21%

25%

25%

18%

24%

Not sure

14%

7%

4%

5%

9%

Source: Harris Interactive / Financial Times
Methodology: Online interviews with 5,413 adults in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, conducted from Feb. 28 to Mar. 12, 2007. Margin of error for individual countries is 3 per cent.

Slovakia: Smer Holds Large Lead

What party would you vote for in the next parliamentary election?


Mar. 2007

Feb. 2007

Jan. 2007

Party Direction - Third Way (Smer)

45.3%

46.7%

47.7%

Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKU)

13.6%

10.5%

10.7%

Slovak National Party (SNS)

11.0%

10.6%

11.8%

Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS)

10.4%

10.4%

9.6%

Party of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK)

9.1%

9.8%

9.1%

Christian Democratic Movement (KDH)

7.0%

6.9%

7.3%

Slovak Communist Party (KSS)

1.4%

1.8%

1.9%

Movement for Democracy (HZD)

0.9%

1.2%

0.6%

Free Forum (SF)

0.6%

1.7%

0.5%

New Civic Alliance (ANO)

0.6%

0.2%

0.4%

Source: UVVM
Methodology: Interviews with 1,109 Slovak adults, conducted from Mar. 1 to Mar. 9, 2007. No margin of error was provided.

Interested American Stat Counter

Twitter Feed

Top 25 Countries for Property Rights

2011 List

1. New Zealand (95 index)
2. The Netherlands (90)
3. Switzerland (90)
4. Sweden (90)
5. Singapore (90)
6. Norway (90)
7. Luxembourg (90)
8. Ireland (90)
9. Iceland (90)
10. Hong Kong (90)
11. Germany (90)
12. Finland (90)
13. Denmark (90)
14. Canada (90)
15. Austria (90)
16. United States (85)
17. United Kingdom (85)
18. Chile (85)
19. Japan (80)
20. France (80)
21. Estonia (80)
22. Cyprus (80)
23. Belgium (80)
24. Barbados (80)
25. Uruguay (70)

Source: The Heritage Foundation

The Interested Archive

The Gettysburg Address

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

-- Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

List of the Enumerated Powers of Congress

Section 8: The Congress shall have power To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

To establish post offices and post roads;

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;—And

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

A List of American Third Parties

* America First Party (2002) * American Party (1968) * America's Independent Party (2008) * Boston Tea Party (2006) * Communist Party of the United States of America (1919) * Constitution Party (1992) * Florida Whig Party (2006) * Green Party (1996) * Independence Party of America (2007) * Libertarian Party (1971) * Moderate Party (2006) * Modern Whig Party (2008) * National Socialist Movement (1959) * New American Independent Party (2004) * Objectivist Party (2008) * Party for Socialism and Liberation (2004) * Peace and Freedom Party (1967) * Pirate Party of the United States (2006) * Progressive Labor Party (1961) * Prohibition Party (1869) * Reform Party of the United States of America (1995) * Socialist Party USA (1973) * Socialist Workers Party (1938) * United States Marijuana Party (2002) * Unity Party of America (2004) * Workers Party (2003) * Working Families Party (1998) Source: Wikipedia

Best States for Business (2009)

  • Wyoming
  • South Dakota
  • Nevada
  • Alaska
  • Florida
  • Montana
  • Texas
  • New Hampshire
  • Oregon
  • Delaware

Speakers of the House

1st Frederick A.C. Muhlenberg, Pennsylvania, Apr 01, 1789

2nd Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticut, Oct 24, 1791

3rd Frederick A.C. Muhlenberg, Pennsylvania, Dec 02, 1793

4th, 5th Jonathan Dayton, New Jersey, Dec 07, 1795

6th Theodore Sedgwick, Massachusetts, Dec 02, 1799

7th-9th Nathaniel Macon, North Carolina, Dec 07, 1801

10th, 11th Joseph B. Varnum, Massachusetts, Oct 26, 1807

12th, 13th Henry Clay, Kentucky, Nov 04, 1811

13th Langdon Cheves, South Carolina, Jan 19, 1814

14th-16th Henry Clay, Kentucky, Dec 04, 1815

16th John W. Taylor, New York, Nov 15, 1820

17th Philip P. Barbour, Virginia, Dec 04, 1821

18th Henry Clay, Kentucky, Dec 01, 1823

19th John W. Taylor, New York, Dec 05, 1825

20th-22nd Andrew Stevenson, Virginia, Dec 03, 1827

23rd John Bell, Tennessee, Jun 02, 1834

24th, 25th James K. Polk, Tennessee, Dec 07, 1835

26th Robert M.T. Hunter, Virginia, Dec 16, 1839

27th John White, Kentucky, May 31, 1841

28th John W. Jones, Virginia, Dec 04, 1843

29th John W. Davis, Indiana, Dec 01, 1845

30th Robert C. Winthrop, Massachusetts, Dec 06, 1847

31st Howell Cobb, Georgia, Dec 22, 1849

32nd, 33rd Linn Boyd, Kentucky, Dec 01, 1851

34th Nathaniel P. Banks, Massachusetts, Feb 02, 1856

35th James L. Orr, South Carolina, Dec 07, 1857

36th William Pennington, New Jersey, Feb 01, 1860

37th Galusha A. Grow, Pennsylvania, Jul 04, 1861

38th-40th Schuyler Colfax, Indiana, Dec 07, 1863

40th Theodore M. Pomeroy,New York, Mar 03, 1869

41st-43rd James G. Blaine, Maine, Mar 04, 1869

44th Michael C. Kerr, Indiana, Dec 06, 1875

44th-46th Samuel J. Randall, Pennsylvania, Dec 04, 1876

47th J. Warren Keifer, Ohio, Dec 05, 1881

48th-50th John G. Carlisle, Kentucky, Dec 03, 1883

51st Thomas B. Reed, Maine, Dec 02, 1889

52nd, 53rd Charles F. Crisp, Georgia, Dec 08, 1891

54th, 55th Thomas B. Reed, Maine, Dec 02, 1895

56th, 57th David B. Henderson, Iowa, Dec 04, 1899

58th-61st Joseph G. Cannon, Illinois, Nov 09, 1903

62nd-65th James Beauchamp Clark, Missouri, Apr 04, 1911

66th-68th Frederick H. Gillett, Massachusetts, May 19, 1919

69th-71st Nicholas Longworth, Ohio, Dec 07, 1925

72nd John N. Garner, Texas, Dec 07, 1931

73rd Henry T. Rainey, Illinois, Mar 09, 1933

74th Joseph W. Byrns, Tennessee, Jan 03, 1935

74th-76th William B. Bankhead, Alabama, Jun 04, 1936

76th-79th Sam Rayburn, Texas, Sep 16, 1940

80th Joseph W. Martin, Jr., Massachusetts, Jan 03, 1947

81st, 82nd Sam Rayburn, Texas, Jan 03, 1949

83rd Joseph W. Martin, Jr., Massachusetts, Jan 03, 1953

84th-87th Sam Rayburn, Texas, Jan 05, 1955

87th-91st John W. McCormack, Massachusetts, Jan 10, 1962

92nd-94th Carl B. Albert, Oklahoma, Jan 21, 1971

95th-99th Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr., Massachusetts, Jan 04, 1977

100th, 101st James C. Wright, Jr., Texas, Jan 06, 1987

101st-103rd Thomas S. Foley, Washington, Jun 06, 1989

104th, 105th Newt Gingrich, Georgia, Jan 04, 1995

106th-109th J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois, Jan 06, 1999

110th, 111th Nancy Pelosi, California, Jan 04, 2007

112th, 113th, 114th John Boehner, Ohio, Jan, 2011

BLOATED Bastids: List of US Government Departments and Agences

Conservative, Republican & Libertarian Celebrities

  • Aaron Tippin
  • Adam Carolla
  • Adam Sandler
  • Al Leiter
  • Alabama
  • Alan Jackson
  • Alice Cooper
  • Amy Grant
  • Andy Garcia
  • Angie Harmon
  • Anita Louise
  • Ann Miller
  • Arnold Palmer
  • Avenged Sevenfold
  • Barret Swatek
  • Belinda Carlisle
  • Ben Stein
  • Bill Belichick
  • Billy Ray Cyrus
  • Bo Derek
  • Bobby Bowden
  • Bobby Steele
  • Brooks and Dunn
  • Bruce Boxleitner
  • Bruce Willis
  • Candace Bushnell
  • Candace Cameron Bure
  • Carrie Underwood
  • Catherine Hicks
  • Chad Sexton
  • Charlie Daniels
  • Charlton Heston
  • Chelsea Noble
  • Cheryl Ladd
  • Chris Evert
  • Chuck Norris
  • Cindy Williams
  • Clint Black
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Connie Stevens
  • Craig T. Nelson
  • Crystal Bernard
  • Curt Schilling
  • Daddy Yankee
  • Dale Earnhardt Jr.
  • Danny Aiello
  • Darryl Worley
  • Dave Mustaine
  • Dave Smalley
  • David Lynch
  • Deanna Lund
  • Delta Burke
  • Dennis Franz
  • Dennis Miller
  • Dick Van Patten
  • Dina Merrill
  • Dixie Carter
  • Don Shula
  • Drew Carey
  • Eazy-E
  • Elisabeth Hasselbeck
  • Emma Caulfield
  • Ernie Banks
  • Ethel Merman
  • Eva Gabor
  • Frankie Avalon
  • Gail O'Grady
  • Gary Sinise
  • Gerald McRaney
  • Ginger Rogers
  • Gloria Estefan
  • Gretchen Wilson
  • Hank Williams
  • Hank Williams Jr.
  • Heather Locklear
  • Heather Whitestone
  • Hedda Hopper
  • Heidi Montag
  • Helen Hayes
  • Hilary Duff
  • India Allen
  • Jack Nicklaus
  • Jackie Mason
  • Jaclyn Smith
  • James Brown
  • James Caan
  • James Caviezel
  • James Woods
  • Jamie Farr
  • Jane Wyman
  • Janine Turner
  • Jason Sehorn
  • Jeanette MacDonald
  • Jeff Baxter
  • Jennifer Flavin
  • Jerry Bruckheimer
  • Jinx Falkenburg
  • Joan Rivers
  • Joe Escalante
  • Joe Perry
  • John Elway
  • John Malkovich
  • John Ratzenberger
  • John Rich
  • Johnny Ramone
  • Jon Cryer
  • Jon Voight
  • June Allyson
  • Kansas
  • Karl Malone
  • Kathie Lee Gifford
  • Kathy Ireland
  • Keith Morris
  • Kellie Pickler
  • Kelsey Grammar
  • Kenny Chesney
  • Kerri Strug
  • Kid Rock
  • Kim Alexis
  • Kirk Cameron
  • Lance Armstrong
  • Lara Flynn Boyle
  • Larry the Cable Guy
  • Laura Prepon
  • LeAnn Rimes
  • Lee Ann Womack
  • Lee Greenwood
  • Lee Ving
  • Leeann Tweeden
  • Lorenzo Lamas
  • Loretta Lynn
  • Lorrie Morgan
  • Lou Ferrigno
  • Louella Parsons
  • Lynard Skynard
  • Lynn Swann
  • Margaret Hamilton
  • Marie Osmond
  • Mark Chesnutt
  • Martina McBride
  • Mary Hart
  • Mary Lou Retton
  • Matt Hasselbeck
  • Maureen O'Hara
  • Meat Loaf
  • Mel Gibson
  • Merle Haggard
  • Michael W. Smith
  • Mike Ditka
  • Mike Love
  • Morgan Brittany
  • Naomi Judd
  • Nick Lachey
  • Nolan Ryan
  • Norm McDonald
  • Pat Sajak
  • Patricia Cornwell
  • Patricia Heaton
  • Paula Prentiss
  • Pete Sampras
  • R. Lee Ermey
  • Rachel Hunter
  • Randy Travis
  • Rebecca St. James
  • Ric Flair
  • Richard Petty
  • Rick Schroeder
  • Ricky Skaggs
  • Rip Torn
  • Robert Conrad
  • Robert Davi
  • Robert Duvall
  • Roger Penske
  • Ron Silver
  • Salvador Dali
  • Sam Shepard
  • Sammy Haggar
  • Sara Evans
  • Sarah Michelle Gellar
  • Scott Baio
  • Sela Ward
  • Shannen Doherty
  • Shawnee Smith
  • Shirley Jones
  • Shirley Temple
  • Skrewdriver
  • Stephen Baldwin
  • Styx
  • Susan Lucci
  • Tammy Grimes
  • Ted Nugent
  • Tim Tebow
  • Tippi Hedrin
  • Tom Clancy
  • Tom Selleck
  • Tony Danza
  • Trace Adkins
  • Tracy Scoggins
  • Travis Tritt
  • Type O Negative
  • Victoria Jackson
  • Vince Flynn
  • Vincent Gallo
  • Wayne Newton
  • Wilfred Brimley
  • Yaphet Kotto
  • Yvette Mimieux
  • Zig Ziglar

The Interested American Ranking of the Presidents of the United States of America

Abraham Lincoln
Ronald Reagan
James Madison
Thomas Jefferson
George Washington
John Adams
James K. Polk
William McKinley
Calvin Coolidge
William Taft
George W. Bush
Theodore Roosevelt
James Monroe
Andrew Jackson
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Harry S. Truman
Benjamin Harrison
John F. Kennedy

Zachary Taylor
Benjamin Harrison
Ulysses Grant
Grover Cleveland
Chester Arthur
Martin Van Buren
John Tyler
William Henry Harrison

George HW Bush
John Q. Adams
Gerald Ford
Millard Fillmore
Franklin Pierce
Rutherford B. Hayes
Warren Harding
Andrew Johnson
James Buchanan
Herbert Hoover
Bill Clinton
Richard Nixon
Franklin D. Roosevelt
James Carter
Woodrow Wilson
Barack Hussein Obama
Lyndon Baines Johnson


45 Goals of the Communist Party (1963)

  • 01. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
  • 02. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
  • 03. Develop the illustion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
  • 04. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
  • 05. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
  • 06. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
  • 07. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
  • 08. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under the supervision of the U.N.
  • 09. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
  • 10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
  • 11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
  • 12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
  • 13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
  • 14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
  • 15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
  • 16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
  • 17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
  • 18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
  • 19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
  • 20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
  • 21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
  • 22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
  • 23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
  • 24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
  • 25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
  • 26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
  • 27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
  • 28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
  • 29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
  • 30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
  • 31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
  • 32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
  • 33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
  • 34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
  • 35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
  • 36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
  • 37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
  • 38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
  • 39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
  • 40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
  • 41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
  • 42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.
  • 43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
  • 44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
  • 45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

List of All United States Supreme Court Justices

Jay, John (1789-1795)
Rutledge, John (1789-1791), (1795)
Cushing, William (1789-1810)
Wilson, James (1789-1798)
Blair, John Jr. (1789-1795)
Iredell, James (1790-1799)
Johnson, Thomas (1791-1793)
Paterson, William (1793-1806)
Chase, Samuel (1796-1811)
Ellsworth, Oliver (1796-1800)
Washington, Bushrod (1798-1829)
Moore, Alfred (1799-1804)
Marshall, John (1801-1835)
Johnson, William Jr. (1804-1834)
Livingston, Henry Brockholst (1806-1823)
Todd, Thomas (1807-1826)
Duvall, Gabriel (1811-1835)
Story, Joseph (1811-1845)
Thompson, Smith (1823-1843)
Trimble, Robert (1826-1828)
McLean, John (1829-1861)
Baldwin, Henry (1830-1844)
Wayne, James Moore (1835-1867)
Barbour, Philip Pendelton (1836-1841)
Taney, Roger Brooke (1836-1864)
Catron, John (1837-1865)
McKinley, John (1837-1852)
Daniel, Peter Vivian (1841-1860)
Nelson, Samuel (1845-1872)
Woodbury, Levi (1845-1851)
Grier, Robert Cooper (1846-1870)
Curtis, Benjamin Robbins (1851-1857)
Campbell, John Archibald (1853-1861)
Clifford, Nathan (1858-1881)
Swayne, Noah Haynes (1862-1881)
Miller, Samuel Freeman (1862-1890)
Davis, David (1862-1877)
Field, Stephen Johnson (1863-1897)
Chase, Salmon Portland (1864-1873)
Strong, William (1870-1880)
Bradley, Joseph P. (1870-1892)
Hunt, Ward (1872-1882)
Waite, Morrison Remick (1874-1888)
Harlan, John Marshall (1877-1911)
Woods, William Burnham (1880-1887)
Matthews, Stanley (1881-1889)
Gray, Horace (1881-1902)
Blatchford, Samuel M. (1882-1893)
Lamar, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus (1888-1893)
Fuller, Melville Weston (1888-1910)
Brewer, David Josiah (1889-1910)
Brown, Henry Billings (1890-1906)
Shiras, George Jr. (1892-1903)
Jackson, Howell Edmunds (1893-1895)
White, Edward Douglass (1894-1921)
Peckham, Rufus Wheeler (1895-1909)
McKenna, Joseph (1898-1925)
Holmes, Oliver Wendell Jr. (1902-1932)
Day, William Rufus (1903-1922)
Moody, William Henry (1906-1910)
Lurton, Horace Harmon (1909-1914)
Hughes, Charles Evans (1910-1916), (1930-1948)
Van Devanter, Willis (1910-1941)
Lamar, Joseph Rucker (1910-1916)
Pitney, Mahlon (1912-1922)
McReynolds, James Clark (1914-1946)
Brandeis, Louis Dembitz (1916-1941)
Clarke, John Hessin (1916-1922)
Taft, William Howard (1921-1930)
Sutherland, George (1922-1942)
Butler, Pierce (1922-1939)
Sanford, Edward Terry (1923-1930)
Stone, Harlan Fiske (1925-1946)
Roberts, Owen Josephus (1930-1945)
Cardozo, Benjamin Nathan (1932-1938)
Black, Hugo Lafayette (1937-1971)
Reed, Stanley Forman (1938-1980)
Frankfurter, Felix (1939-1965)
Douglas, William Orville (1939-1980)
Murphy, Frank (1940-1949)
Byrnes, James Francis (1941-1942)
Jackson, Robert Houghwout (1941-1954)
Rutledge, Wiley Blount (1943-1949)
Burton, Harold Hitz (1945-1964)
Vinson, Frederick Moore (1946-1953)
Clark, Tom C. (1949-1977)
Minton, Sherman (1949-1965)
Warren, Earl (1953-1974)
Harlan, John Marshall (1955-1971)
Brennan, William Joseph Jr. (1956-1997)
Whittaker, Charles Evans (1957-1965)
Stewart, Potter (1958-1985)
White, Byron Raymond (1962-2002)
Goldberg, Arthur Joseph (1962-1965)
Fortas, Abe (1965-1969)
Marshall, Thurgood (1967-1993)
Burger, Warren Earl (1969-1995)
Blackmun, Harry Andrew (1970-1999)
Powell, Lewis Franklin Jr. (1971-1998)
Rehnquist, William Hubbs (1971-2005)
Stevens, John Paul (1975-2010)
O`Connor, Sandra Day (1981-2005)
Scalia, Antonin (1986-present)
Kennedy, Anthony McLeod (1988-present)
Souter, David Hackett (1990-2009)
Thomas, Clarence (1991-present)
Ginsburg, Ruth Bader (1993-present)
Breyer, Stephen Gerald (1994-present)
Roberts, John Glover Jr. (2005-present)
Alito, Samuel A. Jr. (2006-present)
Sotomayor, Sonia (2009-present)
Elana Kagan (2010-present)

Ranking Countries by Economic Freedom

Hong Kong
Singapore
Australia
New Zealand
Ireland
Switzerland
Canada
United States
Denmark
Chile
United Kingdom
Mauritius
Bahrain
Luxembourg
The Netherlands
Estonia
Finland
Iceland
Japan
Macau
Sweden
Austria
Germany
Cyprus
Saint Lucia
Georgia
Botswana
Lithuania
Belgium
South Korea
El Salvador
Uruguay
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Spain
Norway
Armenia
Qatar
Barbados
Mexico
Kuwait
Oman
Israel
Peru
United Arab Emirates
The Bahamas
Malta
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Latvia
Hungary
Jordan
Albania
Costa Rica
Trinidad and Tobago
Macedonia
Jamaica
Colombia
Malaysia
Panama
Slovenia
Portugal
Romania
France
Saudi Arabia
Thailand
Turkey
Montenegro
Madagascar
Dominica
Poland
South Africa
Greece
Italy
Bulgaria
Uganda
Namibia
Cape Verde
Belize
Kyrgyz Republic
Paraguay
Kazakhstan
Guatemala
Samoa
Fiji
Dominican Republic
Ghana
Mongolia
Lebanon
Burkina Faso
Morocco
Croatia
Rwanda
Egypt
Tunisia
Azerbaijan
Tanzania
Nicaragua
Honduras
Zambia
Kenya
Swaziland
Bhutan
Serbia
Algeria
Nigeria
Cambodia
Vanuatu
Philippines
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Mozambique
Mali
Brazil
Indonesia
Benin
Gabon
Pakistan
Gambia
Senegal
Sri Lanka
Yemen
Malawi
Cote d'Ivoire
India
Moldova
Papua New Guinea
Tonga
Tajikistan
Niger
Nepal
Suriname
Cameroon
Mauritania
Guinea
Argentina
Ethiopia
Bangladesh
Laos
Djibouti
China
Haiti
Micronesia
Russia
Vietnam
Syria
Bolivia
Ecuador
Maldives
Sao Tome and Principe
Belarus
Equatorial Guinea
Central African Republic
Guyana
Angola
Lesotho
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Uzbekistan
Chad
Burundi
Togo
Ukraine
Liberia
Timor-Leste
Comoros
Kiribati
Guinea-Bissau
Iran
Republic of Congo
Solomon Islands
Turkmenistan
Democratic Republic of Congo
Libya
Venezuela
Burma
Eritrea
Cuba
Zimbabwe
North Korea

Not Indexed:
Afghanistan
Iraq
Liechtenstein
Sudan

Source: 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.


The Bill of Rights

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.



Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.



Amendment III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.



Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.



Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.



Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.



Amendment VII

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.



Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.



Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.



Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Right to Work States

  • Alabama
  • Arizona
  • Arkansas
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • Idaho
  • Indiana
  • Iowa
  • Kansas
  • Louisiana
  • Mississippi
  • Nebraska
  • Nevada
  • North Carolina
  • North Dakota
  • Oklahoma
  • South Carolina
  • South Dakota
  • Tennessee
  • Texas
  • Utah
  • Virginia
  • Wyoming

Top Conservative Colleges in America

Ave Maria University, CONS
Benedictine College, CONS
Brighham Young University, PR08, CONS,
Calvin College, USN06,
Cedarville University, EHOW
Christendom College, YAF10, CONS,
College of the Ozarks, YAF10, PR08,
Evangel University, CONS
Franciscan University of Steubenville, YAF10, CONS, EHOW
Grove City College, YAF10, PR08, CONS,
Harding University, YAF10
Hampden-Sydney College, PR08,
Hillsdale College, YAF10, PR08, CONS
The King's College, YAF10, CONS,
Liberty University, YAF10, USN06, CONS,
Newberry College, CONS
Ohio Wesleyan University, EHOW
Patrick Henry College, YAF10, CONS,
Regent University, YAF10
Saint Vincent College, YAF10
Thomas Aquinas College, YAF10, CONS,
Thomas More College, YAF10
United States Airforce Academy, PR08
United States Coast Guard Academy, CONS
United States Merchant Marine Academy, PR08
United States Naval Academy, PR08
University of Dallas, PR08, CONS
Wheaton College, PR08
Wisconsin Lutheran College, YAF10

Sources:
CONS — Conservapedia
EHOW — eHow.com
PR08 — Princeton Review 2008.
YAF10 — Young America's Foundation 2009-2010.
USN06 — US News and World Report 2006.

The Worst Mass Murderers in History

1. Mao Tse Tung (China) Roughly 70 million murdered.
2. Josef Stalin (Soviet Union) Roughly 23 million murdered.
3. Adolf Hitler (Germany) Roughly 12 million murdered.
4. Ismail Enver (Turkey) Roughly 2.5 million murdered.
5. Pol Pot (Cambodia) Roughly 1.7 million murdered.

Hirohito (Japan)
Vladimir Lenin (Soviet Union)
Saddam Hussein (Iraq)
Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam)
Kim Il Sung (North Korea)
Ion Antonescu (Romania)
Fidel Castro (Cuba)
Che Guevara (Argentina)
Robespierre (France)
Idi Amin (Uganda)
Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe)
Radovan Karadzic (Bosnia)
Francisco Franco (Spain)
Osama Bin Laden (Al-Qaeda)