Unfortunately, this is playing out pretty much as expected

We’re conditional supporters of legalizing marijuana. We say conditional because the optimal condition for marijuana to exists would be in a low tax/low regulation environment. That, however, is probably not going to happen given the statist ways of our politicians and, unfortunately, a too-large segment of the voting public.


Alas, in Colorado which legalized pot last year, the tragically inevitable is unfolding before our very eyes:

The taxes on recreational marijuana might go a lot higher than first thought. Smokers buying at shops in Denver may pay up to 35 percent in taxes.

Colorado voters will be asked to approve two state taxes totaling 25 percent on all retail marijuana sales in the November election. They may be asked to approve an additional city tax for Denver.

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock wants to add an additional five to 10 percent city tax on top of that.

Hancock said the money is needed to pay the costs of regulating the drug.

Critics complain severe taxes would destroy a new industry already approved by voters.

The Denver City Council has until August to decide if the tax question will go on the November ballot.

(italics, ours)


We won't pretend to know just how marijuana is regulated in Colorado but if the rates stated above in the article are any indication, then that would represent the rather un-optimal condition we fear for "legalizing" marijuana.


Then again, the regulations may be minimal and all this is just indicative of the usual instinct by politicians to tax anything that moves.


Either way, this represents precisely what we fear: taxing and regulating a product right back into the gray market because that will be the ultimate outcome of all this should these taxes go through.


Hopefully, the good people of Colorado not only see these taxes as a step backwards in the freeing of marijuana but also in the unwinding of the drug war.

Funeral for a Friend?

So, a buddy of ours was informed recently by his superiors at work that they were aware of his internet musings on politics and culture and let us just say for the sake of clarification that "aware of" was not made in the context of "Hey, we're big fans, where do we sign up?"


Our jovially cantankerous moral scold was sufficiently freaked out about this to the point that he related that he may scale back his activity on the 'net while simultaneously seeking in-house legal counsel. Legal bubbas told him management had no grounds to interfere in any manner in any legal activity he chose to pursue outside of work. We weren't privy to the conversation but the foundation for this rationale was most likely deeply rooted in the 1st amendment of this nation's Constitution - you may have heard of it.


Good news, right? Wrong. Yes, perhaps justice and sanity won out in the end, but the damage had been done. The fact that our friend actually had to consider the consequences of his actions with respect to his workplace meant that the bad guys had snuck in a left hook on free speech to the extent our friend felt/feels compelled to keep watching his own back. We guess this is what is meant by putting a "chill" on things, kind of like how the Department of Justice has put a "chill" on reporters, you know, doing their job by snooping on their phone records as is the case with 20 Associated Press reporters and Fox News' James Rosen in two separate leak investigations.



Now, as recently, perhaps as 6 months ago we may have told our friend he was over-reacting to this and that maybe some time off from work rather than blogging might do his inner worker bee some good.

No longer.


Folks, at this point, it very much appears we have a rogue government on our hands. The aforementioned DOJ investigations, the IRS harassment of conservative groups and the NSA snooping of U.S. citizens all without any seeming consequences rather smug denials of knowledge and/or responsibility and worse yet, reassignments, paid admin. leave and even promotions for people central to these crises (again, we refuse to call these scandals as to our knowledge, no one was getting laid as a result of this lawlessness).


Yes, we very much have a Constitutional crisis on our hands as the very institutions we formerly trusted to uphold the law and that constitution are quite openly and quite shamelessly working to tear them down.


The following is a related missive from our friend that was passed along to a group of his friends which he did not want to post on his own site and also which we believe there was an implied permission granted to share with you all:

Friends,

On Friday, I worked at Catholic Charities food resource center. On Saturday, my wife and I taught the remarriage class for the Diocese. It's really weird, but the more of these things I do, the less American I feel. At the class, my wife and I worked to help people understand the problems and prepare for the issues of remarriage and blended families. It was great, but at the same time, in the back of my mind, I knew my government was actively working to hurt me and my faith. It's not that the government was indifferent, which I would fully accept, it was that it was pointlessly trying to hurt us through the HHS mandate.


We were working to keep society together while Sandra Fluke was giving speeches at the winning side's national convention and while the government actively looked the other way so Dr. Gosnell could slaughter babies.


I'm not disloyal or traitorous and I'm not going to pick up a rifle and go all Cristados, but I just can't help but think about this stuff.


Dittos for the Catholic Charities stuff. Many of our customers can't speak a bit of English despite being in the country for years. I used to get ticked off at this as an American, knowing it was idiotic not to have a common language. But now I see them as images of Christ and only want to help them. If the rest of America votes to give them government assistance and education in their own language, that's their problem, not mine. My problem is to love them.


I'm not leaving, I'm not giving up on fighting for what we collectively believe in through legal and proper means, it's just something I can't help thinking as I become more active within the Church.


It's such a tragedy that in working to improve society and help the poor I feel alienated from my government.



(signed)


PS - And if you must know, we make all clients at the food resource center and all the people in the class sign a statement swearing they will always hate gays. It's just what we do. All the time. Talk about gays. "Gays, gays, gays!" that's us.

So, the NSA was in league with our boy's employers in "monitoring" the activity of law-abiding Americans? No. (Well, nothing is off the table at this point but for the sake of discussion let's assume the two are entirely separate abuses of power).


In short, we see this as the gradual march of statism through our nation's institutions that has occurred over the past 40-50 years to the point we now have an entrenched institutional bias in our governmental institutions. An institutional bias that is inherently opposed to free speech and the exercise thereof and of other freedoms and liberties we have for so long taken for granted (please see also the 2nd, 4th and 5th amendments).


(Side note: We find no end to the irony that this collectivist/statist ideological bent finds its roots in the Free Speech movement and the New Left of the 60s.)



Yeah, our statist friends figured it out pretty easily and moved forward with the master plan leaving us conservative/libertarian types scratching our heads wondering from whence came that 2x4 upside our collective heads. Of course, this can be rationally explained away as a structural disadvantage as a goal of conservo-libertarianism is to decrease the influence of government institutions in our daily lives. Sheesh. How is that effective do-nothing passiveness any strategy for preventing a former constitutional republic from descending into tyranny?


Closing thought: If, by now, you are not a Constitutional radical, you haven't been paying attention or perhaps you are, indeed, a patsy for tyranny.



(Addendum #1: The Beltway establishment types, Democrat and Republican alike, all crawled out of their holes on the Sunday talk shows to defend the NSA super-surveillance program citing various unnamed terror plots it had help foil. With the Tsarnaev brothers, the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber, to name just a few, all hiding in plain sight and all going quite un-foiled, the political class hacks are going to have to do a lot better job in convincing us than they did yesterday.

And let's just say we're 100% wrong and that the NSA super-duper citizen snooper program is teh most awesome counter-terror program ever all without infringing upon anyone's civil liberties, how can increased scrutiny and skepticism of the government ever be a bad thing?)

Some thoughts on what's been going on lately

*

.

If you are still a big government liberal, you probably aren't paying attention.#IRS #Obamacare #Pigford #AP#EPA#Benghazi

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) May 16, 2013

That wasn't meant as an admonishment to our liberal friends who follow us on Twitter (and whom most likely pay no never mind to our politically-themed tweets) rather an invitation to discuss just what the unfolding scandals represent in the broader context of things. And to provide, perhaps a counter-balance to that if it was taken as an admonishment, we offered up this:

Hey, conservatives, keep big picture in mind:this isn't D v. R, this is DC/Political Class v. you.#AP#IRS

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) May 16, 2013

We used "Ruling Class/Political Class" in the context of Angelo Codevilla's phenomenal essay from the American Spectator, "America's Ruling Class - And the Perils of Revolution" written nearly 3 years ago. (It's a lengthy piece but you would be doing yourself a huge favor to take the 20-30 minutes to read it)


To look at what has been happening in Washington through a partisan prism would be a big mistake and would be missing the larger point of assessing the role of government and how and in what manner its power is wielded.


Put simply, the scandals of the IRS, the Justice Department secretly obtaining Associated Press phone records and Pigford, are all symptomatic of a federal government that has become so large and intrusive that the inevitable result is contempt and corruption.


Attorney General Eric Holder's testimony yesterday before Congress provided excellent examples of this. When asked about how many or how often his department seized the phone records of media outlets, he claimed he couldn't quantify a number... he could not even ballpark it. He gave every impression that seizure of private records was standard operating procedure at the Justice Department.


We won't apologize for saying this exchange did not cover our constitutional republic in glory.


And when pressed for details specific to the Associated Press case, he claimed he recused himself from that case so he knew nothing of the details. He recused himself but couldn't recall specifically when he did and he did not recuse himself in writing and further, never informed his boss in the White House that he had recused himself. For an operation as serious in nature as it relates to the 1st amendment, civil liberties and privacy concerns, there is no record of him recusing himself other than him verbally telling his deputy that he had done so. (And it turns out the justification for these phone record seizures as being a matter of national security may be bogus). Unreal.


We use Holder as an example because he has been a favorite whipping boy of ours over the years as he personifies the complete contempt and quite possible corruption for which he has never been held accountable.


Accountability. A leviathan the size of our federal government will quickly lose accountability as that size becomes structured in a byzantine maze of agencies, bureaus and departments. To date, only one person has been axed as a result of the IRS debacle and that person, the head of the agency was going to be stepping down in June, anyway. The two "low level" employees in Cinncinnati whom we were told were responsible for the effective harassment of conservative groups have been "disciplined", or so we've been told. End of story, correct?


In reality, these abuses have been going on for years with the knowledge of senior IRS officials who did nothing to stop it. That hastily arranged presser last Friday was pure kabuki theater designed to get out ahead of and play damage control in front of the Inspector's General report that was to drop shortly thereafter on Friday. Even the IG report blandly labeled the wrongdoing as "mismanagement" when all indications point to the politicization of the tax-exempt application process.


Tea party and other conservative groups simply gave up in the light of overburdening and outrageous lines of questioning or for fears they might perjure themselves for not knowing the nature of any of their future activities as had been asked of some of the groups as part of the application process. And it only took 3 or 4 years of banging on their dinner plates to see any action taken on this. No accountability so the harassment and intimidation was allowed to continue, again, with the full knowledge of higher-ups within the IRS.


As Marco Rubio pointed out the other day, these are the sort of things you see in the 3rd world or failed state republics. This sort of stuff should not be happening here. But this is where we are because of our fool's errand of replacing a healthy skepticism of government and a desire to limit its power to a mindset that the government's good intentions as advertised by our betters in the Ruling Class justified an ever-increasing expansion of government powers... and as our Founders knew, we also know what is paved with good intentions.


These abuses, harassments, intimidations and lack of accountability are simply part and parcel to a government that grows so large, it simply gets drunk on its own power and starts running amok and trampling its original and intended charter.



* That quote in the image is from our President a couple weeks back at the graduation ceremony at the Ohio State University.

We forgot where we read it first but someone claimed that these scandals have all been making a better case for conservatism than all our leading conservative thinkers as we have seen the practical application rather than the theoretical and rhetorical.

Awww... Bill Maher a little late to the personal responsibilty party

Bill Maher on the New York City soda ban and why “liberal fascism” is not at all contradictory but actually quite complimentary.

"I am for overturning this ban," HBO host Bill Maher said about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's soda ban. "I think this is what makes liberals look bad. This is what makes liberals look like elitist bullies who think they know everything and can tell people what to do."

"Again, it is what makes liberals look bad. They never met a regulation they didn't like. Of course, we should do something about this problem, but what if I want to have that one Big Gulp once a week? I should be able to," he added.

"You shouldn't have to clear what you eat with the municipal government," Maher also said.

While we whole-heartedly agree with the creepy little misogynist, the current trajectory of healthcare in this country necessarily dictates that the government gets more involved with what you eat and drink.

Since we are rapidly approaching the “we’re all in this together” state of being with government-managed healthcare trending towards a single-payer system, the government and it’s tax-paying citizens are vested parties in your healthcare and will most likely want a say in what you are shoveling down your pie hole.

So, isn’t that terrific: We are now in a political environment where we go from being completely hands-off libertarians with respect to what other people eat, drink and, in general, what they do to their bodies, to finger-wagging nanny-scolds. If there is anything that points to the wrongness of government-managed healthcare, it is that.

If you wish to make poor life decision, dietary or otherwise, no person nor governmental entity should stand in your way of doing so. Of course, you are on the hook for the consequences of behaving badly also, right? Unfortunately, this simple life rule of sleeping in the bed one makes that we all learned back in kindergarten has been blown to smithereens with the encroaching entitlement/welfare state over the decades, culminating now with the passage of ObamaCare some 3 years ago.


So...

A message of warning to our plentiful smoking friends: we are going to be absolutely insufferable nags from here on out. Hey, it may be your body but it’s our bucks.


.

Some not so random thoughts of the day

.

We saw this on Instapundit a couple of days ago and with respect to the massacre in Connecticut, we thought it worth sharing:

SO IF WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A “NATIONAL CONVERSATION ON GUNS,” HERE ARE SOME OPENERS:

Why do people who favor gun-control call people who disagree with them murderers or accomplices to murder? Is that constructive?

Would any of the various proposals have actually prevented the tragedy that is the supposed reason for them?

When you say you hope that this event will finally change the debate, do you really mean that you hope you can use emotionalism and blood-libel-bullying to get your way on political issues that were losers in the past?

If you’re a media member or politician, do you have armed security? Do you have a permit for a gun yourself? (I’m asking you Dianne Feinstein!) If so, what makes your life more valuable than other people’s?

Do you know the difference between an automatic weapon and a semi-automatic weapon? Do your public statements reflect that difference?

If guns cause murder, why have murder rates fallen as gun sales have skyrocketed?

Have you talked about “Fast and Furious?” Do you even know what it is? Do you care less when brown people die?

When you say that “we” need to change, how are you planning to change? Does your change involve any actual sacrifice on your part?

Let me know when you’re ready to talk about these things. We’ll have a conversation.

Our thoughts:



We've been shocked and sickened by what went down in Newtown, CT this past Friday. What happened there was no "tragedy"... what happened there was pure evil and which resulted in a massacre and we will call it nothing else.



We've also been shocked and sickened by the call for violence upon and death to gun owners and, in particular, NRA members. We've let our membership lapse but next chance we get it will be renewed as nothing provokes a swift reaction in us as a vile and unhinged initial action.


We've never witnessed anything like it before on social media but wishing violence upon those whom you deem unenlightened and backwards does not make you, in turn, enlightened and progressive.

The statist-left will tell you they love freedom but we can now only assume it's freedom as practiced by them, not those in the fly-over portions of this country.


It's now beyond obvious that this debate is not about gun control or the public safety benefits that the statist-left believes more gun control laws will yield, it's about control, period. It's about control and an unhinged hatred of freedoms guaranteed by the 2nd amendment as practiced by primarily rural, non-coastal, whites - a demogaphic of bitter-clingers of whom are as foreign to them as would be Martians if they landed here tomorrow.

Never again do we want to be lectured about civility by a set of people who have been as hypocritical in that regard as humanly possible. What we've always known about the control-mad statist-left has only been confirmed as what has been amplified over these past few days has only served to move the needle for those on the fence.

The lines have been drawn and it cannot be any clearer what separates us. Were we in any sort of position, we would oppose most any manner of gun control legislation not only on the merits of fact and reason but, now, also out spite.



Congratulations, gang, on that whole raising-the-level-of-discourse thing. It has served only to harden our hearts. We hope to, in the near future, rise up out of this funk but until then and to those of you out there who have nothing but hatred for us, we wish you nothing but peace, love and the Almighty's infinite graciousness.

Amen.

.


.

Photo image of the day

.

Like Flat Stanley, only better...

... Iron Fist's Hired Hand visits the Prescott Brewery Company.




Also, we couldn't go without mentioning fellow SLOB W.C. Varones got Instalanched for his post Rime of the Ancient Australian.

From the post:

"My wife doesn't like me talking about this. But I've lived under a dictatorship before. And that's exactly what you've got coming here," he finally confessed.

He couldn't have known that I was no Obama fan. Most people my age in this area were Obama voters. But once he had decided to tell his tale, he couldn't stop.

He talked of things with which I was quite familiar, but with which most of the public would not have been: Eric Holder and the Black Panthers, the White House asking people to inform on their dissident friends and neighbors, the Obama cult of personality, and the way the media were no longer watchdogs but open supporters of the regime.

Check out the whole thing at the link.


For those that are thinking that this is a tad over-the-top or delusional, try taking yourself to a place where it was President George W. Bush that had signed legislation that gave himself the power to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without cause or to carry out drone strikes against U.S. citizens overseas without traditionally-recognized due process, and which in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son, has already happened (bet you didn't know the son was killed in a separate drone strike, altogether).

And Cindy Sheehan and her set were camping out in a ditch somewhere outside of Crawford, TX because three bums were waterboarded. Got it.


Where are the outraged and aggrieved now? Seduced by a cult of personality and having their feeble minds inflicted with a case of un-democratic it's-OK-because-it's-our-guy-did-it tribalism, they have busied themselves decrying the tea party as extreme and have actually been seen lamenting the radicalization of the G.O.P., longing for the days of their ultimate tormentor, Ronald Reagan. Talk about your alternate universes.


As it stands, much of America is coming around to what many of us knew all along; Hopenchange was the ultimate con, the pitch-perfect sales campaign for one who was nothing more than another thuggish, two-bit Chicago pol.

After all the votes are tallied on November 6, we will either be celebrating victory or celebrating the 22nd amendment.

.

Some things worth remembering here in the heat of the battle

.


Reason.tv presents their special presidential election edition of Nanny of the Month:

.







It reminds us of an un-attributed quote we heard some time back:

Democrat or Republican... no matter who wins the election, government still gets in.

.

I don't even trust you to do that

.

Beers with Demo's salute to Milton Friedman rolls on.



We've played this clip before as it remains one of our favorites because, in part, uber-lib Phil Donahue can't believe what he is seeing and hearing. It's as if an alien landed in the guest chair and Donahue is thinking to himself "My God, who is this and please don't let him gazortanplat myself and everyone else here in the studio."

.






.

.

Not wanting a recession to go to waste

.

Well, we suppose the logical extension of claiming food stamps and unemployment benefits provide an economic stimulus is to use them as bait to get people on the voting rolls.

From Mickey Kaus:

Will the GOPs take advantage of Obama's new welfare weakness? The Obama Department of Agriculture has pulled the radio"novelas" that urged Spanish-speakers to wise up and get on the dole. ("In one of these, an individual tries to convince a friend to enroll in food stamps even though that friend declares: 'I don't need anyone's help. My husband earns enough to take care of us," says GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions, describing the novelas. "The first individual replies back: 'When are you going to learn?'")

Why is the USDA's retreat significant? Because it shows the administration is sensitive, in an election year, to being perceived as dismissive of the work ethic. Like a prize fighter who winces when you hit him in a sore spot, the Obamaites have revealed their weakness. If the Republicans' have any strategic sense they will now hit that sore spot again by making a big fuss about the Health and Human Service regulations that renege on the work requirements imposed on welfare recipients by the 1996 welfare reform law (and its successors). If Romney, Boehner and McConnell can't frame these regs as part (along with the food stamp push) of Obama's cavalier disregard for the value of work-in embarrassing contradiction to the image he portrayed in 2008-they should really retire to Austria with Denise Rich.

If you think merely getting more people on the dole is the real end game then we, unfortunately, believe you to be a tad naive. From an electoral standpoint, the Democrats are absolutely invested in creating a permanent underclass, dependent upon the Party for the unwarranted bennies as the Democrats are dependent upon them for their votes. Nice little arrangement they have worked out for themselves.

However, as we have stated in our previous post, the government in enticing people to eschew work in order to get food stamps is completely immoral. A government that encourages its people to sacrifice their independence and liberty in the name of sloth is not a government worthy of governing.


We hate to seem pessimistic or even conspiratorial, but what is it precisely that has you persuaded the Democrats don't think this recession is such a bad thing?

Graphic image of the day

.

Courtesy KT over at the Scratching Post:

li


li
Which was inspired by these words from The One at a campaign stop in Roanoke, Va., this past Friday:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

(italics, ours)

We're baffled. It's such a completely different mindset that frames everything in such a context. A context that even beyond paying taxes for basic government services that delivers the mail, paves the roads and defends the coast (we could go on... they sure would like to will), there can be no individual success outside that which is defined by your relation to the government.

If you doubt us, recall it's this administration that claims as a success how many people they can put on food stamps and further, how unemployment benefits are somehow an economic stimulus.

It's no wonder these people are economic illiterates when, in a sense, they are moral illiterates as well. Yeah, we said it - because a philosophy whereby individual success is defined by the extent by which the government provided it, is immoral. And fealty to anybody beyond yourself and your Creator is inherently immoral as well.

As we recall, it is a government of the people and by the people and not the other way around. They seem to have flipped the script, wouldn't you say?

.

What were we tweeting (yesterday)?

.

A continuation of a running series reflecting on what was on our mind when it came to social media.


.


Oh boy. First day after ObamaCare Obamatax SCOTUS decision was rendered and things were highly active. Some of our thoughts as transmitted on Twitter:

Tweet: Socializing the cost and privtzng the profits. How did left get bckd into bizarro world corner that they support wht they despise?

Seriously. The left needs to explain to us just why it is they fought tooth and nail for a completely illiberal piece of legislation that was written by the lobbyists of Big Health behind closed doors and which will only serve to lock-in the already unholy alliance between the government and the health insurance industry while lining the pockets of the health insurance companies.

Tweet: #Obamatax silver linings? That's akin to being re-assured by O's signing statement on detentions and wacks in #ADAA.

There's some wishful thinking amongst some conservative circles out there that Robert's was going long game by clipping the powers by which Congress could wield the commerce clause to do its bidding. Mmmm... not buying it. We had to have this battle to win the War. Oh, we may still win but this was akin to getting repelled at Normandy. In that context, we just tacked on 3-4 more years and 100,000 or more lives.

And like Obama's reassurances that he won't indefinitely detain Americans without due cause nor assassinate Americans without due process because he issued a signing statement or something... it doesn't matter. Obamacare Obamatax is the law of the land and no long-term strategery regarding the flippin' commerce clause is going to change that fact.



Tweet: After Thursday, we're obligated to know what you are doing and who you are doing it with. #Obamatax

Sorry, gang. Now that we have skin in everybody else's game, we're all nanny-staters now. On the upside, we cannot imagine how much fun it's going to be being such insufferable cranks to our liberal friends who smoke. Cannot. Wait. Starting. Today.


follow us @deanriehm

.

Journalistic embarrassment

.

The image below represents the poll question that was asked of the San Diego Union-Tribune's web version readers this past Thursday:





The question is so vague as to be misleading that we aren't quite sure where to start.

First of all, please give us an operational definition of "family planning" which can cover a whole host of services depending upon the provider.

But the cynic in us knows that in this particular case, "family planning" is merely code for contraceptive and abortion services.

Now who would deny such a necessary and vital health service to "workers" (another lame descriptive)?

That's right! It would be those big meanies in the Catholic Church. Those pro-life zealots are the ones denying the pill and abortions to, you know, workers.

The meme framed here is that workers cannot access "family planning" anywhere but through Catholic Church-based health plans... which don't offer "family planning".

The workers are screwed! There ought to be a law!


The provision within ObamaCare that forces Catholic institutions to provide "family planning" (for free, we might add) is the ultimate in a solution looking for a problem.

When this provision was enacted via legislative fiat by the Obama regime, we were heretofore unaware that "family planning" was so tough to come by. We guess a 20 minute walk or 10 minute bus ride to the Planned Parenthood clinic up on College and El Cajon to receive, absolutely free, "family planning" services would somehow represent a breach of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. How little do we know.


Congrats to San Diego's mullet wrap of record for the worst-worded poll question we have seen so far this year.


And congrats to the Obama regime for picking this scrap. People are pissed. People are motivate and people are now willing to act to see this gross overreach of government authority into matters of faith, conscience and simple common sense absolutely crushed.


If you are down for the fight, get ye over to KT's hang at the Scratching Post who has got a blog roll going for like-minded freedom-loving Americans regardless of your religious affiliation.

#fortnight4freedom

.

Links of the week

.

First they came for the Catholics and I did not speak up because I was not a Catholic.



A prior commitment prevented us from attending but a gathering Wednesday of believers and non-believers alike at Mission San Diego de Alcala, kicked off the Fortnight for Freedom to protest the federal government's requirement via ObamaCare that religious institutions provide free contraceptive services and, in general, the government's assault on freedom, be it religious or otherwise.



Fellow SLOB W.C Varones filed his report here (and who also provided the picture above) which included this passage which was read during the event and which came from Prayer for Freedom and Protection from Evil:

In that freedom, Lord, we your people live our lives
In a way that advances your Kingdom of Life,
And we refuse to cooperate in what is evil.

At this moment, therefore, when our government has decided
To force us to cooperate in evil,
We pray for the grace to be faithful to you
And to oppose the unjust laws and mandates
That have been imposed upon us and our institutions.

And KT over at the Scratching Post who attended had this to say:

My wife and I attended the Fortnight for Religious Freedom event last night at the Mission San Diego de Alcala. The place was packed and the event moved me to tears. I felt like I was at one of the original organizing meetings of the Cristados. I've got lots more to blog about this later, but let me just add one more thing. The presence of non-Catholics there in the Mission, standing with us in support of our freedoms, was awesome.

Codified in the 1st amendment and seared into our American DNA, we can scarcely think of anything more important to a country that was founded, in large part, by religious dissidents who refused to submit to the powers that be.

We wish to participate in future Fortnight for Freedom events and we will be covering it here at Beers with Demo and we relish the opportunity to take this fight to our enemies.


They have a Facebook umbrella page: Fortnight for Freedom


Follow on Twitter: @fortnight4freedom

.

25 years ago yesterday...

.

... Ronald Reagan made his famous "Tear down this wall" speech at Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin.



The full text of the speech is as follows:

Chancellor Kohl, Governing Mayor Diepgen, ladies and gentlemen: Twenty-four years ago, President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin, speaking to the people of this city and the world at the City Hall. Well, since then two other presidents have come, each in his turn, to Berlin. And today I, myself, make my second visit to your city.

We come to Berlin, we American presidents, because it's our duty to speak, in this place, of freedom. But I must confess, we're drawn here by other things as well: by the feeling of history in this city, more than 500 years older than our own nation; by the beauty of the Grunewald and the Tiergarten; most of all, by your courage and determination. Perhaps the composer Paul Lincke understood something about American presidents. You see, like so many presidents before me, I come here today because wherever I go, whatever I do: Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin. [I still have a suitcase in Berlin.]

Our gathering today is being broadcast throughout Western Europe and North America. I understand that it is being seen and heard as well in the East. To those listening throughout Eastern Europe, a special word: Although I cannot be with you, I address my remarks to you just as surely as to those standing here before me. For I join you, as I join your fellow countrymen in the West, in this firm, this unalterable belief: Es gibt nur ein Berlin. [There is only one Berlin.]

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same--still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar.

President von Weizsacker has said, "The German question is open as long as the Brandenburg Gate is closed." Today I say: As long as the gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. Yet I do not come here to lament. For I find in Berlin a message of hope, even in the shadow of this wall, a message of triumph.

In this season of spring in 1945, the people of Berlin emerged from their air-raid shelters to find devastation. Thousands of miles away, the people of the United States reached out to help. And in 1947 Secretary of State--as you've been told--George Marshall announced the creation of what would become known as the Marshall Plan. Speaking precisely 40 years ago this month, he said: "Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos."

In the Reichstag a few moments ago, I saw a display commemorating this 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. I was struck by the sign on a burnt-out, gutted structure that was being rebuilt. I understand that Berliners of my own generation can remember seeing signs like it dotted throughout the western sectors of the city. The sign read simply: "The Marshall Plan is helping here to strengthen the free world." A strong, free world in the West, that dream became real. Japan rose from ruin to become an economic giant. Italy, France, Belgium--virtually every nation in Western Europe saw political and economic rebirth; the European Community was founded.

In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty--that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled.

Where four decades ago there was rubble, today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany--busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of parkland. Where a city's culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. Where there was want, today there's abundance--food, clothing, automobiles--the wonderful goods of the Ku'damm. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth. The Soviets may have had other plans. But my friends, there were a few things the Soviets didn't count on--Berliner Herz, Berliner Humor, ja, und Berliner Schnauze. [Berliner heart, Berliner humor, yes, and a Berliner Schnauze.]

In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind--too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.

Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I understand the fear of war and the pain of division that afflict this continent-- and I pledge to you my country's efforts to help overcome these burdens. To be sure, we in the West must resist Soviet expansion. So we must maintain defenses of unassailable strength. Yet we seek peace; so we must strive to reduce arms on both sides.

Beginning 10 years ago, the Soviets challenged the Western alliance with a grave new threat, hundreds of new and more deadly SS-20 nuclear missiles, capable of striking every capital in Europe. The Western alliance responded by committing itself to a counter-deployment unless the Soviets agreed to negotiate a better solution; namely, the elimination of such weapons on both sides. For many months, the Soviets refused to bargain in earnestness. As the alliance, in turn, prepared to go forward with its counter-deployment, there were difficult days--days of protests like those during my 1982 visit to this city--and the Soviets later walked away from the table.

But through it all, the alliance held firm. And I invite those who protested then-- I invite those who protest today--to mark this fact: Because we remained strong, the Soviets came back to the table. And because we remained strong, today we have within reach the possibility, not merely of limiting the growth of arms, but of eliminating, for the first time, an entire class of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.

As I speak, NATO ministers are meeting in Iceland to review the progress of our proposals for eliminating these weapons. At the talks in Geneva, we have also proposed deep cuts in strategic offensive weapons. And the Western allies have likewise made far-reaching proposals to reduce the danger of conventional war and to place a total ban on chemical weapons.

While we pursue these arms reductions, I pledge to you that we will maintain the capacity to deter Soviet aggression at any level at which it might occur. And in cooperation with many of our allies, the United States is pursuing the Strategic Defense Initiative--research to base deterrence not on the threat of offensive retaliation, but on defenses that truly defend; on systems, in short, that will not target populations, but shield them. By these means we seek to increase the safety of Europe and all the world. But we must remember a crucial fact: East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other. And our differences are not about weapons but about liberty. When President Kennedy spoke at the City Hall those 24 years ago, freedom was encircled, Berlin was under siege. And today, despite all the pressures upon this city, Berlin stands secure in its liberty. And freedom itself is transforming the globe.

In the Philippines, in South and Central America, democracy has been given a rebirth. Throughout the Pacific, free markets are working miracle after miracle of economic growth. In the industrialized nations, a technological revolution is taking place--a revolution marked by rapid, dramatic advances in computers and telecommunications.

In Europe, only one nation and those it controls refuse to join the community of freedom. Yet in this age of redoubled economic growth, of information and innovation, the Soviet Union faces a choice: It must make fundamental changes, or it will become obsolete.

Today thus represents a moment of hope. We in the West stand ready to cooperate with the East to promote true openness, to break down barriers that separate people, to create a safe, freer world. And surely there is no better place than Berlin, the meeting place of East and West, to make a start. Free people of Berlin: Today, as in the past, the United States stands for the strict observance and full implementation of all parts of the Four Power Agreement of 1971. Let us use this occasion, the 750th anniversary of this city, to usher in a new era, to seek a still fuller, richer life for the Berlin of the future. Together, let us maintain and develop the ties between the Federal Republic and the Western sectors of Berlin, which is permitted by the 1971 agreement.

And I invite Mr. Gorbachev: Let us work to bring the Eastern and Western parts of the city closer together, so that all the inhabitants of all Berlin can enjoy the benefits that come with life in one of the great cities of the world.

To open Berlin still further to all Europe, East and West, let us expand the vital air access to this city, finding ways of making commercial air service to Berlin more convenient, more comfortable, and more economical. We look to the day when West Berlin can become one of the chief aviation hubs in all central Europe.

With our French and British partners, the United States is prepared to help bring international meetings to Berlin. It would be only fitting for Berlin to serve as the site of United Nations meetings, or world conferences on human rights and arms control or other issues that call for international cooperation.

There is no better way to establish hope for the future than to enlighten young minds, and we would be honored to sponsor summer youth exchanges, cultural events, and other programs for young Berliners from the East. Our French and British friends, I'm certain, will do the same. And it's my hope that an authority can be found in East Berlin to sponsor visits from young people of the Western sectors.

One final proposal, one close to my heart: Sport represents a source of enjoyment and ennoblement, and you may have noted that the Republic of Korea--South Korea--has offered to permit certain events of the 1988 Olympics to take place in the North. International sports competitions of all kinds could take place in both parts of this city. And what better way to demonstrate to the world the openness of this city than to offer in some future year to hold the Olympic games here in Berlin, East and West? In these four decades, as I have said, you Berliners have built a great city. You've done so in spite of threats--the Soviet attempts to impose the East-mark, the blockade. Today the city thrives in spite of the challenges implicit in the very presence of this wall. What keeps you here? Certainly there's a great deal to be said for your fortitude, for your defiant courage. But I believe there's something deeper, something that involves Berlin's whole look and feel and way of life--not mere sentiment. No one could live long in Berlin without being completely disabused of illusions. Something instead, that has seen the difficulties of life in Berlin but chose to accept them, that continues to build this good and proud city in contrast to a surrounding totalitarian presence that refuses to release human energies or aspirations. Something that speaks with a powerful voice of affirmation, that says yes to this city, yes to the future, yes to freedom. In a word, I would submit that what keeps you in Berlin is love--love both profound and abiding.

Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West. The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront. Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower's one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere--that sphere that towers over all Berlin--the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.

As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: "This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality." Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

And I would like, before I close, to say one word. I have read, and I have been questioned since I've been here about certain demonstrations against my coming. And I would like to say just one thing, and to those who demonstrate so. I wonder if they have ever asked themselves that if they should have the kind of government they apparently seek, no one would ever be able to do what they're doing again.

Thank you and God bless you all.

What real hope and what real change looks and sounds like:






We are fans of hockey in the utmost casual manner but our favorite player has always been Jaromir Jagr who spent the bulk of his career with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Jagr grew up in what was then Czechoslovakia in the 80s and as a lad carried around a folded-up picture of Reagan in his wallet such was his admiration for the man and what he represented.

It can be deduced, then, that Jagr's photo of Reagan would be today's polar opposite of some UC San Diego student's Che' t-shirt.

.

Oddly enough, we don't think he'll take his own advice

.

Alternative headline: Like engineers, ask an environmentalist and you'll get the truth.

The big tent of Malthusians and warmists have really fallen on some hard times. They keep getting their hands caught in the cookie jar when it comes to cooking the books with respect to climate data and when they're not doing that, they're basically admitting that their efforts aren't really about stopping and reversing global warming climate change but rather wealth distribution.

Think we're joking?:

Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist and co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change (say that twice), told the Neue Zurcher Zeitung last week: "The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War." After all, redistributing global wealth is no small matter.

Edenhofer let the environmental cat out of the bag when he said "climate policy is redistributing the world's wealth" and that "it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization."

As we're finding out with the current administration, if your policies aren't working, don't talk about them. Talk about anything else except that at which you have failed.

Anyway, all that may not be the biggest problem with the faith-based AGW set. What pales in comparison to the above is a messaging problem. The message is this: they don't like you (humans) too much and would kindly desire that you excuse yourself from this mortal coil either voluntarily or involuntarily.


Here's Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola on the miserableness of the human condition:

"What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides."

"The composition of the Greens seems to be the same as that of the population in general — mainly pieces of drifting wood, people who never think."

"A minority can never have any other effective means to influence the course of matters but through the use of violence."

"Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth."

(ed. note: this is working out exactly as desired in places like North Korea and Cuba)

"The most central and irrational faith among people is the faith in technology and economical growth. Its priests believe until their death that material prosperity bring enjoyment and happiness - even though all the proofs in history have shown that only lack and attempt cause a life worth living, that the material prosperity doesn't bring anything else than despair. These priests believe in technology still when they choke in their gas masks."

"That there are billions of people over 60kg weight on this planet is recklessness."

"Alternative movements and groups are a welcome relief and a present for the society of economic growth."

"We will have to...learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves."

(ed. note: the entirety of the message of the 20 the century was this: "Oh... we learned, alright.")

"Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed."

"A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life are been organized on basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her...Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, only a few are those truly capable of managing the matters of a nation or mankind as a whole...In this time and this part of the World we are headlessly hanging on democracy and parliamentary system, even though these are the most mindless and desperate experiments of the mankind...In democratic coutries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most...Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromizing control of the individual citizen."

Boy, oh, boy. If there is a more anti-BwD message, Linkola wins and the place and show horses aren't even in the picture.

Linkola then goes on to call for licensed birth-giving, the involuntary confiscation of private property, the end of competition and the return to a hunter-gatherer culture. He wants to turn back the clock of humanity to a time from which we've progressed from because, well... not having a car and having to hunt or fish for our meals every freaking day of one's miserable existence on this planet sucked.

There's a term for folks like Linkola besides idiot and it's totalitarian fascist. They aren't nice people. Does he sound nice? We don't like them and we encourage you to not like them as well.

We know what you are saying, though. You're saying, "Look, he's some crank that lives on a boat that no one outside of Finland (or maybe even his own dock) have heard of. That is true but what he is calling for and the means in which to accomplish it, have also been called for by far more main stream-accepted doom-and-gloomers like Paul Ehrlich, though in somewhat softer terms. What Ehrlich provides is some window-dressing to arrive at the same conclusion as Linkola (we swear that sounds like some blog-sharing program).

Scratch not too far below the surface of the environmental agenda and you find yourself a wide-ranging slew of propositions whereby the god-given rights and desires (remember: there's a reason why we don't live in caves, anymore) of the individual are subjugated to the will of the collective as determined by others be they rulers, committees, bureaucrats, even benevolent despots which is the extreme green's ultimate dream.

It's all a lie. Precisely because we have pursued freedom and liberty, we have been able to develop technology, much to the ironic chagrin of the Linkster, that has allowed this planet and its people to survive past the doomsday hour predicted by the likes of Ehrlich and his kind.

Let's face it: they are not really concerned with the fate of you or even the planet. For whatever sick reason, these people hate freedom. They hate liberty and the power within the individual that it has the potential to unleash.

Hey, we can't figure it out. Go catch a fish, bring it to Linkola and maybe he can tell you why he is so filled with hatred.

Video clip of the day

.

From FreeMarketAmerica.org:

If I wanted America to fail I would never tell them that...

.

...the free market is the only force in human history to uplift the poor, establish the middle class and create lasting prosperity.

... I would empower unaccountable bureaucrats in a distant capitol to bully Americans out of their dreams and their property rights.

... for every concern, I'd invent a crisis and for every crisis, I'd invent the cause.

And a nice little populist shout-out to us little folk out here in the hustings:

...and I would praise those who preach environmental austerity in public while indulging a lavish lifestyle in private.

... I would convince them that all of this is for the "greater good".

If I wanted America to fail... I suppose I wouldn't change a thing.

.



This message of "shared sacrifice" we keep hearing from our minders is never accompanied by a message of "shared prosperity" whereby there is an actual pro-growth economic strategy for all Americans. Small wonder then, when it is the jerk of statist redistributionism in which you have been marinating your entire adult life, that concept is an entirely foreign one.

The career political class in D.C. has no interest in any of this other than accruing more power in which to sap the American public. Let's remember that in November and act accordingly.

Quote of the day

.

Via Dueling Bar Stools:

“Call it what you want—capitalism, free enterprise, laissez faire or whatever—but a system that upholds property rights and otherwise allows free people to be themselves is remarkable precisely because it’s NOT a “system” per se. No deluded, pretentious planners devise or direct it. It’s no Rube Goldberg contraption of mandates and decrees. It’s simply what happens when you leave peaceful people alone. They produce more and satisfy human wants to a far greater extent than empty nanny-state promises could ever hope to deliver."

Remember this: no one has granted you the right to enterprise, commerce, the pursuit of happiness, or freedom of speech and religion. You are granted these merely because you are currently upright, breathing and reading this. The Constitution is merely a guarantor against the government or any other entity denying you the same.

.

Constitutional republics are like, hard (cont.)

.

If you watch nothing else today or this week, please check out this video (~7 min.) below from Bill Whittle and Firewall and with respect to inherent rights and being free to do what the hell you want.



President Obama is totally bummed out over the provisions within the National Defense Authorization Act which he signed into law in November of 2011 which gives the federal government the power to indefinetely detain U.S.-born suspected terrorists on U.S. soil without due cause and presumptive G.O.P. nominee Mitt Romney is cool with it because he totally believes that neither Obama nor he, were he to be President, would abuse this power.

Guess what...?






It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter because this power is now enshrined into law and we are assured by completely fallible human beings that they would never, ever abuse that power.


Where we once had a right, we now have an assurance.


Where we once had 1st amendment rights, we are now forced by the government to pay for other people's contraception, quite possibly against our religious beliefs, because of the provisions contained within ObamaCare.


And it's happening without any of us causing much of a fuss because it's all happening... slowly. You can't feel it, we can't feel it but there's those laws setting on the shelves right now for all eternity waiting for it's moment to be abused.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what assurances are given; the legal framework to bury both the 1st and 5th amendment are in place and it really didn't take that long.

Your right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion and your right not to be unlawfully detained are not granted by the Constitution. Those are inherent rights; rights existing merely because you are breathing. They are rights that are protected by the Constitution from interference by the government. And now they are rights that are in serious jeopardy because of the seduction of power and of ignorance and hypocrisy.

.

Of hecklers and softballs

.

C'mon, she had to be a plant, right?

While campaigning in Peoria, Illinois yesterday, ahead of today's primary in that state, Mitt Romney confronts a heckler demanding free birth control and promptly smokes it into the gap for a stand-up double.

Question from woman in Peoria, Illinois: "So you’re all for like, 'yay, freedom,' and all this stuff. And 'yay, like pursuit of happiness.' You know what would make me happy? Free birth control."

Romney: "You know, let me tell you, no no, look, look let me tell you something. If you’re looking for free stuff you don’t have to pay for, vote for the other guy. That’s what he’s all about, okay? That’s not, that’s not what I’m about."

This demostrates precisely what we have been saying all along with respect to the willy-nilly making up of rights out of thin air and particularly making goods and services rights: "free" stuff necessarily requires the involuntary confiscation of other people's wealth and property to pay for it.

This woman wants "free" birth control (yes, we will be using air quotes from here on out whenever applicable) but that comes at a cost to everybody else in the form of higher premiums so that this woman can get laid. That may be her pursuit of happiness but we're pretty damn sure the founders didn't intend for her pursuit of the same to be the responsibility of others. Pursue getting laid on your own dime is elegant in its simplicity.

And irony of ironies, since this woman is insisiting that we all pay for her to get laid, an activity we were once told was the exclusive domain of the two (or more) consenters, she is now insisting that her getting laid be our business as well. Hey, we are paying for it, after all.

It is completely incoherent logic but logic just the same for a reditributionist statist.




We have been told to stay away from the contraception issue as it is one of those un-winnable social issues. Nonsense. The contraception issue , if approached correctly from religious conscience, personal freedom and fiscal responsibility angles will help illustrate the conservative and libertarian principles of the freedom coalition.

.

And the Captain Louis Renault award goes to...

.

... Reuters!


How's that Arab Spring working out?

After months of reassuring secularist critics, Islamist politicians in Tunisia and Egypt have begun to lay down markers about how Muslim their states should be - and first signs show they want more religion than previously admitted.

Islamist parties swept the first free elections in both countries in recent months after campaigns that stressed their readiness to work with the secularists they struggled with in the Arab Spring revolts against decades-long dictatorships.

With political deadlines looming, a key Tunisian party in the constituent assembly and the head of Egypt's influential Muslim Brotherhood both made statements this week revealing a stronger emphasis on Islam in government.

Popular List, the party tasked with writing Tunisia's new constitution, announced on Monday its draft called Islam "the principle source of legislation" - a phrase denoting laws based on the sharia moral and legal code.

On Tuesday, Egyptian Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie said his group wanted a president with "an Islamic background." That term is vague, but not as vague as the conciliatory "consensus candidate" talk heard from most parties until now.

Secularists in both countries warned voters against trusting the Islamists and these subtle changes could have come straight from a secularist playbook on how Islamists would gradually insert more religion into the political and legal systems.

(italics, ours)


Reuters is shocked... shocked that previous moderate signals from various Islamist factions would take a turn for the Sharia.

It's eerily similar to their reporting (along with the rest of the American press) on bad economic news... unexpectedly!

And subtle changes? Let's call it for what it is gang... minority groups from women and Christians to gays and adulturers (alleged or otherwise) are screwed now more than ever.

How it is that Reuters seems to be taken off-guard by these as-predictable-as-the-Sun-rises-in-the-East developments is beyond us.

.