Links - political

For discussion of current public-policy issues that are facing the American political system, try the resources at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at www.puaf.umd.edu/ippp/

For a basic "front door" to almost all U.S. government Web sites, click onto the very useful site maintained by the Univesity of Michigan http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs

I don't know how I happened upon it, but you can just find all kinds of stuff in The National Archives at http://www.archives.gov/historical.docs/document.html?doc=38title.raw=Constitution!252

If you want to look at state constitutions, go to www.findlaw.com/casecode/state.html

Project Vote Smart's Web site on current issues in American government offers a number of articles. Go to www.vote-smart.org/issues/

You can find a directory of numerous federalism links at www.gmu.edu/

The Brookings Institution's policy analyses and recommendations on a variety of issues can be accessed at www.brook.edu/

For a libertarian approach to issues relating to federalism, go to the Cato Institute's Web page at www.cato.org/

National Assocation of State Information Resource Executives: www.nasire.org/

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the leading civil liberties organization, provides an extensive array of information and links concerning civil rights issues at www.aclu.org/

The Liberty Counsel describes itself as "a nonprofit religious civil liberties education and legal defense organization established to preserve religious freedom." The URL for its Web site is www.ic.org/

If you want to read historica Supreme Court decisions, you can find them, listed by name at supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) focuses on how development in communications technology are affecting the constitutional liberties of Americans. You can access the CDT's site at www.cdt.org/

An extensive collection of information on Martin Luther King, Jr., is offered by the Martin Luther King Papers Project at Stanford university. If you wish to check out these papers, go to www.stanford.edu/group/King/

If you are interested in learning more about the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or want to find out how to file a complaint with that agency, go to www.eeoc.gov/

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is online at www.naacp.org/

For information on the League of Latin American Citizens, go to www.mundo.com/lulac.html

The URL for Women's Web World, which provides information on empowerment and equality for women, is www.feminist.org/

If you wish to contact the National Organization for Women (NOW) or check out the resources and links it offers, go to www.now.org/

You can find information on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, including the act's text, at janweb.icdi.wvu.edu/kinder

You can access the Web site of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the nation's largest gay and lesbian political organization, at www.hrc.org/

If you are interested in children's rights and welfare, a good starting place is the Web site of the Child Welfare Institute. Go to www.gocwi.org/

FindLaw, at www.findlaw.com/ U.S. House of Representatives Law Library, at law.house.gov/
Legal Resource Guide, at www.ilrg.com/

Yale University Library, one of the great research institutions, has a Social Science Library and Information Services. If you want to roam around some library sources of public opinion data, this is an interesting site to visit. Go to www.library.yale.edu/socsci/opinion/

According to its home page, the mission of National Election Studies (NES) "is to produce high quality data on voting, public opinion, and political participation that serves the research needs of social scientists, teachers, students, and policymakes concerned with understanding the theoretical and empirical foundations of mass politics in a democratic society." This is a good place to obtain information related to public opinion. Find it at www.umich.edu/~nes/

The Pew Charitable Trusts serves the public interest by providing information, advancing policy solutions and supporting civic life. The Trusts will invest $248 million in fiscal year 2007 to provide organizations and citizens with fact-based research and practical solutions for challenging issues. http://www.pewtrusts.org/

Now, with the explosion of weblogs and Web 2.0 services such as search, tagging, and Technorati, the Web itself has become a single, massive-scale outlet for citizen journalism. One simply doesn't need Command Post much anymore, but we're keeping the site up as an archive ... a small historical landmark along the hyperlink highway. "Oh, look, honey," Web travelers might say, "here's where average people around the world first collaboratively reported and documented history for themselves on a global scale." Something may happen one day that warrants reactivation of the network, but until then, please read and enjoy. http://www.command-post.org/

The Corner on National Review Online http://corner.nationalreview.com/

John H. Hinderaker is a lawyer with a nationwide litigation practice. Scott W. Johnson is a Minneapolis attorney. For more than 10 years, they have written on public policy issues. Paul Mirengoff is an attorney in Washington, D.C. They publish at http://www.powerlineblog.com/

History and history in the making at the Belmont Club http://www.belmontclub.blogspot.com/ for earlier posts. Newer posts are on http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/.

Roger L. Simon is a mystery novelist and screenwriter. He can be found at http://www.rogerlsimon.com/

James Lileks, a columnist for the Star-Tribune and syndicated political humor columnist for Newhouse News Service, publishes humiliating defenseless ephemera at http://www.lileks.com/

Captain's Quarters - Thus every blogger, in his kind, is bit by him who comes behind -- http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/

The Evangelical Outpost - reflections on culture, politics, and religion from an evangelical worldview - http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/

Gideons

I sometimes have some fairly unpopular opinions. This is one of those times.

This morning, at my church, we had a Gideon speaker get up to speak. As soon as he got up to speak, this scripture started running through my head. It was something about not throwing your pearls before swine.

Right before the Gideon speaker, we had heard about our church's ministry in Brazil. I'd been wondering why we had to go halfway across the world to minister the gospel. When the Gideon speaker got up, he shed some light on the subject. We have callused our Western world by over-disseminating the gospel, maybe.

This is, trust me, such a strange thought for me to have. I grew up wanting to be a sort of biblical Johnny Appleseed. I remember in grade school, when I heard the story of Johnny Appleseed, I literally wanted to be like him, except scattering God's Word all over the world.

The problem is that I hear God's Words spoken by the strangest people in bus stations and homeless shelters. Everyone knows a couple of verses by which they justify their lifestyle, but nobody knows or has much interest in knowing the whole book. It's like Western society has been given a Gospel innoculation to make it immune to the real Gospel message.

Here are some notes from an article on the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul. I don't entirely agree with him, but I think he has some points.

A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.

I'm a dedicated Republican, as it so happens. But, I agree that the inextricable tying of evangelicals to the Republican Party is disastrous. It leaves us talking about political issues more than we talk about Jesus Christ. People who don't agree with our politlcal convictions might not be attracted to the Savior if we identify the two so closely.

He said there were Christians on both the left and the right who had turned politics and patriotism into “idolatry.”

It seems to me that Christians of all stripes are turning a lot of different leaders into idols, political leaders = political idols. religious leaders = religious idols. I think we should look back to what God said to the Israelites when they wanted a king. As Christians, God is our leader.

“I am sorry to tell you,” he continued, “that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.”

I think that abortion and homosexuality are bad things, but I think that they are nowhere near as bad as people dying and going to hell. I never shop at our local Wallgreen's because of their support of homosexuality. But, I don't see many commandments in the Bible about trying to contain or hinder the sin of the world. I see commandments about weeding out sin in my life, to perfect my testimony to that world. I also see statements about shining as a light to a lost world. We can't stop the world from being . . . worldly. The god of this world is the devil. We shouldn't be surprised if the world is more and more evil. We should pick out battles and not waste our time trying to change the world. We should, instead, divide and conquer. Change individuals with the gospel and the world may slowly change a little.

AMEN, Rivkin & Casey

A few quotes taken from David Rivkin & Lee Casey's Article "The British Way" from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL's Editorial Page.

Indeed, judging by some of the more extreme criticism leveled against war-on-terror policies, there are those who consider as the purest tyranny any compromise of individual autonomy to meet the community's needs.

For 30 years, Britain's military and law-enforcement forces investigated, infiltrated, surveilled and openly fought the IRA and won, deriving two important advantages in the process. First, Britain's armed forces and police have been thoroughly schooled in the most advanced techniques of surveillance and counterterrorism. Second, its political establishment and population (obviously, with some exceptions) have become accustomed to the measures, sometimes intrusive and burdensome, necessary to prevent terrorist attacks.

The United States cannot, of course, adopt all aspects of the British system; our constitutional systems are really quite different. Nevertheless, there are clear lessons that can be drawn from the British experience--especially in affording the police greater investigative latitude and in accepting some compromise of privacy in exchange for a greater security. Bush administration critics often misquote Benjamin Franklin as having said that "those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither." What Franklin actually proposed was a balancing test: "They that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." In fighting terrorism, the British appear to have been striking that balance successfully.

Internet supervision

Marybeth Hicks has a great article on how she'd rather be an overprotective momma than ever see her kids on the 6:00 news. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0806/hicks081006.php3

EU: Hezbollah not a terrorist group ?

"'Given the sensitive situation, I don't think we will be acting on this now,' said Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja, speaking for the 25 member states of the European Union, which this week rebuffed a plea from 213 U.S. congressmen to brand Hezbollah a terrorist group." - Diana West

"Some Islamist groups, notably Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad in Palestine and Al-Qaeda have used suicide bombers against civilians, soldiers, and government officials of the regimes that they oppose." -Wikipedia

"Nowadays, Hezbollah operates a number of operative agents in Israel, whose objectives are threefold:

• Establishing and developing terrorist groups in Israel with the purpose of perpetrating terrorist attacks in Israel, orchestrated directly by Hezbollah.
• Smuggling arms and ammunition ­including rockets ­and concealing them in Israel.
• Providing logistic and operative assistance for perpetrating terrorist attacks in Israel by Palestinian terrorist groups based in the Palestinian Authority administered territories." -- The Lebanese Foundation for Peace

In April 2005 Al-Manar (Hezbollah's satellite TV station) broadcast a 12-part series, also produced in Syria, the biography of Yehia Ayash (“the engineer”), one of Hamas’ most vicious senior terrorists. The series exalted and glorified Yehia Ayash, turning a brutal killer into a role model.(Between 1994 and 1996 he was behind several suicide bombing attacks in Israeli cities whose aim was to sabotage the Oslo peace process, and was responsible for the killing, wounding and maiming of hundreds of Israeli civilians.) http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/6_05/hezb_pub_e.htm

What I keep thinking as I'm reading up on this is . . . If right and wrong are determined by who seems to be getting the worst of the fight at the moment, the underdog, then the scales of our foreign policy will keep tipping back and forth as we support one movement until it gets strong enough to prevail, then we turn and start supporting its rival. This seems to be a very unstable way to determine foreign policy. This is what public opinion will do, though, without some intervention. Govt. leaders: When it comes to things as difficult to understand as terrorism, we've got to count on you, to some degree, to act in our best interest and not listen to us whining and mewing. Please hire people who are better and smarter than us, 'cause honestly we're pretty confused.

Sudden Jihad Syndrome

Have you heard of Sudden Jihad Syndrome? I hadn't. Jeff Jacoby mentions it today over at Jewish World Review (http://www.jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby080706.php3), as he discusses Naveed Haq. Mr. Haq "forced his way into the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle by holding a gun to the head of a 13-year-old girl. Once inside, Haq announced, "I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel," and opened fire with two semi-automatic pistols. Pam Waechter, 58, died on the spot. Five other women, one of them 20 weeks pregnant, were shot in the abdomen, knee, or arm."

How does a country maintain freedom of religion when one of the religions is determined to make war on the other? Must not freedom of religion in this case give way to other freedoms, like freedom from semi-automatic pistol fire?

Child Custody Protection Act

I'm not terribly strident about abortion to tell you the truth. Maybe I should be. I don't know. I guess what disturbs me most about interstate transportation of minors to obtain an abortion is not the abortion. It's that we're institutionalizing (if that's the right word) the circumvention of our laws. Disrespect for authority is pretty common among teenagers. Did I hear right that Senator Reid's block of the CCPA's passage into conference committee, thus keeping it from becoming law this term, was about his concern that clergy be allowed to circumvent the state laws? It's like the left's trying to play the church vs. state card that it's seen work so well for the right.

Whether you're left, right, or center, we have laws in this country. Circumventing them is not good. Teaching our children that politics or religion make breaking the law okay is horrible.

Of course, our getting our kids to pray at football games, refusing to acknowledge certain supreme court rulings falls under the same heading. The right is just as bad as the left.