It was my outrage at the unconstitutional assignment of taxpayer dollars to Left-wing advocacy groups that contributed significantly to my decision to found The Conservative Caucus in 1974. Defunding the Left continues to be one of TCC’s top priorities.

OBAMA'S THREAT TO OUR CHILDREN

One of the most dangerous items on the Obama agenda is government control of children at ever younger ages, separating them from their parents under the guise of "early childhood education". Obama described early childhood education as among his highest priorities, and his nominee for Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, is a strong advocate.

As The New York Times observes, the $10 million Obama has pledged for early childhood education would amount to the largest new Federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965. Richard Nixon, in 1971, wisely vetoed a bill that would have underwritten child care for everyone, arguing, correctly, that the bill would commit the vast moral authority of the national government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over/against the family-centered approach.

"It was the morning after the presidential election, and Matthew Melmed, executive director of Zero to Three, a national organization devoted to early childhood education, could barely contain his exultation.

"Mr. Melmed fired off an e-mail message to his board and staff, reminding them of President-elect Barack Obama’s interest in the care and education of the very young and congratulating Mr. Obama for campaigning on a ‘comprehensive platform for early childhood.’

"Mr. Melmed was not alone in his excitement. After years of what they call backhanded treatment by the Bush administration, whose focus has been on the testing of older children, many advocates are atremble with anticipation over Mr. Obama’s espousal of early childhood education.

"In the presidential debates, he twice described it as among his highest priorities, and his choice for secretary of education, Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools superintendent, is a strong advocate for it.

"And the $10 billion Mr. Obama has pledged for early childhood education would amount to the largest new federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965. Now, Head Start is a $7 billion federal program serving about 900,000 preschoolers.

" ‘People are absolutely ecstatic,’ said Cornelia Grumman, executive director of the First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group. ‘Some people seem to think the Great Society is upon us again.’ …

"It is not as though Mr. Obama is running against the wind. Major philanthropists including Bill Gates; Warren Buffett’s children; and George B. Kaiser, an Oklahoma oil billionaire, are financing education efforts for the very young. And the chairman of the Federal Reserve and many governors have said that expanding early childhood education should be a national priority. …

"Mr. Obama’s platform, which Mr. Duncan helped write, emphasizes extending care to infants and toddlers as well, and it makes helping poor children a priority. It would also provide new federal financing for states rolling out programs to serve young children of all incomes.

"Outright opponents are fewer, and certainly less influential than they once were. In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon vetoed a bill that would have underwritten child care for everyone, arguing that the bill ‘would commit the vast moral authority of the national government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach.’

"For years after that, conservatives blocked many early childhood initiatives, but resistance has diminished in recent years." Source: The New York Times, 12/17/08, p. 1, Sam Dillon

I first heard Odetta sing in the summer of 1960 when, as President of the Harvard Student Council, I was a leading participant in the National Student Congress held in Minneapolis.

That same year, I gave my permission to allow Communist folk singer Pete Seeger the opportunity to perform on the Harvard campus. This was my first real exposure to folk music – – – which was used by leftists as a means for radicalizing potential allies in the student community.

Here is what The Washington Post (12/4/08, p.B6) had to say on the occasion of Odetta’s death: "Odetta, 77, a forceful singer during the folk music revival and civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s and a self-described ‘musical historian’ who championed the downtrodden by reviving slave, prison and work songs, died Dec. 2 at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. She had heart disease and pulmonary fibrosis.

" ‘She was one of the great singers of late-20th-century America,’ said folk musician and peace activist Pete Seeger, who met Odetta at a folk songfest in 1950. He said in an interview that ‘she sang straight, no tricks,’ meaning her performance showed none of the idiosyncrasies that could detract from the melodies and messages of the words she sang. …

"Seeger and singer Harry Belafonte were among her earliest advocates, and she was said to have inspired Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez and Joan Armatrading. …

"A classically trained singer, Odetta adapted her remarkable vocal range -- from soprano to baritone -- to a folk repertoire that included blues, swing, sea chanteys, spirituals and protest songs. She was widely remembered for singing ‘O Freedom’ and two other spirituals as part of what she called the ‘Freedom Trilogy’ at the 1963 March on Washington, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. introduced her.

"She tirelessly performed benefit concerts for the civil rights movement, and in 1963, she sang in front of President John F. Kennedy on the nationally televised civil rights special ‘Dinner With the President.’ Alongside King, she marched for voting rights in 1965 in Selma, Ala.

" ‘In folk music, complex emotions are spoken about with such simplicity that it's the highest form of art to me,’ she told the New York Times in 1965. ‘You can unclutter things.’ …

"Her interest in long-forgotten music from chain gangs, fieldworkers and cowboys -- music she unearthed in many cases from the vaults of the Library of Congress -- earned her a reputation as the ‘First Lady of the Folk Song.’ But she shunned categorization and saw herself foremost as a ‘musical historian,’ she told The Washington Post.

"Accompanied by her wood-bodied guitar ‘Baby,’ Odetta rose to international prominence on television, stage and record with an indomitable presence and voice that flexed from bell-like clarity to nasal grittiness on songs such as ‘Waterboy,’ ‘The House of the Rising Sun,’ ‘He's Got the Whole World in His Hands,’ ‘Somebody Talking 'Bout Jesus’ and ‘Keep On Moving It On.’

"In 1960, New York Times music critic Robert Shelton called Odetta ‘the most glorious new voice in American folk music.’ But she was already a veteran. She had played coffeehouses and Carnegie Hall, as well as the Newport Folk Festival, and appeared to poignant effect on TV shows with Belafonte and poet Langston Hughes. …

"After graduating from high school, Odetta followed her mother into work as a domestic worker. She also studied music in night classes at Los Angeles City College and found choral work in the West Coast touring company of the musical ‘Finian's Rainbow.’

"The show took her to San Francisco in 1949, and it was there that she was exposed to the folk music scene. …

"While maintaining a prolific career in concerts and festivals, Odetta starred in a stage production about the life of blues singer Bessie Smith and periodically took supporting roles onscreen, including a dramatic part as a servant who kills a child in ‘Sanctuary’ (1961), a film based on a William Faulkner novel. She also played a supporting part in the 1974 TV movie ‘The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman’ starring Cicely Tyson.

"Her late-career albums were devoted to jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald (‘To Ella,’ 1998) and blues guitarist and singer Leadbelly (‘Looking for a Home,’ 2001). She earned a Grammy Award nomination for ‘Blues Everywhere I Go,’ a 1999 release honoring blueswomen of the 1920s and 1930s, and a second nomination for ‘Gonna Let it Shine’ (2005), a live album of Christmas spirituals.

"In 1999, she won the National Endowment for the Arts' National Medal of Arts.

Vera Glaser tried to get me to date her daughter, and shared some of her personal secrets with me. Now she’s dead.

"Vera Glaser thought the questions asked by her fellow reporters at President Nixon's February 1969 news conference were entirely too easy. Her colleagues asked about international affairs, cigarette advertising on television, school desegregation and an oil spill off the California coast.

" ‘I had about seven questions in mind that he could be asked,’ the veteran journalist told a Penn State oral history project. ‘When he recognized me, I had to decide quickly what I was going to ask him.’

"She noted that of his 200 presidential appointments at that point, only three had gone to women. ‘Can we expect some more equitable recognition of women's abilities or are we going to remain the lost sex?’ she asked.

"Some of her colleagues chuckled, she noticed, and Nixon smiled and asked teasingly if she would like to come into the administration. ‘But he must have realized, "I'm on television with 50 million people watching," and he turned quite serious,’ Ms. Glaser said.

" ‘Very seriously, I did not know that only three had gone to women, and I shall see that we correct that imbalance very promptly,’ he said, according to a transcript of the conference.

"Catharine East, the Labor Department researcher whose work on women's employment inspired the National Organization for Women, saw the news conference and was delighted with Ms. Glaser's question.

" ‘I thought, "Here's a woman after my own heart," ’ she told The Washington Post in 1983. East, who died in 1996, noted that the women's movement was not receiving any serious news coverage, and most of what was written was patronizing and the issues trivialized.

"So East sent Ms. Glaser a letter. ‘I gather from the tone of your question, you might be interested in a few statistics,’ the researcher said. From that start, Ms. Glaser wrote her definitive work, a five-part syndicated newspaper series about discrimination against women in employment and government policy.

"Ms. Glaser, 92, Washington bureau chief for the former North American Newspaper Alliance syndicate of 90 newspapers, and national correspondent and syndicated columnist for the old Knight Ridder newspaper chain, died Nov. 26 at Brighton Gardens at Friendship Heights in Chevy Chase. She had Parkinson's disease.

"As a result of her question to Nixon, the first systematic program to recruit women into federal executive positions was set up.

" ‘She made a significant difference in the coverage of the women's liberation movement,’ said Kimberly Wilmot Voss, a journalism historian at the University of Central Florida. Women like her ‘worked behind the scenes. Their names might not be well known, but they laid the groundwork, and she was on the forefront of writing about the women's movement.’

"Ms. Glaser's daughter agreed. ‘She felt she was a voice for women in journalism when it was an uphill fight,’ said the Rev. Carol Barriger of Redwood City, Calif. Survivors also include three grandchildren and a great-grandson.

"Ms. Glaser served on a couple of presidential commissions having to do with women and the White House Fellows. She and Malvina Stephenson shared the ‘Offbeat Washington’ column for five years and broke several important stories.

"In June 1969, she quoted FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover calling columnist Carl Rowan ‘racist’ for raising objections to FBI wiretaps of political activists. In 1970, she and Stephenson wrote about Clark Mollenhoff, a special counsel to the White House, collecting the names of 250 State Department employees who criticized Nixon's decision to expand the Vietnam War into Cambodia.

"She was a past president of the Washington Press Club, formerly the Women's National Press Club, which was started in response to the prohibition against women in the National Press Club. In 1963, after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev insisted during a visit to Washington that female as well as male correspondents be permitted to cover him, she wrote a pointed story about the event.

" ‘Female writers in Washington had a communist dictator to thank for temporarily lifting them from their second-class status,’ she wrote.

"Born in St. Louis, Ms. Glaser became aware of gender discrimination when she graduated first in her high school class during the Depression. That typically meant a scholarship to the local Washington University, but a young man got it. Decades later, she recalled, that snub and later workplace discrimination turned her into ‘a fighting feminist.’

"In 1939, she married Herbert R. Glaser, who died in 1992. They moved to Washington and she began publishing freelance pieces in magazines until joining the old Washington Times Herald in 1944. She worked for a series of news outlets, as well as on the staffs of Sen. Charles Potter (R-Mich.), Sen. Kenneth Keating (R-N.Y.) and the women's division of the Republican National Committee.

"During the 1960s and 1970s, she was with her newspaper syndicate and Knight Ridder, and in the 1980s worked at Washingtonian magazine. In the 1990s, she was a correspondent for Maturity News Service. Ms. Glaser also was a member of the Cosmos Club and the International Women's Media Foundation.

"In the past few years, she lost much of her sight, but friends, who described her as a warm woman with a ready smile, said she still enjoyed having front-page headlines and editorials read to her." Source: The Washington Post, 12/7/08, p. C7, Patricia Sullivan

The new Capitol Visitors Center is a disgrace, projecting, as it does, unauthorized changes in the text and meaning of the Constitution of the United States.

"Matthew Spalding, director of the Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation, says the visitor center selectively cuts passages from the Constitution, weighing in on a long-running debate about the scope and limits of federal power by taking the liberal side of that debate, envisioning broad congressional powers that the Founding Fathers never intended.

" ‘I started looking at this stuff, and it’s just patently absurd,’ he said. ‘The dominant message when you walk [through] the doors in this exhibit you’re hit with is the role of Congress is to fulfill our greatest aspirations. So the message you’re teaching these millions of visitors each year is the Constitution really isn’t what we thought it was; it’s the open-ended thing that’s up to Congress to decide what it means.’

"The top leaders from each party in the House and Senate are expected to host an opening ceremony Tuesday morning for the new center.

"The center cost twice its original budget and is four years late in opening, and as the delays and cost overruns have piled up, so has criticism. Some lawmakers have objected to what they say is left out of the exhibits. Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, fought to have the Pledge of Allegiance and the national motto, ‘In God We Trust,’ added to the displays.

"Mr. Spalding said what was put into the displays is just as problematic as what was left out.

"He singled out the display on ‘Knowledge,’ which he said selectively cuts the powers granted to Congress by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, reducing the full explanation – ‘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 an expansive grant: ‘The Congress shall have Power To … promote … useful Arts.’

"The display says that grant of powers is the basis under which Congress founded the Library of Congress, ‘promoted public education, supported the arts and sciences, and funded extensive research.’

"In addition to knowledge, the other aspirations the displays say Congress is charged with helping fulfill are unity, freedom, defense, exploration and the general welfare.

" ‘In the seeds of how they’re dealing with the Constitution, what they’re really telling everybody, the message they’re really telling everybody, is Congress is unlimited, and it’s Congress that will define our highest ideals and aspirations,’ Mr. Spalding said. ‘When you think about that, that’s a radical message.’ …

"Donald A. Ritchie, the Senate’s associate historian, said the script has been vetted by the leadership of both parties in both the House and Senate and revised repeatedly. …

"Mr. Ritchie said the Library of Congress requested that a section on knowledge be included, and he said even though the library isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, more than 200 years of operation have shown it is fundamental to Congress’ operation." Source: Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times, 12/2/08, B1, B4

In 1968, I was campaign manager for Pennsylvania Congressman Dick Schweiker in a successful campaign to unseat Left-wing Democrat U.S. Senator Joe Clark. Our campaign headquarters was in Harrisburg, and, on a typical day, I would take a long lunchtime walk down Harrisburg’s Main Street to reflect on our strategy and its implementation.

On a particular day I stopped in front of a bookstore and gazed at some very tempting volumes displayed in the window. Then, a very tall man stepped outside the bookstore, and beckoned me inside.

He said, "Young man" (I was then 27 years of age), "ten years from now you will be the same person you are today, except for the people you meet and the books you read. Here are some books you ought to read." He then presented me with about twenty books. I said, "I have a young family and can’t afford to pay for these." He said: "They are my gift to you."

I gratefully accepted the books, and read every one of them. They were well worth my time.

Some years later, when my youngest son, Sam, was twelve years old, we observed that the donor of those books, Charles "Tremendous" Jones, was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Christian Businessmen’s Association in Washington, D.C.

Sam and I went to the meeting, expectantly, because I was tremendously impressed with the man known as Charles "Tremendous" Jones. At the close of the meeting, I went to the front of the hall and introduced myself, and Mr. Jones said, "Howard, of course I know who you are. I’ve been following your career, and I’m grateful for all that you do. Here is my list of the 100 most important books I’ve ever read. Please give me your list." I subsequently provided such a list to Mr. Jones.

Recently, Charles "Tremendous" Jones went to his Heavenly reward, following a very successful career in the life insurance business and as president of Executive Books/Life Management Services in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

Here is some of the advice that he gave to his grandson, Sammy.

"Remember:
Learn to laugh at yourself.
Learn to help others laugh.
Learn to laugh when you are up.
Learn to laugh when you are down.
Learn to laugh."

Charles "Tremendous" Jones included in every speech the inspiring phrase "Life is tremendous". He was a great evangelist and a great man.

It was a great pleasure to see Admiral John Poindexter at the Pumpkin Papers celebration on October 30. I’m a big fan of Admiral Poindexter, with whom I had an important meeting at a critical point during the Reagan administration.

The background is this: Indiana Senator Dick Lugar had pushed sanctions on the anti-Communist government of South Africa, sanctions which once placed in force would, and did, benefit the Communist-dominated African National Congress.

Pat Buchanan and I drafted a veto message of the sanctions legislation which had been approved in Congress and sent to President Reagan’s desk. President Reagan, with minor changes, signed our draft veto.

The question then became ‘would the veto be sustained?’ I requested and received a meeting with Admiral Poindexter, then the President’s National Security Adviser, who strongly agreed with President Reagan’s opposition to sanctions, and, with White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan. They asked for advice on how the President’s veto could be sustained. I said, ‘The answer is simple. Have the President send a message to every person who contributed $1,000 or more to those Republican Senators up for re-election in 1986, urging that they contact those Senators and ask that they vote to sustain his veto.’ Poindexter and Regan agreed and said they would take action.

After several days had passed with no action being taken, I called Admiral Poindexter to see where matters stood. He told me that White House Political Director Mitch Daniels (a former chief of staff to Senator Lugar) had strongly objected to the implementation of my proposal, saying it would lead to the defeat of the Republican Senators who voted to sustain President Reagan’s veto.

Accordingly, those 1986 candidates for re-election to the Senate voted to override the President, and sanctions were imposed. Sadly, every one of those Senators up for re-election in 1986 whom I urged be contacted, went down to defeat. They included Marlowe Cook of Kentucky, James Abdnor of South Dakota, and others.

Mitch Daniels wasn’t really working for Ronald Reagan. He was working for his Indiana colleague, Dick Lugar.

In the Soviet Union, they had a "ministry of culture". I wish the days were past when we imitate the Soviet Union.

Two organizations parallel to those in the Soviet Union are the National Endowment for the Arts, our ministry of culture, and National Public Radio (NPR), our "official" instrument of news, opinion, and culture.

NPR has always had a leftward slant (which will undoubtedly be reinforced by their new chief executive fresh from her labors at the left-wing New York Times):

"National Public Radio reached into the new-media industry yesterday to find a new chief executive, hiring a top manager at the online operation of the New York Times to run NPR’s growing news and information franchise.

"Vivian Schiller, 47, will take over as president and CEO of Washington-based NPR at a time when many media companies are under severe economic stress due to declining advertising support and rapidly shifting consumer tastes. The noncommercial organization has bucked those trends, though, buoyed by a popular programming operation and solid financial footing. …

"Schiller takes over an organization, however, that has been roiled by internal disagreement. Former chief executive Ken Stern pushed NPR into such new ventures as satellite radio and online music vending, upsetting the hundreds of noncommercial radio stations nationwide that rely on NPR for programming, and which supply the bulk of NPR’s revenue in the form of annual dues. …

"Schiller will join NPR in January from NYTimes.com, the newspaper’s online operation, where she is senior vice president and general manager. She also has held senior management posts at the Discovery Times Channel, a joint venture of the Times and Discovery Communications of Silver Spring, and at CNN Productions, a unit of Turner Broadcasting that produces documentaries and TV series. Before that, she was a simultaneous Russian interpreter in the then-Soviet Union. …

" ‘I think the board has been very consistent in its message that we are a system,’ said Stevenson, a Harvard Business School professor. ‘You can’t have healthy public radio stations without NPR, and you can’t have a healthy NPR without the stations.’" Source: The Washington Post, Paul Farhi, 11/12/08, p. C7

We mourn the passing of our friend, Marshall Fritz, founder of the Alliance for the Separation of School and State.

He died on Election Day, November 4, 2008, after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Marshall is survived by his wife of 44 years, Joan, his son, Eugene, his three daughters and their husbands, Susan and Christopher Bethea of Clovis, Lucie and Tony Ruiz of Fresno, Ann and Kyle McKenna of Pittsburgh, twelve grandchildren and his brother, Russell Fritz of Baja, Mexico.

Studs Terkel was a left-winger, but a very charming and interesting left-winger, whom it was my privilege to meet more than a decade ago and by whom I was interviewed at length for one of his books.

Studs has now gone to his reward at the age of 96. I am glad I had a chance to meet him.

"Much of what’s important to know about Studs Terkel could be shorthanded in that nickname. Who calls anyone ‘Studs’ anymore? Who even called guys that back when – the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s, when Louis ‘Studs’ Terkel honed his craft as a journalist, raconteur, and chronicler and champion of the working class.

"As it happened, the nickname came from the character Studs Lonigan, hero of James T. Farrell’s novels about a kid from Chicago’s South Side, which was the Bronx-born Terkel’s adopted home.

"But ‘Studs’ suggested much of what Terkel, who died yesterday at 96, was: a man who came up on the real people’s side of town, who knew the gangsters and the showgirls, and who never lost his feel for the people at the back of the bus, slumped and slumbering in the dreary light. He was rumpled, and smoked cigars. Of course.

"Reporters and priests and psychologists know it takes a certain kind of personality to get a certain kind of person to speak honestly. Terkel’s gift – displayed on his syndicated radio program for decades, as well as in print – was just this. He perfected a kind of shoe-leather approach to writing the history of America in the last century that coaxed extraordinary tales out of nobodies. …

"For what doth it profit a man to gain the whole world (or at least a job again) if he wakes up every morning fearing something far more terrifying than his own death: the loss of his son in distant battle?

"An unapologetic and lifelong lefty, Terkel’s special affinity was with the waitress and the tool-and-die man. ‘I never met picket line or petition I didn’t like,’ Terkel once said. He was an avid New Dealer in the 1930s and was blacklisted in the 1950s, suspected of communist leanings, a suspicion that cost him his national TV show. …

"The perfect Terkel quote: ‘When the Chinese Wall was built, where did the masons go for lunch?’ he said when he received an honorary National Book Award medal in 1997. ‘When Caesar conquered Gaul, was there not even a cook in the army? And here’s the big one: When the Armada sank, you read that King Philip wept. Were there no other tears? Ad that’s what I believe oral history is about. It’s about those who shed those other tears, who on rare occasions of triumph laugh that other laugh.’ " Source: Paul Farhi, The Washington Post, 11/1/08, pp. C1, C3

We have work to do in rebuilding opposition in Congress to the North American Union (NAU).

We have lost 12 co-sponsors. Nancy Boyda of Kansas was defeated for reelection. Barbara Cubin of Wyoming retired. David Davis of Tennessee was defeated. Jo Ann Davis of Virginia died. Terry Everett of Alabama retired. Duncan Hunter of California retired. Charles Norwood of Georgia died. Ralph Regula of Ohio retired. Bill Sali of Idaho was defeated. Jim Saxton of New Jersey retired, and Tom Tancredo of Colorado retired, and Virgil Goode of Virginia who has apparently been defeated, with a recount pending.

The remaining co-sponsors in the 111^th Congress are:

• Michele Bachmann of Minnesota Spencer Bachus of Alabama
• Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland Rob Bishop of Utah
• John Boozman of Arkansas Paul C. Broun of Georgia
• Lincoln Davis of Tennessee John J. Duncan, Jr. of Tennessee
• Mary Fallin of Oklahoma Virginia Foxx of North Carolina
  Trent Franks of Arizona Scott Garrett of New Jersey
• Kirsten Gillibrand of New York Phil Gingrey of Georgia
• Sam Graves of Missouri Dean Heller of Nevada
• Darrell Issa of California Walter B. Jones, Jr. of North Carolina
• Marcy Kaptur of Ohio Steven LaTourette of Ohio
• Frank Lucas of Oklahoma Kenny Marchant of Texas
• Jim Marshall of Georgia Thaddeus G. McCotter of Michigan
• Gary Miller of California Jeff Miller of Florida
• Jerry Moran of Kansas Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania
• Sue Wilkins Myrick of North Carolina Ron Paul of Texas
• Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota John E. Peterson of Pennsylvania
  Ted Poe of Texas Heath Shuler of North Carolina
• Cliff Stearns of Florida Bart Stupak of Michigan
• John Sullivan of Oklahoma Lee Terry of Nebraska
• Patrick J. Tiberi of Ohio Zach Wamp of Tennessee
• Robert J. Wittman of Virginia

Please join our efforts with your maximum donation, by signing up to receive our email alerts, by taking action and telling your friends.

The popular vote for Obama on November 4 makes the work of The Conservative Caucus (TCC) even more urgent and more important.

We are ready to lead the way against

1. restoration of the Fairness Doctrine,
2. the unconstitutional award of voting privileges in the Congress to D.C.,
3. socialized medicine,
4. amnesty for illegal aliens,
5. higher taxes and spending,
6. more Federal involvement in the indoctrination of students in the government schools,
7. elimination of the secret ballot in union elections, and
8. drastic cuts in U.S. defense spending, particularly with regard to SDI, space programs, and the U.S. Navy.

Please join our efforts with your maximum donation, by signing up to receive our email alerts, by taking action, and telling your friends.

It is not correct to say that Barack Obama is America’s President-elect.

Yes, he did win a majority of the popular vote and pluralities-plus in states with a majority of the Electoral College votes.

However, until the votes are cast by electors meeting in the 50 state capitals plus D.C., no decision will have been made as to the identity of the next President, and it can also be argued that no person is President-elect until the votes are counted in January in a joint session of Congress.

I wish no harm to befall Mr. Obama, but should events conspire to immobilize his candidacy prior to December 15, whether because of his failure to meet the Constitutional test for natural born citizen, a problem of health, or, an accident, or a physical attack, the decision would then fall to the electors at their meetings on December 15.

It is conceivable that, in such circumstances, the electors would divide their votes among John McCain, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton.

I encourage you to carefully read the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution which spells out the procedures which are to be followed:

"The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;—The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; —The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. [And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President—] The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."

I did 30 minutes this evening with John Clark of "America Betrayed". Clark is the founder of Americans for Immigration Control with whom I began working on the immigration issue in the 1990’s. We discussed the failure of the GOP to follow through on promises concerning immigration which they made during the mid-1990’s under the Clinton Administration, and how the leaders of the GOP, both George Bush and John McCain, have concluded that efforts to gain support from Hispanic voters, legal and illegal, and to foster good relations with Mexico, take precedence over the expectations that were raised in years gone by.

I’ve known Colin Powell since his fellow left-winger Frank Carlucci brought him into the White House staff and subsequently aided his career every step of the way.

When Powell was on the National Security Council staff of President Reagan, about once every week I argued with him about U.S. policy concerning Nicaragua. Powell was overly sympathetic to the Sandinistas, and wrong on a great many other issues, including abortion.

He and his wife have been vehement pro-aborts throughout his public career and he indicated his concern about the appointment of Supreme Court justices as a reason he had decided to support Barack Obama.

Birds of a feather do flock together.

Americans oppose merging the United States, Mexico and Canada into a North American Union (NAU) similar to the European Union, according to a poll conducted by The Conservative Caucus (TCC). Political leaders from the three governments have been working since 2005 through the "Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)" to bring about what the Mexican government has called a "major integration" of North America.

All poll respondents agreed that a North American Union is unnecessary.

Specific aspects of the NAU did little better at winning support. A common currency (possibly to be called the Amero) was opposed by 100% and the building of a NAFTA Superhighway (beginning with construction of the Trans-Texas Corridor) also received unanimous opposition.

Those responding to the poll did not believe that President Bush has the Constitutional authority to carry out the creation of a North American Union (98% no and 2% undecided) without Congressional approval. However, they also look unfavorably on Congressional action, with 98% saying they would be less likely to support a candidate who backs the North American Union (NAU) scheme.

The poll was conducted by mail during the spring and summer with about 5,000 responses.

The Conservative Caucus (TCC) is a grass roots action organization, formed in 1974. It was active in defeating the SALT II Treaty, repealing the Catastrophic Coverage Act, blocking the Clinton health-care takeover, and impeaching President Clinton.

POLL SAYS "NAFTA SUPERHIGHWAY" SHOULD NOT BE BUILT

Security concerns cause many Americans to oppose the construction of a "NAFTA Superhighway" according to a poll conducted by The Conservative Caucus (TCC). Ninety-eight percent of respondents believe it would "greatly increase" the possibility of a major terrorist attack in the United States. All respondents believed that the lack of inspection by U.S. customs officials could produce a major terrorism threat.

Concern over border control policies was shown in the unanimous answer of "no" to a question asking whether "law enforcement agencies are currently doing enough to keep out illegal immigrants and terrorists?"

The poll was conducted by mail during the summer with about 3,000 responses.

The Conservative Caucus (TCC) is a grass roots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. TCC organized the Coalition to Block the North American Union in 2006. It was active in defeating the SALT II Treaty, repealing the Catastrophic Coverage Act, blocking the Clinton health-care takeover, and impeaching President Clinton.

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Americans want English to be the nation’s official language according to a poll conducted by The Conservative Caucus Foundation (TCCF). Ninety-eight percent of those responding to the poll supported making English the official language.

There was also 98% support for revoking Executive Order 13166 (issued by President Clinton) which required Federal, state and local government agencies to conduct more of their business in other languages. Ninety-nine percent agreed that it is "patriotic and for the good of all immigrants to learn our nation’s unifying language."

The tax burden of illegal immigrants who do not speak English was a concern to 99%, and 99% opposed continuing to provide government forms in a language other than English. The EEOC prosecution of the Salvation Army for requiring employees to speak English on the job was opposed by 89%.

The poll was conducted by mail during the summer and received about 4,000 responses.

The Conservative Caucus Foundation (TCCF), founded in 1976, has published studies on many public policy issues, including some concerning Red China, the Panama Canal, the START treaties, and SDI.

Americans are not willing to accept a North American Union (NAU), merging the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a single political unit, according to a poll conducted by The Conservative Caucus Foundation (TCCF).

Nearly all respondents (98%), agreed that the NAU would be "an assault on our way of life". Defending the border with Mexico, instead of opening it, enjoyed 97% support. Putting Americans under the authority of a trilateral bureaucracy was described by 99% as a "betrayal of our Constitution".

Proceeding with the NAU without getting the approval of Congress or the American public was labeled as "wrong" by 100%. Speaking as taxpayers, 100% of respondents expressed concern over the cost of social programs if the NAU were implemented.

The poll was conducted by mail during summer and received about 2,000 responses.

The Conservative Caucus Foundation (TCCF), founded in 1976, has published studies on many public policy issues, including some concerning Red China, the Panama Canal, the START treaties, and SDI.

It is a sad fact that Senator Joseph Biden, the former chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary is a Constitutional ignoramus.

In his debate with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on October 2, Biden said: "Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had.… The idea he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that.… The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he’s part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous." Source: Transcript of Biden-Palin Vice Presidential debate on October 2, 2008, www.CNN.com.

Article I, Section 3 says "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided."

Article I is all about the Legislative Branch and its powers. It is Article II which establishes that "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years … together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term…."

"OTTAWA, September 29, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In his strongest statements in support of unlimited abortion on demand in Canada, Prime Minister Harper today told reporters that his government would not only not open the abortion issue itself, but would prevent anyone else from raising it." 

"Asked by a reporter if Harper could give assurances to pro-abortion groups, who are accusing the Conservatives of engineering a stealth pro-life campaign, Harper said that he could."

" ‘The answer is yes.  This government will not open, will not permit anyone to open the abortion debate. Our position is clear,’ he said, speaking in French.

  "Another French-speaking reporter sought clarification, asking if Harper was prepared to promise that he would not tolerate the reopening of the abortion debate.  ‘That's absolutely correct,’ replied Harper emphatically. ‘It's the position we took in the last parliament. Our position in the future is that this government will not open the abortion debate and will not allow another opening of the abortion debate.’"

  "Jim Hughes, President of Campaign Life Coalition - the political arm of the pro-life movement - told LifeSiteNews.com that Harper's statements proved once again that pro-life advocates must vote for the pro-life candidate in their own ridings regardless of the party they represent.  Hughes said that he has told people for years that Harper would not protect the unborn.  ‘I'm sorry that there are people out there who have believed that he was waiting for a majority before acting on the issue,’ said Hughes." Source: LifeSiteNews.com, 9/29/08, John-Henry Westen

There is overwhelming support for returning the U.S. military to bases in Panama, according to a poll conducted by The Conservative Caucus Foundation.

An overwhelming 96% expressed support for "returning U.S. military forces to Panama", from which they could counter growing Red Chinese influence at the strategically crucial isthmus. Only 1% were opposed, while 3% were undecided.

The U.S. abandoned all its Panama bases at the end of 1999. Panama has no army or navy, leaving it unable to effectively defend the Canal against a terrorist attack.

TCCF President Howard Phillips has traveled frequently to Panama to review the security situation and discuss the possibilities of a U.S. return with Panamanians.

The Panama poll was conducted by mail during the summer, and received about 500 responses.

The Conservative Caucus Foundation, founded in 1976, has published studies on many foreign policy and defense issues, including China policy, the Panama Canal, the START treaties, and SDI.

I am persuaded that Thomas Jefferson was, in fact, the father of at least some of the children born to his slave, Sally Hemings.

Sally and Jefferson’s wife shared the same father, and Mrs. Jefferson made Thomas promise not to remarry after her death.

For me, the deciding factor is a personal relationship I had with Madison Denniston, who was my Vice Chairman when I was Chairman of the Republican Party in Boston. Madison was the spitting image of Thomas Jefferson with a dark tan, and he recounted to me stories passed from generation to generation, including comments by his late mother, regarding their direct descent from the third President of the United States, the author of the Declaration of Independence.

Anyone meeting Madison Denniston would be hard pressed not to believe that Mr. Jefferson was his progenitor, several generations before.

It is worth reading Annette Gordon-Reed’s new book, "Jefferson’s Other Clan":

"Jefferson’s Other Clan – A Book Explores a Founding Father’s Rumored Affair [by Annette Gordon-Reed].

"You could write every known fact about Sally Hemings on the back of an envelope.

"She was definitely a mulatto slave owned by Thomas Jefferson. According to people who knew her, she was ‘attractive,’ ‘good-natured,’ ‘industrious’ and ‘orderly.’ She served in the widowed Jefferson's Parisian home when he was minister to France and later at Monticello. She never married but gave birth to a half-dozen children; of the four who lived to adulthood, at least two were light-skinned enough that they could pass for white, and did.

"But history can't say with certainty whether Jefferson fathered any or all of those children during the 38 years he and Hemings worked under the same roof. Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor at New York Law School and author of the new book ‘The Hemingses of Monticello,’ believes Jefferson and Hemings had a kind of shadow marriage, although only Jefferson could have walked away. Assembling the few scraps of data about Hemings that survive, and leaning heavily on both logic and conjecture, Ms. Gordon-Reed makes the case that Jefferson was a man, not a saint, and Hemings was a woman, not a ‘slave girl.’

"Ms. Gordon-Reed came to a similar conclusion in an earlier book, ‘Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy,’ published in 1998. As promised, the book was controversial. Historians, biographers and descendants of the family attacked her as an ideologically motivated revisionist. For Jefferson to have had children with Hemings was a ‘moral impossibility’ -- the Jefferson they knew was incapable of such perfidy. Even when results of genetic tests were published in 1998, showing a DNA link between Jefferson and Hemings's last-born child, some scholars declared the evidence inconclusive because other Jefferson males shared the same chromosome.

But combined with Ms. Gordon-Reed's comprehensive research, it's hard not to be convinced. Jefferson was a product of 18th-century Virginia, and in that time and place, Ms. Gordon-Reed points out, slaves and their owners often had sexual, occasionally romantic, liaisons. Sally Hemings's own father was a white plantation owner, her mother a slave. Furthermore, records show that Jefferson was in the same location as Hemings nine months before each of her children's births.

"If the relationship between Hemings and Jefferson endured for almost 40 years until his death, might it fairly be called love? This ground even Ms. Gordon-Reed fears to tread. It was in Hemings's self-interest -- and her children's -- to remain loyal to Jefferson. Eventually, Jefferson allowed all her children to go free. But why couldn't an attractive, good-natured and industrious woman be drawn to the distinguished Thomas Jefferson?

"Gossip about the two circulated in Washington in the early 19th century, and Hemings bore the brunt of the outrage. (A 1974 book, ‘Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History’ by Fawn Brodie, also speculated on Jefferson's relationship with Hemings and became a national bestseller.) In her own lifetime Hemings and her family ‘were dragged into the national spotlight in a way unprecedented for individual slaves,’ Ms. Gordon-Reed writes. But also unlike most other individual slaves, Sally Hemings has not been lost to history." Source: The Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2008, p. W2, Cynthia Crossen.

It’s disappointing to see so many key Republicans support a $411 million cut in the missile defense agency budget.

The Republican defectors were Bennett of Utah, Collins of Maine, Corker of Tennessee, Gregg of New Hampshire, Sessions of Alabama, Snowe of Maine, Stevens of Alaska, Sununu of New Hampshire, and Warner of Virginia.

One Democrat bucked his party and supported SDI. It was Bayh of Indiana.