Yes I told you so….last October, in these precise words.

Doug Kmiec and Bob Casey would have gotten their plum ambassadorships to some small European countries

One of the enduring qualities of clueless liberal idealists (remember “Legally Blonde” movies?) is their utter inability to differentiate the cover from the content. The starry eyed idealism has made them useful tools for tyrants since before the Second World War. Confusing elections with pluralism and parliaments with liberty, liberals have given comfort to the enemy in Eastern Europe in the late 1940s, in Vietnam in the early 1970s, in Iran in the 1980s, and now in Honduras. Some may be, but I am not an iota surprised to see Hugo Chavez and Mrs. Clinton backing the deposed dictator of Honduras who was removed, lest we forget, by the action of the Supreme Court and Congress of that country after he tried to, in true Hitlerite fashion, arrogate all power to himself-via democratic means of course. The Left never remembers to forget that Adolf Hitler came to power and consolidated it through the mechanisms of German 'democracy'; sadly for Germany in the 1930s, there were no men with backbone enough to challenge the Fuhrer’s democratic populism by means of legislative and judicial actions.

Liberal democrats will do well to remember the sage advice of one of their own, the late Ambassador Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick who cautioned her party’s ideologues against falling in love with the idea of ‘democracy’ without realizing that democracy is but a tool to achieve the objective of free societies: liberty.

For once I don’t blame the mainstream media for being harsher on cheating Republicans than on cheating Democrats. Republicans are and should be held to a higher standard as befits a party that, at least officially, stands for the traditional two parent family as the building block of a free society. That trailer trash liberals from Little Rock or doped elites from Manhattan do it is no excuse for the Republicans, that too conservative ones, to follow through.

Mark Sanford’s sexual escapade is of no consequence to me; his credibility is. Whether he willfully defaults on a bank loan or deliberately breaks the most solemn pledge a man ever gives (at the wedding altar), he loses PUBLIC credibility. There is nothing private about it when that credibility is the cornerstone of a public official’s trust.

Have some shame, a smidge of decency, and resign, Governor. You have done enough damage to our cause and everyday you continue in office, the damage becomes greater.  If your wife and sons forgive you, good for you Governor. But please let us stop this utterly narcissistic nonsense of ‘it is a private matter between him and his wife’. No, it isn’t, no matter how loud the Hollywood apologists shout. Betraying a publicly taken solemn oath is a crisis of public credibility. Yes, it is THAT black and white.

The idea of celebrating a Father’s Day in our good old USA is largely a tongue in cheek joke today.  Notwithstanding the very wise words of the President of the United States on the occasion, the fact remains that his ideological allies have waged a relentless all out war against men in general and fathers in particular over a period of the last forty years. Laws reflect it, bureaucrats are hired to enforce that anti-father prejudice at all levels of government, and media portrayals of fathers as dispensable dunces underline the bias in pop culture.

Asking fathers to be responsible is great, Mr, President. But when the heavy handed mandate of the federal government is that the best ‘father’ is one who desires to see his kids no more than twice a month, who on Earth are you kidding? The less fathers are in the lives of children, the more money is made by lawyers, bureaucrats, and state agencies: that is what the federal government’s ‘family agenda’ has brought us. The President of the United States and members of Congress of either party are too chicken to say it because they know how much this truth rankles feminist radicals, the American Bar Association, and the powerful federal bureaucrats whose livelihoods depend on marginalizing fathers.

Father’s Day. One of the most colorful practical calendar jokes in America.

 An enemy who openly shows his weakness, or is perceived thereof, is a dishonorable enemy. That is a thread of thought that has been true in the Middle East for millennia and more. The constant badgering of Israel by the Obama administration and the mealy mouthed response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions portray an America that would rather sue its enemies in a court of law than confront them on the field of battle. Whether the friends of Israel in America were expecting anything different from an administration exclusively staffed by Ivy League litigators is worth wondering.

What is beyond wondering is that feminized politics and policy do not impress the very masculine approach to statecraft that is found in the cultures of Israel, the Arabs, the Persians, and the Pashtuns. When the most important policy debate in the US military is how to accommodate gays in the trenches and women in fighter planes, it is little wonder that our enemies do not take us or our purpose seriously. Frankly there are a few historians both in the Middle East and here who see in us a power that is reminiscent of the Roman Empire at its zenith where luxurious abstractness and moral ambivalence was seeped into the vitals of a military behemoth slowly, steadily, and, ultimately, fatally.

The debate we should be having is not how to provide for abortions in military hospitals but how to abort the deadly possibility of a nuclear armed Iran. The United States military is supposed to be a fighting force not a uniformed version of Westchester county suburban decadence run amok.

Much has been made about the speech two weeks ago when former Vice President Cheney expressed a nonchalance about state sanction of marriage between gay individuals. Frankly, I don’t see  the big deal.

It has been a long maintained position of KsReaganite that the issue of marriage is within the jurisdiction of states as determined by the representatives of the people of such states. As long as the duly elected legislature of a state determines that a man can marry another man and provides for the fullest protection of the First Amendment rights of those who find such ‘marriages’ an affront, so be it.

As such, I do cautiously respect what the government of New Hampshire did, in stark contrast to the dictatorial edicts of black robed ayatollahs in Iowa, Massachussetts, and Vermont. Let us be clear, however, that for the religious rights of conscience to be protected, it is incumbent that errant  federal judges be forever forbidden to rule upon the issue of gay marriage. With one flick of a pen-egged on by one individual’s desire to be immortalized in the annals of the ABA-the rights of Orthodox Jewish parents and Roman Catholic cathedrals can be eviscerated. This has happened before and continues to happen as we speak.

So here is the deal, my liberal friends: I will support the concept of gay marriage provided that all these conditions are met;

1. Only state legislatures can authorize it
2. Other states or the federal government cannot be forced to accept it
3. Federal judges lose all jurisdiction, per Article 3, Section 2, Exception clause

Kansas Big First, covering two thirds of the state’s geographical area is one of the most reliably Republican seats in the United States House of Representatives. This is the district that has sent people like former Vice President Charles Curtis, Bob Dole, and Pat Roberts to Washington. In other words, the GOP primary is the real election here. And for once, the decision was not simple for KsReaganite. Both the major candidates are honorable, decent men who stand stoutly for time honored principles. What sets apart Tim Huelskamp, however, is his lack of false airs or false modesty. There is not much artificial about the man who is equally at ease being a farmer or a teacher or a legislator and has no need to affect familiarity or distance from those around him. Because of my work I have had the privilege of traveling often throughout the Big First, including Dr. Huelskamp’s legislative district. Those who are his neighbors or business associates routinely show nothing more than ‘oh, Tim, yes I know him’ nonchalance about him…a nonchalance that is refreshingly down to earth and unaffected, and a peculiarly Western Kansas thing.

A professor, a farmer, and an accomplished legislator he may be, but ultimately Tim Huelskamp is simply a regular father, husband, and neighbor. He is the proverbial everyman. And while that kind of normal, average guy may not be how folks in Kansas City or Chicago or New York expect their member of Congress to be, Western Kansas has had a long tradition of sending to Washington someone who truly represents their level headed characteristics. Tim Huelskamp will continue that fine tradition. Nor does it hurt that Dr. Huelskamp is a quiet but authentic conservative in the optimistic mold of Ronald Reagan.

It is with delight that KsReaganite supports Tim Huelskamp for next year’s Republican nomination. Dr. Huelskamp embodies the values of Ronald Reagan and exemplifies the best commonsense traits for which Western Kansas is rightly known. On the right hand panel, in the blog roll, you’ll find a link to Dr. Huelskamp’s campaign website.

If there was one figure in public life with whom KsReaganite agreed with almost a 100 percent on issues of the day, it was Jack Kemp. A true conservative who gregariously believed that freedom and opportunity were the birthright of every man and woman of every creed and color, Secretary Kemp was a big-tent compassionate conservative before George W. Bush made it his own mantra. Never afraid to challenge the occasional plain lunacy of his own party-as he did when he famously stood up for immigrants in the 1990s-this former footballer epitomized the best of a party that stood for life, liberty, and prosperity. Pro-life, pro-gun, pro-growth, pro-security, pro-Israel, pro-civil liberties, pro-entrepreneurship….no wonder this was one of the very few white GOP politicians of stature who could go into Harlem and speak with credibility and without police escort.

May God welcome him in His Loving arms as behooves a good, humble servant of His who dedicated his life to bettering the lot of his fellow man.

If there was one figure in public life with whom KsReaganite agreed with almost a 100 percent on issues of the day, it was Jack Kemp. A true conservative who gregariously believed that freedom and opportunity were the birthright of every man and woman of every creed and color, Secretary Kemp was a big-tent compassionate conservative before George W. Bush made it his own mantra. Never afraid to challenge the occasional plain lunacy of his own party-as he did when he famously stood up for immigrants in the 1990s-this former footballer epitomized the best of a party that stood for life, liberty, and prosperity. Pro-life, pro-gun, pro-growth, pro-security, pro-Israel, pro-civil liberties, pro-entrepreneurship….no wonder this was one of the very few white GOP politicians of stature who could go into Harlem and speak with credibility and without police escort.

May God welcome him in His Loving arms as behooves a good, humble servant of His who dedicated his life to bettering the lot of his fellow man.

Often instinctively we all-yes even politically correct liberals-have a tendency to equate courage with masculinity. The events of the last week amply prove why such instincts should not be automatic presumptions. Two people, in vastly different areas of life, at opposite ends of the country, one a middle aged man and the other a vibrant young woman, both facing a defining moment in their respective careers. Faced with that challenge, one showed quiet courage and the other Quisling-esque cowardice.

Carrie Perjean, groomed from her toddler days to be a beauty queen, was at the last hurdle before being crowned Miss USA, the ultimate prize in that career field. This was Hollywood, the bastion of anti-religious bigotry and liberal fascism run amok. The bias of the judge in question was very well known to all. All Perjean had to do was to mumble a bland, lawyer-like answer to a loaded, explosive question, and the crown would be hers. In a tone that was muted but words that were unmistakable-and unmistakably a kiss of death to her aspirations-Carrie Perjean answered the question honestly and sincerely: her faith led her to the conclusion that marriage was a union of one man and one woman. She conceded that other sincere people may well hold different opinion and values and that was fine in this land of the free. Evidently, from the hateful backlash against her that rages on, difference of opinion with the media elite is anathema to self-declared ‘open minded’ people.

More than three times Carrie Perjean’s age is seventy six year old Arlen Specter, the five term senator from Pennsylvania. Faced with the prospect of standing up for his supposed beliefs in a competitive election, he decided to change parties when promised financial and other incentives from a messianic President of the United States. To believe that this man was once a career prosecutor who took on organized crime bosses in Philadelphia is ..well, reminiscent of the specter of reality. In doing his quisling like act, Arlen Specter inaugurated one party rule in Washington DC. In all honesty, the odds before Specter were daunting. But then, it is in those times of daunting odds that courage comes in handy. Sadly for Arlen Specter, and more so for this country, courage was one thing found sorely wanting in a once brave prosecutor from Philadelphia.

The late John F. Kennedy called courage the most sublime virtue in a public figure. Given its rarity, it is all the more so in these times. And as last week showed, a  blonde beauty queen from California  has much more courage in her twenty some year old heart than does a seventy six year old man known as a fearless lawman once upon a time.