In Federalist #2, Founder John Jay addressed the dangers of foreign force and influence.  In the course of the essay, he celebrated, "With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people ? a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs."  Jay understood that perhaps America's greatest protection against the threat of foreign manipulation was our overriding sense of unity as a people.

That's why Jay and the other Founders insisted that immigrants be willing to embrace and adopt our values and principles.  George Washington wrote, "By an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendents, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word soon become one people."

Unfortunately, in the name of political correctness, we are trampling this very notion of unity in deference to the sacred cow of "diversity."  No clearer can this tragic reality be witnessed than in our developing societal embrace of Islam. 

Unlike other religions, Islam is simultaneously a religious and a political order.  It seeks a state-imposed caliphate...a theocratic regime that orders allegiance to Islamic law.  Those are the expectations of anyone who follows the Koran.

When Dr. Daniel Shayesteh (the former co-founder of the Islamic terror group Hezbollah) appeared on my radio program, I asked him whether true adherents to Islam could peacefully assimilate into American culture and embrace constitutional law and order.  He responded, "It is impossible for a person who follows Mohammed and says, ?I am a Muslim' and follows the instruction of the Koran to align himself with other laws and cultural values.  That's impossible, because everything other than Islamic culture and principle is evil."

That chilling admission should set off warning bells.  Yet, despite this plainly stated position, Americans continue to suffer the foolishness of political correctness that tells us we should celebrate the growth of Islam here in America.  Let me ask a hypothetical question: would you vote for someone who ran on the platform of obliterating U.S. sovereignty, discarding the U.S. Constitution, subjugating women and executing homosexuals and all non-adherents to an established national religion?

Of course not.  Then why do we consider it a feather in our cap as a people, and hail our virtuous diversity when practicing Muslims are elected to office?  Because either professing Muslims like Andre Carson (D-IN) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) - both of whom serve in Congress - believe in those aforementioned principles, or they are not true adherents to Islam.

Don't believe me?  Omar Ahmed, chairman of the supposedly moderate Council on American-Islamic Relations, reportedly told a group of California Muslims in 1998, "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran...should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."

I know that addressing all this makes many people so uncomfortable that they choose not to pay attention.  Perhaps that stems from our fear of violence if we do (see Comedy Central's recent capitulation to "Revolution Muslim").  But more likely it comes from our mounting cultural indoctrination in political correctness - the same garbage that infected Europe decades ago.  What have been its fruits there?  Entire regions of many modern European countries are now completely under the authority of local Muslim leaders who ignore national laws and impose their own Sharia law instead. 

And here?  The American Academy of Pediatrics has recently taken the side of Muslims who seek to uphold their cultural practice of female genital mutilation.  Islam holds that women should not receive the same sexual pleasure that men do, and therefore many Muslims in the United States send their young daughters overseas to have those sensitive areas removed.  Rather than stand against this barbaric act, the AAP has begun advocating for the U.S. to change its laws to allow this practice to occur here legally.  We must be open-minded, you know.

And though the construction of Islamic mosques have historically been to signify dominance over conquered foes, the New York community board and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg are okaying plans to construct not one, but two mosques at the site of the World Trade Center attacks.  Another triumph for diversity!

This is a matter of self-preservation.  The more we loosen our grip on our Founders' insistence on assimilation and unity for those who make America their home, the quicker we hasten our march towards cultural oblivion...or the jihadists' paradise.

If you haven't been paying attention, a very interesting reality has been occurring on the American political left.  Long advocates of the need to keep religion and the church out of politics, leading liberals have begun singing a different tune recently.  We hear the President speaking about listening for "God's voice," Harry Reid lecturing on our "moral imperatives," and even Nancy Pelosi calling on church leaders to lobby their parishioners to support the left-wing approach to illegal immigration.

I actually consider this a major victory for conservative Christians who have been speaking about the inescapable intersection of faith and politics for years.  For the longest time, the left kept up a futile approach of pretending that faith doesn't matter in the sphere of public policy.  Yet, there was always an air of inconsistency in their tired contention that, "you can't legislate morality."  After all, every law that is written declares one thing to be right and another wrong...thus, it imposes someone's view of morality. 

So now, the left has apparently abandoned their incoherent strategy and adopted a new one.  Rather than seeking to eliminate Christian influence on politics, the left is now launching an aggressive campaign to rebrand Christianity to fit their liberal political agenda.

And perhaps no other figure is playing a more important role in that effort than self-proclaimed spiritual adviser to liberal politicians, Jim Wallis.  Wallis's past is one that includes membership in the radical "Students for a Democratic Society" during Vietnam, championing of communism in the 1970s, and the founding of an anti-capitalist magazine entitled, "The Post-American." 

In 1971, Wallis changed the name of his magazine to "Sojourners."  Though billed as a "progressive Christian commentary on faith, politics, and culture," it is readily apparent to regular readers like myself that it is heavy on the "progressive" and light on the "Christian."  For instance, a recent post on Wallis' Sojourner's blog - "God's politics" - blatantly lied about the Arizona immigration law, calling it "legal racial profiling."  The law itself outright forbids racial profiling at least four times.  Even more damaging, the magazine's website links to the outrageously vile and offensive left-wing hate site "Daily Kos" in its favorite blogs section, and recently featured the foul-mouthed Comedy Central host Jon Stewart as a "modern day prophet."

These anecdotal red flags, however, are not nearly as concerning as Wallis's own words and behavior.  Appearing recently on the left wing talk radio program, "The Stephanie Miller Show," Wallis condemned the "utterly partisan" political dialogue.  "That's why I like shows like yours," Wallis commented to Miller.  But wait...Stephanie Miller is the same woman who went on Larry King Live and called for the execution of Rush Limbaugh.  She also recently made the proclamation that "God is a Democrat."

Evidently that blatant hypocrisy was not enough for Wallis.  He then went on to condemn conservatives by reprimanding, "But, my goodness, you can't challenge people's...faith because they disagree with you on a policy option."  This just moments before Wallis told Miller he was, "pondering a blog for this week which will say, ?Is Libertarianism Christian?'"  In other words, because Wallis disagrees with libertarians on policy, he will question their faith.  Oh, but he wasn't done.  Asked by Miller about Kentucky Republican Rand Paul's position on the BP oil spill, Wallis replied, "I'd say that's un-Christian."

The truth is I have always struggled theologically with many of Wallis's positions.  While claiming to revere William Wilberforce (the man who single handedly made slavery illegal in England) as a Christian who did political engagement the right way, on the great moral issue of our day - abortion - Wallis believes it should be kept legal.  I've also scratched my head many times at Wallis's call for "social justice."  While I do believe that fighting poverty, being a good steward of creation, and charity are Christian imperatives, I recognize that those are commands Christ gave to us individually, to be motivated out of love and compassion.  Too often, it seems, Wallis seeks to use public policy, government confiscation, regulation and redistribution to achieve these objectives.  That's not compassion, it's compulsion.  His well-intentioned aims then bring glory to the state, not to God.

But those theological concerns are now giving way to something more serious, and those Christians who "sojourn" with Wallis should be very wary.  While our faith should always inform our politics, we should never let our politics inform our faith.  Recent examples show Wallis treading freely across that dangerous line.

Last Friday, Democrats led the House of Representatives in passing legislation to allow the open practice of homosexuality in the United States military for the first time in our history.  This is a catastrophic move that is coming as the result of political correctness trumping common sense.

It also demonstrates the extraordinary success of the rabid homosexual lobby that has, in a matter of just a few decades, successfully altered the landscape of this and other debates regarding depraved sexual conduct.  Because of their ceaseless onslaught of propaganda, a majority of Americans (some even within the church) have come to believe in the existence of a group of people whose natural state is "homosexual."  We now casually use this terminology, assuming that there are "heterosexuals" and "homosexuals."

When we accept this baseline, we have detached ourselves from rational thinking.  We have allowed the debates over "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," marriage rights, hospital visitation and other legislative objectives like adoption privileges to become ones of civil rights and fairness.  And once those advancing homosexuality have successfully framed these debates in this way, those holding to traditional morality are helpless.  They are easily portrayed as cruel, discriminatory, hateful bigots unwilling to extend the rights they want for themselves to others who are not like them.  Needless to say, this is all by design.  It has been the stated strategy of the homosexual agenda from the start.

Yet all it would take to undo this fraudulent charade is basic common sense - the greatest enemy of political correctness.  So here it is: all sexual behavior - married heterosexual conduct, adulterous heterosexuality, bestiality, necrophilia, homosexuality, pedophilia, coprophilia, polyamory...ALL of it - is chosen behavior.  No one is compelled into any sexual conduct.  Even those who choose to abide by God's design for sex within the confines of a married, monogamous, man/woman relationship, how, when and if they engage in sexual behavior is a choice.  It has nothing to do with unalterable, unchangeable, immutable characteristics.

A person's natural state is that of male or female.  From there, people choose what kind of sexual behavior, if any, to participate in.  They choose whether to conform to Biblical standards, societal standards, or no standards at all.  But since what they do sexually is always chosen behavior, it has nothing to do with their identity.  Who a person is, is different than what a person does.

Once we regain this rational baseline for our thinking, we soon realize how terribly (and intentionally) skewed this debate over "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has become.  The ban that has existed from the infancy of the American military until today has not been on any group of people...it has been on the open practice of a chosen sexual behavior.  Moreover, homosexuality is but one of many sexual practices that has been banned by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  Even attempts of heterosexual adultery are forbidden.  Is that discriminatory against heterosexuals?

Therefore, the proper debate regarding "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" should not be held as one that will determine whether certain people can serve.  That is a false premise.  The debate should be held over whether or not those who do serve should be banned from participating in certain sexual behaviors. 

Since the Uniform Code of Military Justice seeks, "to promote the well-being, morale...and good order and discipline" of our armed forces, we should be asking whether the open practice of men having sex with men is dangerous to military cohesion.

We should be asking whether or not the devastating physical effects of men having sex with men is conducive to a healthy and strong fighting force.

We should be asking if the preponderance of sexual transmitted diseases found in men having sex with men represents any concerns with the necessity of battlefield blood transfusions.

We should be asking if the same reasons the military forbids men and women from sharing barracks (avoiding sexual aggression, harassment and counterproductive distractions) should not preclude the open acceptance of men having sex with men.

These are the rational grounds upon which this debate should be fought.  Failing to recognize, articulate and demand as much guarantees the outcome - one in which grounded and clear thinking individuals are labeled bigots, and in which the most powerful military in world history surrenders to its most dangerous foe...political correctness.

Not long ago, I was witness to some pretty flagrant discrimination.  It has taken me awhile to find the courage to speak out about the incident, but in light of what is happening along our southern border in Arizona, I think it's time.

It happened two summers ago when I took my wife to a Cincinnati Reds baseball game.  When we arrived, I fully anticipated being able to walk right into the stadium without any harassment or nuisance.  Imagine my surprise when I found a walled complex with guards stationed at nearly every entrance.  And what do you suppose those guards were doing?  They were checking everyone's papers...or "tickets" as they called them.  And shockingly, if someone was unable to produce such papers upon demand, they were hatefully turned away.

Looking back, though I was fortunate enough to have brought my papers with me, my conscience should have refused to let me enter that den of discrimination.  I should have made a public spectacle and led a march of protest on the Reds' front office.  How can this be happening in America? 

Believe it or not, the Reds organization has actually condoned this practice of turning away undocumented game attendees.  And worse than that, their stated policy requires the immediate ejection of all people who are innocently and peacefully watching the game if they are discovered to be undocumented.

Being the committed proponent of social justice that I am, I wrote a sharply worded email to the commissioner of Major League Baseball, asking him to not only renounce these offensive practices, but to call for all other teams to boycott the Cincinnati Reds until they open their borders and start allowing anyone in to their games who wants to come in.

Shockingly, no such boycott will be forthcoming.  And why?  Apparently the commissioner feels the Cincinnati policy is appropriate.  His reasons - get this - were that without ticketing their events and enforcing their rules with security guards, the Reds' organization would be endangering their fans and players, and would suffer economically...to the point of collapse!  How ridiculous!  Let's take these one at a time.

How could anyone honestly allege that removing security guards at the perimeter of their complex is endangering fans?  Oh, I suppose you could make the silly argument that someone might smuggle a weapon or bomb in, or that unscrupulous rabble rousers could make mischief in the stands...but how likely is that?  In a major American city?  It's a chance in a million.

Do we really want to exchange our right to free entertainment for a quiet, respectful stadium?  Of course not.  The mere presence of these gun-toting intimidators is an affront to our civil liberties.  It opens up the possibility that they will unfairly profile the shady looking character with no ticket, a trench coat and a bulging backpack.  And if there's one thing that we all should demand, it's that those kind of individuals not be inconvenienced by having to show ID, open their coat and reveal the contents of their bags.  What makes them any more suspicious than an elderly season-ticket holder?

And even more outrageous than the supposed need for security is the economic argument.  Is the commissioner seriously suggesting that there would be any negative financial consequences to a ballclub that allowed thousands of people to walk into their games without purchasing a ticket?  The next thing you know, he'll be proposing that people be forced to pay for the various amenities the park has to offer - like concessions, memorabilia and game-day programs.  Are these not basic human rights to which all people - those with papers and those without - are simply entitled to?

With as disconcerting as this experience has been for me, at least there's reason for hope.  President Obama has taken a clear and uncompromising position on this type of Naziesque behavior, condemning the entire state of Arizona for their outrageous expectation that people follow the rules.  "We are not defined by our borders," the President has declared.  And as always, Mr. Obama practices what he preaches.

Remember the warm and jovial reaction he and his staff had when the Salahi couple crashed the White House party earlier in his term?  When it was uncovered that this pair didn't have the legal documentation to be at the event, the President's staff quickly laughed it off and put an end to all security screenings and ticket-checking.

Some will say, "But Peter, the President's secret service and the Reds security staff aren't unlawfully discriminating, they are simply doing their job to protect the innocent."  To that I simply point to Arizona and say, "Exactly."

At this year's National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama chided Republicans and Democrats to not contaminate our political discussions with smears and slander.  "Civility is not a sign of weakness," he said.  "At times, it seems like we are unable to listen to one another, to have at once a serious and civil debate. This erosion of civility in the public square sows division and cynicism among our citizens. It poisons the well of public opinion."

No word yet on whether the president choked on the thick irony that encrusted those hollow words as they poured from his lips.

In Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter's new book, "The Promise, President Obama, Year One," it is revealed that Mr. Civility decided to do a little poisoning of that well himself as he slandered millions of Americans who are fed up with his big-government approach.  Discussing the unanimous opposition Republicans mounted to his now-failed stimulus plan, Obama mocked how, "That helped to create the tea-baggers."  Perhaps referring to your fellow countrymen by using vile terminology like "tea-bagging" - an outrageously offensive term that describes a sex act - is Mr. Obama's idea of "serious and civil debate?"

Imagine if you will, the furor that would have erupted if President George W. Bush had used an equally offensive term, the "n-word," to describe his political opponents at the NAACP.  Or what if Bush had used slang terminology to refer to his political opponents within the homosexual lobby?  As media critic Brent Bozell pointed out, "if President George W. Bush had slurred the gay rights movement during his presidency, it would have immediately dominated the news of every single national media outlet."

He's right.  And such criticism would have been completely warranted.  Demeaning and slandering fellow citizens (even those you disagree with politically) is unproductive, childish and certainly beneath the dignity of the office of President of the United States.

Yet, this practice of sowing division and discord while simultaneously condemning the sowing of division and discord has become the Obama way.  It was reflected in his inaugural address when he heroically decreed, "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances...that for far too long have strangled our politics."

This shortly after he had scoffed at the bitter Pennsylvanians who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."  No petty grievances there.

Or take his recent speech to the University of Michigan class of 2010 where he counseled, "If we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we will become more polarized, more set in our ways.  But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from."

This said following his first year and a half in office in which he attempted to shun an entire news agency because they dared question him, demonized Rush Limbaugh, attempted to cut Fox News from the White House press pool, and had members of his staff orchestrating boycotts against cultural commentators who oppose his policies.  Is this what "seeking out information that challenges our assumptions" means?

Of course, no one in the mainstream press seems interested in pointing out this duplicity.  And why should they?  These modern prophets of one-way tolerance seem to enjoy using offensive slang like "tea-bagging" as much as their fearless leader.  Demonstrating the pathetic state of journalistic integrity in the old media, consider that CBS's Mark Knoller, PBS's Gwen Ifill, CNN's Katrina Vanden Heuval, Suzanne Malveaux, Candy Crowley and Anderson Cooper, MSNBC's David Shuster, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, and ABC's George Stephanopoulos have all used that disgusting epithet to describe conservative Americans.

At the prayer breakfast, Obama lamented, "We become absorbed with our abstract arguments, our ideological disputes, our contests for power. And in this Tower of Babel, we lose the sound of God's voice."  If the president truly seeks to encourage Americans to find their inner angels, my humble suggestion would be for him to try leading by example.

But if, as I suspect, this rhetoric is meant only to perpetuate the myth of Obama as post-partisan healer, while he insults and defames those who get in his way, I have but one message for him: stay classy, Mr. President.

If I could go back in time, there is one group of people that I wish I wouldn't have been so quick to dismiss...those who expressed dismay over what they perceived as George W. Bush using his presidential power to trample the Constitution.  I might not have ended up agreeing with all of their accusations, but I know my predisposition towards liking the guy caused me to discount their charges without always giving them fair thought.

Obviously there were those on the far left who made it difficult to do so.  You can only watch Keith Olbermann froth at the mouth so many times while pompously condemning the Commander-in-Chief of "urinating on the Constitution" before you begin to build up a tolerance to such reckless hyperbole.  But there were others whose case against Bush was rooted in logic and experience.  They cautiously questioned the wisdom of urgently enacting a monstrous bill (the Patriot Act) that few Congressmen had time to even read.  They cautioned that it could limit constitutionally protected liberty, even though it was done with the best of intentions (sound familiar?).  Regardless of whether they were right or wrong, their objections deserved to be addressed.

One of those who voiced opposition to Bush's behavior was Barack Obama, who wisely crafted his campaign on the platform of undoing those supposed missteps.  He promised a presidency that would see the United States return to constitutional fidelity, ending the practice of renditions, enhanced interrogations, and wiretapping, as well as reinstate our trampled civil liberties and the sacrosanct writ of habeas corpus (this provision allows for the criminally detained to be brought before a judge rather than being held indefinitely without charge).

But besides the fact that President Obama has left virtually every single one of those Bush-era practices firmly in place, his actions reveal a governing philosophy that appears to be belligerently rebellious to the legal restraints put on him by the Constitution.  This is either the result of blissful ignorance of those limitations, or willful betrayal. 

Take for instance the President's reaction to the recent British Petroleum oil spill.  In an effort to save face politically, President Obama issued a statement saying that he, "strongly supports efforts on Capitol Hill to raise the Oil Pollution Act damages cap significantly above $75 million."  So even though at the time of the accident the law required companies like BP to be financially responsible up to a specified amount, Obama has arbitrarily decided that BP should pay more, and is therefore urging Congress to change the rules in the middle of the game.

Whatever your feelings may be about the President, BP Oil, or environmental protection, there is no escaping the reality that such a move by Obama is blatantly unconstitutional.  Article I, section 9 of the Constitution explicitly forbids Congress from passing what are called "ex post facto" (after the fact) laws.  That is to say, you can't enforce punishments or penalties against a person or a company that weren't already on the books when they committed the act.   Our Founders regarded such governmental action as abusive and authoritarian.  Our current president sees it as sound policy.

Moreover,  consider that when Obama and others accused President Bush of unlawfully suspending the "rights of the accused" to terrorist detainees on the battlefield, Bush correctly pointed out that these thugs were not American citizens or lawful residents, and therefore not technically entitled to constitutional protections.  The left pilloried Bush for such a defense, accusing him of betraying America's longstanding ideals.  Obama himself scolded, "We must adhere to our values as diligently as we protect our safety with no exceptions."  In other words, according to President Obama, we should extend constitutional protections to our sworn blood enemies who seek to bring this civilization to its knees. 

And yet that same President is encouraging Congress to deliberately deny constitutional protections to companies like BP who, as Mark Finklestein points out, "have supplied untold quantities of energy resources to the American economy and paid out billions in wages and supply purchases to American workers and firms."

Extra-constitutional protections for those that want to kill us...denial of explicit constitutional protections for companies that are critical pieces in our economy...and this from a former constitutional law professor?

I do regret not giving more credibility to those who questioned the constitutionality of some of George Bush's actions as president.  But if those same folks aren't even more up in arms about the flagrant abuse our current president is inflicting on the Constitution, they never deserved it in the first place.

About a week ago, news reports surfaced from Turkey that a team of evangelical researchers had claimed to find the remains of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat.  The team confirmed that they were "99.9 percent" sure that the wooden structure they found was part of the Biblical vessel that preserved life during the cataclysmic flood approximately 5,000 years ago.

Within moments of their announcement, evolutionary scientists began to cast doubt on the find.  The headline at MSNBC read, "Noah's Ark Found? Not so Fast."  Stories appeared, quoting archaeologists like Peter Kuniholm from Cornell who called the reported find a "crock."  Paul Zimansky, an archaeologist and historian at Stony Brook University who specializes in that region of the world, dismissed the reports as well, stating, "Press releases are not the way archaeology advances."

Though I certainly agree with that sentiment, I have to wonder where Zimansky and these other critics were less than a year ago when another earth-shattering discovery was touted by media reports.  Then, rather than being a potential find that would go a long way to validate the Biblical record of history (and by extension the creationist model), it was the reported discovery of the so-called Darwinian "missing link."

Nicknamed "Ida," this perfectly preserved lemur-like fossil was said to provide the, "final piece of Darwin's jigsaw."  But unlike the supposed Ark discovery, the frenzy that ensued from this press release was far from skeptical.

Sky News called it, "the eighth wonder of the world."  National Geographic trumpeted that Ida was a "branching point on the evolutionary tree."  British naturalist David Attenborough proclaimed, "The link, they would have said until now, is missing.  Well, it is no longer missing."  ABC's Good Morning America showcased the fossil.  Both the History Channel and BBC One aired documentaries on Ida called, "The Link."  A book by the same title was published almost instantaneously.  Even the online search engine Google fell prey to the trap and modified its search page banner to show Ida.  Within a week, over 630 online news sites had covered the groundbreaking story.

A year later, the scientific community is recognizing that there's nothing very special about Ida after all.  Well, perhaps that's not fair.  The remarkable preservation of this lemur-like creature is stunning (something best explained by its rapid burial in sediment...sort of like what would happen in a catastrophic worldwide flood).  But all those references to Ida as a "missing link" were summarily removed from the final scientific paper by the conscientious peer-review process.

So why the two different standards?  Why does the potential find of Noah's Ark generate scorn and immediate skepticism if the potential find of the "missing link" does not?  By the way, though I certainly believe in Noah's flood, I should acknowledge that I think the skepticism over the Ark find is completely appropriate.  Every couple years, it seems, a new group claims to have found it - and usually the evidence is less than compelling.  But how is that any different from the missing link - something that Darwin's modern prophets angrily say has already been found...until a news story like Ida reveals the truth that they are desperately still searching for it?

The truth is that science is supposed to be skeptical of everything.  And yet, so often we see the reality that Darwinists hijack the name of science in an effort to proselytize their own faith, and thereby commit the same offense they condemn creationists for committing.  Think about it:

Kuniholm mocks Ark hunters by saying, "These guys have already gotten the answer worked out ahead of time, and then they go out to prove it."  In other words, if there does end up being a large wooden structure on the mountain, that doesn't necessarily prove Noah's story.it only proves there is something wooden on the mountain.  Creationists then work that structure into a narrative they've already accepted of a worldwide flood.

Fair enough...but what was Ida?  Nothing about her suggested anything other than an extinct, lemur-like creature.  Yet Darwinists took a dead organism and worked it into a narrative they've already accepted of macro-evolution.  They presuppose Darwin's model is correct and then interpret the fossil in a way that helps tell the story.

So how about some intellectual honesty?  Science can prove there's a wooden structure on a mountain, and a dead lemur in the rocks.  But how we choose to interpret those scientific facts is much more about our presuppositions and faith than it is science.  And that's true on both sides.

His name is Lance Baxter, better known as the "Geico: fifteen minutes can save you 15% or more on car insurance" guy.  Well, he was.  Unfortunately, Lance drank the Keith Olbermann Kool-Aid a few too many times and decided to call and leave a disgusting message on the answering machine of FreedomWorks - an organization involved in the tea party movement.  His message entailed much of the nonsense heard nightly during primetime on MSNBC: that tea partiers are "mentally retarded" and prone to violence.  But then Baxter did something incredibly ignorant.  So ignorant in fact, you could say that even a caveman wouldn't do it: he left his name and phone number in the message.

FreedomWorks got his message out to millions of Americans - many of whom might have been in the market for car insurance - and the company very quickly cut ties with the leftist Baxter.

I don't feel any sense of jubilation over the fact that Mr. Baxter lost his job.  Indeed, given what our current leadership has done to our economy, rejoicing in someone being fired is particularly cruel.  But this event does give more validation to the increasingly obvious reality that the tea party message of free markets, low taxes, smaller government, and fiscal responsibility is a runaway freight train that the impotent left is powerless to stop.  They have used their timeless tactics: they have misled, they have deceived, they have smeared, slandered and demonized...and they've come up woefully short.

As Baxter demonstrates, in the end they are the ones who end up looking like radical nuts.  It reminds me of a quote I shared with a crowd of a few hundred at a tea party event in Huntington, Indiana.  Mahatma Gandhi once said of dealing with ideological enemies, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Could these words be any more accurate in describing the left's assault on tea party patriots?  When this movement started just one year ago, it was like pulling teeth to get anyone in the media to pay any attention.  The same liberal broadcast journalists who found it newsworthy when twelve anti-war activists joined Cindy Sheehan outside George W. Bush's ranch in Texas had no interest in covering gatherings of thousands of American citizens frustrated with their irresponsible government.  But despite being ignored, the movement continued to grow.

In response, the left kicked it into full mockery mode.  Nancy Pelosi derided the movement as being "Astroturf" - a concoction of the Republican Party meant to distract people from her and Obama's serious work.  And just like the obedient lapdogs they are, the complicit mainstream media picked up the meme and ran with it, poking fun at all the freaks wearing their Paul Revere outfits in public.  Yet despite being laughed at, the movement continued to grow.

And now, having utterly failed to derail the tea party message, the left has declared an all-out war on the tea partiers themselves.  They have attacked them as racist, bigoted, homophobic and violent radicals, hoping their smears will stick and people will shy away from joining such a vile movement.  But the sheer stupidity of their claims is so blatantly obvious that their attacks are backfiring.

While unhinged liberal Bill Maher calls the events "Klan rallies," and members of the Black Congressional Caucus claim they were called racist names by the protestors, not one has been able to produce a single piece of video or audio to support their outrageous accusations...this despite a $100,000 prize offered by Andrew Breitbart to anyone who can.

While Bill Clinton warns that the anti-government sentiment of these events (it's not anti-government by the way, it's anti-irresponsible big government) might turn violent, the only demonstrable hostility to take place was when liberal union thugs beat up a black tea partier named Kenneth Gladney at a St. Louis town hall meeting.

While Rachel Maddow, who uses her pseudo-intellectualism to mask her slander, cautions that the tea parties will soon produce the next Tim McVeigh, mainstream press like the Christian Science Monitor are forced to admit that these events are so peaceful that police around the country are relaxing their security and protocol for such public protests.

And while Keith Olbermann compares the movement to the Selma violence of the civil rights era, the fact remains that after nearly 10,000 tea parties in over a year, few if any arrests have been made.

So take heart, tea partiers: they have ignored you, they have laughed at you, they are now fighting you.  And in November, you win.

Sometimes one word can make a world of difference.  And though admittedly it's probably an oversimplification, much of my angst and frustration with the current direction of our leadership in Washington, D.C. comes down to one simple word.

There is absolutely no doubt in listening to the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama that they firmly believe in an unalienable right of happiness for every individual.  In other words, if government is not ensuring that every individual American gets what they want (or even what they feel they need), then that government is failing its true purpose as outlined in our glorious charter, the Declaration of Independence. 

That's why they battle for a "living wage" - a government forced wage that all businesses must pay their employees so they can live "comfortably."  It's why they felt obligated to cram through stage-one in the march to government run healthcare despite the overwhelming opposition of the American people.  And it's why they are now pursuing a federal government mandate forbidding all airline companies from charging us for carry-on bags.  They believe they are meant to ensure our happiness...and surely paying extra for a carry-on, making less than $15 an hour, or having to provide for our own health insurance doesn't make us happy, they reason.

The problem with this is that our Founders never said we were to be guaranteed happiness by our government.  Rather, the Declaration states explicitly that the government was to protect our right to pursue happiness.  That one word forges a monumental canyon between the goals and purposes of our modern statist leadership, and the intent of the architects of our Republic.

Our Founders wisely understood that even if they wanted to, there was simply no way that any government could guarantee happiness to all its citizens.  Why?  Because people are too different and unique.  What makes me happy might not be - and probably isn't - what would make you happy.  How then could any government possibly create a one-size fits all model that would not only pacify the masses, but bring them to the point of total pleasure and contentment?  It couldn't.

And so instead, they did something ingenious.  They decided to use government as an instrument to protect every man's right to pursue whatever happiness might mean to him individually.  Want a nice house?  Build it.  Want a cushy retirement?  Work hard now and save like crazy.  Want ten weeks paid vacation?  Start your own business, grow it into a magnificent success, and call your own shots. 

In other words, they unleashed the individual brilliance of man to a greater degree than had ever been seen before.  And the rest is history: the most blessed, prosperous, talented, advanced, and envied civilization in world history.  And why?  Because government got out of the way and let man pursue his dreams.

Yet despite this obvious reality, liberals and socialists go on touting the theoretical utopia of a government-planned society where no one wants for anything.  They are so drunk on the nectar of this fool's paradise that they end up admiring backwards countries.  Liberal scholar Tom Friedman is completely infatuated with China, evidently missing their oppression of political dissent and human rights violations.  Michael Moore hypes the miraculous government run healthcare system of Cuba, evidently missing the truckloads of refugees that risk their lives to escape to the United States.  And yes, I mean truckloads - they are so desperate to leave, they put floaties on a ?57 Chevy and try to sail it to Florida.  Ezra Klein, columnist for The American Prospect (which touts itself as "liberal intelligence"), jealously laments that France's government guarantees its workers 30 days of vacation time, unlimited sick days, and full child care.  Quick challenge to Mr. Klein: name the last medical marvel, technological gadget, or world-changing innovation to come out of France.  Exactly.

I understand why the left worries about giving people the right to pursue happiness.  It involves risk.  Anytime you give people the freedom to succeed, the freedom to fail is there too.  And that's what the left feels obligated to spare us from.  But by using government to prevent our businesses from collapsing, our investments from failing, our mortgages from foreclosing, and our lives from suffering setbacks, they necessarily prevent our success.  They strip us of our individuality, our autonomy, and our independence, and we become nothing more than chattel slaves...pawns in the hands of those running our lives for us.

That's a recipe for misery, not happiness.

Who knew the most pro-abortion president in the history of the United States would so effectively obliterate the deceptive front the abortion movement has been able to sustain for nearly 40 years?  But hats off to Mr. Obama for a job well done.

First of all, I have to admit that I find it appalling that we can be living in the 21st century, living in a country whose creed espouses the unalienable right to life for all people, living in a nation that has spent over 200 years struggling to extend the blessings of liberty to all men, and yet there are still those who are so backwards in their thinking and so void of moral conscience that they can actually advocate a supposed right to dismember infants in the womb. 

Scientifically, medically, constitutionally, morally and ethically, the case for abortion rights is so intellectually bankrupt, it is a national embarrassment that we take those who argue it seriously.  Moreover, the fact that any individual who espouses a right to kill children can not only escape the loony bin, but actually be elected to a position of authority in our society is a devastating commentary on our people's commitment to human rights.

Nevertheless, I must also admit to finding great satisfaction in finally being able to lay to rest one of the most offensive, hollow, and illogical arguments of the pro-abortion lobby.  The euphemistic label of not being pro-abortion, but rather "pro-choice" has plagued this debate for decades.  Intellectually speaking, this argument has always been beyond silly.  To say that you're pro-choice is absolutely meaningless unless you acknowledge what act you believe people should have a choice in doing.  The question has always been, "choice to do what?"

What's interesting is that through the years of engaging those that claim this label of "pro-choice," I've found that they are many times the most anti-choice people you could imagine.  Whether it is their insistence on carbon regulation that limits our travel choices, their forbiddance of private investment of our own Social Security deposits, or their refusal to allow school choice for those trapped in failing educational environments, if theirs is the face of choice, the word has no meaning.

Yet despite this reality, these anti-human rights activists on the left have been successful at tempering the inherent evil of their position by falsely representing themselves as fierce defenders of "a woman's right to choose."  No matter how many times this fraud was exposed, the myth perpetuated thanks to a complicit media that refused to acknowledge how barbaric one's mindset must be to - in this enlightened age - still believe in the savage ritual of human sacrifice.  But no more.

Those iconic placards carried by NARAL and Planned Parenthood agitators that proudly declared "My Body, My Choice" and "Keep Your Government's Hands Off My Body" must be officially retired.  Though it was always an empty, irrational argument (sure we all have a right to control our bodies - but not in a way that results in the slaughter of another human being), we can now know for certain that they never meant it anyway.  All the overblown rhetoric about privacy rights and how the government should never interject itself between a woman and her doctor was nothing more than a public relations cover for their true fascination.

How can we know?  Because the great champions of "choice" themselves - Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, Feinstein, et al - just crammed through a healthcare bill that intentionally thrusts the government directly between every woman (as well as man and child) and their doctor.  And they did this with the blessing of the criminally misnamed "choice" lobby!

ObamaCare opens the door to government access of your most personal medical records.  It mandates government-enforced purchase of government-approved health insurance that will cover government-permitted procedures.  It stands to take the most critical and private decisions about your well being and place them in the hands of a faceless bureaucratic board that is more concerned with cutting costs than extending your life.  They will determine whether you need the pacemaker, the bypass or the stent.  You, meanwhile, are left with no...choice.

So if nothing else, Barack Obama and company just accomplished proving something pro-lifers have been fighting to demonstrate for 40 years.  The abortion movement has never been about choice.  It's never been about privacy.  It's never been about personal liberty.  It's always been about a macabre obsession with advancing a legal right to kill kids for convenience.  That's pure, unadulterated evil.