Rick Perry may just be the guy.  The country's longest tenured governor, from its second largest state, is generating a lot of buzz in conservative circles as he contemplates entering the wide open Republican presidential primary.  There are plenty of reasons that Perry is an attractive option: he is a no-nonsense decision maker with solid conservative credentials.  A man who not only speaks about family values, but lives them, Perry's power to persuade voters to see things his way is proven - battle tested in a state known for independent-minded citizens.

But what serious political analysts on both sides of the aisle will acknowledge as perhaps Perry's strongest attribute heading into 2012 is the stark contrast that would be evident in a potential Perry-Obama showdown.  While Republican front-runner Mitt Romney capitulates to the left on global warming, refuses to sign a pro-life pledge, and ridiculously defends the RomneyCare failure in Massachusetts, the media is working overtime to tout their choice, former Utah Governor and Obama administration official Jon Huntsman, as the Republicans' best hope.  What nonsense. 

While Huntsman or Romney might please the same Republican establishment that brought us the mesmerizing campaigns of John McCain and Bob Dole, the best thing for the Republican Party - and the country - is for there to be a sharp distinction between the two parties' nominees.  If there was any question about whether Rick Perry would provide a clear alternative to Obama, look only to the left's reaction to Perry's recent speech at the Republican Leadership Conference.

Following his remarks (which though well prepared and delivered, were nothing outside mainstream conservative thought), MSNBC's liberal commentator Mika Brzezinski proclaimed that she, "felt like an alien" watching the speech.  While others may recoil at such an outlandish declaration about what was a fairly benign, if fiery, conservative speech, I found myself applauding Mika's refreshing candor about the perspective of the American left. 

It's high time Americans know that ideas like the ones Perry addressed - American exceptionalism, the sanctity of life, states' rights, personal freedom - are foreign concepts to the modern left.  They can't make sense of them and can't imagine that anyone actually believes that way.  

Remember Barack Obama's take on the concept of American exceptionalism was to interpret it as nothing more than an aggressive form of nationalistic pride.  "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism," he famously stammered.  That's why he prostrates himself before foreign leaders and thinks that becoming more respected in the world means diminishing our power and influence to be on par with everyone else.  And it's also why when hearing Rick Perry proclaim that America must return to global "preeminence because our values.are the world's greatest hope," he and Mika feel like aliens.

And to what values does Perry refer?  Those enshrined in the Declaration of Independence - the world's foremost statement on human liberty and freedom, where life, liberty and property are protected as inalienable.  While the Texas Governor makes an unapologetic appeal to those principles, demanding that, "we need to stop apologizing for celebrating life," Mika and the left look through the dingy windows of Planned Parenthood's abortion mill and scratch their heads.

Americans need to see this contrast in 2012.  After experiencing a liberal administration's heavy-handed, central planning philosophy on government, pursuing policies that greatly expand the power and influence of Washington into their daily lives, Americans need to hear a candidate who views such an approach as, "an affront to every freedom-loving American and a threat to every private sector job in this country."

After watching Obama act as a perpetual thorn in the sides of the states, suing them (Arizona), threatening them (South Carolina and Indiana), or crippling them (Louisiana), Americans need to hear from one who believes in allowing the states to be what Jefferson called the "laboratories of democracy," and calls to, "displace the entrenched powers in Washington, [and] restore the rightful balance between the state and federal government."

It's instructive that Mika's alien comment came on the heels of fellow liberal commentator Chris Matthews complaining that conservative Christians who disapproved of disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner's sexcapades were, "culturally backwards."  To the left, it wasn't Weiner's behavior that was backwards.  No, that distinction belonged to those who expect honesty, integrity, and morality from their lawmakers.  The disparity between the views of the right and left is as obvious as ever.  Maybe this is what the Democrats' criminally indicted former Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards meant all those years he spent talking about there being two different Americas.

Put succinctly, I'm with Mika.  The ideological distinction has never been so clear in this country.  So let's make sure that reality is reflected and highlighted in glaring detail during the 2012 campaign and allow the American people to decide who the aliens are.

This column was first published at The American Thinker.

The famous quote attributed to Winston Churchill that, "If you're not liberal at 20, you have no heart...if you're not conservative by 30, you have no brain," may need some tweaking given the recent antics of the American left.  Having built the credibility of their political movement on the grounds of compassion and empathy, their actions and policy proposals are reflective of just the opposite.

Start with my home state of Indiana, whose Republican legislature and governor enacted a law to prohibit taxpayer dollars from flowing into the hands of any health clinic that performs abortions.  Through entirely predictable demagoguery, the bleeding hearts of the left pounced on this action as an irresponsible assault on legitimate health services like cancer screenings and mammograms.  Where else will poor families turn for their healthcare, they asked, as they painted the picture of the impoverished dying in the streets due to an unprovoked conservative attack on choice.

Of course, beyond the reckless sensationalism, the fact remains that those tax dollars are still funding responsible family clinics that provide those essential services.  They are only being denied to the ones who use the family planning cloak to shroud the evil butchery of abortion that appears at the top of their menu.

Nevertheless, with the stage set, Barack Obama waded into the fray with the trademark thuggery he once used to brow-beat Arizonans over their immigration policy.  This time, showing the extent to which he is beholden to the abortion lobby, Obama has threatened to deny Indiana its federal Medicaid dollars if Hoosiers don't capitulate to his demands and restore Planned Parenthood's blood money.

Do you notice the irony?  The left accuses the right of lacking compassion by playing politics with the health services of poor people.  This while their grand leader threatens to cut off the health funding for Indiana's poor people over politics!  Apparently the highly vaunted liberal empathy for the impoverished is only reliable until it can be leveraged and exchanged for more dead children.  But hey, everyone's got to have priorities.

For an even more personal view of the left's true compassion, pay attention the next time you fill up your gas tank.  You will inevitably encounter the same heartbreaking scene I recently did.  Standing at the pump, a disheveled looking man in an old Chevy Cavalier pulled up next to me, looking at the balance ledger of his checkbook as he got out of his car.  Shaking his head, he wrote a check, walked in, paid the cashier, returned, filled up and left before I had finished filling my own tank.  Out of curiosity, I glanced at his pump and saw he had only been able to pay $5...enough to buy him just over a gallon of gas.

Our leftist leadership can pretend that by telling us we are in an economic recovery, we will all be convinced that it's true.  But people aren't going to judge our economy by proclamations and press releases.  They will judge it by what they're living.  What happened to that man at the pump may be anecdotal, but real-life struggles like his are rippling throughout our economy and having devastating impacts not just on jobs, but on families.

While we sit on top of some of the world's largest fuel supplies, our leftist leadership keeps telling us that there's nothing we can do about the oil and gasoline situation.  If you ever wanted to know what the left's compassion really looked like, watch them continue lying about that as struggling Americans scrape up change to put a single gallon of gas in their car.

Remember, it is Barack Obama who implied he has no objections to $4 a gallon gasoline, as well as his energy secretary who has stated we should be paying double that amount.  After all, they tell us, such high prices will push us to more fuel efficient vehicles.  Here's a newsflash to the president: that man at the gas pump next to me won't be able to afford a ritzy Mercedes-Benz hybrid anytime soon.

Maybe he can just bum a ride from rich liberals like the newly christened "Patriotic Millionaires," a club for wealthy progressives who want to keep their left-wing compassion credentials without having to actually show any.  These leftist fat cats just held a conference where they feigned compassion by demanding the government tax them more.  Not surprisingly, when asked by CNSNews.com if any of them would be willing to get out their checkbook and make a personal donation to the Treasury Department's contribution website to help pay down the national debt, they bristled.  One of the group's spokesman, Dennis Mehiel, scoffed that such an idea was "preposterous on its face."

Of course it is.  Because to do so would actually cost them something, whereas going on TV and demanding you be taxed more (when you know you have perfected ways to dodge the IRS) gets you good publicity without actually hurting your bank account.

Given that this is the current state of liberal compassion, perhaps 20 year olds with a heart should start shopping for a new ideology.

This column was first published at The American Thinker.

It's a classic example of political rhetoric intended to cloud reality.  Explaining why the most recent Medicare trustee report shows the system going bankrupt in thirteen years (five years earlier than predicted last year), Barack Obama's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner explained the alarming update was the result of, "technical changes in the economic assumptions underlying the projections."  That's the delicate way for a politician to say, "We were counting on our economic policies actually working, but as you all know, they haven't."

And while that provides yet another indictment of Obamanomics for conservatives to present in the courtroom of public opinion, the most concerning part remains the fragility of a healthcare system that is being relied upon by millions of elderly Americans - and is being counted on by millions more who are nearing the Medicare eligibility age.  That is why now more than ever it is incumbent upon our leadership to have an honest debate about the future of the system.

No American should naively assume that there is one easy, pragmatic answer to solving the Medicare crisis.  Additionally, no American should naively assume that putting the issue off until one such answer emerges is a prudent approach.  The biggest danger to our seniors is not Paul Ryan and the Republicans who are proposing changes to save the system.  Nor is it Democrats who might do the same.

Right now, the gravest threat Medicare faces is the self-serving politician who champions complacency towards the issue with shameless demagoguery condemning any reform proposals as too big, too dramatic, too risky, and endangering the stability of the system.  Take Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has been in re-runs in virtually every television interview she's given on the subject. 

Two weeks ago, Schultz was asked by Harry Smith on CBS's Meet the Nation, "But the trustees said...that this thing could be insolvent in the next decade. Doesn't something really dramatic have to happen, and as the Congressman suggested, the Republicans have a plan. Do the Democrats have a plan?"  She refused to answer that question, choosing instead to read from her poll-tested cue cards: "Like I said, the Republicans have a plan to end Medicare as we know it."

Yes, they do.  Anyone who seriously values and wants to save the Medicare system - or at least who wants to preserve it for those currently relying on it - knows that if we don't come up with a plan to do so, Medicare as we know it will end itself when it goes belly up in the next ten to thirteen years.  Wasserman Schultz may pretend otherwise, but if you pay close attention to what even her allies are saying, it's demonstrably true.

Consider New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, whose recent blog post boasted a title, "Yes, Medicare is Sustainable in its Current Form," which surely made Ms. Schultz proud.  But look at what Krugman actually wrote: "Medicare American-style is very open-ended, reluctant to say no to paying for medically dubious procedures, and also fails to make use of its pricing power over drugs and other items.  So Medicare will have to start saying no; it will have to provide incentives to move away from fee for service, and so on and so forth."

Uh, wait a second.  Isn't Krugman suggesting changes to Medicare?  How can you credibly say it is "sustainable in its current form" if you then clarify yourself by citing ways it must be changed to remain sustainable?  Krugman excuses his revealing double-speak by arguing that, "such changes would not mean a fundamental change in the way Medicare works."

Oh really?  Proposing that Medicare stop paying for "dubious medical procedures" may sound simple enough. But the question any serious thinker would pose to Mr. Krugman is what constitutes dubious?  And perhaps more importantly, who gets to decide that question? 

Ask Jane Sturm.  She was the woman whose 99 year old mother received a life-saving pacemaker, something Mr. Obama openly questioned in a White House town hall meeting as potentially dubious.  Sorry Mr. Krugman, but empowering boards of bureaucrats to deny surgeries and procedures requested and needed by seniors (ones that they are currently able to access) is the very definition of a "fundamental change" to the system.

Both sides, then, if they are serious about saving Medicare, are proposing to "end Medicare as we know it."  While Paul Ryan and the Republicans are offering solutions to give the individual more control over their healthcare, Krugman and the Democrats are suggesting changes to give the government more control.

What Americans need - what American seniors deserve - is for both parties to recognize the system must be changed, and the longer we wait to do it, the more potent and difficult the adjustments will be.  If politics is the art of compromise, then it's time to stop the demagoguery, put all proposals on the table, and fight this out at the ballot box.

If one side refuses to do that, it should tell you all you need to know about their motives and the strength of their ideas.

This column was first published at The American Thinker.

With a little over a year to go until the next national election cycle is complete, it has become apparent that from an economic standpoint, the SS Liberal has officially run out of steam.  Hull weighted down with the barnacles of false promises and rudder crippled by the reckless mismanagement of a spendthrift captain from Chicago, she sits there floundering in a sea of unemployment and malaise not experienced since Jimmy Carter was at the helm.

And despite all the rosy window dressing provided by the beaming ship attendants of the mainstream media who pretend to be shocked every time another leak opens up, we passengers are fully aware of our surroundings.

CNBC reports that the private sector job market is still shrinking, with employers announcing over 37,000 more job cuts this month.  That's up nearly 2% since April.  In addition, Forbes reveals that home prices have dropped to their 2002 levels, falling another 4.2% in the first quarter of 2011.  David Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices released a chilling statement that, "This month's report is marked by the confirmation of a double-dip in home prices across much of the nation."

Any rational person hoping that we were righting our economic ship knows the words "double-dip" signify the exact opposite.  Of course, not all numbers are down. 

Government statistics show the number of food stamp recipients is at an all time high - up 39% since Barack Obama took office.  And though things are lean in the private sector, it's never been a better time to be employed by the federal government.  Beyond just salaries soaring to the point where roughly 77,000 federal employees are making more money than state governors, a new study has found there has been a 73% increase in the amount of federally owned limousines to cart our central planning VIPs through the streets of the peasantry.

Along those streets, it's a different story.  Bloomberg reports that as jobless claims jumped another 10,000 last month, "more Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, a sign the labor market is struggling to gain momentum."

With economic numbers like these, it's no wonder that liberal commentators are advising Barack Obama - the man who got elected as the anti-war president - to run for re-election on his record as a war commander.  Still, some left-wing economists aren't ready to give up the ship.

Take Paul Krugman, the intrepid little socialist and Nobel laureate who writes for the New York Times.  Faced with the abject failure of the very excessive government spending he has promoted as the solution to our economic woes, Krugman's allegiance to Keynesian Obamanomics nevertheless remains undaunted.  That might be admirable if it wasn't so foolhardy. 

His recent column is the best evidence yet that when it comes to stimulating economic recovery, the left is simply out of ideas.  Far from innovative, creative or progressive, Krugman actually proposes bringing back one of the greatest failures of FDR's New Deal.  He writes, "We could have W.P.A.-type programs putting the unemployed to work doing useful things like repairing roads ? which would also, by raising incomes, make it easier for households to pay down debt."

For those unfamiliar, the Works Progress Administration was a controversial policy of the 1930s to put unemployed people to work doing various construction projects just so the government could give them a paycheck.  Yes, sometimes that meant doing constructive things like building roads and highways.  But more often, it included boondoggles like hiring one group to go out and dig a ditch, while hiring another to come through after them and fill in the ditch.  The object was to put people to work so you could pay them - the job they were doing was not important.

Did the WPA work?  Nope.  When FDR initiated it, unemployment was around 20%.  Three years later, unemployment was around 19%.  In the intervening 75 years, most rational people have figured out why it failed.  Government jobs are paid from the general tax revenue that is created and produced only by the private sector.  Thus, a plan like the WPA did nothing to generate prosperity, but rather merely allocated what was already there.  Once the ditch was dug or the road resurfaced, the job disappeared and we were right back to where we started.

Not to mention that such a program cost an enormous amount of money to maintain.  As our private sector continues to shrink under the backwards policies of this administration, I'm not sure where Krugman thinks we will find the money to finance more government workers.

Yet this futility is all that remains in the left's idea bag.  The only thing that is unclear is whether Americans will recognize it. 

As much as we should, the danger comes in the reality that liberals have been rewriting textbooks and ingraining an anti-capitalist, pro-socialist message in the minds of America's youth for decades.  The extent to which they have been successful will be determined by whether our nation decides to chain itself to the deck of this Obama piloted Titanic, or do the smart thing and abandon ship.

This column was first published at The American Thinker.

CNN host Don Lemon recently became the latest in a string of high profile individuals to "come out of the closet" and inform everyone who would listen that he enjoys practicing homosexuality.  Every time this occurs, and we are treated to the seemingly endless litany of interviews that applaud the recently outed individual's courage and fortitude, I'm left scratching my head.

First, why do the very people that constantly tell us that what a person does in their bedroom is no one else's business, simultaneously find it necessary to inform everyone of what they do in their bedroom?  If this is a private matter, Don, then let's keep it private.  Perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way, but frankly, I don't care to know what kind of sex the evening news anchor is into.  Beyond it being remarkably irrelevant to the dissemination of news, it's just kind of creepy that these proponents of sexual anarchy feel it is their civic duty to incessantly shove their unconventional behavior in front of our children's faces.

But beyond that, let me be blunt: there is absolutely no courage to be found in following what has become an alarming fad amongst the entertainment glitterati by joining the LGBT crowd.  Does anyone actually think that in the politically correct world of American media there was any chance Don Lemon was going to be publicly criticized amongst his peers for such a declaration?  Lemon's home network of CNN has become notorious for their one-sided reporting of the emerging face-off between homosexual rights claims of sexual anarchists on the left and the rights of conscience for the traditional morality crowd on the right.

Homophobia has become a buzzword that is ceaselessly applied to anyone with moral objections to homosexuality.  In her celebratory interview with Lemon, congratulating him for telling everyone who he enjoys having sex with, uber-leftist Joy Behar demonstrated this very truth.  She asked Lemon, "And so you're going to have people sit there with you like Rick Santorum, who seems like a big homophobe...how do you feel that you'll be able to handle that easily?" 

Gee, Joy, maybe like every Christian feels when they sit down to talk with a Christophobe like you?  And that's the point: far from eliminating discrimination and prejudice, these homosexual rights champions that dominate the press and entertainment world are advocating their own version of bigotry towards those who espouse Biblical morality.

If Lemon really wanted to demonstrate courage, let's see him "come out" in the media as a Bible believing, born-again follower of Jesus Christ whose faith teaches him that homosexuality is morally improper.  Rather than basking in the glow of the entertainment crowd's unyielding affection, he would be immediately tarred and feathered for his draconian allegiance to discriminatory and prejudicial fairy tales coming from an ancient, bigoted book.

He would watch his convictions be publicly twisted as nothing more than masked hatred.  He would see his entire career and livelihood threatened as a result of his supposedly backwards beliefs.  Think I'm exaggerating?  Ask two-time gymnastics gold medal winner Peter Vidmar who just this month was forced to resign from his position as head of the 2012 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team simply because he donated $2,000 to support traditional marriage in California.  Far from being hailed as a hero or courageous for standing up for who he was and what he believed, the homosexual crowd vilified Vidmar, as outed figure skater Johnny Weir labeled his convictions, "disgraceful." 

In our pop culture, courage is apparently a one way street.  This reality was further demonstrated by former NBA star turned social commentator Charles Barkley's recent comments to Washington Post columnist Mike Wise.  Praising Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts for his courage in announcing - what else - that he was "gay," Barkley opined, "The first people who whine and complain is them Bible-thumpers, who are supposed to be non-judgmental, who rail against them.  Hey, may, I don't worry about what other people do."

In case you're wondering, no, Charles didn't notice the irony of claiming he doesn't care about what people do the sentence right after he viciously condemned "Bible-thumping" people for what they do.  Perhaps I'm expecting too much intellectual integrity from a man whose most famous contribution to his profession was spitting on opposing fans in the crowd.  But Barkley's glaring hypocrisy is reflective of a systemic problem of inconsistency on the left.

That inconsistency is what leads us to a culture where someone as genial and pleasant as Dr. James Dobson is branded a hater, while someone as vile and perverted as Lady Gaga is hailed as a courageous trailblazer.

In the end, it's not the presence of decadence in our culture that is the issue.  Free societies will always produce the occasional oddball, and embracing liberty means securing the basic rights of those who are different.  But what we're experiencing is a move on the part of the oddballs not to secure their own rights, but to deny and disparage the rights of others to disagree with them and their choices.  If outlawing decadence is bigoted, codifying it is even worse.

This column was first published at The American Thinker.

There's an old African proverb that says, "Who knows whose womb carries the chief."  This simple truth has taken on a powerful meaning recently for every American paying attention.

According to recently secured documents from the Immigration and Naturalization Services, evidence has emerged that President Obama's father, Barack Obama, Sr., apparently paid to send a young Kenyan girl he had impregnated in Massachusetts to London to have an abortion.

Doing the work that investigative journalists of the mainstream media used to do, author Jack Cashill reveals that the foreign press, unlike their American counterparts, are all over the story.  Far from speculation, according to the INS documents, the high school aged girl was in Massachusetts on an exchange program when she evidently became pregnant by the 29 year old Obama.  Asian News International notes that this incident occurred prior to 1973's Roe v. Wade decision, meaning, "abortions were illegal in the U.S."

One cannot help but wonder if such a revelation would not cause a man whose own wife describes the heinous butchery of partial-birth abortion as a "legitimate medical procedure" to consider: that could have easily been me. 

Let me pause to acknowledge that I don't typically like using these kinds of tactics when discussing the issue of abortion.  The truth is it doesn't matter whether the child being killed is the next Beethoven, Bach, Edison or Einstein.  What makes human life valuable and worthy of protection is that it is human life, bearing the inviolable image of the Creator.  Life is valuable because of what it is, not what it does - whether that's making beautiful music or being tone deaf, inventing a light bulb and unlocking spectacular scientific mysteries or needing help tying shoe laces...or yes, leading the most powerful nation in world history.

But this unfolding bombshell regarding Barack Obama's family is highly instructive given our President's life-long commitment to defending abortion.  The simplest scenario arising from the story is this: President Obama had a half-brother or half-sister who, rather than having the chance to thrive and succeed as he has, ended up in a dumpster in London.  The more complex reality for the president to grapple with is that it is not that far of a stretch to assume, given the complexities of his relationship with mother Ann Dunham, that Barack Obama, Sr. might have preferred the same end for our current president. 

Such a scenario, beyond offering a brand new perspective on Obama's memoir "Dreams from my Father," would provide the most pro-abortion president our country has ever known with the same chilling realization that so many of us born after the disastrous Roe decision encounter: had it not been for the strength and resolve of loving, pro-life mothers, we could have been legally slaughtered.

It was former President Ronald Reagan who is credited with having stated the obvious but enlightening fact that those fighting for abortion rights are those who have already been born.  This disquieting account about his father allows our current President the chance to put himself where his half-brother or half-sister once was...where he once was...and reconsider his tragic position on life in the womb.

As I read the heartbreaking details of this story about a soul deprived of its unalienable right to breathe free, I'm taken back to President Obama's response to Rick Warren at the Saddleback Church presidential forum in the lead-up to the 2008 election.  Asked when a baby gets human rights, Obama cowardly surrendered righteousness for convenience and politics, infamously asserting that, "answering that question with specificity is above my pay grade."

That embarrassing response shouldn't have been a surprise given that just a few months prior, Barack Obama addressed the issue of sex education on the campaign trail.  Speaking specifically about his own daughters, the man who could have been aborted himself proclaimed, "I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."

Like father, like son.

This column was first published at The American Thinker.

Remember the days when Iraq was the "dumb war," when President Bush was nothing but a political punching bag, and the war-weary American mind began to tolerate the second coming of anti-war retreads of the 1960s and 70s?

Who knew how quickly a little extralegal military assassination done on the watch of a Democrat president could turn the left's resurgent "peace community" into a fist-pumping, flag-waving, patriotic cabal of jingoistic chickenhawks?  All of a sudden, for the first time in their adult lives, it seems they are really proud of their country.

Take MSNBC's Ed Schultz, a man for whom self-contradiction is a way of life.  After berating the illegal methods of waging war and the ineffective tactics of gathering intelligence that supposedly took place during the Bush years, Schultz crowed that, "Osama bin Laden is the Republicans' Waterloo on national security.  They don't have the upper hand.  Their plan didn't work for all those years. They did the illegal activity and it didn't work. And it was President Obama and it was the Democrats who have supported this strategy that was well played out on the campaign trail and now is enacted big time and we're getting ... results!"

The only problem with this analysis, of course, is the evidence.  As anyone with a coherent mind recognizes, it takes more than just waking up one day and saying, "You know what, I think it's time we go get bin Laden," to eliminate the fugitive terrorist mastermind.  It took years of intelligence gathering.  Had the left's strategy - the one that Obama proudly touted from the campaign trail - actually been employed during those years, we would have never found him.

Had Guantanamo been closed, had aggressive tactics not been used, had government secrets been released, had habeas corpus been extended, had civilian show trials been conducted, had terrorists been provided legal counsel, had "courageous restraint" been employed - all liberal policy ideas - Osama bin Laden would still be planning, plotting, and killing.  That he's dead serves only as proof that when liberals actually get serious about national security, they jettison their own foolishly naïve arguments and follow a conservative path.

The truth is that the entire liberal philosophy on protecting America has been rendered a joke.  Take their passionate insistence that enhanced interrogations like waterboarding violate our values.  It's fine to be morally opposed to such techniques, but what warped ethical interpretation of our values does one have to possess to condemn non-lethal interrogations, yet condone and celebrate shooting an unarmed, pajama-clad man in the face with an assault rifle? 

That question was put to Obama's National Security Advisor Tom Donilon by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.  Donilon's response was a priceless depiction of the awkward position the left now finds itself in.  When Wallace asked Donilon to explain the contradiction of believing that waterboarding a violent terrorist like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was not consistent with our values but shooting a violent terrorist like bin Laden in the head was, Donilon paused and then stammered, "We are at war with Osama bin Laden."  Of course we are.but isn't the same true for KSM and the entire al-Qaeda network?

But perhaps the final nail in the coffin of the left's national security credibility is the most satisfying.  In the first presidential debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, the man who now occupies the White House laid out his familiar condemnation of George Bush's war in Iraq by saying, "Six years ago, I opposed this war because...we hadn't caught bin Laden. We hadn't put al Qaeda to rest, and as a consequence, I thought that it was going to be a distraction. I wish I had been wrong."

Great news, Mr. President: as it turns out, you were!  Evidence has now emerged that the key al-Qaeda operative who helped our intelligence community pinpoint Osama bin Laden's courier (the rat who led us to the cheese) was captured in...wait for it...Iraq.  Hassan Ghul, a terrorist nabbed by American forces in Iraq in 2004, has been identified as providing the "key moment" when our interrogators put the final piece of the puzzle in place.

So the road to bin Laden traveled straight through the streets of Iraq.  This fitting conclusion provides the self-congratulating left with a most uncomfortable and inconvenient reality: those who wish to celebrate the killing of Osama bin Laden are compelled to acknowledge and appreciate the wisdom and courage of President Bush - a man who faced withering criticism by those who now bask in the glory of what his policies (the very ones they demagogued) wrought.

As it turns out, Ed Schultz is right about the killing of bin Laden being a "Waterloo."  He simply has mistaken who is playing the part of Napoleon.

This column was first published at The American Thinker.

Much is being made of President Obama's recent decision to employ presidential signing statements -- refusing to enforce certain portions of a Congressional budget bill he signed into law -- given that during the 2008 campaign he railed against such a practice proclaiming, "We're not gonna use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around Congress."  This glaring inconsistency would strike most people as hypocritical.  But coupled with his decisions to use military tribunals after blasting them during the campaign, to keep Guantanamo open for business after previously blaming it as nothing but a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda, and to start new wars after vociferously condemning "dumb" ones, this is par for the Obama course.

But beyond the blatantly obvious flip-flops which the Obama-loving mainstream press find a way to excuse as just part of the president's remarkably nuanced mind, this behavior fits a much larger pattern of inconsistency that has come to define the liberal mind in America.  Inconsistencies that should bring great embarrassment when exposed, and that rationality would demand be confronted and resolved, are systematically embraced and welcomed in the land of left-believe.

How else can one explain the recent protest that took place in Washington, D.C.?  There, over 40 liberals (including the city's mayor and several councilmen) took to the streets to complain that the budget deal recently passed by Congress would deprive the nation's capital city of federal tax dollars to fund abortions.  In the name of choice, these left-wing activists blocked the streets until being detained by police.  On its own, seeing a group of liberals championing the right to choose to kill children in the womb is nothing new.

But that wasn't all they were protesting.  Another part of the budget deal that had raised their ire was the reinstatement of the Opportunities Scholarship Program.  This school choice program provides poor families the chance to move their children from failing inner-city schools to higher performing ones, allowing future generations of predominantly minority students the opportunity to escape the cycle of poverty that engulfs them.  This protest, then, is the perfect embodiment of modern liberal thought: rally in the streets to continue facilitating the choice to slaughter innocent children in the womb while simultaneously demanding that those children who survive the abortion holocaust be given no choice to break free from their deplorable surroundings.

Or consider the brewing controversy in the New York public libraries where patrons are allowed virtually unfettered access to view hard-core pornography on the computers.  The ACLU and their fellow liberal travelers are quick to defend the smut as a constitutional right.  Library spokesman Angela Montefinise explained as much, stating, "In deference to the First Amendment protecting freedom of speech, the New York Public Library cannot prevent adult patrons from accessing adult content that is legal."

Of course, no deference to the First Amendment protection of freedom of religion is necessary when and if library officials would want to set up a Nativity Scene on the front lawn.  Here again, we see the state of the liberal mind: Jesus Christ on public library taxpayer-funded lawns violates the U.S. Constitution, but porn star Jenna Jameson on public library taxpayer-funded computer screens -- in plain sight of little Bobby checking out his Curious George book -- is the essence of the First Amendment.

And finally, how can we overlook the witch hunt liberals are instigating against the evil oil speculators that they claim are single-handedly driving up the cost of fuel in America?  In a desperate bid to divert the nation's attention from the logical consequences of President Obama's war against domestic oil production, the left attacks those who attempt to make money in oil futures by buying low and selling high.  They create a patently absurd fantasy that there is a secret room where a handful of evil masterminds sit around cackling like madmen as they play us all like harp strings.  But as Columbia Business School finance professor Bob Hodrick explains, "The market is so competitive that that's nonsense.  There's no way for everyone to communicate and get together and say, ?we're going to buy and drive up the price.'"  Of course not.

Ironically though, the only power cabal capable of wielding enough influence over the market to make any significant difference in our economic health is the Obama Administration -- the very ones ordering investigations into these non-existent secret price manipulators.  Bill Kristol drew attention to this inconvenient truth on last week's Fox News Sunday, explaining that Obama's speculation on the massive stimulus package has exploded the deficit while failing to create any noticeable economic growth.  What it has done is generate, "more government spending and unbelievably cheap money depreciating, [thus] debasing the dollar." 

That, in the end, is what contributes far more to high gas and food prices than any other factor.  If liberals want to blame speculators for our troubles, intellectual honesty demands that they begin with our Speculator-in-Chief.

But intellectual honesty is not the order of the day in the modern liberal mind -- a place where if it weren't for double standards, there seemingly would be no standards at all.

The column was first published at The American Thinker.

We did not waver, we did not tire, we did not falter...and we did not fail. 

After nearly a decade of spent American blood, sweat and treasure in an arduous struggle against those who perpetrated the most brazen and dastardly attack on the American homeland in our nation's history, the United States military has struck its most significant blow.  Osama bin Laden is dead.

Those simple words mean much. 

They mean closure - or as close to it as is possible - for the families who suffered the death of loved ones in the fire and rubble of 9/11. 

They mean a sense of peace to those who have watched their sons and daughters volunteer to serve the great cause of freedom on distant and hostile shores. 

They mean dread confirmation of the reality our enemies face that no matter how long it takes, the American military will get their man. 

They mean justification to a former president who had vowed to his people that justice would be served. 

They mean vindication to a current president whose commitment to the war against terror had been criticized and questioned. 

And most importantly, they mean exactly what they say: that a murderous butcher who had masterminded countless plots to kill innocent people in pursuit of his unholy and mad designs no longer treads our sod, and has been dispatched to deal with an Authority far greater than any earthly judge.

To the heroic members of the U.S. Armed Forces that carried out this cunning and skilled attack - men and women who never cease to amaze or impress us with their loyalty and resolve - words do not express our pride in your professionalism and courage.  As details emerge, we will learn and understand more about the mission, its risks and dangers.  And the precision with which it has been carried out will become known throughout the world. 

When it does, it will reaffirm to our citizens what we already know: that ours is the best trained, best equipped and most effective fighting force the world has ever known.  The U.S. military, in cooperation with our superior intelligence agencies, are well worth our investments and our support.

It will also reaffirm what our enemies would be wise to learn: we may bicker and disagree vigorously amongst ourselves, but that should never be taken as a sign of weakness.  Americans may be slow to anger, but that should never be taken as a sign of ambivalence.  When it comes to the values that unite and inspire us, Americans of every generation including our own are strong, resolute and fiercely determined.

And finally, to our Commander-in-Chief, well done, sir.  You have defied the left-wing of your base by continuing the vast majority of the anti-terrorism strategies left in place by President Bush because you knew they would make us safer.  You have ramped up predator drone attacks on terror camps and made the killing or capture of Osama bin Laden a top priority.  It paid off. 

There are a great many issues upon which I disagree vehemently with you, Mr. President.  And undoubtedly, I will continue to express those frustrations and concerns.  But your devotion and commitment to this end is one that demands and receives my utmost respect. 

Security officials are already revealing the intensity with which you have pursued the intelligence tip on bin Laden's whereabouts that your office received months ago.  No one of any political persuasion can question your dedication to fulfilling the "dead or alive" demand made by your predecessor. 

No matter how symbolic some will attempt to say this action was, Mr. President, you made our country safer by your decisiveness.  For that, every American - including this one - owes you a debt of gratitude.

After less than two months in office, President Obama made a decision that many at the time saw as un-presidential.  In the midst of what even he was calling the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, Obama became the first sitting U.S. President to go on a late night comedy show.  Bizarre as it might have been, ardent Obama defenders like Robert Bianco at the USA Today gave him a pass, writing, "Whatever one thinks of his policies, no one can accuse Obama of lacking gravity or dignity. He doesn't need any particular setting to bestow those qualities on him; he carries them with him."  Or not.

Just a little over two years later, it has become clear that whatever you think of his policies, the current occupant of the White House harbors an irrepressible juvenility that undermines the dignity of the office he holds.  The recent tongue lashing he administered to Republican Congressman Paul Ryan is the latest example of President Obama's increasingly evident maturity deficiency.

To grasp the magnitude of this spectacle, it is important to understand the context.  At the start of the year, the President spoke directly to Republican House leaders at their annual retreat.  There, he took on a tone reminiscent of his hope-n-change, post-partisan healer routine from the 2008 campaign trail, urging, "I don't think [the American people] want more partisanship... They didn't send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel cage match to see who comes out alive... They sent us to Washington to work together, to get things done."

In such an environment of cooperation and collaboration, President Obama invited Congressman Paul Ryan -- the architect of the recent Republican budget plan -- to sit in the front row, just inches from the presidential lectern at his recent budget address.  It would be fair to assume that Ryan believed this to be a sign of goodwill.  Though the President was sure to disagree with portions of his plan, Ryan probably felt he was in for a bipartisan pat on the back and an expression of appreciation for tackling this monumental challenge.  Why else would the President save him such a seat of prominence?

How about the Playground Bully-in-Chief could ambush Ryan and make an example of him in front of the country?  For the better part of an hour, the President of the United States lambasted Ryan's efforts publicly as little short of abandoning autistic kids to the sewers and locking Granny in the attic.

Given this undignified blindside, Rep. Ryan would have been well within his rights to walk out of the hall in disgust.  But apparently, decorum and respect are words that find meaning in the Ryan vocabulary -- more than can be said for our Chief Executive.  After all, this recent manifestation of his brazen childishness is but one thread in a much larger tapestry of immaturity that has emerged.

Remember that in 2008, John McCain purchased an ad to simply congratulate Mr. Obama the night he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination.  Obama couldn't find the grace to return the favor to the former POW, instead making a political calculation to attempt to upstage McCain's big moment by conducting his long-anticipated interview with Bill O'Reilly.

Further, since winning the presidency, Mr. Obama has refused to honor the longstanding, unspoken rule of presidential etiquette not to blame your predecessor.  And as if the petulant strains of "it's all Bush's fault," weren't enough, Obama took it a step further by refusing to credit Bush for the clear success of the Iraqi surge strategy -- a strategy that while in the Senate, Mr. Obama vehemently opposed.  Instead, his administration is shamelessly posturing to call Iraq one of its own greatest successes.

And while several presidents have been rumored or known to have used colorful language in private (Nixon and Johnson are a bipartisan couple of potty-mouths that come to mind), Barack Obama has the dubious distinction of being the first to do so publicly during a morning television interview.  The President apparently thought that using profanity while threatening to kick people's bottoms would be a fine example of presidential poise to set for the nation's youth as they ate their morning Cheerios.

But perhaps, in hindsight, the most instructive example we could have noted in the lead-up to the budget bullying extravaganza was President Obama's unprecedented attack on the Supreme Court during his 2010 State of the Union Address.  There as honored guests of the Congress, the President thought it an appropriate time to directly chastise and scold them for interpreting the law differently than his ideology dictates.  The esteemed justices, like Ryan, were forced to sit there silently (though Justice Alito famously mouthed his displeasure) and endure an un-presidential reprimand.

Far from being a post-partisan healer, President Obama has proven himself to be petty, juvenile, and someone totally lacking the temperament and class we should expect from an Oval Office executive.  Apparently coming to grips with this uncomfortable reality as they watch him forgo press conferences for Daily Show and Tonight Show appearances, some on the left have taken a different approach in defending him.

Writing a piece entitled (no joke), "The Trouble with Presidential Dignity," the New Republic author Jonathan Chait concluded, "our problem is not too little presidential dignity but too much."  That's one national problem I feel confident that the presidency of Barack Obama will correct.

This column was first published at The American Thinker.