As much as I’d like to go, I can’t. However, my husband and I would be willing to financially help out others who can go, and I imagine there are others who might be in the same position we are.

I’d like to propose that RedState set up a fund to help out with travel expenses for those who are going to the rally this weekend. Here’s how I suggest it might work.

RedState already has a contributions page. If they could quickly and easily update it to include a note field, anyone wishing to contribute to this fund could simply type in an agreed upon note like “Code Red Rally Travel Expense Fund”. However, given that the contributions are run through a third party, they might not be able to do this easily. As an alternative, we could agree that anyone interested in contributing to this fund could choose the “other” payment option and enter values ending in 3 cents (example $100.03).  This would provide a “quick and dirty” method for RedState to determine which contributions were meant for the special fund and which for their normal operating expenses.

On the outgoing end, people who wish to receive one of these travel expense “scholarships” (for lack of a better word) would have to submit proof that they’d been to D.C. over the weekend (either a date-stamped photo or a PDF-ed receipt or something similar) to RedState.  Further, I’d suggest that they’d have to have been members of RedState for at least a month, and probably would go as far as suggesting that they need to have a diary / comment history indicating they’re actually conservatives.  (We don’t want our money going to trolls who would use it to communicate the opposite message we want communicated in D.C.)

Just doing a quick “back of the envelope” calculation, I’d suggest these scholarships pay out roughly 10 to 20 cents per mile, based on the round-trip distance between the recipient’s home and D.C. (This would of course depend on how much money went into the fund and how many people applied for the scholarships.) I know this wouldn’t completely cover their expenses, but it might make enough of a difference to help.

Anyway, I don’t know if we can pull this off, but if it can be set up, I’d certainly be willing to contribute.

Given that the nation’s universities, particularly in the liberal arts and soft science areas, have become overwhelmingly dominated by leftist thinking, I believe it is vital that we fight back by establishing some conservative universities. (I know, there are already a few good ones out there.) It pains me to suggest that we should have to establish a university with any particular philosophical leaning because I believe firmly in NOT indoctrinating students into any particular philosophy. Rather, I believe that students need to be given a firm grounding in history, in logic, and in the philosophical underpinnings of our western society upon which basis they can be free to make their own choices. I believe students need to be educated in a climate of rigorous and open debate where they are taught to analyze all sides of an issue before making a morally and logically grounded decision. However, if the history of the past century has taught us anything, it is that any institution that is not explicitly conservative will drift leftward over time.

With that in mind, I would like to get your thoughts on who you would hire (assuming they were interested) as faculty members of such a university. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m interested in filling all sorts of roles from the full time faculty that would shape the development of an entire department or school, to regular teaching faculty, to visiting faculty that could share their thoughts with students and influence their thinking even if only for a single semester. (So don’t assume that just because someone is currently sitting on the Supreme Court, they couldn’t drop by for a while. Feel free to suggest conservative, libertarian, or even intelligent liberal thinkers (to provide some different perspectives).

While I myself am trained in the sciences and would like my university to rigorously pursue science education, I am more interested for the moment in building solid departments in areas such as law, journalism, economics, education, etc. that are currently so dominated in our society by people on the left.

As a few examples to get us started, I think it would be wonderful to have people like Thomas Sowell (economics), Victor Davis Hanson (classics, history) and Dallas Willard (philosophy). I’d love to have Robert Bork shape a law department, but at 81 he might be a little old for the job. Any suggestions as to alternatives?

Please let me know who you’d like to see as one of our prospective faculty members and why. Also feel free to disagree with any of the suggestions I’ve made above.

Wikipedia describes Milk as “an American politician who was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the United States”. He was a fierce advocate for homosexual rights who often used highly controversial tactics to advance his cause.

Whether or not you agree with the issues that Milk was fighting for, it is clear that the primary reason that this legislation is being passed is for purposes of social engineering. The entire purpose of this bill, despite the denials of its originators, is to teach school children to accept the LGBT lifestyle as normal. Agree with it or not, this kind of teaching does not belong in our public schools and amounts to nothing more nor less than indoctrination in one particular philosophical viewpoint.

More information about this issue and the text of the bill itself are available here:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/sexuality/harveymilk.asp

Please call and urge Gov. Schwarzenegger to veto this bill!

Most of us political junkies know that the trooper in question, ex-husband of Palin’s sister, should have been fired. He used a Taser on his 10-year old stepson, was drinking while on duty, and threatened the life of several of Palin’s relatives if the family hired an attorney to defend Sarah’s sister in the divorce proceedings. The fact that he wasn’t fired was due mainly to intransigence on the part of the police union.

As far as I know, it is not yet clear whether or not Sarah Palin used her influence as governor to fire the state’s Public Safety Commissioner responsible for NOT firing the trooper. Mike Gravel, former Democratic senator from Alaska and one time presidential candidate has stated on air (hat tip Hot Air via Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO’s the Corner) that he believes Troopergate will come out in Palin’s favor.

However, while in the end it may come out in her favor, there’s no denying that an October surprise could sway an ill-informed public days before the election. What can we do to mitigate this potential problem? I would argue that we need to get the details of this case exposed extensively to the public before October 31st, particularly the details about the abusive nature of this state trooper and the union influences that prevented him from being fired as he should have been. We also need to expose the Democratic partisan politics in the state that are refusing Gov. Palin a fair and non-partisan investigation. But how do we get the word out there into the non-internet public?