America faces an enemy that is more dangerous than the entire worldwide collection of Islamic terrorists, and more threatening to our long-term sovereignty than our massive national debt. This enemy is the slow and creeping rot of the social institutions that hold this country together – the invisible bonds that make America what she is and that are necessary to the success of any country. Behold the face of this enemy, which has named itself “Progress

Rome was not overrun by the Visigoths – at least, not really. Rome overran itself. The Rome of Augustus and Tiberius would have scoffed in the face of the threat presented by the Gothic Wars. However, the fat, bloated, and divided Rome of the fourth century onward was not even able to manage a passable pretense of the glory days which preceded it. It was a territory which sat on wealth it did not deserve and could not protect because its own decadence had sapped its will.

Fast forward to America in the early 21st century. Although not an “Empire” in the traditional sense of the word, America has shepherded the world through a remarkable period of relative peace for the last half decade, and prevented Western Europe from another period of the Dark Ages under communist totalitarianism. Alas, all is not well and the signs of very serious trouble are unavoidable. Here at home on our streets, a sizeable portion of our citizenry is crying out for a factory of infanticide on every corner. Worse, the leading lights of the only political party ostensibly committed to maintaining America’s greatness are crying out for “truce” with the purveyors of this wickedness so that the urgent business of maintaining current marginal tax rates can be attended to.

The end of this story may be seen from the beginning.

Can it be avoided? Perhaps. Conservatives have preferred to chide the last two administrations with failing to understand the nature of the terrorist enemy; will they continue to blind themselves to the nature of the enemy at home? Will those who would deride the idea of a truce with bin Laden continue to cry out for a truce with the enablers and participants in mass infanticide? The answer to these questions holds the future of our society.

And only we are capable of answering them.

In the panoply of Reagan tributes being issued in memory of Reagan on what would have been his 100th birthday (next Wednesday), this one from GE stands out as being extremely well done. As the tribute notes, Reagan had a relationship with GE as a spokesman in the early days of his political and pre-political careers, and this video does a remarkably good job of chronicling the early days of Reagan as a major player in politics. Something for you all to enjoy on your Friday afternoon.

General Electric also has a site, which can be found here, where you can submit your own stories and remembrances about Ronald Reagan and the ways in which he inspired you.

In addition, the NFL will join in tribute with this video which is to be shown prior to the Super Bowl:

“No one is pro-abortion.”

-Barack Obama

By now I am sure that you have all seen the video of Planned Parenthood actively participating in the coverup of underage sex slavery. If not, please take a few minutes and do so here:

We were honored to have SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser cover this story yesterday, and I would encourage you all to read her post here. This video, however, was compelling enough that I thought a couple of additional points deserved to be made.

First, it has long been alleged (with substantial proof) that the sort of behavior captured on tape here is widespread in Planned Parenthood clinics. Some of this proof is chronicled here, and we have covered an actual Internet confession of a Planned Parenthood worker who admitted to covering up the sexual abuse of minors at RedState before. It is, however, quite another thing to see on the video where the “pimp” talks about how he might have a lot of 14 year old sex slaves who need abortions and the clinic director reaches into the top drawer of her desk and goes “Oh, no problem, we have a HANDOUT YOU CAN LOOK AT which helpfully outlines what to say for you.” How commonplace does a practice have to be before a company goes to the trouble of printing out a handout that it keeps in convenient locations for distribution?

Second, we in this country like to believe that as a country we take strong stands against both slavery and the sexual abuse of minors. Yet here we have an organization which, by uncontroverted proof, facilitates both. This organization receives hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax money every year. Our elected officials are doing nothing to stop or police this organization. So the question falls to you, dear citizen: what are you going to have your elected officials do about it?

I will say this: this particular Planned Parenthood clinic is in New Jersey. Despite some carping from some folks who have bitter grapes about the Lonegan loss, I have liked just about every move Chris Christie has made as Governor so far. But if he does not come down like a ton of bricks on this clinic I will a) be shocked and b) cross him off my list of potential candidates for both 2012 and 2016. If he has learned nothing from the mistakes of Tom Ridge, then his judgment must be considered fatally flawed. However, whatever Christie does about this particular clinic, only the most thoroughgoing naif would suggest at this point that the behavior captured in this video was an isolated incident confined to New Jersey. This is a national problem with an organization that must be stopped, for the sake of our society’s legitimacy.

Although it is a fact that we only dare to confront in the occasional dark night of our souls, this country has been teetering on the brink of moral illegitimacy for the last 38 years.

Yesterday, I was forcibly reminded of this when someone sent me this excerpt from the forthcoming book Unplanned, in which former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson explains her conversion from pro-choice activist to pro-life activist, as she watched an abortion being performed live on an ultrasound:

At first, the baby didn’t seem aware of the cannula. It gently probed the baby’s side, and for a quick second I felt relief. Of course, I thought. The fetus doesn’t feel pain. I had reassured countless women of this as I’d been taught by Planned Parenthood. The fetal tissue feels nothing as it is removed. Get a grip, Abby. This is a simple, quick medical procedure. My head was working hard to control my responses, but I couldn’t shake an inner disquiet that was quickly mounting to horror as I watched the screen.

The next movement was the sudden jerk of a tiny foot as the baby started kicking, as if it were trying to move away from the probing invader. As the cannula pressed its side, the baby began struggling to turn and twist away. It seemed clear to me that it could feel the cannula, and it did not like what it was feeling. And then the doctor’s voice broke through, startling me.

“Beam me up, Scotty,” he said lightheartedly to the nurse. He was telling her to turn on the suction — in an abortion the suction isn’t turned on until the doctor feels he has the cannula in exactly the right place.

I had a sudden urge to yell, “Stop!” To shake the woman and say, “Look at what is happening to your baby! Wake up! Hurry! Stop them!”

But even as I thought those words, I looked at my own hand holding the probe. I was one of “them” performing this act. My eyes shot back to the screen again. The cannula was already being rotated by the doctor, and now I could see the tiny body violently twisting with it. For the briefest moment the baby looked as if it were being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed. And then it crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes. The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube, and then it was gone. And the uterus was empty. Totally empty.

If you are able, I encourage you to read the whole thing. I have to confess to you that I almost was not. The horror that Johnson describes is almost unfathomable, accentuated by the cruelty and insensitivity of the conscienceless monsters cracking jokes as they watched the death of a tiny human unfold live before them.

Perversely, the most shocking aspect of this particular story is its mundanity. It occurs every single day in the United States, over three thousand times a day, and has for almost four decades. The only thing that sets this particular abortion apart is that a person possessed of a conscience and some measure of writing skill happened to be present and witness it on ultrasound. Every day, including today, probably several dozen times during the course of the time it takes you to read this article, this horror is repeated in America and no one is present who cares to chronicle it in a book about the way it changed their life. Tens of millions of times since 1973 this has occurred in this country under the color and protection of law.

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My friend and RedStater emeritus Pejman Yousefzadeh has discovered a truly astounding thing:

The Apocalypse is upon us. Sarah Palin did something, and Andrew Sullivan professes to not giving a hoot.

What’s next? An admission that Trig is Sarah Palin’s son? Stock up on the canned goods, and shotguns, people. The Seventh Seal is about to be broken, and the Cubs might win the next World Series.

To expound on Pejman’s point – Andrew Sullivan explained to us over and over and over that determining whether Trig Palin was actually Sarah Palin’s son was a matter of great national importance because… well, I don’t really understand the because in this case because I am not afflicted with an organic brain disease. He continued pressing on with this obsession long past the point that all reasonable people – and even most truthers – gave it up as folly.

However, when Sarah Palin – who is undoubtedly a political force in America, agree with her or not – speaks on the one issue that defines Andrew Sullivan, he does not care. The man is officially beyond parody.

You know, I travel a decent amount and I always find myself talking to people about politics wherever I go. I find lots of people who read RedState, lots of people who read Kos, or Hot Air, or Firedoglake, or whatever. I have never in all my travels met anyone who has voluntarily announced that they read Andrew Sullivan every day and love his commentary. I have reached the point that I am eagerly awaiting the occasion when it finally does happen so that I can enjoy pointing in that person’s face and laughing. Hard.

I should note at the outset of this post that I do not have very strong feelings one way or the other about Reince Priebus, who is currently seeking to replace Michael Steele as RNC chairman. This post is not really intended to be an argument that Priebus is the best candidate for the job. It is merely intended to set the record straight on a spurious attack on Priebus that is making the rounds in the blogosphere, typified by this post at National Review. The argument goes that since Priebus’ law firm (where Priebus is, unsurprisingly, in the government affairs practice group) advertised that it was willing and able to help clients understand the implications of Obama’s stimulus bill and take advantage of it, this somehow constitutes an endorsement of the stimulus bill itself on Priebus’ part.

Most of the furor in the blosophere today concerns whether or not Priebus actually did any work with clients on the stimulus bill or not; this all completely misses the point and illustrates that the people who are circulating this attack don’t really have the slightest clue what it is that lawyers do or what our obligations to our clients are. Which is certainly acceptable under ordinary circumstances; I would not want to know about a day in the life of a lawyer myself if my paycheck did not require me to do so. But in this case, the record really does need to be set straight.

In the first place, one of the things that is explained very early on in the career of every law school student is that advocacy on behalf of a client does not indicate endorsement of the client’s views or activities. In fact, this principle is even enshrined in binding ethical canons upon lawyers. The reason for this is that lawyers have an ethical duty to diligently represent their clients to the best of their abilities, which sometimes requires making arguments on a client’s behalf that are necessarily not in line with the personal viewpoints of the lawyer. As a lawyer, you are merely the agent of your client, and have a fiduciary and ethical obligation to use their best independent judgment to maximize results on behalf of their clients. If you, as a lawyer, became aware that your client was eligible for millions of dollars in stimulus money from the Federal Government, and you refused to fill out the paperwork for them (or notify them of their eligibility for the benefits) merely because you politically opposed the stimulus, that would almost certainly amount to legal malpractice and a breach of legal ethics.

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Glenn Greenwald is really, really upset that we have taken Bradley Manning’s pillow and blankie away. He’s so upset, he’s written one of his typical 8 billion word posts (complete with several pointless updates) explaining, in his prissy and hyperventilating style, that we’re effacing the poor boy’s personality (which by all accounts, would be a desirable result in this case, but that is beside the point, I suppose) with TORTURE.

OK. Well, I suppose I really wouldn’t want to be put in solitary confinement and have my pillow and blankie taken away. In order to avoid this result, I have made a conscious decision to not access and steal highly classified information from the United States and sell it to a sex offender from Sweden. Thus far, my strategy seems to be working, but if that ever changes, I’m sure you’ll all hear about it on Glenn Greenwald’s blog.

Glenn Greenwald is constantly telling us that the reason the terrorists want to kill us is not because they are regressive degenerates who hate Western values like freedom and tolerance, but rather because they just don’t like our military policies and how we’re all meddling in their business.

Well, I am not a man without a heart, so I am willing to propose a solution to Greenwald’s problem which I am confident the Army would be amenable to. As an added bonus, it will serve as an opportunity to validate Glenn Greenwald’s views on the causes of Islamic terrorism. We will give Bradley Manning his pillow and blankie back, and remove him from solitary confinement. In fact, we’ll let him be around lots of people. We’ll call an emissary with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, and tell them that we have a political prisoner to release to them, no strings attached. We will tell them that we are going to release to them an American who thoroughly rejects our interventionist policies and our military meddling – he rejects them so strongly, in fact, that he did everything in his power to see that American soldiers were killed and that Islamic terrorists were given access to our operational details. Therefore, we have decided to let him go to be with the Taliban so that he can self-actualize and join the fight against America with them.

I’m sure that like John Walker Lindh, the Taliban will be happy to have an American like this on board. So we’ll drive Manning out there to meet them at some safe remote location in Afghanistan somewhere, and we’ll release Manning and let him rush to join his new Taliban brethren.

Then we’ll tell them he’s gay.

Contrary to the fervent hopes of, well, darn near everyone, Michael Steele has announced that he is seeking another term as RNC chair. In a rambling conference call last night that was reminiscent of Lebron James’ ill-fated The Decision special on ESPN (both in terms of total vacuity and clueless narcissism), Steele announced, to widespread cries of “Ah, crap.” that the RNC could have two more years of his, uh, “services,” if it wanted them.

The only thing more embarrassing than the conference call was this atrocious “statement” Steele released to the RNC members. Judging by the quality of the writing contained therein, Steele either wrote it himself or had Meghan McCain do it after a weekend-long binge on Four Lokos and deep-fried chocolate-covered bacon. EIther way, the “statement” certainly showcases the competence that has made him a favorite of party activists throughout the entire country, especially here in the South where we were glad to finally have an RNC chair willing to bravely call us all racists. Of course, Steele is not a man to show favoritism; to him, all Republicans who criticize him (a group which includes pretty much all Republicans everywhere) are equally racist.

Click below the fold to find a small sampling of the verbal sausage of Michael Steele, communicator extraordinaire. All typos, grammatical errors, and cheap e.e. cummings rip-offs are in the original:

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I have had time now to briefly read Judge Hudson’s opinion ruling that the individual mandate portion of Obamacare is unconstitutional. My initial impression is that, while this ruling will widely be viewed as a victory for opponents of Obamacare, there are some potential problems with the opinion that may result in this opinion being a net loss down the road (where it will inevitably be decided by the Supreme Court in any case).

To begin with, Judge Hudson specifically refused to enjoin the Act’s enforcement pending appeal (a decision which will likely not be revisited by the Fourth Circuit whenever they get around to hearing the appeals). More importantly, Judge Hudson – improperly, in my view – severed the individual mandate from the Act as a whole.  If that decision stands, it could well result in the wholesale destruction of private health insurance companies in the United States. It is also worth noting that this lawsuit did not address the potential capitation problems being litigated in the Florida lawsuit.

The largest legal hurdle the Virginia AG had to clear in arguing that the individual mandate was not within Congress’ Commerce Clause powers was avoiding the argument that this case was controlled by Wickard v. Fillburn, in which the Supreme Court upheld the application of a federal regulation imposed upon an individual wheat farmer.  The Supreme Court in Wickard reasoned that although the particular wheat farmer at issue certainly had a de minimis effect on interstate commerce, the aggregate effect of all wheat farmers nationwide did have a “substantial effect” on interstate commerce, and therefore Congress had acted within their Commerce Clause powers in enacting the act.  More recently, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Wickard with respect to individual marijuana growers in Gonzales v. Raich, which I suspect is the one judicial opinion in his career that Scalia would like to have back.

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I have read enough of his opinions to know that Stephen Breyer is not an idiot. However, despite any protestations to the contrary he might make, he undoubtedly is a partisan. And his partisanship leads him down paths that require him to engage in intellectual dishonesty, which serves to make him look like an idiot far more often than he shoud. For example:

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Breyer said history stands with the dissenters in the court’s decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban in the 2008 case “D.C. v. Heller.” 

Breyer wrote the dissent and was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He said historians would side with him in the case because they have concluded that Founding Father James Madison was more worried that the Constitution may not be ratified than he was about granting individuals the right to bear arms. 

Here we have a Supreme Court Justice appearing on television to spout some truly moronic tripe. Even if we grant Breyer’s characterization of the history with respect to Madison (and I gather that this is a subject of some debate), that does not at all lead to the conclusion that therefore, the founding fathers would have been fine with the DC gun ban at issue in Heller.  In fact, the number of logical leaps and bounds (over yawning chasms of total and utter nonsense) required to get from Point A to Point B in this circumstance are so numerous that only an idiot would make the attempt. Or, in this case, a partisan desperate to appear nonpartisan.

Nevertheless, the substance of Breyer’s arguments aside, I find Breyer’s sudden solicitousness for utilizing history in interpreting the constitution to be refreshing and hope that it will continue:

“If you’re interested in history, and in this one history was important, then I think you do have to pay attention to the story,” Breyer said. “If that was his motive historically, the dissenters were right. And I think more of the historians were with us.”

That being the case, and particularly since the Founding Fathers did not foresee how modern day would change individual behavior, government bodies can impose regulations on guns, Breyer concluded.

Alright, Steve, let’s make a deal. We’ll concede your point that the history should be dispositive on the issue of handguns and the Second Amendment, if you’ll concede the point that absolutely no one will seriously suggest that the founding fathers had abortion in mind when they wrote the Fourth Amendment. We’ll disarm our emanations and penumbras if you deep six yours. Deal?

Of course, I don’t think for a minute that Breyer is going to start taking constitutional history seriously as a universal proposition, or even that he really cares about the history surrounding the Second Amendment. The simple truth here is that there is no tool that a partisan hack will not summon to his side if his party requires it.