To date, the Swine Flu has only been located in Ohio, Kansas, Texas, California and New York and while it would be easy to make some witty comment about how our leaders are feeding at the public trough like a bunch of fevered pigs, I’ll restrain myself and, instead, turn my attention to weightier issues.

The World Health Organization (WHO? you ask… exactly) has pointed to Mexico as the epicenter of the swine flu outbreak. According to the AP, 1,600 people in Mexico have been affected by the disease, 149 fatally, prompting the WHO’s apocalyptic description of the possible pandemic in a manner that mirrors the SARS outbreak and bird flu scares of recent years. Health officials at the European Union and in countries far removed from North American shores are cautioning their citizens against taking “unnecessary trips” to the US, Mexico and Canada. So far only 40 Americans have contacted the swine flu to date, none of the cases proving fatal, but how long will these numbers stay that low?

I am not an alarmist by any means, and part of me believes this “pandemic scare” to be nothing more than a marketing ploy by Tyson foods and big-pharmaceuticals (the scare has already taken a massive toll on the commodities market) but there is one very serious angle to this issue that I have yet to see addressed.

California and Texas are two of the States hardest hit by the swine flu. What do these two states have in common? They are both border states and gateways for the conga-line of Mexicans that illegally enter this country by the hundreds-of-thousands each year. The Pew Hispanic Center places the number of illegal Mexicans crossing our Southern border unimpeded at 500,000 per year between 2006 and 2008. These aliens bring with them all kinds of diseases; many of which were eradicated from the US decades ago, only to rear their heads again thanks to their hosts’ alacrity with a pair of rusty wire-cutters.

The WHO and health experts have no idea how or where the swine flu jumped from it’s cloven-hoofed to bi-pedal hosts, but one thing that is certain, Mexico is the epicenter and the Mexican “government” is already being verbally berated by countries around the world for it’s lackadaisical approach to the treatment and containment of what the WHO and other are calling a potential “global epidemic.” Mexico hasn’t even gotten medical treatment to the families of those who have been killed by the disease. Like with so many other threats to America’s security and safety (drugs come to mind) the Mexican government has proven itself an impotent hindrance.

So we can’t expect any help from Mexico; so what are our leaders going to do about it? If my math is correct, 1,369.86 Mexicans illegally cross our Southern border every day. (My inclusion of the .86 Mexican was on purpose, since many of them are pregnant waiting to hit Brownsville before conveniently delivering an anchor baby.) How many of them carry this potentially deadly fly strain? How many of them have come in contact with someone who does? And, to take it to it’s next logical step; how many Americans will have to be infected or die before our myopic, flat-arsed leaders in DC do anything about it?

This outbreak is the perfect opportunity for the few politicians left in Washington who still believe in border security to step up and propose legislation putting an absolute halt to all illegal immigration along our Southern border. Bring in the military is that’s what it takes. Make the timing contingent on the flu’s eradication if that’s what it takes. After all, President Obama would never sign an Executive Order demanding as much, since his interests lie more in his own popularity and political capital than in the health and well-being of the people he swore to protect. But the proposal of such legislation, citing immediate danger and the protection of the American people, would put pressure on the Liberals and RHINO Republicans in Congress to either put up or shut up and prove to the American people who is really interested in their security and safety. A vote against a border-sealing bill in light of the global ramifications of this outbreak would be political hari-kari and might just be enough to get a majority on our side. (Robert Byrd only counts for half…)

So, if anyone back in DC is reading this (which I doubt, since most of you don’t even read your own legislation half the time) do what the Democrats do whenever there’s a school shooting and they go after guns –crack down on the “offenders” — fight fire with fire, capitalize on the media uproar and the heightened sense of public awareness, fast-track some tough legislation and let the American people see who’s really looking out for them.

It’s time someone stood up for the most marginalized minority group in America. The US-Americans of which I speak are, in fact, so despised and lacking in representation that they are forced to gather, once a year, just to prove their collective worth to a nation and society who, to be frank, could not care less.

I speak, of course, of beauty queens.

Apparently a new Miss America/USA was crowned last weekend. Who knew? I had no idea they were even holding the Miss America pageant anymore. I mean I’m just as much a red-blooded American male as the next guy, known for my strong affinity for women with low IQ’s and high chest-to-waste ratios, and a big fan of world peace to boot! But it slipped by even me. Nowhere else on the planet can you tune in and see such a bevy of attractive women with such well-developed… ahem… assets and few brain cells. And apparently no one aside from the contestant themselves would have given a tinker’s-damn about any of it but for a politically loaded, hot-potato-of-a-question that took out Miss California and handed the crown to Miss North Carolina.

The question came from “Perez Hilton,” the flamboyantly gay force behind one of the most popular Hollywood gossip sites on the planet, PerezHilton.com. This self-anointed “gossip queen” who’s moniker pays homage to the ultimate Hollywood tabloid harlot, Paris Hilton, makes Liberace look like Mr. Rogers, and has apparently risen in stardom to the point that he was brought in as one of the judges for this year’s festivities. (Shame to waste all those bikinis on a gay man, but at least he got some ideas for swim-suit season! Haaaay!)

During the always-stimulating Q&A portion of the show, Hilton leveled this question at Miss Prop-8-State, Carrie Prejean,

“Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?”

Hear her answer here.

(Whoops, wrong clip, sorry…) Prejean answered,

“Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. Um, we live in a land that you can choose same sex marriage or opposite marriage and, you know what, in my country and in, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman,” Carrie said to a mix of boos and applause. “No offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think that it should be between a man and a woman.”

Despite the fact that it was delivered about as well as your ex-brother-in-law’s wedding toast, the answer, for a beauty queen, is legitimate and about as coherent as one can expect. But it was not the poor delivery that cost Prejean the tiara, according to Hilton and the audience, but the answer itself.

“The way miss California answered her question lost her the crown, without a doubt!” Perez told Access Hollywood after the pageant. “Never before that I’m aware of has a contestant been booed at Miss USA,” Hilton said.

Keith Lewis, Co-Executive Director of the Miss California USA and Miss California Teen USA said this is a statement to Access Hollywood,

“I am proud of Carrie Prejean’s beauty and placement at the 2009 Miss USA pageant. I support Carrie’s right to express her personal beliefs even if they do not coincide with my own,” Keith told Access. “I believe the subject of gay marriage deserves a great deal more conversation in order to heal the divide it has created.”

So, it really wouldn’t have mattered if Prejean had have answered the question with the eloquence of William F. Buckley Jr. or Obama’s Teleprompter, her views on gay marriage (views that 52.24% of the California voting-public agree with) are so repulsive that they cost the statuesque blond a title with as little relevance to the general public as Janeane Garofalo’s career. Wow!

Strike another blow against free-speech and free minds.

Of course, Miss Prejean’s mistake wasn’t her answer, but that she didn’t have the common sense to realize the political volatility of the question and the fact that it was delivered by a celebrated homosexual lightening rod. Hilton often uses his website as a pro-gay rights platform and was incredibly active in opposing and rallying support against Proposition 8, an amendment to the CA Constitution that threatened to tear the state in half just a few short months ago.

Obviously, the pageant and appointed judges can run and rule the way they feel, but it’s a shame to see the content of Miss Prejean’s answer (and her personal beliefs) judged, instead of the quality of her answer. (The quality of her answer would have sealed her fate had I been a judge, but instead of focusing on her apparent lack of eloquence and inability to communicate her own ideals, Hilton & Co. chose to punish her for holding a politically incorrect opinion on a politically volatile issue, an opinion that, incidentally, a majority of the American people support. But what does that matter? Wherever a fashionably-dressed vocal minority are in charge, you traditionalists had better watch out! (Or they might throw a pump at you!)

So, Miss Prejean, I’m sure you are in need of some comfort and should you be interested in opposing homosexuality through the exploration of a strictly heterosexual interaction, look me up.

Pirates have been on everyone’s mind lately after the saga of Captain Richard Phillips reminded millions here in the US and around the globe of the reality that is piracy. No longer are pirates a colorful band of rowdy, run-filled, swashbuckling thieves as depicted by Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom, but are real, flesh-and-blood, brutal hijackers who make their living through kidnapping, theft and murder. These pirates don’t bury their treasure in chests under a lone palm marked by an “X” but wire them to Swiss bank accounts or trade their loot for weapons and tools of the trade. They are, as were their predecessors, a scourge to international trade and a danger to peaceful sea-goers and trade-ships. Captain Phillip’s vessel wasn’t carrying treasure, or weapons or contraband of any kind — it carried aid for the countrymen of the very Somalian pirates’ who took him captive and threatened his life. These people are just as random in their terror tactics as are the terrestrial miscreants we seek in Afghanistan, and just as dangerous. So, what to do?

While others waste time hand-wringing and talking about “peaceful negotiations,” one lone congressman from Texas has looked to the Constitution for a solution to the pirate problem. His name is Ron Paul, and in recent days his crazy-enough-to-work idea has begun attracting the attention of the intelligence intelligentsia. Our foremost founding document contains within it’s weathers pages a power granted to Congress to issue “letters of marque and reprisal” — certificates that grant the holder license to hunt down, prosecute and destroy, if necessary, pirates and other saboteurs of the high seas. These letters would essentially “privatize” the hunting, prosecution and elimination of said pirates by any individual willing to sign a bond requiring them to adhere to international laws of combat while in international waters. Such letters were used extensively during the War for Independence and the War of 1812, when a majority of our fighting men were, in fact, private citizens and the fledgling nation found it more expedient and less expensive to privatize the activity rather than charge the standing US Navy with the task. Such is the case now. With our military spread painfully thin around the globe, still involved in Afghanistan and Iraq and facing massive budget cuts by newly-minted President Obama, Congressman Paul’s plan to invoke a Constitutional solution might just be exactly what we seek.

And therein lies my question. Why is it that turning to the Constitution is (1.) not the first place our leaders look when faced with a pressing issue at home or abroad, and (2.) viewed with such perplexity and apprehension when they do? As Americans, shouldn’t we look first to the pages of our founding documents and the words of our Founders when we seek guidance? It is a sad day when one lonely obstetrician from the Lone Star State is the only voice reminding Congress, our fair leader, the American intelligence community and general public to look to the Constitution for answers!

But so it has become in recent, and not so recent, years. The documents that forged this nation are rarely referred to and the only time they are is when Senator Robert Byrd wags his pocket version for the C-SPAN cameras to see before returning to his chambers for a diaper change and nap.

Is this what we’ve been reduced to; a nation with no memory, no historical recollection and no desire to even explore the solutions contained in our founding documents and the wise words of the men who lifted the United States on their collective shoulders?

Sadly, it is. And if it weren’t for men like Dr. Paul and a scant few others, the wisdom found in those pages would have turned to dust years ago.

As is true of so many other of their unconstitutional, over-reaching, deficit-spending, imbecilic undertakings, it’s time for the federal government to get out the pirate-hunting business and turn it over to the private sector. And it’s high time that we return our national attention back to the wisdom contained in those seven articles and 27 amendments.

So, it has come to this has it? I knew it would eventually.

In the same manner the tyrannical British monarchy labeled the Founders and their fellow countrymen as dangerous radicals, the current administration has decided to bestow the same garland on the heads of you and I, and when I say you and I, I of course mean anyone who believes in Constitutionally protected individual liberty, the sovereignty of the states and the limiting powers of the Constitution over the federal government. Yep, in case you hadn’t heard, Obama & Co. have just released a Department of Homeland Security document to every law enforcement entity in the country warning against the rise in dangerous “right-wing” radical groups — devilish groups like the KKK, the skinheads, the neo-nazis, the white-supremacy movement, anarchic anti-government militias and… pro-life counselors in crisis pregnancy clinics. Wait, what?! You heard me correctly, according to the DHS document, “right-wing extremists” are anyone who falls into the Timothy McVeigh-like organizations above AND anyone who takes issue with illegal immigration or abortion, and “groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.” Hmmm, you just described every founder from Adams to Washington and every true Conservative in the country! Talk about painting with a broad brush!

Essentially, the Obama administration is attempting a massive black-list of everyone who didn’t vote for “change and hope” (or was it hope & change?) in ’08. Oh, and they didn’t forget to include their favorite target of disdain, the baby-killing US military. According to our dear leader, our fighting men and women are all mindless, damaged individuals just waiting to be snatched up by each and every wackadoo nut-job outfit that ever heiled Hitler — ready to be turned into killing machines — thanks to the training they received in those two illegal wars we’ve been fighting.

And it’s all because of the economy says they. Well, that’s a regular chapter out of the Marx/Heigel playbook now isn’t it? People are merely products of their environment and controlled by the eternal quest of collecting material possessions, and when there’s no money for the items they desire, society collapses and turns into anarchy, blah, blah, blah. (If that’s true, then the years of the Great Depression should have been the most lawless in our nations history; which, incedentally, they weren’t.)

So, here’s my response to President Obama and his lackeys over at DHS: You bet I’m dangerous, dangerous to your way of thinking and the plans you have in store for this country. I have no plans to build pipe-bombs, begin stockpiling canned goods or contact David Duke, but I do plan on fighting the intellectual battles that will be required to take this country back from you and return it to it’s former glory as a “shining city on a hill.” I might only reach one person, maybe 10, maybe 20, but I will do everything in my power to expose you and your ilk for what you are — statists bent on tearing apart the very fabric that holds this country together and has brought us so much prosperity over our short 300-year existence.
So be afraid, very afraid, Mr. President. We true Conservatives will not go down without a fight. It will not be a battle of man-made weapons meant for bodily harm, but instead a battle of ideas, a battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. And we will win, sir. It may not be in 2012, it may not be 2016, but count on it.

How did Meghan McCain become the de-facto mouthpiece for the young Republican party, conservative movement, or anything at all? Oh, that’s right, her octogenarian father ran an ill-fated, right-of-center, reach-out-to-minorities-at-all-costs campaign for President — which he then lost to a wet-behind-the-ears junior Senator with no resume and Hussein for a middle name. And young Meghan was there to experience every flash-bulb and balloon-drop, transforming into an attractive-enough-to-get-on-FOX-pseudo-celebrity in the process. I get it now. Proximity equals authority.

Well, no matter how she got access to a microphone, this time Meghan McCain and her multiple chins got it wrong.

Miss McCain is delighted to announce that she will address the Log Cabin Republicans this week. (I don’t quite understand the organizations choice in speakers, perhaps Heidi Montag was unavailable, but at least they’ll be able to compare accessories!) The young political starlet is using the platform as an excuse to speak out against the anti-gay sentiment of the current Republican Party and Conservative movement (as if the two are one in the same.) She claims that it is high time for both to shed the anti-gay mantra that has been hanging about our necks like a rainbow-hued mill-stone for so many years and embrace gay marriage as an individual choice and right defended by our own hallowed Declaration of Independence and championed by (her words not mine) the “ultimate Republican rock star” Ronald W. Reagan. (Hmm, the Gipper did play cowboys during his days in Hollywood, but I’m pretty sure none of them were the Brokeback variety.)

First things first, it is high time for the Republican Party to start taking it’s cues from the Conservative movement — not the other way around. It was the very practice of big-tent Republicanism that dear Meghan espouses as our way out of the wilderness that brought us President Obama and a Democratically controlled Congress. The American people don’t know what the Republican Party stands for anymore and, frankly, neither do many Republicans. I refuse to join the ranks of the GOP for that very reason. The inmates have been running the asylum for too long now and Miss McCain seems to be fine with continuing the practice, so long as the boys who want to share their bunk-beds with other boys are afforded an equal place in the cuckoo’s nest.

This “changing the party/movement to fit the times” mentality is part-and-parcel with the ideology that says the Constitution is a “living document” that must be changed/interpreted in accord with current social and political trends. Nothing is farther from the truth, yet Miss McCain and current GOP leadership seem to believe that we need to water down our message and, in doing so, reach out to those who normally wouldn’t share our ideology; such as gay Americans.

Obviously there are homosexuals who believe in the same things we do, being gay is not a disqualifier for Conservatism, and there are many gays who share our love of individual liberty, private property, a Constitutionally-bound government and shared tradition. But where the issue of marriage is concerned, Miss McCain could not be more incorrect when she paints it as an individual right guaranteed to all citizens by our founding documents and the approval of popular leaders like Reagan or, lesser-so, Hutchinson.

It is possible to believe in, and defend, individual liberty and self-determination while disagreeing with the idea of extending the rights and rewards of marriage to the gay community. Marriage is not an inherent right of man and is not guaranteed by any of our founding documents to the citizenry. In fact, the inclusion of the guarantee to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” found in the Declaration seems to run counter to any description of marriage I’ve ever heard. (Maybe that’s why Rush and Ann are still single, hmmm.)

If marriage were, in fact, a Constitutionally recognized and protected right, then sexual orientation should not be used as a impediment to that right anymore than sex, race or religion. But it isn’t. And until there is either a federal amendment adopted or a Supreme Court decision stating otherwise, both of which I reject, the argument is moot.

Marriage is a religious insitution entered into before God that the government got involved in after-the-fact; first in order to provide incentives for producing children and furthering the civilization, then as a means to regulate the family and collect revenue. Now it is being painted by right and left alike as the civil rights struggle of our time, or at least that’s what the sequined lame’ sign I saw recently said.

Bottom-line, the GOP will not gain ground by diluting its principles. We do not need to extend a new, mythical right to the gay commuinity, or any minority community, to attract them to our ranks. We will only do so by returning to the principles of our founding and reinforcing them through the open communication of a Conservative, pro-liberty message.

Meghan, you’re a lot better looking than your dad and I’m sure your gay friends are wonderful people, but before you start reinventing the GOP and Conservatism is your image, re-read Goldwater and do a few crunches.