Well, how do you do????

I move that the Nominating Committee nominate Hillary for a position on the NRA Board of Directors. Man, I am sure glad she cleared that up, and I really believe her!!!

From The Caucus:

Clinton Portrays Herself as a Pro-Gun Churchgoer
By Julie Bosman

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton managed to co-opt Mr. Obama’s message of hope and optimism, beginning a speech in Valparaiso, Ind., by talking about how positive and “fundamentally optimistic” Americans are….

“I disagree with Senator Obama’s assertion that people in our country cling to guns and have certain attitudes about immigration or trade simply out of frustration,” she said.

She described herself as a pro-gun churchgoer, recalling that her father taught her how to shoot a gun when she was a young girl and said that her faith “is the faith of my parents and my grandparents.”

The official Democratic Party campaign car is designed exactly the way Obama and Clinton lay out their campaign message — A New Direction.

You figure it out. I have a headache.

Hillary Cinton’s celebrated cackle is back.

When facing “problematic” questions, polished pols have learned to take evasive action by smiling away, even titttering a bit. This will often throw off the hounds, or in many cases, the media puppies.

Hillary, as we see, or hear, in the video, still has not perfected the technique. She was asked about Bill’s pulling in — if not grifting — almost a million dollars for speeches supporting the Columbia NAFTA deal — yes, the very same Free Trade deal which she herself is now claiming to oppose.

Uh-oh. What does an iconic Presidential candidate do who tells us she is ready to take momentous phone calls at three o’clock in the morning, on anything from mad mullahs to mortgage defaults?

It turns out that Hillary, fresh from being caught in her “Sniper Fire” doozy, apparently is still unable to lie as artfully as Master Slick. She had another deer-in-the-headlights moment, with awkward sound effects….

Her reaction to a straight question about Clinton contradictions and playing both sides against the muddle?

Not very Presidential. In fact, she was unable to keep the old cackle in its box. Despite all her lessons, all the tutoring from professionals, all the Billdozing, it still escaped (and into the wide world of YouTube.) And her eyes. Deer me!

Dennis Miller says the Clintons are low-rent grifters who should never be allowed back in the White House.

Dennis was kind. He didn’t advocate prosecution for the precision missile guidance technology that now lets a Chinese General boast how they can target L.A.

And, so far as I know, he didn’t suggest water-boarding to get back the White House silver.

It’s Official: Mayor Cresitello of Morristown has collected enough signatures to run for the Democratic nomination for the US Senate against Frank Lautenberg.

Mayor Cresitello has been an outspoken advocate of immigration reform. As Mayor of Morristown he filed an application to institute Federal Program 287(g) in his town which would enable local police to partner with federal law enforcement to enforce immigration law.

From the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

Mayor C guns for the Senate by George!

There’s no turning back now. Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello filed on Monday to challenge Sen. Frank Lautenberg in the Democratic primary. The field also includes Rep. Rob Andrews (D-1st Dist.), who says he will give up his congressional seat regardless of the Senate outcome.

Mayor Cresitello has said he supports securing U.S. borders while dealing with illegal aliens with “humanity and compassion.”

Some good news on the anti-illegal immigration front. From HS Today we learn that US Senator Arlen Specter is getting tough:

Specter Presses Criminal Alien Deportation Bill
by Mickey McCarter
Friday, 11 April 2008

Pa. senator’s bill to put pressure on countries to repatriate alien nationals deported by US.

A proposal now introduced in the US House of Representatives would compel foreign nations to take back foreign nationals deported from the United States or face a mandatory denial of US visas to citizens of those countries as well as reductions or elimination of US foreign aid to those countries, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who first introduced the bill in the Senate, announced Thursday.

Reps. Mike Castle (R-Del.) and Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), revealed the House companion bill to Specter’s Accountability in Immigration Repatriation Act, introduced March 5….

“There is no reason American taxpayers should carry the burden of drawn-out repatriation negotiations for criminal aliens,” Castle asserted….

More good news! From the Central Penn Business Journal:

Senate approves bill to keep public benefits from illegal immigrants
By Eric Veronikis
4/10/2008

….Senate Bill 9 requires anyone requesting public benefits to provide identification that proves they are legal residents… Applicants would also have to sign an affidavit that states they are a U.S. citizen or legal immigrant….

If the bill is approved by the House of Representatives and signed into law by the governor, illegal immigrants would no longer be eligible for benefits such as Medicaid, welfare, and in-state college tuition…

Illegal immigrants cost the state about $285 million annually in public benefits… That figure is expected to grow to $812 million by 2020….

Now for the not-so-good news. According to CBS News, illegal aliens’ babies are costing a bundle:

Illegal Immigrant Births – At Your Expense
Taxpayers Foot Bill For Roughly 300,000 Children Born Into Citizenship When Their Parents Are Illegal

It was 5 a.m. and CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts is with a woman who is nine months pregnant. She’s rushed to a south Texas hospital to undergo a C-section – a $4,700 medical procedure that won’t cost her a dime. She qualifies for emergency Medicaid.

She gave birth to a healthy, 8 1/2 pound baby boy – born in America. His Mexican mother gave him an American name: Eliot.

Eliot is one of an estimated 300,000 children of illegal immigrants born in the United States every year, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. They’re given instant citizenship because they are born on U.S. soil, which makes it easier for their parents to become U.S. citizens.

That’s because those babies can eventually sponsor their parents….

It’s a “better” life … that American taxpayers help pay for.

Take healthcare for example — an estimated $1.1 billion per year for undocumented men, women and children, according to the Rand Corporation.

Joe Riley is the CEO of the McAllen Texas Medical Center near the Texas-Mexico border. Forty percent of the children born there, nearly 2,400 last year, were the babies of illegal immigrants.

Riley has seen and heard it all.

“Mothers about to give birth that walk up to the hospital still wet from swimming across the river in actual labor … dirty, wet, cold,” he said.

But here to have a child?

“Here to have a child in the U.S.,” he said.

McAllen is part of a large hospital system. Like all hospitals, it is mandated by law to treat all emergency-room patients, not verify citizenship.

“We have uncompensated care of over $200 million a year,” Riley said.

“Of money that you’ll never see again?” Pitts asked.

“Yes,” he said.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said: “It is not fair to the taxpayers who have to foot the bill.”

Congress has all but given up on comprehensive immigration reform. But lawmakers like Smith want to solve birth citizenship to illegal immigrants, in part by challenging the 14th Amendment, which guarantees U.S. citizenship to any child born in America.

“It seems fundamentally wrong that we ought to give the greatest honor of their citizenship,” Smith said. “His or her mother came across the border illegally.”

Many Americans who struggle to take care of their own families think it is unfair….

Well, yes!

“We have to change the way business is done in Washington. The good news is the name George Bush won’t be on the ballot in November.”

~~Barack Obama, speaking at a town hall meeting in Levittown, PA on April 9th

Barack Obama, like Jimmy Stewart, wants to change the way the government works in the nation’s capital. He decries the way legislators behave, how they are unduly influenced by special interests, lobbyists, big business.

Presumably he is equally concerned about lobbyists from Planned Parenthood, MoveOn.org, Hollywood, and People for the American Way.

In an Obama administration, he promises, this will change. An Obama White House will be a clean White House. Lobbyists are a kind of enemy, he says, an impediment to good governance and progress.

There were 34,750 registered lobbyists in America in 2005, twice the number from 2000, according to the Washington Post. See The Road to Riches Is Called K Street.

Many legislators retire from office and become lobbyists: examples include Geraldine Ferraro and Phil Graham. Some lobbyists perform a useful function in the information they provide. All are to be viewed with skepticism for obvious reasons.

Last Fall, according to Public Citizen:

“the number of registered lobbyists raising money for 2008 presidential candidates (was) already nearing the total for the entire 2004 campaign – despite the fact that most of the 2004 lobbyist-fund raisers are not yet involved.”

Read White House For Sale.

Public Citizen has identified at least 92 federal lobbyists acting as fund raisers for the 2008 presidential candidates. McCain uses 32 lobbyists, Clinton 18, and Obama 7.

It would appear one candidate’s lobbyist is another candidate’s strategist/fund raiser/advisor, illustrated recently when Clinton had to distance herself from her chief strategist when it was reported he was lobbying for a Columbian trade deal she opposes.

Corruption is as corruption does, and pray as we might for cleaner government, asking government to police government is, well, you know, a pipe dream.

One supposes Obama will outlaw lobbyists, or otherwise regulate them? Not likely. There are plenty of regulations in place already. Thirty-six years ago Shirley Chisholm decried back room dealing in DC. Nothing has changed, and little is likely to change.

We’ve always had some kind of influence peddling in DC. The problem is, it is virtually impossible to regulate it out of existence without doing damage to personal freedom. Groups and individuals have a right to petition the government, inform representatives on issues, and work to influence legislative outcomes.

Complex, tightly controlled campaign finance regulation tends to constrict free speech.

Demonizing business undermines the necessary partnerships between government and enterprise required for a healthy republic.

Pigeon-holing legislators as corrupt money-grubbers (however true) tends to isolate the executive branch creating gridlock.

The reality is that the problem with America is not with her people or with business (including oil and pharmaceutical companies, as Obama asserts). The problem with America is not capitalism.

The primarily problem with America is the federal government.

There is one enormous gorilla in the living room, and no one is talking about it, except the comptroller general David Walker and Glenn Beck. Indeed, unless we tackle our downward financial spiral, the threat of Islamic terrorism will look like a picnic.

“The greatest threat to the United States is our own fiscal irresponsibility,” Walker says bluntly. “The American people are starved for two things: the truth, and leadership.”

Walker says the very survival of America is in the balance.

He says flatly unless we take radical steps right now, we will soon be bankrupt. That’s it. We have spent far more than we have, and one day, the bill comes due.

He says the main problem is government spending on entitlements, especially Medicare. Now that “baby boomers” are retiring while the workforce shrinks, a financial train wreck looms.

Watch US Government Immorality Will Lead to Bankruptcy on YouTube.

And Sen. Obama’s approach in this campaign is to vilify George Bush (I thought he was bringing a new kind of politics?), and call for massive increases in entitlement spending, something George Bush accomplished with the prescription drug program. More spending? Yes. And much more in taxation. Thus, Obama and the Democrats want to federalize more than one-seventh of the national economy in creating universal health care when we cannot even afford Medicare, not to mention Social Security, and to do all this, they promise the program will pay for itself in reduced costs, with improved quality of service.

When was the last time the government ran a program more efficiently at less cost providing better service?

The truth is no one will lobby for the people, other than the people themselves. And the people appear content demanding handouts while abdicating power to elected officials.

Only the people can rein in a government out of control. But the people seem more interested in American Idol or the latest outrage on YouTube.

Jimmy Stewart cannot do it alone, and besides, there’s no Jimmy Stewart on the horizon in any case.

The truth? And leadership? Maybe in four years, but by then, it will be too late.

Ron Paul, we hardly knew ye.