— Mantra of those who opposed HillaryCare in the 1990s.

In the idealistic constitutional fantasies of those who harbor high hopes and short memories, the accumulating effect of the scandals piling up like rotting garbage at the front door of the White House will result in the impeachment and removal from office of Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States. Despite the dog and pony show Congress will inevitably put on, no such scenario will ever play itself out.

Daryl Cagle / Cagle Cartoons (click to view more cartoons by Cagle)

Like Bill Clinton, Obama will never relinquish control of the empire the American people have allowed him to create for himself. And unless the United States Senate magically becomes populated with 67 clones of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, there will never exist a quorum of statesmen willing to remove the modern day equivalent of what Nixon aide John Dean called “a cancer growing on the presidency.”

While Benghazi-gate is the scandal that could most easily be laid directly at Obama’s feet, the atmosphere created by a huge, out-of-control, left-leaning government (and a president who likes it that way) is symptomatic of why we are experiencing such rapid erosion of our freedom. To utilize the tortured term for political scandal even further, this atmosphere is how we ended up with IRS-gate, AP-gate and who knows what other gates?

Obama was right about one thing: what is needed is fundamental change — and it must start with our federal tax code. The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution states: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” To those 30 words, over the last century, Congress has added so many thousands of pages of rules, restrictions, regulations, exemptions and officious gobbledygook that we now have a government entity that no one trusts and everyone fears.

Complete and total repeal of the 16th Amendment is the only way to forever drive a stake through the heart of the liberty-sucking vampire known as the Internal Revenue Service. Tinkering around the edges will not suffice. A flat tax will not do it, because the IRS remains behind as the most powerful and odious collection agency on the planet.

America needs the Fair Tax — a national sales tax that replaces all federal taxes on income, including payroll taxes that support Social Security and Medicare.

Space does not permit me to detail the benefits of the Fair Tax. If you are truly interested in it, look it up at www.fairtax.org. Bold, conservative members of Congress like Steve King of Iowa and John Linder of Georgia (the original sponsor of the legislation in the House of Representatives) have been elected repeatedly on its merits.

The Fair Tax would allow each of us to keep every dime we earn. We would then pay a federal sales tax on all new consumer items. You, not your congressman, would decide how much tax you paid. What could you do with the extra funds if you were taking home that gross figure every payday rather than the so-called “net,” which is nothing more than what the federal government allows you to keep?

Picture a trillion dollar anchor being dragged through our economy every year, with half the population having no skin in the game. And we wonder why we are sliding toward banana republic welfare-state status.

Imagine no more April 15th. No more receipts. No more endless forms. No more manipulating your income or outgo to reflect what the feds want you to do. No more undeclared hidden income from shadowy activities. No more playing favorites, deciding who receives or who is denied tax exempt status. No more abuse of a powerful agency by bureaucrats trying to please their tyrannical bosses to punish their political enemies. Imagine not having to tell the government how much you earn, because it is none of their business!

So don’t bother imagining no more Obama. Imagine instead no more IRS. Study the issue and then call your congressman. The will of the people could make this happen.

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Eric Allie / Cagle Cartoons (click to view more cartoons by Allie)

The temptation of each generation of those who value truth is to say that the leaders in power at that moment in time must be the most corrupt ever to rule. The blight of progressivism had its root in the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Those who opposed FDR and his power grabs of the 1930s saw the roots of communism, one of the scourges of the world at that time, in much of what he did. Richard Nixon was considered by many at the time to be the most lawless president of our time. And Bill Clinton’s attempts at undermining the Constitution were only exceeded by his loutish behavior and perjury before a grand jury, which led to his impeachment.

But all these instances of duplicity pale in contrast to the serial mendacities of Barack Obama and his administration over the last four and a half years. From his breathtaking lies about immigration, gun control, the stimulus bill, government-sanctioned theft from the legitimate bondholders of General Motors to prop up the United Auto Workers, the corruption of Solyndra, murder along our southern border due to Operation Fast and Furious, the $20 billion shakedown of BP after the Gulf oil spill (where did all that money go?) and, of course, Obamacare, this president has taken deceit to a whole new level.

But if the press finally does its job — and I realize that’s a big if — Obama’s lies about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, could be the ones that finally bring him down.

For weeks after that attack, Obama, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and a host of others, tried to convince the world that a cheaply made You Tube video trailer was the catalyst behind the destruction of the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, and the murder of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. We were supposed to believe that spontaneous protestors were armed with hand-held rocket propelled grenade launchers and automatic weapons — and that this spontaneous protest just happened to occur on the anniversary of September 11th.

The Romney campaign apparently trusted the press to get the story out. Of course, under this president the American media have become the equivalent of Pravda, the old Soviet state-controlled news agency. Consequently, they dutifully circled the wagons and helped the president bury the story long enough to get re-elected.

Now, with testimony coming forth in the halls of Congress, the ugly truth is spilling out. Despite the panic at the White House to contain it and the ongoing determination of the mainstream media to ignore it, courageous whistleblowers are telling the tale as it actually occurred, and it does not correspond to the version the White House and the State Department have been peddling for the last eight months.

Why did the President of the United States, his Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense allow our ambassador and three brave Americans trying to defend him to be murdered? Why did they lie to us about the cause of the attacks? What was Ambassador Stevens doing in a dangerous place like Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of 9/11 with little or no security? Was this another administration sanctioned gun-running operation, like Fast and Furious? Were we, as has been alleged, supplying arms to Syrian “rebels” (really terrorists) through Turkey?

But the two most pertinent questions are these: Will the media tell us the truth about government law-breaking and cover-up? And do the American people care? Time will tell.

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

Kermit Gosnell is on trial for multiple counts of murder in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — several live babies and at least one adult woman. For decades, Gosnell ran a hellish yet very profitable death mill in the inner-city while local, state and federal officials looked the other way.

The story is beyond scandalous. It is the epitaph of post-modern America.

A 17-year-old mother, almost 30 weeks along in her pregnancy — that’s 7½ months — walked into the clinic to have an illegal abortion. After inducing labor and subsequently delivering a live baby, an employee of the clinic estimated the boy’s weight at approximately six pounds.

The baby was breathing — the ultimate complication for an abortionist in such situations — and so his spine was “snipped” in what the employee described as “a beheading,” and the fully developed little boy’s body was simply tossed into a plastic shoebox for disposal with the rest of the garbage. Gosnell joked that this baby was so big he could “walk me to the bus stop.”

In another case, a baby was alive, breathing, and crying on a table after delivery. After 20 minutes, one of Gosnell’s assistants came in and did the “snipping,” just as she had seen her boss do many times before.

When Gosnell’s chamber of horrors was finally closed down, it was completely by accident. On February 18, 2010, FBI agents entered the clinic looking for evidence that prescription drugs were being illegally dispensed. The scene they encountered must have been reminiscent of what American GIs found when they liberated the Nazi concentration camps.

The grand jury’s report reads: “There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and they were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets. All the women had been sedated by unlicensed staff.”

Upon further investigation, officials learned that a woman who had come to Gosnell for a late-term abortion had died at the facility several months earlier.

“Instruments were not sterile,” the grand jury report continues. “Equipment was rusty and outdated. Oxygen equipment was covered with dust, and had not been inspected. The same corroded suction tubing used for abortions was the only tubing available for oral airways if assistance for breathing was needed. There was no functioning resuscitation or even monitoring equipment except for a single blood pressure cuff.”

Perhaps most disturbing in the report is this: “The search team discovered fetal remains haphazardly stored throughout the clinic — in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and even cat food containers.”

Toilets were back up, clogged with body parts from murdered babies: Black babies, Asian babies, babies whose poor, abused, misled mothers had been preyed upon by this ghoul who was raking in blood money while serving no one but himself.

Venereal disease was spread from patient to patient by Gosnell’s use of filthy, unsterilized instruments. He tore out uteruses, punctured bowels, and destroyed any opportunity for many of them to ever have more children. And yet authorities never even inspected the place.

The occasional white woman who came to the clinic was ushered by Gosnell up the back stairs to a clean waiting room and received a completely different treatment — no doubt out of fear that they might report the horrendous conditions to which minority patients were regularly subjected.

Make no mistake. This is happening all over this country. Evidence is now emerging of such practices at taxpayer-supported Planned Parenthood clinics, and it is being systematically ignored by most of the nation’s news media.

This is worse than Nazi Germany. It is worse because instead of having such evil forced upon us, all that was needed to create this nightmare in the greatest nation on earth was the freedom to allow man’s fallen nature to run amuck. It is worse because instead of being herded into gas chambers, 55 million mothers have been duped into entering abortion mills of their own free will, to be victimized by the Josef Mengeles of our day.

It is worse because we have done this to ourselves.

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton. His weekly columns are distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

Arcadio Esquivel / Cagle Cartoons (click to view more cartoons by Esquivel)

In 1988, it was Bush the elder over Michael Dukakis. In 1992, I resisted the temptation to punish President “Read-My-Lips” by casting my ballot for Ross Perot, knowing that a vote for the pintsized Texas screwball would simply be handing the presidency to Bill Clinton.

In 2000, Bush 43 was not my first choice in the primaries, but after he captured the nomination, there was no possible way I could mark a ballot for eco-fraud Al Gore, and Dubya got my vote. By 2004, when he was running for reelection, it was a no-brainer against ultra-lib John Kerry.

In 2008, John McCain was my last choice for the Republican nomination. He redeemed himself somewhat by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, and given a choice between McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden, well, as the old saying goes, I was born at night but it wasn’t last night.

But now, after elitist statements by these people and their families, color me convinced. I will never vote for another Bush or another McCain. Former First Lady Barbara Bush, when asked about Sarah Palin, opined that the former Alaska governor seemed to love her home state — and should stay there. Bar’s namesake, one of George and Laura’s twin girls, appeared in a video proclaiming the following:

“I’m Barbara Bush, and I’m a New Yorker for marriage equality. New York is about fairness and equality, and everyone should have the right to marry the person they love. Join us.”

Of course, John McCain’s wife, Cindy, and their insipid, annoying daughter, Meghan, have expressed a similarly misguided view of marriage. During the first Obama term, McCain himself declared that the president had “moved to the middle.” Sadly, the truth is that the radically leftwing Obama would not have to move too far to the right to meet up with McCain, who never met a compromise he was unwilling to embrace.

But it is on the issue of illegal immigration that George W. Bush and John McCain — the two men who, along with Mitt Romney, have nearly destroyed the party of Lincoln and Reagan — have placed our nation at grave risk on so many different levels. And as a member of the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” (which McCain was born to lead), Marco Rubio seems to have joined their ranks.

The next Bush in the family dynasty, Jeb, is increasingly mentioned as a potential candidate in 2016, as is his protégé, Marco Rubio. However, given his insistence on “immigration reform,” one has to ask how closely Rubio shares the views of Jeb and his older brother, the former president, who, during a speech at Southern Methodist University after leaving office, said the following:

“What’s interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some ‘isms’ that occasionally pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the ’20s, for example, there was an American-first policy that said, ‘Who cares what happens in Europe?’ And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians; therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we’ve been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and nativism. I’m a little concerned that we may be going through the same period. I hope that these ‘isms’ pass.”

I couldn’t agree more. We have far too many “isms.” Elitism, favoritism and statism come to mind, “isms” for which the Bushes and the McCains have become poster boys, and Marco Rubio is going to have to do a much better job of repudiating those “isms” on the issue of amnesty to avoid being placed on my “never” list.

In the wake of the Boston bombings, the American people are in no mood to compromise on the issue of America’s out-of-control immigration policies, especially our wide open borders.

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com or call 800 696 7561. Readers are encouraged to email Doug at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

- Edward R. Murrow

Benjamin Franklin warned that a people preferring security over liberty deserves neither. In the aftermath of each attack upon our nation, we have seen this maxim play out with growing restrictions on our God-given constitutional freedoms.

Cam Cardow / Ottawa Citizen (click to view more cartoons by Cardow)

There was the USA Patriot Act, passed in the wake of 9/11, followed by the creation of a massive bureaucratic agency known as the Department of Homeland Security. Personally, I have never felt uncomfortable with that word — homeland — which I found to be reminiscent of “motherland” or “fatherland,” terms too often utilized by tyrants who wish to stir their people to fanatical nationalism without regard to personal liberty. We have submitted to indignities at airports, surveillance of our movements in public places, and intrusions into our private lives that would never have been tolerated by previous generations.

With each mass shooting, the clamor for more gun control has become louder. For those who have not yet given up on the folly of revoking the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, with President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg leading the parade, the murder of 20 innocent first-graders at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, afforded them the perfect opportunity to further their agenda.

Obama was angry when the U.S. Senate did not pass universal background checks, the last meaningful amendment to his gun control bill. He claims that 90 percent of Americans support such legislation. He also observed that 90 percent of Democrats voted for it, while 90 percent of Republicans opposed it, implying that GOP senators somehow caused the bill’s demise. With Obama’s party in control of the Senate, 100 percent of Republicans are incapable of stopping anything if Democrats want it passed.

With the terrorist bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the drumbeat for tighter restrictions on American liberties continues unabated. Bloomberg, who thinks everything we do is his business — to criticize and to regulate — told a radio audience: “I would argue that if you want to sell your gun to your son, maybe you have a problem in your family.”

Excuse me? This is the mentality of a despot.

But the attitude is hardly unique on the left. Hollywood actor Jay Mohr took to Twitter following the Boston carnage, tweeting that it was time to rid ourselves of the 2nd Amendment — as if that would have stopped the bomber from putting together a device made of ball bearings, nails and pressure cookers. Perhaps a ban on building materials and cooking utensils is in order. To paraphrase Obama, if it would save just one life, wouldn’t it be worth it?

In the aftermath of the Boston bombing, David Sirota, writing for Salon.com, posted a column whose title speaks for itself: “Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber is a White American.” His premise is that “white privilege” would prevent that person from bringing persecution down upon all white people — unlike, say, a Muslim of Arab descent between the ages of 18 and 39 who flies planes into buildings? As you know, we perpetrate so much racial profiling and other discrimination on people fitting that description.

Apparently Sirota has forgotten the pandering of George W. Bush to “the religion of peace.” Perhaps he has not been informed that TSA agents regularly humiliate white-haired little old ladies and terrorize young children in our airports in order to appear culturally sensitive to the person next in line who happens to be wearing a turban or a burqa. Maybe no one told him of the special treatment at GITMO, where prisoners are given the opportunity to practice their religion, read the Koran and eat culturally appropriate meals. And it would appear that he is unaware of Major Nidal Hasan, who shrieked “Allahu Akbar” before murdering 14 people and wounding 32 others at Fort Hood Army Base in Texas — and to this day the Obama administration refuses to call it terrorism? They prefer “workplace violence.”

Those who would steal our freedoms would first steal our reality, or at least distort it. This nation of sheep is indeed begetting a government of wolves, and as a result we are all witnessing the death of liberty.

_

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com or call 800 696 7561. Readers are encouraged to email Doug at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Bob Englehart / Hartford Courant (click to view more cartoons by Englehart)

The vicious loons on the far left were apoplectic when these two towering figures were in office—at the same time! And this week, with the death of Lady Thatcher, her petty, small-minded enemies are staging celebrations of her passing. How pathetic. As much as I detest what Barack Obama is doing to the United States of America, I cannot imagine rejoicing at his demise. As I have tried to teach my children and grandchildren, everyone is loved by someone, and that someone can easily be hurt during a time of grief.

In the case of Margaret Thatcher, she was loved by many and admired by millions. Her combination of dignity and resolve throughout her career has enshrined her name in the ages. Like Reagan, she had that unique ability to tell you to go to hell and yet make you feel as if you might actually enjoy the trip. Now that she is gone, her antagonists diminish themselves with every cheer or nasty comment in which they indulge. Some of these buffoons, who have been planning for this celebration for a decade, are urging people to show up on Saturday in London’s Trafalgar Square to join their tasteless revelry.

Another measurement of greatness by which to gauge a leader is the number of quotes one can attribute to that person. There are certainly exceptions to that rule. For example, while I consider Calvin Coolidge to be the second greatest president of the last one hundred years, after Reagan, the only quote from “Silent Cal” that leaps to mind was his acerbic response at a dinner party to left-wing critic Dorothy Parker. When Parker informed Coolidge that someone had bet her she could not get him to say more than two words, he is reputed to have replied, “You lose.”

However, as a confirmed word geek, I do love great quotes, and as I was contemplating the meaning of Margaret Thatcher’s life, leadership and passing, it occurred to me that one indication of greatness is whether the next generation remembers anything you said. Reagan and Thatcher are quoted endlessly. So was Winston Churchill. In fact, how many prime ministers of the United Kingdom — other than Churchill, Thatcher and Tony Blair — can you even name off the top of your head?

One of the best known utterances from the Iron Lady was “The problem with Socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.” It is a sentiment that she practiced, and her belief in individual achievement helped her lead Great Britain out of some of its darkest days.

Another Thatcher quote echoes Reagan’s first inaugural statement that “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” In a 1987 interview with Women’s Own magazine, referring to those who demand more from government, the prime minister said, “They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbors.”

I could not tell you one thing that current British Prime Minister David Cameron has ever uttered. And one of the few quotes from Barack Obama that any of us will remember is the one from his 2008 presidential campaign: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” We will remember that one, and many will regret not having contemplated its true meaning.

May Margaret Thatcher, along with her great friend and ally, Ronald Reagan, rest in peace, and may we be so fortunate as to see such greatness again.

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

So why is anyone surprised to learn that Planned Parenthood “doctors” may be killing babies on the operating table after they are born? The current President of the United States favored the practice back home in Illinois, as evidenced by his strenuous opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act put forth in the Illinois State Senate when he was a part of that body. (It was one of the few times he didn’t vote “present,” so you know he must have been passionate about it.)

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

The macabre possibility that Planned Parenthood physicians may be committing infanticide was inadvertently brought to light by one of the organization’s lobbyists, one Alisa LaPolt Snow, during her testimony before the Florida State House of Representatives, which is considering a bill similar to the one Obama stood against. The proposed “Infants Born Alive” bill would extend protection to live infants born in the wake of a failed abortion.

“If a baby is born, on a table, as a result of a botched abortion,” Florida Rep. Jim Boyd asked Snow, “what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”

Her knee-jerk, talking-points answer: “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”

Rep. Daniel Davis pressed her further: “What happens in a situation where a baby is alive, breathing on a table, moving? What do your physicians do at that point?”

Snow’s answer: “I do not have that information.”

And when asked by another lawmaker if, in addition to the mother, the baby also would at that point become the patient, she again replied, “I really don’t have the answer to that.”

I repeat: why is anyone surprised? After all, Planned Parenthood is a breathtakingly evil organization founded nearly a century ago by Margaret Sanger, a racist devotee of Adolf Hitler and the eugenics movement, who envisioned a world where physically and mentally challenged individuals and people of color would simply be aborted, sterilized or eliminated. She once stated that sterilization of the “unfit” would be the “salvation of American civilization.”

She had equal contempt for people of faith, calling “reckless and irresponsible” anyone “whose religious scruples prevent them from control of their numbers,” stating that “there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.” Rarely has such a cold-hearted, wicked woman been as lionized as has Margaret Sanger.

Today, Planned Parenthood performs more abortions than any other single entity in the country, making them an incredibly profitable enterprise. And yet our federal government handed them more than half a billion dollars of our hard-earned tax money last year.

This is the same organization that was caught on tape a few years ago facilitating the sexual abuse of children by counseling underage teen girls to quietly have abortions to hide pregnancies caused by their over-21 boyfriends, teachers, male relatives — whomever! And still they receive hundreds of millions of our tax dollars.

This is an organization that specializes in aborting black babies, as evidenced by so many Planned Parenthood clinics located in the inner city. And still they receive hundreds of millions of our tax dollars.

Ceasing to give Planned Parenthood our tax money seems like such a simple thing. John Boehner and his merry band of Republican “leaders” in the U.S. House of Representatives, tasked by the Constitution with the power of the purse strings, could simply choose not to fund this monstrosity any longer. But even in cases where state governments have voted to cut off funds to this organization, tyrannical judges have frequently stepped in and forced them to continue the funding. At some point, this nation’s patriots will have to defy that tyranny and simply say “no!”

From Margaret Sanger to Barack Obama, this is the world the left has created for us. It is a twisted, amoral utopia, where right is wrong and wrong is right, where good is evil and evil is good, where fully born babies can be murdered in abortion mills.

Welcome to Margaret Sanger’s brave new world.

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com or call 800 696 7561. Readers are encouraged to email Doug at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Jeff Parker / Florida Today (click to view more cartoons by Parker)

Will Roberts do it again? As I write this, the High Court is hearing oral arguments for and against California’s Proposition 8, which defined marriage as a union of a man and a woman, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which gives states the right to refuse recognition of same-sex “marriages” performed in other states. DOMA was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by then President Bill Clinton in 1996.

Based on what I’m hearing from the justices — John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy in particular — I am not optimistic for the future of marriage in our nation.

Arguably, America’s slide into the morass of progressivism began a century ago when Teddy Roosevelt, dissatisfied with his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, decided to make a comeback in 1912 as an independent candidate for president. In so doing, TR helped to usher in the dark days of Woodrow Wilson and to pave the way for cousin Franklin D. and his “New Deal.”

Since then, Democrats have built on that radical foundation, with Obama taking it to its European-style extremes. Witness how quickly the culture has shifted on this issue of same-sex marriage. If recent polls are to be believed, the change of opinion on this issue has been startling. Suddenly, it’s cool to equate homosexual unions with monogamous heterosexual marriage. It’s the new civil right.

This is especially true for people under 30, many of whom seem willing to support the latest fad, no matter how damaging it may be to society. Sadly, I doubt that a Defense of Marriage Amendment like that passed in 2000 by voters in Nebraska could pass today. And there is no question in my mind that Californians who believe in traditional marriage would be hard pressed to prevail now, as they did in 2008.

Of course, the national media have kept up a steady drumbeat for this change, and the Republican Party leadership has been nearly silent on the issue, no doubt on the advice of their legions of overpaid consultants. Meanwhile, on the Democrat side, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as others who previously claimed to believe that marriage is the union of a man and woman, recently have stuck their progressive fingers into the shifting cultural winds and concluded that, well, maybe we don’t really believe what we claimed we believed after all.

Ohio Senator Rob Portman is the latest Republican to call for “marriage equality.” Portman has reportedly arrived at this conclusion because he has a son acting out homosexual behavior with other men, and that this somehow justifies jettisoning 5,000 years of religious and societal tradition.

This brings us back to Chief Justice Roberts. A George W. Bush appointee, Roberts has a lesbian cousin who has been sitting in the courtroom with her “partner” waiting for Cousin John to “do the right thing.”

Interestingly, those who scoffed at conservative Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in the 2003 Lawrence vs. Texas decision, which struck down that state’s anti-sodomy laws, would have heard his questions echoed by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor in the course of oral arguments on the Prop 8 case. Scalia argued 10 years ago that the Lawrence ruling opened the door to legalized incest and polygamy. During her questioning of anti-Prop 8 attorney Ted Olson, Sotomayor asked: if gay marriage is okay, why not polygamy and incest? Olson dismissed Sotomayor’s question by stating that those activities involved “exploitation and abuse.”

I am not a lawyer, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would predict that the best those of us who believe in traditional marriage can hope for out of this court is that they will uphold Prop 8 and strike down DOMA, thereby leaving the nation with a hodgepodge of state laws that create an even more balkanized nation than we have already.

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact cari@cagle.com or call 800 696 7561. Readers are encouraged to email Doug at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Eric Allie / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by Allie)

When my wife and I used to vacation in Colorado in the 1970s, I started noticing bumper stickers that read “Don’t Californicate Colorado.” The initial movement that spawned that sentiment was a way for Colorado residents to express their disapproval of how Southern California had exploded with seemingly unlimited development. However, since that time, “Californicate” has taken on a whole new meaning.

In September 2011, a frustrated but perceptive blogger at the libertarian website “Western Hero” summed up the feelings of many in Colorado thusly: “We used to be a good mix of libertarian liberals and conservatives with a live and let live attitude. Not anymore. We’re now getting stupider, and this is being powered by the mass influx of east coast and west coast liberals into the liberal loon town of Denver. You can see evidence of this in online forums. Enlightened progressives sing Obama’s praises and remark what an east coast feel Denver has, and they are right. It is now easily the least ‘Colorado’ part of the state. Reminds me of the old saying: Half the people of Colorado live in Denver, and the rest of us are glad they do!”

They may live in Denver, but their ideology has spread like a cancer to every area of the state, mainly because liberals always think they know better how to run everyone else’s life, and they are more than happy to do so.

Former Denver Mayor and now Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper is no exception. Hickenlooper is now parroting Barack Obama while wringing his hands about gun violence and repeating the line, “If it saves just one life, we have to do something!”

Unfortunately, Colorado is not alone in its drift to the left. According to a 2012 Gallup Poll, one of the ten most liberal states in the country is now New Hampshire. That’s right. The “Live Free or Die!” state. So what happened? Massachusetts happened, that’s what. Residents of the Bay State, including business owners fleeing from crushing taxes and regulations, moved to New Hampshire. All was fine…for a while. New Hampshire was happy to have the business, and they welcomed their new neighbors.

Then, inevitably, election seasons began to roll around, and those self-transplants from Massachusetts began to vote for the same sort of meddling liberal politicians who had enslaved them and their businesses back home. And so, in 2012, New Hampshire helped re-elect Barack Obama and gained the dubious distinction of becoming one of the top ten most liberal states in the country.

Finally, consider California itself. The Golden State, which once gave us Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan (the last Republican presidential candidate to carry it), has become the land of Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein and Jerry Brown. And the invasion of illegal aliens has all but ensured that it will take a miracle for the GOP ever to carry the state again.

In the case of Texas, it is one of the last holdouts for freedom, as evidenced by the 2012 election of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. It is fiscally and socially conservative, with no state income tax and with perhaps as many guns in private hands as in the rest of the nation combined.

Iowa is more of a mixed bag. In fact, the voters are almost schizophrenic in their voting patterns. Branstad was returned to office in 2010 after 12 years of Democratic governors, but the state went for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Like Minnesota to its north, the Hawkeye State elects a conservative like Chuck Grassley to the U.S. Senate one cycle and a liberal like Tom Harkin the next. Yet, when the Iowa Supreme Court arbitrarily legalized same sex marriage a few years ago, the voters mobilized to throw half the court off the bench.

In any case, both Perry and Branstad should be very careful what they wish for. Like New Hampshire, they just might get it.

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info on using columns contact Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com. Readers are encouraged to email Doug at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Daryl Cagle / Cagle Cartoons (click to view more cartoons by Cagle)

Diane Sawyer, ABC News: “An inexplicable thing happened in Washington today. In a bizarre tantrum gone public, two Senate Democrats attacked three esteemed colleagues for their work to stop mass shootings like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut…”

Brian Williams, NBC News: “You don’t often see this kind of testiness in the collegial upper chamber, but today a pair of Democratic Senators let their tempers get the better of them by impugning the motives of fellow Senators Diane Feinstein, Charles Schumer and Richard Blumenthal…”

Scott Pelley, CBS News: “In a strange diatribe that almost sounded like a manifesto, two Democrats unloaded on three of their senate colleagues today. Senators Diane Feinstein, Charles Schumer and Richard Blumenthal — who have worked feverishly to make sensible gun legislation the law of the land — were themselves subjected to a merciless assault, albeit verbal, from two of their fellow Democrats…”

Wolf Blitzer, CNN: “What has happened to the decorum of the United States Senate? Two Democrats ran completely off the rails this week in a fit of pique not seen since President Lyndon Johnson clashed with Dixiecrats in the great civil rights battles of the 1960s…”

Rachel Maddow, MSNBC (in her best snarky voice): “Two rogue Democrats — Joe Manchin of West Virginny, and Jon Tester from Militia-land, somewhere in Montana — savaged three of their colleagues on the floor of the U.S. Senate today. Manchin then took to the air waves, granting an exclusive interview to paranoid, far-right wing radio host Alex Jones. During that interview, Senator Manchin called fellow Democrats Diane Feinstein, Charles Schumer and Richard Blumenthal “wacko birds” because they don’t want five-year-olds buying Uzis on the streets of America! This was on the Alex Jones show! Talk about your wacko birds!”

In reality, Democrat politicians don’t do this to one another. Furthermore, if such a situation did occur, it is improbable that the mainstream media would report on it at all. They would bury it along with the truth about Benghazi and a hundred other scandals over the last four years.

But if they did cover the story, it would be as I have described it. In other words, they would circle the wagons and throw Manchin and Tester under the bus so fast it would send a whole new thrill up Chris Matthews’ leg.

Not so when John McCain and Lindsay Graham condemned fellow GOP Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, as well as Republican Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan, who supported Senator Paul’s 13-hour filibuster on the Senate floor last week.

Senator Paul simply wanted an opinion from Attorney-General Eric Holder as to whether the President of the United States has the constitutional authority to use weaponized drones to kill American citizens, without due process, on American soil. (By the way, my 7-year-old grandson came up with a “no” answer long before Holder did.)

For this perceived outrage, the cantankerous McCain, who long ago chose to transform himself from an American hero into a political clown for the amusement of Washington media elites, granted an interview to the loony-left Huffington Post website to vent his displeasure. Therein, he referred to Senator Paul, Senator Cruz and Rep. Amash as “wacko birds.”

Amash, who has taken on McCain & company before, especially on Twitter, tweeted in response, “Sen McCain called @SenRandPaul, @SenTedCruz & me ‘wacko birds.’ Bravo, Senator. You got us. Did you come up with that at #DinnerWithBarack?” — a reference to McCain and Graham having dinner with the president just before their condemnation of their colleagues.

Amash has put his finger on the pulse of the problem. John McCain and Lindsay Graham have been in Washington far too long. When a Republican United States Senator prefers to attack Rand Paul and Ted Cruz for defending liberty rather than Barack Obama and Eric Holder for trying to destroy it, that senator has become irrelevant at best or dangerous at worst.

© 2013 by Doug Patton- Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

“Well,” I said, “for one thing, when I was your age, my parents didn’t have to ask the government for permission to go to the doctor. Now your parents have no choice in the matter. Also, the government didn’t violate our right to religious expression. Under Obamacare, we have no choice but to fund abortion, sex change operations and all sorts of other things we don’t believe in.”

“What else was different back then?”

“Well, gas was about a quarter a gallon, instead of the $9.75 a gallon Obama’s policies have driven it up to. Now we’re all driving around in electric clown cars and paying twelve dollars for a loaf of bread.”

“What about the immigrants? Grandma says Obama gave them something called am…am… ammesty.”

“That’s amnesty, and yes, there’s no question that all our freedoms have been diminished because of it. You see, son, you just can’t reward people for breaking the law without others doing it, too. It’s just human nature.”

“My dad says Obama didn’t defend the country. What did he actually do?”

“Well, he left our borders wide open and slashed our defense budget. He took the greatest military force in the world and turned it into a social experiment by allowing open homosexuals in Army barracks and women in combat. He coddled and supported Islamist governments all over the world. And then people actually wonder why Israel had to attack Iran to keep them from getting a nuclear weapon.”

“Did President Obama really hate our country? I’ve heard my dad say that.”

“President Obama grew up listening to people who hated our country, and, yes, I believe he embraced a lot of that same kind of anti-American thinking.”

“But why would anyone hate their country?”

“You have to understand that you have been raised to be a patriot. Obama was not. Quite the opposite. He grew up thinking our country was evil and that the people who achieved success must have cheated to get ahead. That’s why he and those who believe as he does have always wanted to punish those who have more than other people.”

“What about guns, Grandpa? Did you have a gun when you were my age?”

“As a matter of fact, when I turned twelve in 1960, my dad gave me my first rifle. It was a single shot .22 good for shooting rabbits, squirrels and tin cans.”

“Did your dad take you hunting?”

“Sure. Most dads took their boys hunting and fishing in those days. It wasn’t like today, when so many people are afraid of guns. I knew where my dad kept our rifles — mine and his — and I knew where he kept all the ammo, too. There was no need to lock it up. It never occurred to me or to anyone else I knew to take our guns and shoot somebody.”

“My teacher says that President Obama had to take away people’s guns so that they don’t kill each other, but I keep hearing about murders on the news, and it doesn’t seem like it’s working too well.”

“Of course it’s not working. It’s like I’ve always told you, murder is in the hearts of men, not in a bullet in the barrel of a gun. A gun is just a tool, like a hammer, an ax or a baseball bat. It can be used for good or bad. That’s up to the person holding it.”

“How could the president take away people’s guns? Aren’t there laws about that? And how can people defend themselves without guns?”

“I know your dad has taught you about the Constitution. Our rights come from God, and the Constitution spells out those rights on paper. But always remember, that none of the other parts of that document mean anything without the ability to defend those rights. That ability is spelled out in the Second Amendment.

“Did everyone give up their guns, Grandpa?”

“Not all of us, buddy. Not even close.”

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info on using columns contact Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com. Readers are encouraged to email Doug at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Nate Beeler / Columbus Dispatch (click to view more cartoons by Beeler)

In the interest of putting the issue of illegal immigration into perspective once again, I present the following scenario, first proffered in this space several years ago under the title, “Where no one locks the door.” It still seems eerily relevant.

Imagine you are a child living with your family in a small town. You have always felt safe there. The crimes of big cities seem distant from your serene world, where no one ever locks the door.

Then one night, your next-door neighbors are murdered in their home, which is burned to the ground. Your whole town is terrified. Your parents gather the family together for a reassuring pep talk.

“The men who did this will be brought to justice,” your parents tell you. “And until they are caught, we will protect you.”

You believe them, but the next day you discover that your doors not only remain unlocked; they are standing wide open. You are astonished. Your parents tell you that locking the doors would not be neighborly.

Miraculously, nothing happens for five nights. On the sixth night, you hear a noise downstairs. You wake your parents and follow your father down to the kitchen, where you discover a man rummaging through your trash.

Your father opens the refrigerator and tells the man to take what he wants and turn the lights out when he is finished. Amazed, you ask why he doesn’t call the police or at least throw this man out and lock the doors. He tells you this man meant no harm, and besides, locked doors are not the way in your town.

“After all,” he says, “we don’t want people to hate us.”

Frightened and confused, you go back to bed and listen to the sounds of the man in your family’s kitchen.

Over the next fourteen nights, six men wander into the house and take what they want. One night, you open your eyes to find one of them standing over your bed. In answer to your screams, your father puts his arm around the man and escorts him downstairs to the refrigerator. The next morning your family discovers their home theater system is missing. Your mother sighs and shakes her head, while your father simply shrugs.

On the second night of the third week, just before sleep comes, you smell something that sends chills over every inch of your body. Gasoline!

This time, you don’t wake your father. You reach for the phone and call the sheriff, who arrives just before one of the three men in your living room lights the match. The men are arrested and taken to the county jail, but later you hear that they have been released.

Meanwhile, you learn that the criminal’s entire family is living in a house on the other side of town, and that they are all criminals. You ask your father why they haven’t been jailed or simply thrown out of your town. He is shocked that you would even suggest such a thing.

“Our town has a lot of new strangers who have moved in,” he says. “Most of them are good, decent people who don’t mean us any harm. Just because they are criminals doesn’t mean we shouldn’t welcome them here. After all, we were once strangers in this town, too. And don’t forget, these folks are doing jobs that people in our town don’t want to do.”

“That’s right,” your mother chimes in. “Unless you want to start mowing the lawn again, you had better start showing some appreciation for our new neighbors, young man!”

You stare at them and realize that they are serious. Are they losing their minds? Are you? And suddenly you know that life in your town will never be the same again.

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

One might think Evan would be supportive of the misguided efforts by President Barack Obama to restrict the Second Amendment rights of every law-abiding citizen in the United States of America. Nothing could be further from the truth: for the past decade, he has been an outspoken opponent of additional gun control laws. Now Evan has written an open letter to the president about the issue.

“The evidence is very clear pertaining to the inadequacies of the assault weapons ban,” he writes. “It had little to no effect when it was in place from 1994 to 2004. It was during this time that I personally witnessed two fellow students murder twelve of my classmates and one teacher. The assault weapons ban did not deter these two murderers, nor did the other thirty-something laws that they broke.”

But then, the president and his underlings already know that, as evidenced by a recently disclosed white paper written by the National Institute for Justice — the research and evaluation agency of the Justice Department — and obtained by the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA). The report is an eye-opener for any who still believe that Obama & company are proposing “moderate” or “reasonable” gun control measures. They are neither moderate nor reasonable. They are radical and draconian. If you still count yourself among those who disbelieve that, read on.

The document states: “Since assault weapons are not a major contributor to U.S. gun homicide, and the existing stock of guns is large, an assault weapons ban is unlikely to have an impact on gun violence.” However, the report goes on to state, “If coupled with a gun buyback and no exemptions, then it could be effective.”

What, exactly, would such a mandatory gun buyback accomplish? Eliminating the types of firearms Barack Obama, Diane Feinstein and their elitist, gun-grabbing friends don’t like? The purpose is certainly not reducing murders in the United States, since the DOJ has already concluded that “assault weapons are not a major contributor to U.S. gun homicide.”

As for the proposals to limit the size of magazines to 10 rounds (it’s now 7 in knee-jerk New York), the DOJ document states, “In order to have an impact, large capacity magazine regulation needs to sharply curtail availability to include restrictions on importation, manufacturing, sale and possession.”

Mandatory gun buybacks…Proposals to make the very possession of high-capacity magazines illegal…Mandatory registration of all firearms…If these ideas don’t sound to you like confiscation of private property guaranteed by the United States Constitution, then you belong in another country, not mine. Obama can hike up his mom jeans and take pictures all day long of him firing a shotgun, but those of us who know better are not convinced that he loves either the Constitution or the freedom guaranteed by it. His hand-wringing, limp-wristed, latte-drinking liberal base can wonder why gun sales are among the few areas of the American economy currently booming. Some of us know why, including Evan Todd, who certainly has earned the right to be heard on this issue.

As Evan wrote in his letter to Obama, “Gun ownership is at an all-time high. And although tragedies like Columbine and Newtown are exploited by ideologues and special-interest lobbying groups, crime is at an all-time low. The people have spoken. Gun stores shelves have been emptied. Gun shows are breaking attendance records. Gun manufacturers are sold out and backordered. Shortages on ammo and firearms are countrywide. The American people have spoken and are telling you that our Second Amendment shall not be infringed.”

What part of that is hard to understand, Mr. President?

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Gary McCoy / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by McCoy)

“They deserve a vote,” he intoned during the obligatory gun control portion of his speech. “They deserve a vote,” he repeated, just in case you missed it the first time. “Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence — they deserve a simple vote.”

Really? On what? Something! We simply must vote on something! As right-wing rocker Ted Nugent succinctly told a reporter who asked him if we shouldn’t do something, “Well, if your child is drowning, I could throw her a cinderblock. That would be doing something. It would just be the wrong thing.” This perfectly describes the whole debate over the issue of gun violence.

The emotional response of so many Americans to Obama’s demand for a vote on his half-baked gun control measures simply underscores their misunderstanding of the issue. The catalyst for this assault on the Second Amendment was, of course, the senseless murder of 20 first graders last December. No single act of violence has ripped at the nation’s heartstrings like this incident. This has not been lost on Obama and company. Never let a crisis go to waste, remember?

Meanwhile, there are 300 million other people who also “deserve a vote.”

While Obama assures us that “the state of our union is strong,” America’s fiscal crisis is careening toward becoming a total economic train wreck. Don’t the young, the old and the middle aged, the rich, the poor and the middle class all “deserve a vote” on a balanced budget amendment?

Obama talks about protecting children, yet he gutted the very popular Washington, D.C., school choice program in order to please his supporters in the National Education Association. Now he advocates that every 4-year-old be sent to a government-run pre-school, presumably so politically correct indoctrination can begin even earlier. Oh yes, this president cares about children — if they happen to be lucky enough to make it out of the womb alive. He couldn’t care less about the 55 million unborn children who, for the last 40 years, have had no rights of any kind. In Obama’s world, they don’t “deserve a vote.”

Proponents of traditional marriage have seen their views trampled by a radical minority intent on destroying the institution altogether. Wouldn’t you love to see an up-or-down vote in Congress on that one, rather than watching them hide behind judiciary rulings?

And what about the military and, by extension, our veterans? “In 2011, Congress passed a law saying that if both parties couldn’t agree on a plan to reach our deficit goal, about a trillion dollars’ worth of budget cuts would automatically go into effect this year,” Obama said in his State of the Union address. “These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts would jeopardize our military readiness. They’d devastate priorities like education, energy, and medical research. They would certainly slow our recovery, and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. That’s why Democrats, Republicans, business leaders and economists have already said that these cuts, known here in Washington as ‘the sequester,’ are a really bad idea. Now, some in this Congress have proposed preventing only the defense cuts by making even bigger cuts to things like education and job training, Medicare and Social Security benefits. That idea is even worse.”

Setting aside for a moment the fact that, out of all the programs mentioned, defending the nation is the only constitutionally mandated obligation of the federal government (something one might assume a “constitutional scholar” would know), consider the fact that the United States Senate, controlled by Obama’s party and run by his lackey, Harry Reid, has not passed a budget since April 2009.

Don’t the American people at least “deserve a vote” on that, Mr. President?

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For more info contact cari@cagle.com or call 800 696 7561. Readers are encouraged to email Doug at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Nate Beeler / Columbus Dispatch (click to view more cartoons by Beeler)

Now Big Brother has decided he has the right to scrutinize your life through the use of his latest toy, the drone, the high-tech equivalent of Winston Smith’s telescreen, which monitored his every move in George Orwell’s chilling 1949 novel, “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

Because of the increased use of drones — military and civilian — lawmakers in California, Florida, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Virginia now are in the process of banning the use of such technology in their skies.

“Our Founders had no conception of things that would fly over them at night and peer into backyards and send signals back to a home base,” said State Senator Donald McEachin, a Virginia Democrat and co-sponsor of a bill that would forbid the use of drones in most instances.

In libertarian-minded Montana, legislators from both parties are working on proposals to restrict the use of drones.

“I do not think our citizens would want cameras to fly overhead and collect data on our lives,” Republican State Senator Matthew Rosendale told a legislative committee recently.

“It’s important for us to prevent Missouri from sliding into a police-type state,” says State Rep. Casey Guernsey, a Republican in the show-me state.

Groups as diverse as the Tea Party and the American Civil Liberties Union are supportive of these actions by state governments. However, according to the ACLU, states will not be able to stop federal agencies from using drones.

“The use of drones across the country has become a great threat to our personal privacy,” says ACLU of Montana policy director Niki Zupanic. “The door is wide open for intrusions into our personal private space.”

In the age of second-term Obama, such concerns may take a back seat to a much more sinister agenda. Recently, a confidential Justice Department document has come to light. It advises the Obama administration that the use of drones in foreign countries to kill Americans suspected of having ties to terrorists is perfectly legal!

“The U.S citizenship of a leader of al-Qaida or its associated forces does not give that person constitutional immunity from attack,” the report reads. “The Due Process Clause (of the U.S. Constitution) does not prohibit a lethal operation of the sort contemplated here.”

If those words do not send shivers up your backside, then you yourself are a drone. The criteria for using such a strike to kill an American citizen is said to be as follows: the person must be a suspected al-Qaida leader; an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government must have determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States; capture of the individual must be infeasible; and finally, the operation must be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable principles governing the laws of war.

Conspicuously absent from the DOJ report is any discussion of whether drone strikes on U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism may be conducted on American soil. And therein lies the problem. Remember when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stated that her department considered pro-life demonstrators and Tea Party activists to be dangerous potential terrorists? Even disgruntled returning war vets were on her paranoid list.

The last time I checked, she was considered a “high-level official of the U.S. government.

It is a short jump from attacking “suspected enemies” abroad to attacking them here. From there, it is another abbreviated leap from attacking Americans suspected of al-Qaida ties to Americans considered terrorists of another stripe.

Elections have consequences. Here come the drones.

© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Nate Beeler / Columbus Dispatch (click to view more cartoons by Beeler)

I remember the Scout Oath: “On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”

And I still can recite the Scout Law from memory fifty years later: “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.”

What part of that is ambiguous?

For 103 years, the Boy Scouts of America fought to live up to those ideals. No more. After standing for moral and physical purity for more than a century, the organization apparently is prepared to surrender to the dark side of our society. The full BSA board must vote on this, but a statement by the group this week reads as follows: “There would no longer be any national policy regarding sexual orientation, and the chartered organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting would accept membership and select leaders consistent with each organization’s mission, principles or religious beliefs.”

For those of us who remember our days in Scouting, it is sad to see the perverse sexualization of the Boy Scouts. And make no mistake: like everything else associated with the pro-homosexual agenda, that is exactly what this is.

As a society, we have gone from live-and-let-live to blind tolerance to tacit approval to blatant, outright promotion of deviancy in less than a generation. What seemed ridiculous 20 years ago (same sex marriage) has now morphed into something called “LGBT marriage equality.”

Let’s break down that absurd phrase. The L, of course, is for lesbian, meaning that a woman could marry another woman. The G is for gay, which would give a man the right to marry another man. B stands for bisexual. I assume that would mean that a bisexual man should be allowed to marry both a man and a woman. And then there are the T’s, the so-called transgendered among us. These tortured souls don’t know who or what they are, so I suppose “marriage equality” for them means that a man who thinks he’s a woman should be allowed to marry a woman who thinks she’s a man. (Wait, I think that’s already legal.)

Activists on the left have mercilessly attacked the Boy Scouts ever since 2000, when the Supreme Court said the Scouts have a right to free association and therefore do not have to accept homosexual members or leaders. That summer, delegates to the Democratic National Convention actually booed a group of Boy Scouts who were simply trying to lead the convention in the Pledge of Allegiance.

In another case, recently decided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, a lower court ruling forbidding the Scouts from operating on city-owned property in San Diego because of their belief in God and sexual purity was unanimously overturned.

If, despite solid backing of the Scouts by the federal courts, the bullies in the homosexual lobby can intimidate members of the national BSA board into jettisoning long-held principles, imagine how mercilessly those “local chartered organizations” will be harassed without the covering of their national group.

In the life of every great nation, there are windows of opportunity for leadership on moral and cultural issues. America is no exception. We faced such a moral crisis a century and a half ago when attempts to sweep the burning issue of slavery under the rug left American soil soaked with our own blood.

Many in government and corporate America believe we need to compromise with evil. They believe in “tolerance” and “inclusion” on such issues as abortion and same-sex marriage. Obviously, they have no stomach for the political and cultural war that rages around them. And sadly, they are willing to watch as iconic institutions like the Boy Scouts of America are destroyed through social engineering.

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© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.

Daryl Cagle / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by Cagle)

Hillary’s testimony began with a weepy opening statement that would have won her an Oscar had it been in a Hollywood movie. Fighting back crocodile tears, she told the committee how terribly personal it had been for her to have to meet those four flag-draped coffins, to put her arms around those family members and to comfort them. I got all choked up just thinking about what poor Hillary must have endured that day, didn’t you?

She then proceeded to tell breathtaking lies to Congress: “The Department of Defense took every action it could to respond to this attack,” she said at one point. “I did not say it was a video that caused this attack,” she said at another juncture. And on and on it went.

However, the most audacious part of her testimony had to be in response to Sen. Ron Johnson, R-WI, who wanted to know why the administration had continued to put forth the narrative that it was, in fact, an offensive video and not terrorism that sparked the attack.

Hillary nearly shrieked: “What difference does it make?!?”

In the end, Hillary demonstrated why she is the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Senate and House Democrats fawned over her as if she were about to be crowned queen, each of them auditioning for the role of court jester (vice president). And with few exceptions — notably the aforementioned Sen. Johnson and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — Republicans did little but make speeches. John McCain’s performance was particularly annoying. He asked her five different questions in a rambling lecture that generated little in the way of useful information from her and served as nothing but a photo op for him.

Congressional committees are usually poor vehicles for investigating anything, and Wednesday’s charade was no exception. But clearly, Hillary came to the hearings far better prepared than did her interrogators. And why not? After all, she has learned from the best. Remember in 1998-1999 when her philandering husband lied through his teeth about his tawdry relationship with a young woman only slightly older than his own daughter? Remember when he perjured himself before a grand jury? Remember when the United States House of Representatives impeached him for it?

But then the case headed over to the laid-back U.S. Senate, which, though it was controlled by Republicans, had absolutely no chance of convicting the man. After all, it took a two-thirds majority to do that, and short of videotaped proof that Clinton had committed cold blooded murder, two-thirds of that body was not going to remove him from office. (Then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-MS, was reported to have stated that even that wouldn’t do it for the Democrats.)

The felon and his bride figured out a long time ago that they could tell the nation a whole boatload of whoppers and get away with it. No resigning in shame like Richard Nixon after Watergate. No mea culpa like Ronald Reagan after Iran-Contra. The Clintons were above all that. The agenda came first, last and always. So Bill wagged his bony index finger at the American people and simply lied: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, and I never told anybody to lie, not one time.”

He sent Hillary out to tell the dark tale of a vast, rightwing conspiracy to their willing accomplices in the mainstream news media, who ate it up with a spoon. And finally, under oath, Bubba himself gave us the tortured phrase, “It all depends on what the meaning of the word is is.”

Of course, today, Bill Clinton is the rock star senior statesman of the Democratic Party, and Hillary’s little dog and pony show before Congress proves that she is now a seasoned Washington liar who does not like to be challenged.

And why not? It has served her husband and her current boss very well indeed.

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© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton. For info on using Doug’s columns at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com or call 800 696 7561.

Gary McCoy / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by McCoy)

The next day, the same thing happened. And the day after that. And the day after that.

It’s been going on for 40 years now.

On January 22, 1973, my wife had been carrying the first of our two sons for three months when seven men in black robes handed down the most notorious Supreme Court ruling since Dred Scott. Consequently, our sons have grown to manhood in a country that has never protected its innocent unborn children. They have come of age with the knowledge that it is a crime to kill certain “endangered species” of animals, while realizing that one-third of their generation has been legally aborted before having the opportunity to draw breath.

America’s callous attitude toward the unborn is due in part to the overwhelming quantity of tiny corpses, now in the neighborhood of 50 million. For the last 40 years, they have been poked, poisoned and pulverized to death in the name of “choice.” As Soviet butcher Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said, “The death of a hundred people is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” This is so because, as human beings, we cannot wrap our minds around the enormity of the evil involved in such numbers.

Killing the innocent is wrong. We all know this intuitively. The events of September 11, 2001, are seared into our consciousness because of the heinous nature of the crimes and the horrendous loss of life. Yet we turn a blind eye to the methodical and deliberate killing of that many human beings every single day at the hands of “doctors.”

We wring our hands over the execution of a mere handful of people on death row, wondering if some of them may not have been guilty. Meanwhile, we continue to avert our gaze from the death of tens of millions of babies over the last four decades, every one of whom we know was innocent beyond any doubt.

Americans revel in individual rights, and this is one that has allowed us to take the life of one person to facilitate the convenience of another. Forty years after Roe vs. Wade, some people are still simply ignorant — many by choice — of the truth about abortion. I remember interviewing a prominent female elected state government official for an article I was writing back in the 1990s. A pro-choice Democrat, when asked what she thought of late-term abortions, this intelligent, well-educated, politically savvy woman said, “Abortion isn’t even legal after the first trimester.”

I was incredulous. “Excuse me,” I said, “but with all due respect, what do you think the debate over partial birth abortion is all about?”

With a blank stare, she said, “I never really thought about it.”

Too many Americans don’t want to let go of their preconceived notions about human beings still gestating in the womb. But there are signs that public opinion has been shifting over the last decade. A recent Time magazine cover story tells us that “40 years ago, abortion-rights activists won an epic victory with Roe vs. Wade…They’ve been losing ever since.”

Perhaps the generation that has been robbed of so many of its members is seeing the light. Or maybe it has to do with new medical technologies like 4D-ultrasound, which has given us the ability to see a baby clearly in the womb. In any case, a majority of Americans are now strongly against abortion. In fact, polls show that 7 out of 10 of us now want to see legal protections restored to pre-born children.

It’s about time.

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© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton. For info on using Doug’s columns at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

In anticipation of the continued seductive tyranny that surely awaits us in the next four years, I would like to propose a new expression to describe the reaction of many of us to the policies coming in Obama’s second term: “Obamasterics,” defined as an appropriate level of hysterics caused by the ongoing authoritarian reign of the 44th President of the United States.

Gary McCoy / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by McCoy)

Unlike Romnesia, Obamasterics is not a joke, and it is not amusing. It is a very serious condition brought on by a fundamental understanding of the U.S. Constitution in an age of despotism. Quite simply, if you understand and support the Constitution, you are likely to suffer from Obamasterics. I know I do. To quote Thomas Jefferson, “I tremble for my country.”

There are very real reasons to be frightened. As half the nation blindly accepts the notion that the office of President of the United States is some sort of autocratic position, the holder of which has virtually unlimited power to decree whatever he pleases, those of us who still cling to the notion of limited Constitutional government understand that Obama himself subscribes to the belief that, as the nation’s chief executive, he has the authority to execute any edict that comes into his calculating Marxist mind.

Nowhere can Obamasterics be viewed more clearly than in our reaction to his determination to grab as many guns from law-abiding citizens as possible. Obama appointed that towering legal mind, Vice President Joe Biden, to “study” the issue of gun violence and come up with a set of solutions. At his first meeting on the subject, Biden announced, “The president is going to act. There are executive orders, executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required.”

Of all the areas of the American economy this president has failed to stimulate in the last four years, the gun industry is the one big exception. Sales are booming. In fact, with Obama and his cronies in Congress threatening more meaningless firearms laws since the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting last month, Obamasterics already had a grip on gun owners — and rightly so.

But with those 52 words from Biden, the Obama administration has thrown down the gauntlet to gun owners and sent them into overdrive to defend their Second Amendment rights. In fact, one has to wonder if that is the idea. Remember when Biden was said to have inadvertently blabbed his opinion that same-sex marriage should be legalized? I never believed for a moment that the VP’s statement wasn’t calculated and timed to throw that issue like a bomb into the public debate.

The same could be said of Biden’s statement about guns. It would not surprise me if the current run on AR-15, AK-47 and SKS rifles, as well as semi-automatic handguns and ammunition, will give these despots the additional excuse they need to go a step further and attempt to tax, regulate, ban, and/or eventually confiscate these weapons and the ammo they utilize.

“There are just too many of these dangerous weapons in the hands of untrained, untested civilians,” the rationale will go, “to allow this situation to stand. Ever since Sandy Hook, people have been buying the same weapons used by this crazed killer. We must ask ourselves, why? And we must act!”

Get ready for the raw exercise of presidential power the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetime. A president with as little regard for the First Amendment as Obama has shown will certainly not think twice about trampling on our Second Amendment rights.

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© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton. For info on using Doug’s columns at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com or call 800 696 7561.

Nate Beeler / Columbus Dispatch (click to view more cartoons by Beeler)

Of course, the dolts who returned him to office see nothing wrong with penalizing the most productive people in our society in order to give them (the dolts) more free stuff. The indoctrination they have received in our government schools has taught them that even if two plus two equals four, it doesn’t matter because somehow the geniuses who represent us in Washington can make it equal seven.

Apparently, Obama was so exhausted from those two speeches he gave this week that he had to resume his multi-million dollar vacation the next morning. In fact, it was so important that he get back to Hawaii, the president left town without even signing the bill he had told us was so crucial to save us from economic Armageddon.

Before leaving, however, he informed the country that he will entertain no further debates — with Congress or anyone else, apparently — about how much of our great-grandchildren’s money he is spending. This is just a preview of the arrogance that will be on full display during his second term.

It is an inane joke to even talk about spending cuts in Washington. The last president to prevail upon Congress to actually cut government spending was Calvin Coolidge in the roaring twenties (hint: that’s why they roared). Today, what passes for a “cut” is actually nothing but a smaller increase in what they planned to spend.

Imagine a family that made $100,000 in 2012 but spent $150,000, putting the difference on a credit card. Their plan for 2013 (while still earning $100,000, mind you) was to spend $300,000. However, on New Year’s Eve, they decide to be “responsible” and only spend $250,000. In Washington, D.C., instead of a $100,000 increase in spending, this would be called a $50,000 cut.

Of course, in Barack Obama’s world, members of our hypothetical family would be forced to change their lifestyles to accommodate the government. The stay-at-home mom would have to go to work in order to pay for the increased costs of gasoline, food, clothing, housing, insurance, health care, and everything else the family needs to survive. And that, of course, when added together with what could be found in the children’s piggy bank, would reclassify the family as “rich,” which would necessitate an additional tax penalty in order to make them pay their “fair share.”

There is now talk of a challenge to Boehner for the position of Speaker. Do you think it will make a difference? Would House Majority leader Eric Cantor be a better negotiator? Would he be able to stop this spending spree? In the United States Senate — run by Democrats — they have not even passed a budget during Obama’s entire first term.

In a matter of weeks, this temporary New Year’s Eve fix will culminate in exactly the debate Obama claims he simply will not have, the one over raising the debt limit another two trillion dollars — that’s a two with twelve zeros behind it — which will not even fund this out-of-control government for six months.

This is not a fiscal cliff. This is fiscal insanity. It is a fiscal abyss, and we are about witness the view from amidst the rubble at the bottom of it.

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© 2013 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton. For info on using Doug’s columns at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com or call 800 696 7561.

Nate Beeler / Columbus Dispatch (click to view more cartoons by Beeler)

That’s the picture that is emerging from the 911 calls from that terrible day. Twenty minutes. I have tried in vain to imagine my 7-year-old grandson, his defenseless classmates and their equally defenseless teacher being shot to death one by one while waiting 20 minutes for police to arrive. It is a scenario too terrible to conjure in my mind. To imagine local law enforcement personnel taking a full one-third of an hour to respond to such a monstrous event is infuriating. And yet, there it is. Those who wish to protect themselves and their loved ones in almost any situation should not depend on government. How many times have we seen it before?

On September 11, 2001, government failed to protect the unsuspecting victims on those four airplanes, as well as those on the ground. On Flight 93, it was courageous passengers, taking matters into their own hands, who stopped those Islamist monsters from making that day even more infamous.

In September 2005, government — federal, state and local — completely failed the people of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina flooded the city’s poorest section. Those who were willing and able to take care of themselves and their families were spared. Many of those who counted on government simply perished.

Even the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last September, was a case study in brave volunteers, not government — especially not this government — making a difference.

And in every mass shooting, in every school or other public place, in every corner of this country, government has betrayed the very people it is sworn to protect, usually by declaring a “gun-free zone” or some other absurd control on the right of private citizens to render protection for themselves, their families and their neighbors.

On October 16, 1991, in Killeen, Texas, an assailant drove his pickup truck through the front window of the Luby’s Cafeteria. He then shot 50 people, killing 23 of them, before turning the gun on himself. Two of those victims were the elderly parents of Suzanna Hupp, whose revolver was useless to her because it was 100 feet away in the glove compartment of her car. Hupp later was elected to the Texas Legislature on a platform of allowing Texans to carry concealed handguns, legislation she successfully pushed through and which then-Governor George W. Bush signed into law.

On April 20, 1999, in Littleton, Colorado, two misfit high school students decided to murder as many of their teachers and classmates as possible. Their subsequent rampage — again carried out in gun-free zone — left 13 innocent victims dead.

On April 16, 2007, at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech), a lone gunman shot and killed 32 people, wounding 17 others. Another school, another gun-free zone.

A few months later, just before Christmas, on December 5, 2007, in Omaha, Nebraska, a 19-year-old loner walked into the Von Maur department store at the Westroads Shopping Center and murdered eight innocent shoppers. As I wrote in a column at the time, “This individual looked at the ‘no concealed weapons’ sign and read, ‘Murderers welcome here. Please come in and shoot as many people as you like. No one here is capable of stopping you. Even our mall security officers are not armed.’”

January 8, 2011, at a Tucson, Arizona, supermarket, 6 people were murdered and 13 others wounded, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who miraculously survived a bullet through her brain.

July 20, 2012, Aurora, Colorado, in a movie theater that does not allow law-abiding citizens to carry their licensed, concealed firearms, 70 people were shot, 12 of them fatally, by a single shooter.

And now, most recently, we have Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, with its horrendous toll of 26 dead — 20 of them 6 and 7-year-old children. As usual, no one there was allowed the tools to protect them. One of the teachers reportedly huddled with her students in hiding and assured them, “The bad guys are here now. We just have to wait for the good guys to get here.”

Sadly, the good guys didn’t arrive for 20 minutes.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton, Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton. For info on using Doug’s columns at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

In the last few years, I have sensed a desire on the part of many to return to the traditional greeting, “Merry Christmas.” This year, anything else seems especially hollow.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

We watch with horror, depression, anger or detachment as events unfold in Newtown, Connecticut, Washington, DC, the Middle East, or elsewhere in our fallen world. We listen to politicians offering to place Band-Aids on the open arteries of our national psyche, and we think, this can’t be the answer!

For two thousand years, we have looked everywhere but a manger in Bethlehem.

Jesus Christ was born in the humblest of settings to become the Savior of all. This was by design, for at the time of His birth, even King Herod’s men did not think to look in a stable for a king. Kings are born in palaces, among opulence and luxury. Jesus did not fit the template.

For two thousand years, the human race has continued to look for something more, something flashier, something more glorious, something greater. For those of us who passionately believe in the story of the Nativity, it is a clear reminder of why our faith is a life to be lived in the Spirit of the Living God. What could be greater than that?

That is the difference between Christianity and every other religion in the world. Scripture tells us what Christ had to say about Himself. He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.” If that is not true, then He was either a liar or a lunatic, and no one believes that. In fact, virtually every other faith speaks of Jesus Christ as a wise prophet, a great teacher, or a good man, and other religions are willing to acknowledge that following Jesus is one of the ways to heaven. But Christ says He is the only way to heaven. No wonder He was crucified.

Christianity also is unique in that it proclaims that its central figure is still alive. Hindus think their leaders have been reincarnated. Buddha and his followers are thought to be part of some vast cosmos of energy. Mohammed, fiercely and violently defended though he may be, is still dead — and adherents to Islam know it. Even the bodies of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have long ago turned to dust. Jesus Christ alone is believed by his followers to be physically alive, despite having faced the worst death imaginable.

Far too many in our society reject the simple gospel presented by Christ and his disciples in favor of alternative religions that teach vague notions of piety through good works. The social gospel of using government to create an earthly utopia will disappoint us every time. False prophets and self-serving politicians have always been at the forefront of man’s disenchantment. They offer hope but dispense hopelessness. They promise freedom but deliver bondage — to an ideology, an idol or a doctrine. There is only one infallible answer. Discontented seekers of new age solutions to age-old problems need only look to the truth of the Christmas story.

This week, as we celebrate the miracle birth of a baby who would grow up to be both man and God, who would lay down His life as a sacrifice for the sins of those who would believe, we also should remember that He is still with us. Like Christmas itself, the reality of Christ persists and grows stronger. He was born, lived, died, and rose again. He ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of His Father, to make intercession for us, and He sent His Holy Spirit to live within those who would receive Him. What a story! To hundreds of millions of us, it is still the only one that makes sense, and He is our only source of true hope and of a truly Merry Christmas.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton. Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

David Fitzsimmons / Arizona Daily Star (click to view more cartoons by Fitzsimmons)

Don’t misunderstand me. I do not count myself among those calling for the elimination of the Electoral College, a system wisely put in place by our Founders, who understood that protecting the interests of small states was crucial to the implementation of Federalism. Rather, my proposal is to implement a system nationwide exactly like that utilized by Nebraska and Maine.

Did you ever wonder why the U.S. House of Representatives could be so dominated by one party (currently the Republicans) in a year when a presidential candidate of the other party wins an overwhelming majority of the Electoral College vote? The reason is that in the other 48 states, the system is such that the winner of the popular vote wins all of that state’s electoral votes. However, in Nebraska and Maine, the process is much more representative of the will of the people.

In these two states, if a presidential nominee wins the popular vote in a particular congressional district, that candidate wins one electoral vote. Barack Obama did it in 2008, when he outpolled John McCain in Nebraska’s Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District — the first time a Democrat had won an electoral vote in the Cornhusker State since Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater back in 1964.

In a short-sighted, knee-jerk reaction to Obama’s 2008 electoral victory in Nebraska 02, the state GOP tried (and failed) to revert back to the old winner-take-all system, which was in effect until 1991.

Imagine what would happen if the entire country were to adopt Maine and Nebraska’s much more representative system.

Most pundits agree that California, New York and Illinois are some of the most solidly Democratic strongholds in the nation — so much so that Republican presidential candidates hardly bother to stump there during general election campaigns because it is a forgone conclusion that all the electoral votes in those states will be awarded to the Democrat. In fact, one has to wonder why California Republicans even bother to vote for president, so meaningless is their choice toward the ultimate outcome of the election.

But would it surprise you to learn that 19 of the 53 congressional districts in that state are represented by Republicans, and that Romney actually carried most of those districts? Did you know that 8 of the 28 New York Districts are held by the GOP? Or that a majority — 11 out of 19 — of the congressional districts in Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois have consistently elected Republicans to the United States House of Representatives?

Would all of these districts always go for a Republican presidential candidate? Of course not, but a system of awarding electoral votes by congressional district arguably would result in a different outcome in many a close national election.

Could it go the other way in states like Texas, Alabama or Georgia? Certainly, but that’s the nature of a representative republic. In our system, the people choose who will represent them, and Nebraska and Maine are the only two states in the country truly allowing their voters to have a voice in presidential races.

What about the so-called battleground or swing states? Look at a map of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida or Virginia and tell me what you find. A sea of red congressional districts flecked with dots of blue.

I am a staunch defender of each state’s right to run their own elections for local, state and federal officials who will represent that particular state. But the fact is that our presidential elections increasingly are being decided by America’s urban areas, which are dictating policy for the entire nation. The best way to change that is to require — through constitutional amendment, if necessary — that all states adopt the Nebraska-Maine model.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton. For info on using Doug’s columns at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

Nate Beeler / Columbus Dispatch (click to view more cartoons by Beeler)

After this year’s election, I no longer believe that even the bold leadership of these officials and former officials will be enough. If America is to continue as we have known it, some fundamental steps must be taken to reclaim the nation that once was a shining city on a hill.

Step 1: The borders. Republicans should stop pretending they have any chance of out-pandering Democrats on the issue of immigration. No further talks should be undertaken with liberals about “comprehensive immigration reform” until there is an enforceable system of border control between Mexico and the United States. Call me racist all you want, but every American with anything functioning in his or her cranial cavity knows that our southern border is an open invitation to criminal elements ranging from violent drug dealers to international terrorists.

Step 2: Education. Abraham Lincoln famously said that the philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. The generation that just re-elected the most radical president in the history of the country has proven that adage to be true. The time has come for conservatives to step up and run for state and local school boards, as well as university regent boards. Conservative patriots with the financial means to do so must begin to fund scholarships to educate the next generation of journalists, college professors, lawyers, judges and other public officials. The only way we will bring social and fiscal sanity back to America is to counteract lies with truth.

Step 3: The news media. The rise of talk radio and the Fox News Channel has shown that Americans are hungry for voices other than the standard “progressive” claptrap that has emanated from the ivory towers of Manhattan and Washington, D.C., at least since Watergate. The next time a major news media entity goes up for sale, billionaire conservatives should step forward and buy it — and then start reporting the truth.

Step 4: The culture. Over the years, we have seen some relief from the sewage that regularly flows out of our entertainment industry. Despite Mel Gibson’s tragic personal meltdown later on, his “Passion of the Christ” was one of the biggest hits to come out of Hollywood in decades. CBS’s “Blue Bloods” is a Friday night TV hit enjoyed by millions of tradition-minded Americans who like a little action along with a depiction of some solid family values. The show depicts a family of cops who love each other, their wives and their community, and who actually say grace over their Sunday dinner. Imagine that! We need more “Blue Bloods” and less “Two and a half Men,” but we will never get there without more bold traditional conservatives with clout in Hollywood.

Step 5: Last, but far from least, America needs spiritual revival. For the last one hundred years — beginning with Woodrow Wilson, continuing on steroids with FDR, and culminating with the election and re-election of Barack Obama — government has been our god. Stating the antidote as plainly as possible, God must once again become our god. Does that mean that God wants a Republican president? No, but I think He would be pleased with a humble leader who believes in liberty and who acknowledges that God, not government, is the answer to our problems.

Disaster surely awaits us if we continue in the direction we are now headed, and change will not happen next year or in the next election cycle. What is as certain as tomorrow’s sunrise is that we will not see it happen at all if we do not take the first steps down a different path than the one we now tread.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton. For info on using Doug’s columns at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

Nate Beeler / Columbus Dispatch (click to view more cartoons by Beeler)

As anachronistic as it may sound in this day and age, David Petraeus has betrayed his own wife, debased another man’s wife, dishonored his profession and generally defamed the four stars he wore so proudly. And all that fruit salad on the uniform now hanging in his closet cannot erase the shame he has brought upon himself, his family and his nation.

The explanations for the Petraeus scandal run the gamut, from “it’s just sex” to “the White House has blackmailed him.” As usual, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. It is doubtful that a man willing to jeopardize his marriage, his family and his distinguished career for sexual pleasure in the arms of another woman would be so honorable as to resign from his post in disgrace if he were not forced to do so.

That said, many questions remain unanswered, the most important being this: Will a Congress that has allowed itself to be made largely irrelevant during Barack Obama’s first term have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to him and demand accountability now that he has been returned to office for another four years?

During Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, even the supposedly honorable Joe Lieberman, who on the Senate floor spoke so disapprovingly of the president’s loutish behavior, in the end voted against Clinton’s conviction for lying under oath. As David Schippers, chief investigative counsel for the proceedings, wrote in his book, “Sellout, the inside story of the Clinton impeachment,” a member of the Republican Senate leadership assured him that if video evidence could be shown that Bill Clinton shot someone dead in broad daylight, they still could not get the two-thirds majority necessary to convict him — because Democrats would never vote to remove him from office.

My own sense is that there is not a single Democrat — and only a handful of Republicans — who would be willing to speak truth to power and then follow through on their words. Mitt Romney certainly did not make a major issue of the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya.

So as David Petraeus prepares to testify before a closed congressional committee about that shameful night, a resolve settles over those of us who do not believe the whole truth will ever be known. The newly reaffirmed tyrant, Barack Obama, will not allow it to be known.

After all, this is a president who has bullied his way through four years in office and been re-elected to a second term.

He has shipped guns illegally into Mexico and watched as people on both sides of the border were murdered by the drug cartels using them.

He has borrowed trillions from China in order to spend tax dollars to be collected from generations yet unborn, to fund stimulus programs that stimulate nothing be the growth of government.

He has rammed through a health care bill opposed by a majority of the American people, which will surely bankrupt the nation, then managed to see it ruled constitutional by a Supreme Court that apparently no longer understands what the Constitution even says.

He apparently went to bed while brave Americans were fighting for their lives in a foreign consulate, got up the next day and made up a flagrantly false story about the reasons for the attack, and then flew off to Las Vegas for a campaign fundraiser.

And because he has disregarded the whole process of submitting a budget to Congress, none has been passed during his entire first term.

And yet we gave him a second term!

He believes, with some justification, that those who returned him to office will believe whatever ridiculous story he tells them about anything — which is why it will likely make little or no difference what David Petraeus says behind closed doors before the United States Congress.

© 2012 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using Doug’s columns at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

- U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin. 2012 vice presidential nominee

When I heard Congressman Ryan utter those words during his speech to the Republican National Convention in Tampa last summer, I thought they would define the 2012 race for the White House. No statement so clearly describes the deep division between the earners and the takers in this country as we stand on the uneasy precipice of another Obama term. As we all try to analyze the election results, it appears that “free stuff” won big.

Gary McCoy / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by McCoy)

More than half a century ago, author Ayn Rand — one of Paul Ryan’s social and political inspirations — saw the dangers of socialism in America. In her 1,100-page opus, “Alas Shrugged,” she presciently predicted the direction of the country and the consequences inherent in that course. The book tells the story of how her protagonist, John Galt, has had enough of the leaches who will not work and the bureaucrats who cater to them. Galt recruits the brightest, most productive members of society to go on strike in order to deprive the nation’s parasites of the support they need to continue redistributing wealth they did not earn.

Now that Obama has won a second four-year term to continue his leftist agenda, one has to wonder just how many of the people who actually pay the bills in this country intend to “go John Galt.” I personally know a few.

A doctor in Nebraska has been telling his patients that he intends to close his practice and leave the country if Obama is re-elected. Obamacare, he says, will destroy his practice, and he has no intentions of working for the government. It appears that he has not been uttering idle threats. He has purchased property in another country and he really plans to leave.

An executive for a major Midwestern corporation, which recently merged with a similar firm in a larger city, has been contemplating relocation in order to continue working for the company that has employed her for more than three decades. Obama’s re-election has finalized her decision.

“I’m done,” she says at the peak of her career. “There’s no way I’m going back to this level of work and stress and taxation. I’m going Galt. Elections have consequences. I’m over it. You’d be surprised how cheaply I can live. They can tax somebody else.”

The owner of a Japanese restaurant tells one of his employees, who supported Obama, “If he wins, you will lose your job.” It is not a threat. He simply knows what is coming.

The owner of a picture framing gallery, who has struggled to keep her business afloat for the past three years, will close her doors by the end of this year. The final, deciding factor for her was the result of this presidential election. “No one even has the money to pick up the work I’ve already framed for them,” she laments, “and it’s only going to get worse. I’m not working this hard for nothing.”

A salesman approaching his 65th birthday, who planned to wait until age 66 to file for Social Security, is contemplating filing early. “My intention was to wait another year so that I wouldn’t be penalized for working and earning more than the allowed amount of $14,400 per year,” he says. “But with rising gas prices, regulations and taxes under Obama, I might as well do the minimum and live off the government dole like half the country already is.”

Barack Obama has already done great damage to this country. He will do much more damage over the next four years. Whether America’s producers will continue to stand for it remains to be seen.

In his gracious concession speech on election night, Mitt Romney appealed to business owners and entrepreneurs. “We look to job-creators of all kinds,” he said. “We’re counting on you to invest, to hire, to step forward…”

Perhaps they will, but if they do, it will be in spite of Barack Obama, certainly not because of him.

© 2012 by Doug Patton, Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

Eric Allie / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by Allie)

Meanwhile, the new mantra for the surrogates who are still trying to defend this president’s actions is this: “After the attacks of September 11, 2001, we all came together and supported our president, and we should do the same now!” Let’s try to analyze the nonsense of this statement.

It stretches credibility almost to the breaking point even to compare the actions of President Bush on September 11, 2001, with those of President Obama on September 11, 2012. In order for Bush’s deeds on that terrible day to be in any way comparable to what Obama did — or, more accurately, failed to do — on the anniversary of the most deadly attack on American soil, something like the following scenario would have to had taken place.

President Bush is reading to a group of grade school children in Florida when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispers in his ear that a jet airliner, possibly piloted by terrorists, has crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. The president freezes. He doesn’t know what to do. How will this affect him politically?

The president is soon informed that a second plane has struck the south tower, while a third has flown directly into the Pentagon. Later, he is told that United Airlines Flight 93 is now in the hands of terrorists somewhere in the skies over Pennsylvania. It is apparent that this plane is headed back to Washington, DC, to crash into either the White House or the U.S. Capitol Building.

Bush and his advisors soon become aware that a brave group of passengers aboard Flight 93 are planning to storm the cockpit and retake the aircraft. Huddled with his aides, Bush orders them to tell those passengers to “stand down.” They are not to try and retake that aircraft under any circumstances, the president decrees. Todd Beamer, the leader of the group, and his fellow heroes, ignore the president’s order. With the battle cry, “let’s roll,” they charge the cockpit. Whether at the hands of the terrorists or Beamer and his courageous friends, the plane crashes into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, thereby foiling the attack on another American landmark.

Overnight, the president concocts a story to tell the American people. He calls a press conference and informs the world, “Yesterday, an attack was perpetrated upon our soil that appears to have been completely random and spontaneous. In looking at the reasons for this violence, it has come to my attention that the Islamic world is rightfully outraged by an episode of the animated television series ‘South Park.’ This episode, which aired earlier this summer, depicts the Prophet Mohammad in an unflattering light and is inexcusable. My administration wants Muslims around the world to know that the United States government had nothing to do with producing, promoting or airing this cartoon show, and that we apologize for the offensive nature of it.”

The following Sunday, George Bush sends United Nations Ambassador John Negroponte to every network talk show to repeat the lie that it was the Comedy Central cartoon show that caused the attacks of 9/11.

And finally, at the funerals of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, Secretary of State Colin Powell tells Todd Beamer’s wife, Lisa, that the Bush administration is going to hunt down Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the co-creators of “South Park,” and arrest them.

Do you believe for one moment that the media, the American people, or anyone in their right mind would have bought into that whopper? Well, Barack Obama thinks you are just that stupid.

Now go out and vote, America!

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© 2012 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

Following Mitt Romney’s elegant rope-a-dope of Obama in their third and final debate of this election season, during which the Republican nominee left the prosecution of the administration’s foreign policy blunders to others during the final days of their race for the White House, the president’s flailing re-election campaign finds itself confronting a whole new set of problems.

While relying heavily on the complicity of the mainstream media to aid in a blatant cover-up concerning a planned terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of 9/11, Obama has been desperate to run out the clock before voters can learn the truth about his incompetence and deceit. Now he must try to explain a newly obtained e-mail message that clearly shows he has been lying all along to the American people about the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

It turns out the president and his team of eggheads knew from day one that an organized terrorist group, not a cheaply made Internet video, was the catalyst for the assault in Benghazi. And yet they chose to propagate a lie, because the truth did not fit their fairytale campaign storyline that terrorism is no longer a problem. In Obama’s words at every campaign stop, “Osama bin Laden is dead and al Qaida is on the run.”

This is the most damning evidence yet in this unfolding scandal. The State Department communique to senior officials at the White House and the Pentagon clearly shows that team Obama knew what was happening to Ambassador Stevens and the others trapped inside the consulate in Benghazi, yet chose to do absolutely nothing to help them — nothing! — for seven long hours, as the violence was underway.

So how has Obama dealt with this growing scandal? Has he held a press conference to answer the tough questions some real reporters might actually want to ask him? Has he been willing to discuss the subject honestly in the presidential debates? Has he gone before the cameras in the Oval Office, Gipper style, to explain what actually happened?

No, his solution has been to hide behind Hillary Clinton’s skirts as she attempts to revive an old familiar boogey man, the vast right-wing conspiracy. Given what this whole fiasco is doing to her reputation worldwide, why Hillary would fall on this sword for the sorry likes of Barack Obama is beyond my comprehension, but there she was, this week, making excuses:

“The independent Accountability Review Board is already hard at work looking at everything,” she said, “not cherry-picking one story here or one document there, but looking at everything which I highly recommend as the appropriate approach to something as complex as an attack like this.”

Translation: Most of our good friends and political allies in the media are on the reservation, where they should be, until Election Day. But those right-wing nut jobs at Fox News, the Drudge Report and on talk radio are screwing up our narrative with just two weeks to go. Shame on them!

When Hillary ran against Obama in the 2008 Democrat primaries, she called into question his ability to deal with that hypothetical “three a.m. phone call.” Apparently, he just doesn’t take those calls. He lets them go to voice mail and flies off to Vegas for a fundraiser.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton, Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com. This column has been edited by the author.

Nate Beeler / Columbus Dispatch (click to view more cartoons by Beeler)

At a crucial juncture in Tuesday night’s so-called town hall style debate, CNN partisan Candy Crowley threw Barack Obama the lifeline he so desperately needed to save him from the only question of the evening concerning his near-criminal handling of the Benghazi, Libya, affair that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. After listening to the incessantly inane questions put forth by supposedly undecided voters — questions selected beforehand by Crowley herself — we finally got a direct question about the Libyan fiasco.

That direct question was this: “The State Department refused extra security for our embassy in Benghazi, Libya, prior to the attacks that killed four Americans. Who was it that denied enhanced security, and why?”

Obama started his two minutes of obfuscation by telling us how proud he is of all our diplomats around the world, what “an incredible job they do in a very dangerous situation,” how they represent him because he appoints them, and how he intended to “investigate” this whole incident until those responsible are “brought to justice” blah blah blah. It was an embarrassing display of bloviating, wherein he never answered the question. In fact, his answer ended with him blaming Romney for turning the whole thing into a political issue by criticizing the president’s actions — or lack of them.

Romney’s response was weak, but he did manage to point out that it was a terrorist attack, not a “spontaneous demonstration,” and that, immediately afterward, Obama had jetted off to a campaign fundraiser in Las Vegas. Filled with faux-indignity, Obama bristled that for Romney to dare to suggest that he or any of his team would use such a grave situation for political purposes was “offensive.”

He also stated that he had called the attack “an act of terror” the day after it happened.

At this point, it was obvious that Obama and Crowley were on the same page on this issue. When Romney challenged Obama’s statement that he had characterized Benghazi as an act of terror in his brief September 12th Rose Garden news conference, the president said, “Get the transcript.” And low and behold, Candy Crowley just happened to have one, which she used to back up Obama’s lie. Delighted, Obama piped up, “Could you say that a little louder, Candy?”

(Later, on her poorly rated network, CNN, when few people were watching, Crowley corrected herself by admitting that the generic reference the president had made at his news conference did not pertain to the Libyan attack at all. Of course, by then she had accomplished her mission of bailing Obama out of a very uncomfortable situation.)

Out of all the statements that have been made over the past month on this issue, ask yourself why Candy Crowley, who had personally chosen the audience questions in advance, would be armed with that particular transcript, if not for the purpose of preparing to provide Obama with a lifeline. How would she have known that this was the excuse the president would use?

Obama was indeed more aggressive in this debate than he was in Denver two weeks ago, when he appeared to barely have a pulse. But, as it so often does, his aggression took the form of petulance and indignation from a petty little man who does not like to be challenged, and who is accustomed to being surrounded by sycophants — both on his staff and in most of the media.

Focus groups across the political spectrum afterward confirmed that Romney clearly had the better answers on the economy and taxes, despite Obama’s class warfare protestations to the contrary. But on the issue that would have been the most damaging to this president — the attempted cover-up involving the murder of a diplomat and three other Americans in a terrorist attack his administration tried for two weeks to sell as a spontaneous demonstration — Obama slithered away from the question with the help of moderator Candy Crowley.

That’s what happens when you let the cheerleaders referee the game. Someday maybe Republicans will learn.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

Eric Allie / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by Allie)

The wife screams, “What are you doing?” To which the husband and the mistress simply get up, get dressed and make the bed as if nothing has happened. Meanwhile, the husband, in response to his wife’s growing hysteria and incredulity, calmly asks, “What woman?” “Where?” By the end of the scene, the husband is sitting in his easy chair, smoking his pipe, while the mistress has left the apartment, leaving the bewildered wife wondering if she is losing her mind. Finally, questioning whether she has imagined the whole thing, she asks her husband, “What do you want for dinner?”

In the ongoing fiasco that is United States foreign policy in the Middle East, Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States, has become Joey Bishop, with the American people playing the role of the beleaguered wife. In a stonewalling lie that would make Richard Nixon and his Watergate crew gasp with envy, the president and key members of his administration have been trying with all their might to run out the clock before they have to face the wrath of voters next month.

For weeks after the fact, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and a host of others, tried to convince the world that a cheaply made video trailer was the catalyst behind the destruction of the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, and the murder of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. We were supposed to believe that spontaneous protestors were armed with hand-held rocket propelled grenade launchers and automatic weapons — and that this spontaneous protest just happened to occur on the anniversary of September 11th. President Joey Bishop obviously thinks we really are that stupid.

Now, of course, from the halls of Congress to the air waves of talk radio and across the Internet, the ugly truth is spilling out, despite the panic at the White House to contain it and the determination of the mainstream media to ignore it.

Given Mitt Romney’s complete rout of the president in the first debate, it is hard to imagine how Obama can avoid having to answer hard questions in the upcoming confrontations about why his state department denied Ambassador Stevens the additional security he urgently requested prior to the attack. What possible explanation can the president invent for his utter failure to secure our embassy and its personnel? How could he and his advisors have so badly misjudged the outcome of the “Arab Spring” when they armed the rebels who now appear to be terrorists themselves? And what justification can he offer for the outright lies that emanated from his administration after what was clearly known to be a terrorist attack?

Barack Obama’s only hope — and it is now a pathetically slim one — is to continue on the path he has set for himself in this campaign, hoping that his fawning sycophants in the national media can somehow continue to bury the biggest story since they refused to cover Operation Fast and Furious. Meanwhile, as Romney, the serious candidate, discusses Benghazi, Obama, the small-minded community organizer, runs ridiculous parodies about Big Bird that look as if they were produced by the Tonight Show or Saturday Night Live.

As then-Sen. Obama said in Denver when he accepted his party’s nomination for president in front of those silly Greek columns in 2008, “If you don’t have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters. If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things.”

I could not have written a better line to describe the president’s re-election campaign.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

In short, he showed the world why he should be number 45.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

There were times when Romney did seem to channel the Gipper, like when he said, “Free people and free enterprise are more effective in bringing down the cost of health care than government will ever be.” But his real strength in this debate was that he was prepared. He was on his toes. He came armed with facts and figures that could be sprinkled throughout the debate without making him seem like a policy wonk who could not relate to the average voter. He was empathetic. Most of all, he was passionate and presidential.

Obama, on the other hand, appeared to be phoning it in. So accustomed is he to being surrounded by sycophants, the president almost looked stunned at times that his singular awesomeness was not enough to carry the night. In fact, to sum up the next day’s desperate spin being put forth by the Obama press agents who masquerade as analysts on his favorite cable channel, MSNBC: If only the Obama we all know and love on the campaign trail had shown up at this debate, we would not have to be admitting that he got his head handed to him by Mitt Romney — who, as we all know, is not worthy to tie the president’s shoes.

The truth is that during the debate, Obama almost seemed lost without his teleprompter and his canned applause and laugh lines. While Romney fixed his gaze directly upon the president during the entire debate, Obama refused to look at his opponent most of the time. He appeared alternately bored, distracted, disengaged, annoyed and/or in need of a lifeline.

In fact, moderator Jim Lehrer threw Obama at least one such life preserver. About a third of the way through the debate, Romney had just decimated Obama’s “balanced” approach to reducing the deficit, which includes job-killing tax increases in addition to reductions in the insane amounts of spending in which this administration has engaged. At this point, with Obama looking positively flummoxed, Lehrer tried to help him regain his composure by feeding him a line to get him back on track: “Mr. President, you’re saying that in order to get the job done, it’s got to be balanced.” Without that help, there is no telling how long it might have taken the president to recover.

Romney’s most devastating assault on Obama came when the president made the mistake of attacking the so-called “tax breaks” for oil companies. Romney pointed out that the policy is an accounting treatment that has been in effect for a hundred years, mostly to spur oil exploration, and that it amounts to $2.8 billion a year.

“And it’s time to end it,” Obama retorted.

“And in one year,” Romney shot back, “you provided $90 billion in breaks to the green energy world…That’s about fifty years’ worth of what oil and gas receives.” Later, Romney returned to the same theme, this time telling Obama that his subsidies to solar and wind energy companies could have hired two million teachers in our public schools. He also pointed out that some of those companies — many of which failed after being bailed out with billions of tax dollars — were owned by donors to the Obama campaign.

For those of us who eat, sleep and live this stuff 24/7, it is sometimes hard to comprehend that, for many voters, this may well have been the first time they have seen Romney as anything other than the ogre who puts men out of work, kills their wives, starves their children and counts his money as he laughs, “Let them eat cake!” That is the image of the Republican challenger that has been spoon fed to the masses in those 30-second, four-Pinocchio whoppers the Obama campaign has been dishing out for the last several months.

On October 3, 2012, all that changed. We are now in a whole new political universe. Now America knows the difference between electing a community organizer and a seasoned executive.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton. Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

“My concern is not whether God is on our side. My greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” – Abraham Lincoln

Occasionally, in the course of my daily newspaper reading, a line jumps off the page, sends chills down my spine and keeps me awake at night. A recent Associated Press article regarding the chaos currently spreading across the Middle East contained such a line.

Speaking of the United Nations, it read as follows: “Among the proposals is a call to impose an international law against promoting religious hatred.” It goes on to state that “many Muslim scholars and leaders have urged the U.N. or other international bodies to step in to help define possible global standards on religious expression.”

Daryl Cagle / NBCNews.com (click to view more cartoons by Cagle)

Finally, AP tells us that “Paul Bhatti, an advisor to the Pakistani prime minister, told a multi-faith crowd of Muslims, Christians and others outside the country’s parliament Sunday that international laws should be imposed to limit the most hateful fringes of Western free speech.”

Still using a cheesy, fifteen-minute Internet video — which most of them have never seen — as their excuse for anti-American riots and murder, this so-called anti-blasphemy law is a deadly serious proposal put forth by religious fanatics to silence anyone who speaks against their repressive, autocratic dogma. And make no mistake; their primary target is the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights, contained within the Constitution of the United States of America.

Many Muslims have come to believe that their religion is denigrated in the United States, when exactly the opposite is true. Indeed, in movies, on television, in the mainstream media, and among our government bureaucrats, no set of religious tenets is handled more delicately than those of Islam.

Contrary to the myth that the attacks of September 11, 2001, caused a backlash against Muslims, America has instead prostrated itself before the Islamic world in an attempt to make them love us. We prosecute our own soldiers if they “mishandle” a Koran or otherwise “disrespect” Muslims. We provide prisoners of war — who have killed our soldiers on the battlefield — food and religious materials in accordance with their faith.

We have even elected a president who apologizes to our enemies when we are attacked, while rebuffing our only true ally in the region, Israel. It is not hard to imagine Barack Obama, in a second term, demanding that the United States Senate ratify a treaty containing just such anti-blasphemy language as is being proposed by the Islamic radicals who now rule the Middle East.

By the way, it is illegal in most of the Arab world to possess a Bible. So much for religious tolerance.

One aspect of the Muslim argument on this issue that is absolutely correct is their assertion that our “hate crimes” laws stand as evidence of our hypocrisy. Hate crimes laws are every bit as dangerous as the anti-blasphemy laws the Islamists are proposing. Such statutes stand in blatant opposition to our Constitution, which guarantees every American the right to say things that are unpopular. These laws spawn an atmosphere wherein pastors can be arrested for preaching against homosexuality or any other protected “lifestyle.” Hate crimes laws will most certainly, eventually, lead to the prosecution of expression that someone considers hate speech.

The First Amendment to our Constitution reads as follows: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Most Americans still take those words and those rights very seriously, because we consider them to be self-evident and bestowed upon us by our Creator. Like Jefferson, we tremble for our country when we contemplate the possibility that Islamic radicals, aided by a weak American president sympathetic to their cause, might be allowed to erase those words from our public life.

© 2012 by Doug Patton. Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com. 

Unfortunately, Mitt Romney too often seems incapable of much more than putting on that goody two shoes Ward Cleaver smile of his and merely giving them ‘heck’ — which is not going to cut it in 2012 against a slash-and-burn campaign like Barack Obama’s.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

Romney has been running for president for at least the last five years, and who knows how long he planned to run before that? One might think that he would have learned from studying past campaigns what to say and how to say it. He should have learned from the winners in both parties (Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama), as well from the losing efforts (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, John Kerry and John McCain). He should not have to be coached about what he believes. He should know in his gut, as Reagan did, what to say and how to say it.

Romney touched a raw nerve with the Obama supporters in the media last week when he defended the First Amendment and vilified the Obama administration for its hand wringing apologies to the tyrants and crazies in the Middle East. This earned him a gold star with those of us who long for the days when the Gipper truly gave ‘em hell.

Now comes this grainy video, with two minutes missing, leaked to left-wing Mother Jones magazine by none other than the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, showing Romney speaking at a fundraiser last spring. In it, he speaks the unvarnished truth, albeit “inelegantly,” about the desire of the Obama administration to create a permanent Democrat voting majority through dependence on government — a kind of living manifestation of the creepy “Julia” cartoon the president was so proud to have posted on his website a few months ago.

So far, Romney has not backed down on the truth he spoke on that video. But will he continue to double down with this valid attack on Obama, employing the same go-for-the-jugular tactics his campaign used against Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and anyone else who threatened his ascendency in the primaries? Time will tell, but it is curious that, for a man who persuaded people to invest millions of dollars into his business ventures over the years, Romney sometimes seems almost timid in his approach to this campaign.

Theories abound as to why this is. Many conservatives blame the campaign’s chief strategist, Stuart Stevens, a jack-of-all-trades gadfly who has worked for such “it’s my turn” losers as Dole and McCain. Stevens is drawing a lot of heat this time around for apparently believing that the anemic economy will automatically turn voters away from Obama’s heavy-handed policies and hand the election to Romney. This is a common misconception among overpaid consultants and inside-the-beltway advisors, who truly believe that the way to win independent voters is to moderate and play nice. How many races do these people have to lose before they examine the premise of their campaign playbook?

If Mitt Romney wants to win this election, he should shut the door on Stuart Stevens and sit down with his running mate for advice. Paul Ryan is a winner, and the de facto leader of the next generation of conservatives. It would be a terrible waste if it turns out that Romney put Ryan on the ticket as window dressing, a kind of red meat bait for conservative activists, as John McCain did with Sarah Palin, while running a milk toast presidential campaign of moderation and appeasement.

I believe that Mitt Romney will win this election, but like Harry and the Gipper, he needs to make the sale.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

While Carter’s inept economic policies were most certainly the major factor that year, his equally maladroit foreign policy played a role in the demise of his presidency as well, especially the events that were unfolding in the Middle East at the time.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

For 444 days, from November 4, 1979, until January 20, 1981, Carter increasingly appeared paralyzed as 52 Americans were held hostage by Islamist radicals who had overrun our embassy in Tehran, Iran. After a failed military rescue attempt resulted in the deaths of eight American servicemen, in addition to being regarded as an incompetent chief executive, Carter was increasingly viewed as a virtually impotent commander in chief, and a whopping majority of the electorate would hold him accountable for his considerable failures that following November.

The Iranians shrewdly waited to see who won the U.S. election. Of course, Reagan crushed Carter at the polls. The moment the new president was sworn in, the hostages were released. Few but the most diehard cynics would today deny the obvious reason.

Thirty-two years later, history is repeating itself on a not so dissimilar world stage, with Barack Obama in the role of the hapless President Peanut, and Mitt Romney as the Gipper.

A mob of extremists invaded the grounds of our embassy in Cairo, Egypt, this week, and replaced the American flag with an Islamic banner. The Obama administration claimed this was in response to an unflattering Internet video about the Muslim prophet Mohammed. Their initial hand-wringing, knee-jerk reaction was to issue a statement condemning “the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

That’s right. Instead of attacking the attackers — in either word or deed — our government condemned those who had made the video.

Within hours, obviously emboldened by Jimmy Obama’s wimpy rejoinder, Islamist savages attacked the American Embassy in Libya and murdered four diplomats, including our ambassador.

Obama’s reaction? With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by his side for strength and credibility, he spoke cool platitudes from the White House Rose Garden about “working with the Libyan government to bring those responsible to justice.”

Later reports stated that these attacks may well have been orchestrated and coordinated by al-Qaida, but Jimmy Obama stuck to his story about the “offensive video.”

Playing the Gipper role beautifully, Romney responded by stating that he was outraged by the attacks and by the deaths of the Americans. “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

This brought waves of questions from the ever-inquiring minds of the national media, invested as they are in getting Jimmy Obama re-elected. How could Romney dare to comment on this issue at a time like this? Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! Isn’t politics supposed to stop at the water’s edge? Etc., etc., yada, yada, blah, blah, blah. (Honestly, doesn’t that sum up their analysis sometimes?)

But playing the title role that will surely make him the next President of the United States, Ronald Romney stuck to his guns:

“America will not tolerate attacks against our citizens and against our embassies,” he said. “We also will defend our constitutional rights of speech and assembly and religion. We have confidence in our cause in America. We respect our Constitution. We stand for the principles our Constitution protects. We encourage other nations to understand and respect the principles of our Constitution because we recognize that these principles are the ultimate source of freedom for individuals around the world.”

What would the Gipper say about that? I think he would say, “Now that sounds like a president!”

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© 2012 by Doug Patton, Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com. 

Jeff Parker / Florida Today (click to view more cartoons by Parker)

Democrats long ago abandoned any reasonable position on cultural issues. Their party now embraces the unfettered right to abortion and the notion that two people of the same sex can form a “marriage.” This year they have even written it into their party platform.

At the Republican convention, the two individuals who spoke most eloquently about the social issues our nation faces were former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum — my personal choices for president in 2008 and 2012, respectively.

Santorum recalled those he met on the campaign trail as he was vying for the GOP nomination earlier this year. “I cradled the little broken hands of the disabled,” he said, “hands that struggle and bring pain, hands that ennoble us and bring great joy. They came to see us — oh, did they come — when they found out Karen and I are blessed with caring for someone very special, too, our daughter, Bella.

“When Bella was born four and a half years ago, the doctors told us she was incompatible with life and to prepare to let go,” he said. “They told us that even if she did survive, her disabilities would be so severe that Bella would not have a life worth living. We didn’t let go and today Bella is full of life, and she has made our lives and countless others much more worth living.

“I thank God,” Santorum concluded, “that America still has one political party that reaches out their hands in love to lift up all of God’s children — born and unborn — and says that each of us has dignity and all of us have the right to live the American Dream.”

Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, laid to rest any remaining doubts about where he stands on religious freedom and politics.

“Let me clear the air about whether guys like me would only support an evangelical,” he told the delegates. “Of the four people on the two tickets, the only self-professed evangelical is Barack Obama, and he supports changing the definition of marriage, he believes that human life is disposable and expendable at any time in the womb or even beyond the womb, and he tells people of faith that they must bow their knees to the god of government and violate their faith and conscience in order to comply with what he calls ‘health care.’

“The attack on my Catholic brothers and sisters is an attack on me,” Huckabee said, referring to Obama’s mandate on religious institutions to pay for contraception and abortion-producing drugs in their health care plans. “This isn’t a battle about contraceptives and Catholics, but of conscience and the Creator.”

A nation cannot destroy more than a million of its unborn children every year for nearly forty years without sinking into a death culture that now includes the very real prospect of euthanasia for the old, the weak and infirm, especially as Obamacare saps our resources and makes rationing of health care a necessity.

We cannot radically redefine a core institution like marriage and continue to function as a free people.

And it is axiomatic that Barack Obama and his fellow radicals have declared war on religious liberty.

John Adams gave us this warning more than two centuries ago: “Our Constitution was made for a moral and a religious people; it is wholly inadequate for the governing of any other.” Without shared, humane cultural mores that go deeper than the exchange of money, we are just a collection of narcissists worshipping at the altar of government while clamoring for more stuff. That is not America.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton, Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cart Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

Many of my friends and family, while hoping I’m right, actually think I’m crazy. My wife fears that there is now a disproportionate number of people in America who have gotten used to the idea of having things handed to them by government, rather than cherishing the opportunity to work for those things themselves.

Cam Cardow / Ottawa Citizen (click to view more cartoons by Cardow)

After the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare this summer, my brother, who lives in the battleground state of Missouri, announced with resignation that, “Obama has just been re-elected.” He reaffirmed that belief recently, during the Todd Akin flap in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race, by once again declaring his state all but lost for Republicans, including Mitt Romney.

A close friend, with whom I have worked on numerous campaigns and who now works for a conservative lobbying organization, has a tendency to fret about all things political. He has been a basket case over the possibility of Obama, part two.

I point out to him that no president from either party since FDR’s second campaign in 1936 has ever been re-elected with an unemployment rate even approaching the numbers we are seeing today. I tell him that any incumbent president who cannot get his poll numbers above 50 percent cannot and will not win.

Sometimes my friend’s anxiety is temporarily assuaged, but there is no doubt in my mind that he will sleep much better after he has seen my prediction come true on November 6th. (Won’t we all?)

Now comes a scientific study of presidential elections, from a pair of faculty members at the University of Colorado, which reinforces the political gut feeling that has been driving my prophecies to a large degree. The long-term model used for this study is the brainchild of Professors Kenneth Bickers and Michael Berry, working at CU’s Boulder and Denver campuses, respectively. Their prototype, Bickers and Berry stress, analyzes economic data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including both state and national unemployment figures, as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors.

Since 1980, their model has accurately predicted every presidential election. Their analysis was accurate even in those years when there was a strong third party candidate running (John Anderson in 1980 and Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996). Perhaps most impressive, their model worked in predicting that Al Gore would win the popular vote in 2000 while losing the electoral vote to George W. Bush.

So what does the model forecast for 2012? They predict that Mitt Romney will soundly defeat Barack Obama by winning 32 states, 53 percent of the popular vote and a whopping 320 electoral votes (270 are needed to win).

“The apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears,” Professor Berry notes, “when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent. The incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama, though statistically significant, is not great enough to offset high rates of unemployment currently experienced in many of the states.”

Berry and Bickers are predicting that Romney will defeat Obama in almost every battleground state, as well as a few the GOP hasn’t won in decades. These include North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and, yes, the “show me” state of Missouri.

Bickers notes that their election prediction model suggests that “presidential elections are about big things and the stewardship of the national economy. It’s not about gaffes, political commercials or day-to-day campaign tactics. I find that heartening for our democracy.

“Based on our forecasting model,” Professor Bickers adds, “it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble.”

As my little sister, who lives in the battleground state of Iowa, would say, “From his lips to God’s ears!”

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© 2012 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cart Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

I would start with Mitt Romney’s taxes. The Obama campaign points out that Romney pays a lower percentage rate than does his running mate, Paul Ryan. The premise of the argument is faulty, of course, but conservatives don’t seem to know how to stop the other side from defining the issue.

Eric Allie / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by Allie)

When Arnold Schwarzenegger first ran for governor of California, he tapped billionaire Warren Buffett to advise him on economic issues. Buffett proceeded to tell the media that he paid more than $14,000 in property taxes annually on his primary residence in Omaha, which was valued at $500,000, while paying less than $2,000 a year on his $2.4 million home in Laguna Beach, California. It was Buffet’s belief that the California model, not Nebraska’s, was the flawed one.

This attitude is at the heart of the current debate over Mitt Romney’s tax bill. My fantasy Super PAC ad would ask several questions: Where is it written that government always has to grow? If a wealthy person pays a lower rate than someone making less, why is it logical to assume that the rich guy’s taxes should be raised? Why not lower the taxes of the person with a more modest income? Of what benefit is it to Paul Ryan — or any of us — to raise Mitt Romney’s taxes? You want to help me out? Lower my taxes!

My second Super PAC commercial would fill the vacuum left by Republicans who have abandoned Missouri GOP U.S. Senate nominee Todd Akin. Admittedly, by expressing his opposition to abortion in cases of rape the way he did, Akin provided a giant political hole through which pro-abortion radicals could drive an armored personnel carrier. Democrats and the national media (but then, I’m being redundant, aren’t I?) immediately began calling for Akin’s head and linking him to Romney and Ryan. This hysteria on the left was soon followed by frightened GOP establishment types like Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove throwing Akin under the bus by threatening to cut off funding for his campaign unless he steps down as the Republican nominee challenging U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill. To his credit, he has refused to do so.

Akin has apologized for the clumsy way in which he addressed the issue, but that, of course, is not enough. When liberals apologize for “misspeaking” (think Joe Biden every other week), everyone is supposed to accept it at face value. When the apology comes from a conservative, the candidate cannot do enough bowing and scraping to stop the harangue.

As is so often the case, the Republican Party and its candidates are going to be tarred and feathered from top to bottom with the Akin comment regardless of what they do — or what he does. That’s why my Super PAC would immediately start running ads in Missouri contrasting the views of Barack Obama and Claire McCaskill with those of Todd Akin and other conservative Republicans.

My ads would tell Missouri voters the truth about Obama’s radical views on abortion. They would learn that as a state senator in Illinois, he supported infanticide by opposing the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which called for saving the life of a baby born alive in the course of a botched abortion. Voters in the “Show Me” state would be told the truth about Obamacare, which, among other things, forces religious institutions to provide abortion services through their health plans — a loathsome provision for which Claire McCaskill provided the crucial 60th vote in the United States Senate.

As long as I’m fantasizing, I think I’ll run my ads in every battleground state. Let’s just see if these really are discussions the White House and their pet candidates want to have.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton, Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cart Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

Romney, of course, can’t (and therefore won’t) say it, but that campaign of division, anger and hate has now turned violent. In a desire to talk about anything but the effects of Obama’s disastrous policies, he and his surrogates — in and out of the media — have adopted a reckless strategy of lies and distortion that has now resulted in what the FBI is investigating as an act of domestic terrorism.

I refer to the attack on the offices of the Family Research Council in Washington, DC, in which a security guard was shot. When disarmed, the gunman, who was reported to be carrying a Chick-fil-A bag, cried out, “Don’t shoot me! It was not about you! It was what this place stands for!”

Whatever do you suppose he meant by that? Even Brian Ross, ABC News crack investigative reporter, who was so quick to mistakenly link the Aurora, Colorado, shooter with the Tea Party, was nowhere to be found on this one. Well, let me connect the dots for you, Brian.

Ever since Dan Cathy, chief operating officer of the family-owned Chick-fil-A restaurant chain expressed his support for traditional marriage, radicals on the left, emboldened by Obama’s newly minted support for same-sex marriage, have attacked Cathy and his company as purveyors of hate. Those accusations have extended to the pro-family organizations Cathy supports, one of which just happens to be the Family Research Council.

In searching for the same kind of explanation for the Colorado shooting, Ross came up with a name he said was associated with a Colorado Tea Party organization. Oops, he said a few hours later, apparently that was a different guy with the same name. Yet, in the initial coverage of this shooting, only Fox News Channel — which Obama and his minions perpetually dis as the ugly, right-wing pariah of the national press — was even reporting the shooter’s statement, which clearly indicates his animosity toward the Family Research Council.

Appallingly, the Associated Press told the story with an almost “What-did-they-expect?” tone, which was dutifully picked up by such news outlets as the Washington Post.

“The Family Research Council advocates conservative positions on social issues and strongly opposes gay marriage and abortion,” the AP reported. “FRC President Tony Perkins was an outspoken defender of Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy’s public stand against same-sex marriage, which made the fast-food chain a flashpoint in the nation’s culture wars. The Cathy family foundation has funded the Family Research Council.”

AP went on to quote Perkins as saying, “Chick-fil-A is a Bible-based, Christian-based business who treats their employees well. They have been attacked in the past about their stand, but they refuse to budge on this matter, and I commend them for what they are doing.”

There was, however, no mention of a possible motive for the shooting in the initial AP coverage. On that score, you see, unlike Colorado, there just wasn’t enough evidence to reach any conclusions.

For his part, Romney issued an appropriate statement. “There is no place for such violence in our society,” it read. “My prayers go out to the wounded security guard and his family, as well as all the people at the Family Research Council, whose sense of security has been shattered by today’s horrific events.”

David Axelrod and other Obama handlers may yet convince the president to at least acknowledge this attack and express concern for those victimized by this gunman, but in the early hours after it happened, there was nothing. The FreeRepublic.com web site reported the following:

“Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney reacted quickly, long before most cable networks even reported the crime, releasing a statement condemning the act. The Human Rights Council, which just a day ago labeled the FRC a ‘hate group’ for its traditional values, even tweeted that its hearts went out to the FRC. But a look at President Obama’s twitter timeline shows no reaction to the attack at all.”

Hope and change has now given way to division and silence.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton, Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself much more often than not. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

Not mistakes. Not distortions. Not factual errors. Not mendacities. Lies!

Democrat Leader Harry Reid took to the floor of the Senate and lied through his smirking teeth about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “The word it out that he hasn’t paid taxes in a decade,” Reid said in that smarmy voice of his. He offered no proof of this scurrilous allegation, and when challenged on it he simply shrugged and said someone told him.

The latest filth to come oozing out of the president’s re-election mud hole is a television commercial being run by Priorities USA Action, the pro-Obama super PAC run by former administration mouthpiece Bill Burton and defended by another former administration mouthpiece, Robert Gibbs, who now works for the campaign (but they don’t coordinate, because that would be wrong).

The ad is running in Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Florida, and on the Internet. It depicts former steelworker Joe Soptic earnestly speaking into the camera about how he lost his job after GST Steel closed its doors in 2001. Bain Capital, the private equity firm formerly run by Romney, was part of a group that had taken over the Kansas City area steel company. Soptic blames Romney, not only for the loss of his job, but also the loss of his wife, who subsequently died of cancer.

“When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant,” Soptic tells us, “I lost my health care, and my family lost their health care. And a short time after that my wife became ill. I don’t know how long she was sick, and I think maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew that we couldn’t afford the insurance, and then one day she became ill and I took her up to the Jackson County Hospital and admitted her for pneumonia, and that’s when they found the cancer, and by then it was stage four. It was…there was nothing they could do for her, and she passed away in 22 days. I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he’s done to anyone, and furthermore I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned.”

The Washington Post gave the ad four Pinocchios, the same rating they gave Reid’s comments on the Senate floor. It seems the Obama slime machine conveniently overlooked a few little factoids: 1) of the $75 million put into the original 1993 deal by several investors, Bain Capital put in a mere $8 million; 2) Romney left Bain Capital in 1999, a full two years before the GST plant was closed; 3) Mrs. Soptic had health insurance through her own employer after her husband lost his job; and 4) she did not die until 2006, five years after the closure of GST Steel.

In the midst of all the lies being told by Barack Obama and his minions, here is the unvarnished truth about health care. If you remember nothing else, remember this. No employer or insurance company can tell you that you cannot have a medical procedure. They may not cover it and that may be a hardship. You might have to mortgage your home or take on some other form of financial burden. You might have to turn to a charity or work out some sort of payment plan. But in the United States of America, no one can dictate that you cannot have health care.

However, when the federal government takes over our health care system — and that is the ultimate goal of Obamacare — they will be the only game in town. No competition and therefore no place else to turn. They will send you home with an aspirin and an excuse: you’re too old; you’re too sick; you’re too whatever. It happens everywhere government-run health care is the law of the land.

It is not the Mitt Romneys of the world who kill sick people. It is the Barack Obamas. Don’t buy their lies.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton, Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself much more often than not. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com. 

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)

I intend to try the fowl fare at Chick-fil-A, not because I am a huge fan of fried chicken sandwiches but rather because I am a gigantic fan of free speech and traditional marriage, both of which are under assault from the Radical Left — a term once used to describe a far flung periphery of the political spectrum but which today connotes the Democrat Party. Don’t think so? Google same-sex marriage and the Democrat Party platform. (Hint: they’re for it.)

For those who may have been vacationing in Katmandu, Antarctica or on the lunar surface for the last two weeks, this whole brouhaha with Chick-fil-A started when their Chief Operating Officer Dan Cathy had the unmitigated gall to express his support for traditional marriage between a man and woman. Until recently, such a statement would have led the PC Gestapo on America’s kook fringe, which now runs our big cities — Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc. — to simply whine, harrumph and stomp their feet about “discrimination” and “homophobia.”

However, since President Barack Obama suddenly “evolved” into a supporter of same-sex marriage a few months ago, his now-emboldened supporters have come to believe that anyone expressing an opposing point of view should be punished. One who seems to believe such things is former Obama Chief of Staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who may have thought he was being bold and standing tall on behalf of civil rights or human rights or marriage rights or whatever other rights he thinks he’s defending. However, Emanuel may well have taken on more than even his pugnacious personality can handle when he declared that “Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values.”

Really, Mr. Mayor? Have you seen the line stretching around the block today at the existing Chick-fil-A locations in your city? I’m hearing reports of Chick-fil-A restaurants all across the country being inundated by supporters who seem to think that this company’s values are America’s values.

Even worse than Emanuel’s bloviating are the statements coming out of the mouth of Chicago Alderman Proco (Joe) Moreno, who is attempting to use his office to block Chick-fil-A from opening more locations in the windy city. This man actually had the audacity to state that before he will consider allowing zoning rights to a Chick-fil-A restaurant in his ward, the company’s corporate board must put in writing that they “won’t support any groups with a political agenda, including those with an anti-gay marriage stance.”

One wonders if the alderman has ever bothered to read the First Amendment.

To their credit, the Chicago Republican Party has filed a complaint with the Illinois Department of Human Rights and Attorney General Lisa Madigan over this blatant discrimination by Alderman Moreno. They later expanded their complaint to include Mayor Emanuel’s statements as well. The complaint states that the alderman and the mayor have broken civil rights laws pertaining to religious freedom and the First Amendment in denying Chick-fil-A a permit to operate its business in the City of Chicago.

“Chick-fil-A may have a pretty good case under the First Amendment if the city uses their religious or political beliefs as a basis for denying a business license or ability to do business in the city,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department civil rights attorney, now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

God bless America. She isn’t finished yet. I don’t know about you, but I know where I’m having lunch tomorrow.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton – Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself much more often than not. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.

For my tenth birthday, I wanted a BB gun. Like the mother in “A Christmas story,” mom simply said, “You’ll shoot your eye out.” Dad had a wiser response. He gave me a choice. I could have the BB gun or a pair of Roy Rogers cap pistols I had been admiring. He made it clear to me that once I owned a weapon that actually fired real projectiles — even if they were only BBs — my toy gun days were over. I chose the pistols, and he knew I wasn’t ready for the real thing.

Brian Fairrington / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by Fairrington)

Two years later, at age twelve, with my toy gun days behind me, Dad bought me a bolt-action .22-caliber rifle and taught me how to use it — safely. I still remember the three simple rules he taught me: this is not a toy, never point it at anyone, and always assume that it is loaded.

As I grew into a teenager, I always knew where Dad kept our guns — mine and his. They were not locked up. They were standing in their cases in the closet in my parents’ bedroom, with the ammunition on the shelf above. Yet never once did it occur to me to take those guns to school and shoot my classmates. Nor did I ever contemplate walking into a packed movie theater or a crowded mall and begin firing.

None of us has any way of knowing whether James Holmes, the shooter in Aurora, Colorado, is simply an evil genius putting on an act in court or if he is a loon who really believes he is Batman’s nemesis, the Joker. We don’t know if his father ever taught him how to use firearms, or if he got his knowledge from watching TV and movies, and playing violent video games.

What we do know is that a society that once lived in reality has evolved into a culture wallowing in fantasy violence, ruled by people whose goal is to disarm the good guys, leaving us all at the mercy of the bad guys.

We know that, like so many communities today, Aurora, Colorado, did not allow law-abiding gun owners to carry their weapons into the theater that night. Perhaps if they had, someone might have been able to stop Holmes before he killed a dozen innocent people and wounded scores of others.

Even in states that allow concealed carry of firearms, politically correct business owners can forbid the possession of such weapons in their establishments. A sign on the door of the Von Maur department store in Omaha, Nebraska, announces that guns are not allowed. On December 5, 2007, 19-year-old Robert Hawkins read that sign as follows: “Even our security guards are unarmed! Come on in and shoot us!” So he did, killing eight people and wounding five others.

Shortly after my dad bought me those cap pistols instead of that BB gun, a teenage punk named Charles Starkweather went on a rampage across Nebraska, killing eleven people. The entire Midwest was terrified. As the debate again heats up over banning certain sized magazines for particular weapons, limiting the quantities and calibers of ammo, as well as other new forms of gun control, it is instructive to note that Starkweather’s weapons of choice on that spree were a pistol, a knife, a .22 rifle, similar to mine, and a .410 shotgun like one I almost bought a few years later.

Charles Starkweather proved in 1958 that he could kill just as many people with a .22 rifle and a small caliber shotgun as Robert Hawkins or James Holmes could a half-century later with a so-called assault rifle. Evil finds a way. As Bruce Wayne’s butler tells him in a previous Batman movie, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

In the wake of these latest murders, as you hear our politicians blather on about more gun control, remember that 100 million gun owners didn’t kill anyone last week. They are the good guys. They are on our side.

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© 2012 by Doug Patton, Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself much more often than not. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to e-mail him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com.