Want Free Speech?

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Dani Leave a comment

You’re going to have to fight for it.

It’s incredible to me that we stick to our preconceived ideas: liberal=open-minded, conservative=stodgy, liberal=truthful do-gooders, conservative=duplicitous businessmen – when it’s obvious that such stereotypes are neither fair nor accurate.

Want to prove that you’re an open-minded liberal? Start fighting for the First Amendment rights of those you don’t agree with. That’s the first step toward true fairness and democracy, and away from this oppressive style of governing that we currently endure.

Read more here, about how the Obama administration has been targeting media outlets for years. Who wants to be the next journalist to get bullied? Any takers?

Our fearless leader, The First Amendment

The Guide to Cool

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Dani Leave a comment

Being cool is very confusing these days. There seems an endless stream of contradictions about what is deemed acceptable by the purveyors of cool; those media types, celebrities and culture-makers who we desperately pattern our lives and opinions after in a ceaseless drive to be in on the joke.

So, I thought it would be helpful to let you in on what’s cool and uncool, based on my own extremely well-researched observations. It’s like skinny jeans for your brain, so drink deeply, my friends:

  • Cool: Angelina Jolie’s “brave” decision to have a double mastectomy to avoid breast cancer.
  • Uncool: Bringing up the fact that the risk of breast cancer increases 50% for women who have an abortion.
  • Cool: “Speaking truth to power” (an amalgous phrase overused by White House senior adviser Valerie Jarratt and President Obama)
  • Uncool: Actually speaking truth to power, which is what the Benghazi whistle-blowers did and were roundly mocked for it, by everyone from reporters to democrats on the hill to Saturday Night Live.
  • Cool: Saying that gun control is a valuable legislation to enact, and is worth it even if we “only save one life”.
  • Uncool: Bringing up the lives saved by personal ownership of firearms every day.
  • Cool: Caring about education for the next generation.
  • Uncool: Noticing that our kids are getting less education for more money every year.
  • Cool: Waxing philosophic about the sad state of hyper-partisanship.
  • Uncool: Honestly noting one’s own partisanship.
  • Cool: Outrage over Abercrombie and Fitch’s latest PR kerfuffle, and demanding acceptance for larger-sized individuals.
  • Uncool: Thinking that parents should be more responsible for the obesity rate in this country, not because we should legislate how much butter a child can eat or because we ought to be cruel to those who struggle with weight, but because there’s obviously a dangerous cultural shift that ends in blind self-acceptance and heart disease.
  • Cool: Laughing at Sarah Palin’s accent.
  • Uncool: Laughing at President Obama’s changing accents (one speech a calm Harvard Law professor, the next a Southern preacher! How handy!)
  • Cool: Sighing meaningfully about how Republicans want to rule over a woman’s body.
  • Uncool: Asking why we’re more worried about “reproductive freedoms” than we are the blatant use of women by an oversexualized culture.
  • Cool: Making fun of the Pope/organized religion/church/backward hicks who still care about the Bible.
  • Uncool: Pointing out the centuries of good the church has done, despite her mistakes.
  • Cool: Demanding that rich businessmen “pay their fair share”.
  • Uncool: Asking what that means, and what happens after “fair share” has been achieved.
  • Cool: Amanda Knox, Jodi Arias, Joanne Chesimard
  • Uncool: Four dead Americans in Benghazi, countless babies left to die on sterilized tables, the nameless, faceless victims of Fast & Furious.
  • Cool: Changing one’s profile picture to the latest “No H8″ “Equality” or “fill in the blank slogan about love” meme.
  • Uncool: Wondering how redefining marriage will affect society, children and culture.
  • Cool: Nonconformity
  • Uncool: Nonconformity that leads one to own a gun, read a Bible, vote Republican or homeschool one’s children.
Cool. (credit: Politico)

Cool. (credit: Politico)

Uncool. (Credit: Western front media)

Uncool. (Credit: Western front media)

To boil it down, here’s the number one rule in the guide to cool: pretend to think for yourself while actually giving your brain over to the “cool” voices instead. If anyone argues with this list, write them off as a homophobic, uneducated racist, and you are well on your way to being cool.

After all, worrying about the consequences of your ideas and your spineless following of the cool is very, VERY uncool.

Crazy kids, Culture with a side of Pop

The Danger of Hate

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Dani 4 Comments

Last week, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow mocked those concerned about last year’s attack in Benghazi, Libya, by insinuating that they only tweeted about it because they were so proud of having finally conquered the spelling of a foreign name. “That ‘h’ is tough, you know,” she said with a smirk.

This was on the heels of the Washington Post tweeting that “the only people talking about Benghazi are rich, middle-aged men and Chick-fil-A lovers”, Jon Stewart calling those worried about the hearings “hysterical” and the Today show giving less than a minute of airtime (out of three hours of “news”) to the latest developments.

All of this made my stomach turn, and I couldn’t figure out why. After all, as a conservative woman I expect to care about things that no one else in the media cares about, and I try not to let it ruffle my feathers too much. I also don’t have a lot of patience for Republicans who constantly whine about their unfair treatment by the mainstream news outlets  – our job is to tell the truth, not complain about it. So why did these snide remarks get to me?

The answer came as I was flipping through the latest issue of the American Spectator. They do a very clever column every month impersonating “Screwtape” C.S. Lewis’ famous head-demon. He cheekily waxes Satanic about the goings-on in the world and it’s always a unique and well-written column; looking at the world as a demon might is a healthy exercise in honesty, after all.

This line stopped me short, however, toward the end of Screwtape’s missive: “It [hatred] encouraged progressives to relish in one of the deepest of human pleasures, in which the naked ego preens in its sense of superiority to a person it despises.”

Ouch. That’s why Rachel Maddow’s smug assurance that anyone who cares about the happenings of 9/11/2012 in Libya must be a dumb dropout got my stomach in knots. That and the other examples I cited earlier smack of hatred, the blind, naked ego laying waste to its fellow-man. It’s the classic schoolyard trick of making fun of someone to make oneself feel prettier, better, faster, funnier – and it’s no cuter in adulthood than it was on the playground.

Let’s face it – hatred of the conservatives who are pounding the drum about security failures in Benghazi is the only thing keeping us from widespread outrage about those four dead Americans and the subsequent actions of the administration. It is a deep, dark and depraved human pleasure, and we are sacrificing our national security, our pursuit of the truth and our honest curiosity to its cavernous needs.

Why? Do we have so little to be truly joyful in, so the sallow smirk of disdain is our purest happiness? Do we think so little of ourselves that we must ridicule others? Is our confidence in our beliefs so shaky that we can’t examine the evidence, but must destroy the messenger?

Hatred is a dangerous emotion, my friends, on either side of the political aisle. For my part, I won’t waste my disdain on those who ridicule me on Twitter or doubt my ability to spell “Benghazi” – I’ll save my emotion for the guys with RPGs and “death to America” signs. Pretty sure that’s who we should be united in disgust toward – not each other.

Our fearless leader, Partisanship - Can't we all just get along?, Punditry, The First Amendment

More Cover-Ups than a Church Swimming Pool: Congressional Hearings on the Benghazi Attack

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Dani 4 Comments

It sounds like a Jack Ryan plot, doesn’t it? You can see a young Harrison Ford or Alec Baldwin, fresh from the third world field, swaggering through the halls of power, demanding answers and raising hell. Why was an American consulate torched and invaded and our diplomats tortured and killed, with naught but a sleepy yawn from our Executive Branch, and a languid wave at YouTube?

While highly-trained and intelligent armed forces members and diplomats were scrambling to save their own lives at the hands of armed terrorists, the powerful branches of government – Executive and State Department – were essentially taking their phones off the hook and plugging their ears to the screams for help from a far-off land.

Terrorists in Benghazi

Terrorists in Benghazi

It’s incredible to see these men – fluent in Arabic, decades of public service and countless mountains of experience under their belt – giving steady and thoughtful answers to questions at the Congressional hearing. They point out that these questions are essential to democracy. They don’t point fingers, they are respectful, and they occasionally have to pause to retain emotional control – these four heroic men who were murdered on September 11th were their friends, colleagues and respected confidantes.

It’s a stark contrast to Secretary of State Clinton’s response at a previous hearing, in which she exploded, “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?!”

It makes a big difference. It makes a difference because it was actually neither scenario – it was neither a protest nor a couple of guys out for a walk, it was a planned, malicious attack on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history. It makes a difference because we, the American people, need to believe that we can trust our government to protect us and uphold our values. It makes a difference because a filmmaker is still imprisoned for using his First Amendment rights, because it was politically expedient for the administration. It makes a difference because these acts of heroism from Benghazi are worthy of commendation, not a cover-up. These men, who were on the ground in Libya while this attack was going on, who have been bullied, threatened and silenced for months, have no such explosions, no Clinton-esque delusions of grandeur.

This story is worthy of Jack Ryan. It’s worthy of drama and outrage, of more than a dull C-Span camera. George Washington once said that, “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by our nation”.

If this is the best that our administration can do to support those who give their lives to foreign service, if all we can give these brave individuals is a mid-morning hearing on a little-watched news channel, and if we the people are so blinded by our President’s charisma that we can’t see the obvious signs of deception and posturing, we have a serious problem. Truth will decay and public service will all but die out under such circumstances, there is no other natural outcome.

Our fearless leader, Punditry, The First Amendment, Those fellas in Congress

Can you “focus” on something 3.6% of the time? The President thinks so.

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Dani Leave a comment

Every day, I think about money. It’s just a fact of life – there are bills to be paid, groceries to buy, savings and retirement to think about – every day requires me to check my bank account balance, run my credit card or debate the wisdom of a purchase or a payment.

A robust national economy means that people like me – young women with professional careers and burgeoning dreams – can spend more time planning for our futures and less time worried about them. It would sure be nice if we knew that the smart guys we elected were as worried about our checking accounts and 401ks as we are, wouldn’t it?

Well, lucky for us, they certainly are. A new report just came out this week from a nonpartisan watchdog group, the Governmental Accountability Institute (GAI), showing that President Obama spent 3.6% of his time focused on the economy. That’s 138 minutes a week, if you care about that kind of thing, which I do. After all, I spend more time than that clipping coupons or thinking about which coffeemaker grants the most bang for my buck – don’t you think that a bit more is required when we’re talking about a massive economic engine, a multi-trillion-dollar national deficit and an unchanging unemployment rate?

The President has spent countless days giving us stump speeches about how “building infrastructure”, “creating jobs” and “looking out for the middle class” – then, apparently, flying back to D.C. and phoning in his actual economic duties.  As Wynton Hall of Breitbart.com puts it, “The GAI report, however, reveals Obama’s hours spent on the economy have fallen significantly since entering office. In 2009, Obama spent 187.2 hours in economic meetings; in 2010, 127.8 hours; in 2011, 73 hours; in 2012, 80.4 hours. In total, the report says Obama has spent 474.4 hours (or 47.4 10-hour workdays) in economic meetings or briefings of any kind throughout his presidency.”

But, you know, I guess it’s OK. Because after all, JOBS is a three-letter word that Barack and Joe have been vewwy, vewwy focused on for several years. Clearly they have it all under control and don’t need to bother putting in even 10% of effort into the number one worry of every family in the country.

EDIT: Great suggestions and sobering statistics on this topic from the Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org/2013/04/30/morning-bell-remember-the-economy-its-still-bad/

It's the Economy, Stupid, Our fearless leader

By writing “Accidental Racist”, I guess Brad Paisley was accidentially racist? Excuse me while I crawl out of this wormhole…

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Dani Leave a comment

Brad Paisley loves taking on the sacred cows of pop culture. Country music’s most talented guitar player is not just a stunt show, but a scathingly sharp critic of our neuroses – from the guffawing “Alcohol” to a-little-to-close-to-home “Online”. His songs and shows are popular in part because he has mastered the ability to be piercingly witty and heartbreakingly sweet in one package – something that many other comics have never quite mastered, leaving them sounding bitter and judgmental instead of warm-hearted.

Now enter the sacred cow of a white man talking about race – and nobody remembers how much we love this unassuming, terrifyingly talented guitarist from West Virginia.

The song is called “Accidental Racist” and it’s an honest, funny, true-to-form discussion of what everyone in flyover country is thinking: that we’re not racists, we’re just white, conservative, country, big-truck-driving, shotgun-shooting, fill-in-the-blank here.

As you know, I have no patience for false tolerance, and I have even less room in my heart for those who take on easy targets (white, male, rural, tea party, you name it, it’s been ridiculed). Paisley (with LL Cool J making a guest appearance) has done something with this honest little parody that shakes the intelligentsia Hollywood elites to their core: he was honest. So, let’s take a little trip and see what they think, shall we?

  • Guardian: Accidental Racist is a horrible mistake and possibly racist (I would like to note the clutching of pearls over how a white man asks that you don’t judge him as a racist on sight, and is called a racist, anyway. The point, it makes itself.)
  • Rolling Stone: Eyebrows raise at Brad Paisley and LL Cool J’s song, Attempt to mesh country, rap goes awry.
  • Huffington Post: Accidental Racist will make you cringe
  • The Atlantic: Brad Paisley and LL Cool J show how not to sing about race (because I suppose the rappers who’ve sung about shorties and ni**ers for years got it right?)
  • The BoomBox: Country song misses the mark
  • The Hollywood Reporter: Accidental Racist: Confederacy, KKK and awkwardness
  • Gawker: Accidental Racist is a real, horrible song
Those are the smiles of black-hearted racists. That's why they wrote a song about it, obvy.

Those are the smiles of black-hearted racists. That’s why they wrote a song about it, obvy.

I could keep going, but it’s leaving the realm of funny and turning into sad. Paisley does NOT say, “I love my white hood and cross-burning, so leave me alone.” He says, “I’m just a white man comin’ to you from the southland/Tryin’ to understand what it’s like not to be/I’m proud of where I’m from but not everything we’ve done/And it ain’t like you and me can re-write history/Our generation didn’t start this nation.”

When LL Cool J gets his turn, he doesn’t say “I want to kill white people” but instead gets real: “Dear Mr. White Man, I wish you understood/What the world is really like when you’re livin’ in the hood/Just because my pants are saggin’ doesn’t mean I’m up to no good.”

Sounds to me like honesty, doesn’t it? But heaven forbid a white Southern man and a black New Yorker come together to laugh about how ridiculously overblown the racism controversy has become. Heaven forbid we make art that is true to life, honest and timely.

All of the gasping snark-masters, having fainting fits over the insensitivity of it all need a reality check. Because how can we say that we’re healing, that we’re tolerant, that we’re not racist bigots, if we can’t even laugh about it? Why are you still demanding that the listeners of country music and the owners of guns and pick-ups pay for imagined crimes? Why is it OK to blast someone for simply drawing our attention to a larger problem?

Brad Paisley is an entertainer and a social critic. He has long demonstrated his ability to take us to task for our cultural stupidity, but this time, he doesn’t even have to. Every idiot who’s getting feisty on Twitter or blasting his insensitivity in the media is doing it for him.

Culture with a side of Pop, Entertainment reviews, Red and yellow, black and white..

What’s love got to do with it?

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Dani 2 Comments

The other day, Piers Morgan and Suze Orman attempted to bully Ryan Anderson, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, into saying that redefining marriage is the only way to be a loving American.

He comported himself incredibly well, and I encourage you to watch both clips:

So, the main thing that sticks out in my mind is this: Suze declares that it’s not just about taxes and benefits, it’s about love. Which leads me to ask: what does love have to do with it?

You might think I’m being facetious or cavalier, but I assure you I’m not. I’m just trying to figure out why love is enough to change a millenia-old definition. Because I don’t think anyone is saying that you can’t love whomever you’d like – you just can’t call it whatever you’d like. For example, having a children is a great way to reduce one’s taxes, so what if I start calling my houseplants “my children”? I love them, I care for them, I tuck them into bed at night, and my love means that I get to call them children and get the benefit of Federal recognition of motherhood.

You’re laughing, I know you’re laughing, because it’s silly. Houseplants are not children, just the way that two women or two men or three people or two people and a dog are not marriage. Marriage is a very specific thing. Marriage is one man and one woman for life. Now, the argument goes that heterosexuals have screwed marriage up so badly that why not redefine it, it’s soiled enough already. (I have to point out, here, that in this oft-used argument, gays are not fighting for their ability to make a sunken ship seaworthy, but simply that they can’t sink it any worse, which seems a fairly poor reason to drill more holes in the hull.)

But again, so what? It greatly grieves me that more people don’t take marriage seriously – amongst both hetero and homosexuals. After all, if gay people cared as much about marriage as they say they do, they wouldn’t be trying to change it, they would honor it and uphold it for heterosexual couples, and create their own version of partnership and love for themselves. After all, marriage is not a fundamental right. I can’t force marriage on anyone (the way I can my right to exist) nor can I marry something or someone that is not eligible for marriage, like my houseplant or my kids or three dudes or one woman.

The way I see it, love is a poor reason to change public policy. People love all kinds of things that are unethical, against the law or just a bad idea in general. Love is an ever-changing emotion, one that can be both beautiful and misleading. Piers Morgan said in the above clips that he can’t imagine “this day in age” restricting marriage, which sort of makes my point for me. As Justice Roberts pointed out in yesterday’s oral arguments – why should we change the definition of marriage to include a phenomenon that is newer than cell phones or the internet? Marriage is not a fad, and it’s not even based on love, as terrible as that sounds. Marriage is a definition of a particular thing, and we should not change the meanings of words because of peer pressure.

For more of my opinion on this, you can click here.

Here’s another helpful resource: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-i03NrAdcU
And here: http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2013/03/is-limiting-marriage-to-unions-of-a-man-and-a-woman-discrimination/

and here: http://jamesfry.tumblr.com/post/46476371742/can-love-be-equal

EDIT: another beautiful and heartfelt piece for anyone who wants to use divorce as an argument for gay marriage: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/im-gay-and-i-oppose-gay-marriage

California... here we come, Christianity, Crazy kids, Culture with a side of Pop, Social justice

Why Sarah Palin Matters

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Dani 2 Comments

Yup, she’s polarizing. She’s sometimes brash, often loud and does not back down.

I have friends who hate her accent, who think she’s too bold or too stupid to be listened to. Many people are wondering why she made such waves at CPAC – she hasn’t done anything in an official political capacity for over five years – so why does she matter?

Watch at least five minutes of the CPAC speech above, and you’ll find out why. She’s mocked for being a stupid hayseed, but in her “aw heck” persona and her “hockey mom” references, there’s a powerful truth: somehow, we have all bought the lie that no one is smart enough to have unique ideas or real beliefs about how our country functions. When we have dinner with friends, if a disagreement arises about a political thought, we sashay out of it, citing our own lack of knowledge or insight in order to avoid an uncomfortable discussion about our beliefs.

We trust the workings of the country to those who seem smart – to the Harvard graduates and the practiced lawyers – to those who convince us that they can take care of us with words, if not with actions. We give the benefit of the doubt to our leaders, not wanting to believe that they might fall prey to the same temptations that we face every day, only on much larger scales.

Sarah Palin reminds us that this narrative is flawed. She is a beautiful woman, a successful professional, a mother of four and she impresses her audience with action, not rhetoric. Sure, she has some laugh lines and she enjoys playing up the folksy humor, but the reason why she matters is much more impressive: she was an incredibly successful mayor and governor, balancing budgets, overseeing prosperity and staring down multinational oil companies in defense of her home state and people. The amount of hatred for her, and the cruel way people talk about her is shocking to me – but again, her response to the vitriol is just another reason why she matters. She didn’t back down from her values or shut up when her kids were mocked, her intelligence was questioned and her beliefs were skewered on everything from Twitter to SNL to CNN. She didn’t talk about rebranding or work on a new image. She showed up to the podium with her signature glasses and big hair – smiling, waving, chuckling and proving that the haters only win when you let them. She reminds us that anyone can make a difference, that your gut feeling about politics might be right and that you don’t have to defer to an expert for commonsense solutions. She gives us hope that grassroots movements have power, that “We the People” are still strong and hopeful, and that no problem is too big for us to solve, with a little love, humility, hard work and common sense.

As a woman, Sarah Palin shows me what I’ll probably have to put up with if I keep on being a conservative and caring more about my babies’ future than their birth control – but she also gives me hope. Hope in strong beliefs, loving family and a country built by every day people, not politicians and lobbyists.

Inspirational stuff, Our fearless leader, Punditry, Women: we're more than our ladyparts

McDonald’s = Planned Parenthood. Are you offended?!

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Dani Leave a comment

“It absolutely breaks my heart when
Christian pastors with huge, national influence
WASTE their place of privilege and LOSE the hearts of hurting people
for the sake of a cheap shot,
a quick thrill,
a PUNCHY tweet.” -Elizabeth Esther

Wow. That sounds bad, doesn’t it? I wonder what hateful thing those pastors said?

OK, so it’s maybe not the classiest thing you could ever say, but it also just so happens to be true. Does it turn your stomach to think about pulling the limbs off of a tiny child? Then don’t read this article, and please ignore what abortion really means. I’m sorry if the truth makes you cry and I understand that you want pastors to be very cuddly and kind all the time. But do you think that God looks at the death of an innocent child and speaks kindly to her killer? Do you think that every time a tiny heartbeat is stopped, that God rejoices and thinks about how he could be sweet to the one who stopped it?

After all, this article in World Magazine illustrates something important:

“Because lots of people don’t know how all-encompassing that definition is, a December poll showed a majority of Americans (53 percent) saying the Supreme Court should not overturn Roe v. Wade. But when Gallup probed, it found much less support for the contents of Roe. Its polling question: “Do you think abortions should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances?” The responses: Only 28 percent would allow abortion under any circumstance (the Roe standard), 52 percent would allow abortion only under certain circumstances, and 18 percent would outlaw all abortions.

Gallup pushed a little more, asking members of the 52 percent this question: “Do you think abortion should be legal in most circumstances or only in a few circumstances?” Three/fourths of them believed abortion should be legal only in a few circumstances. Do the math: Well over half of Americans want restrictions that Roe does not permit.”

I would not have chosen to communicate like Pastor Warren did, but maybe we’ve spent too many years being gentle and not “punchy”. After all, there is 52 percent of people who do not support current abortion laws! Maybe pro-lifers should talk to them! Plus, Warren doesn’t have anything to gain from his tweet (other than hate mail from McDonald’s and bloggers), but he might save something. Maybe, a tiny little life won’t be sacrificed, because he spoke boldly. Maybe the 52 percent will stop being afraid of “losing influence” and start using it.

What do you think? Are you offended by Pastor Warren’s tweet? Personally, I’m offended on behalf of the Big Mac.

Culture with a side of Pop, Punditry, Social justice, Women: we're more than our ladyparts

Let’s hear it for Rand!

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Dani 1 Comment

Over the last couple of days, Senator Rand Paul has been making news for his 13-hour filibuster on the Senate floor. Both Democrats and Republicans are alternately calling him both a hero and crazy hayseed for making such a fuss. I mean, REALLY, WHO is the White House going to target a domestic drone at?

I dunno, they haven't been mad at anybody recently....

I dunno, they haven’t been mad at anybody recently….

Here’s the thing. You can think that Rand Paul is crazy or you can be in love with every inch of him, but you can’t ignore this issue. Like so many things in our constant, hamster-on-espresso news cycle, it’s being pushed aside after a day in the spotlight, but the issue remains.

Why would our Attorney General Eric Holder, the most senior legal mind in the country, have such difficulty answering “no” when asked if it’s Constitutional for the U.S. government to kill citizens at will. This is the same White House that rushed to tell us that four Americans were dead in Benghazi because of an organic protest sparked by a YouTube video. They were in such a hurry to cover up their ineptitude that they lead the American people on a merry chase after the truth for months – yet, in this instance, common sense is being mocked as “ridiculous” and “extreme”, and the White House waits for 13 hours before finally deciding to assure us that no, they guess they won’t start taking out swathes of red state “enemies”.

If you were upset by the Patriot Act, then your dander had better be up here. Let’s compare: listening to emails, or bombing your house, a wire tap or a warhead through your local Starbucks. They’re probably about equal, really.

I don’t actually think that my government is going to start drone striking my neighborhood, but I certainly don’t want to give it that power, no matter who’s in the White House. It should have been an easy answer, and Rand Paul’s filibuster should have been a momentary stunt. Instead, it became a quease-inducing reality check for a complacent nation – your government is grasping for power, and only principled individuals, working within the system (such as Rand Paul and those who stood with him) have any hope of stopping it.

(For your enjoyment, please check out my sources below:)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/6/rand-paul-filibusters-brennan-nomination-cia-direc/?page=all#pagebreak

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/06/liberal-actor-on-gop-led-filibuster-over-drones-for-gods-sake-where-are-democrats/

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/03/07/jon-stewart-stands-rand

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/06/Exclusive-ACLU-backs-Rand

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/03/07/rand-paul-invokes-hanoi-jane

http://spectator.org/blog/2013/03/07/mccain-graham-take-to-the-floo

http://michellemalkin.com/2013/03/06/poll-americans-spending-cut/

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/03/06/rand_paul_i_will_not_sit_quietly_and_let_obama_shred_the_constitution.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/03/07/krauthammer_rand_pauls_filibuster_a_stroke_of_political_genius.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/03/07/jon_stewart_rand_pauls_drone_filibuster_worth_kicking_up_a_fuss_for.html

http://michellemalkin.com/2013/03/07/lindsey-graham-premise-of-rand-pauls-filibuster-is-ridiculous/

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100205887/rand-pauls-beautiful-anti-drone-filibuster-shows-how-civil-liberties-can-unite-and-revive-the-republican-party/

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/340813/drones-contra-krauthammer-kevin-d-williamson

Our fearless leader, Those fellas in the Senate