Free republics are not known to have long life expectancies. At the ripe old age of two hundred and thirty-two, America is definitely showing her age. She is long past her prime, and some are predicting her demise. No, some are PLANNING her demise.

Thomas Jefferson and the other founders of this once-great country believed there was a controlling cabal that was crafting America's servitude. With the assistance of Heaven, they decided to fight those forces. Pastors fought with fiery sermons from the pulpit; newsmen fought with the power of the pen; statesmen fought in the halls of Congress; and merchants fought with the sacrifice of their material gain. Together, they lifted Lady Liberty to her feet and defeated the powers of darkness.

“...tonight I speak for neither the committee, nor the chairman, nor any of the other good people that serve the Federal Reserve System. I speak solely in my own capacity. I want to speak to you tonight about an economic problem that we must soon confront or else risk losing our primacy as the world’s most powerful and dynamic economy.

“...If you wanted to cover the unfunded liability of all three [Medicaid] programs today, you would be stuck with an $85.6 trillion bill. That is more than six times as large as the bill for Social Security. It is more than six times the annual output of the entire U.S. economy.

Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: That's Not Funny!

If you think that Muslims burning the Danish Mohammed Cartoons don't have a sense of humor, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Just wait til the Political Correct Commissars catch you laughing at Barack Obama. It's like the old rabid feminists: That's Not Funny!

Mr. Obama is very easily offended, like Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha, who is constantly looking for the smallest slights to his egg-shell fragile ego.

Why more Jews won't be voting Democrat this year

Defenders of Barack Obama, and sometimes Obama himself, seem frustrated that some American Jews refuse to assume their traditional role of support for the Democratic presidential nominee. The Obama defenders are irked that not all Jews accept at face value Obama's expressions of devotion to Israel and commitment to her security. Why can't these contrarians just take Obama at his word (he is a Zionist, he really is, they insist)? The answer is "1973."

But the explanation starts in 2008. Many Jewish Obama doubters are convinced that Israel faces a true existential threat unlike any in 35 years. From nation states like Iran, which threaten to destroy Israel, to Hizbullah and Hamas terrorists, Israel may in the next decade be pushed to the brink of its existence. Israel's failure to defeat Hizbullah in 2006 demonstrated the limits of Israel's historic military advantage. With the spread of nuclear weapons and other deadly technologies a second Holocaust - that is, the annihilation of a substantial portion of world Jewry - is not out of the realm of imagination.

It’s Official...James Baker Has Lost His Mind

Anyone familiar with the threat posed by the advancing American Fifth Column understands all too clearly that our Constitution is under attack. Whether it is the insistence that the Constitution is a living document meant to conform to the will of the times or the institution of political correctness - a shadow set of laws effectively usurping the laws of our Constitutional Republic - the American Fifth Column is slowly, incrementally, systematically, chipping away at the wisdom as set forth by our Founders and Framers. With news that a non-governmentally charged commission is introducing a measure that would impose "group think" on the Commander-in-Chief, it is evidenced that the American Fifth Column is on the march.

Recently, a story surfaced regarding the War Powers Resolution of 1973. The resolution states:

Democrats and Muslims, Not Much Difference - which may explain the candidacy of Barack Hussein Obama

History reveals an important but unfortunate truth. During every war waged by a democratic society, members of the media and political opponents of the existing government have been quick to portray on-going military actions to deconstruct the nation’s sworn enemies as either (1), tactical mistakes causing unnecessary collateral damage, or (2), another example of brutal atrocities against peace-loving peoples and the rest of humanity – or both. Judging from the current Congressional and Main Stream Media antics, the 21st Century is off to an inauspicious start.

This is a video is of 1215 servicemen and women re-enlisting in a July 4th, 2008 ceremony presided over by General Petraeus in a former Saddam Hussein palace. This is twice the number of re-enlistments from a similar ceremony last year.

In the spring of 1864, tens of thousands of Union volunteers, who had signed up for three years service in 1861 were up for discharge.

They had served with honor and distinction, they had every honorable reason to take their discharges and go home, but if they did so, the cause of the Union would be in jeopardy. They knew with utter certainty what awaited them if they signed up again ... and what might be lost if they did not. Over 30,000 of them reenlisted ... that action, as much as any other, saved the Union.

The young men and women in this video show the spirit of the volunteer soldiers of our nation.

It would be hard not to believe that hovering near them are the spirits of many who have given the last full measure of devotion to their country and freedom, and now whisper, "Thank you soldier, God bless you, and well done."

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

Independence vs Freedom on the Fourth of July

The shells shoot up. The sky fills with color. Color so vivid and bright that for a moment it blots everything out. Green. Red. Blue. Gold. Then it fades and closer by smaller fireworks are shot up with a whoosh and a bang followed by cheering. Small fireworks fired in backyards and rooftops. Illegal now in New York. "That's terrible," come the mutters. "That's not allowed." "Good, people could blow their hands off." "It's too dangerous."

And that was Independence Day. Beneath the spectacle and the dazzle, independence had become detached from freedom and the celebration of the 4th of July was something best left to trained professionals and corporate sponsorship, not to individual Americans. Yet somewhere in the distance rebels were firing off their individual fireworks, illegal, hunted by the police, but still celebrating the truth of the 4th of July, Independence Day.

If you were to get on a bus with many other passengers, one has to hope you care where you’re going? Would you prefer at least a general consensus of the destination? Is any bus, going anywhere, acceptable to you? Would it better for you to be heard and influence the destination than be “taken for a ride?” The destination of America is no less important.

Presidents come and go, but Congress and the Supreme Court endures.

They (American Jews) have persuaded themselves that Barack Obama is a friend of the Jewish people, because Obama put his hand on his heart and swore undying friendship to the state of Israel.

The fact that for 20 years he belonged to a 'black power' church whose pastor - and his own personal spiritual mentor - was an acolyte of the Jew-hating demagogue Louis Farrakhan, and who also supported Hamas as a resistance movement, is a detail that need not trouble the Jews of Los Angeles, Boca Raton or the Upper West Side.

The fact that Obama has said 'Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people' needn't detain them.

The Pied Pipers of the Left's Counterculture

At the heart of the degeneration of the First World has been the overt exploitation of the generation gap by the left's counterculture across the world. It is an unmistakable factor not only in elections but more so in social, political and cultural trends. At the heart of this exploitation has been the elevation of the "wisdom of youth" on the one hand and the portrayal of adults as bigoted, old fashioned and ignorant.

There is of course all the reason in the world for people who want to exploit a society to pander to the most immature, gullible and naive group within that society, who are most likely to think with their emotions and have little life experience to work with. The "wisdom of youth" is three parts idealism, four parts rebellion, two parts outraged cynicism and one part fresh perspective. It shouldn't be dismissed, but neither should it be unrealistically elevated.

After Mass at St. Mary’s, a retired FBI agent who had worked as a boy in the great steel plant in Weirton, W.Va., whose father had died in an accident at the mill, handed me the Weirton Daily Times. “Where Do We Go From Here?”, read the May 20th banner. The front page was devoted to the bankruptcy filing of Weirton Steel, which had once employed 14,000 workers in a town of 23,000. Mark Glyptis, president of the Independent Steelworkers Union, said it didn’t have to happen. It was a poignant story. When I began my campaign of 2000 at the Weirton mill, Mark and his ISU endorsed me.

That same week, a friend e-mailed me. Timco, a lumber mill where we spent the last day of the New Hampshire campaign of 1996, had shut down. As Weirton Steel had been hammered by subsidized steel dumped in the U.S. market, Timco had to compete with subsidized lumber from Canada.

Across America the story is the same: steel and lumber mills going into bankruptcy; textile plants moving to the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and the Far East; auto plants closing and opening overseas; American mines being sealed and farms vanishing. Seven hundred thousand textile workers, many of them minorities and single women, have lost their jobs since NAFTA passed in 1993.

The Religious Roots of the American Revolution and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

This article examines the religious background of the American Revolution. The article details how the particular religious beliefs of the American colonists developed so that the American people eventually came to believe that overthrowing King George and Parliament was a sacred obligation. The religious attitudes which impelled the Americans to armed revolution are an essential component of the American ideology of the right to keep and bear arms.

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").

But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.