The New York Times takes a firm stance against slavery. The “Gray Lady”—as the authoritative “newspaper of record” was once known–wants everyone to know that she won’t tolerate backsliding on the great moral issue of the nineteenth century.

I take no issue with the Times on slavery or on segregation. The liberal conscience of America—for so the editors see themselves—had an honorable record on those twin evils. In the American Civil War, the Times staunchly defended Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation. Similarly, during the modern Civil Rights era, the Gray Lady thundered daily against Jim Crow. It was for many of us the great moral issue of the twentieth century.

In the 1960s and 70s, I was a daily reader of the Times. But recently? Not so much.

And the reason is simply that I cannot abide the Times regularly railing against the defenders of human life. The Times routinely excoriates the Roman Catholic Church. Don’t even ask them about Evangelicals and Lutherans who speak up for the unborn.

Since that grim gray day in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was handed down, the Times has not found a single abortion it could not defend. Of 53,000,000 innocent lives lost, there is not one that should have been welcomed in life and protected by law. At least according to the Gray Lady.

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While I was in the line at the grocery store recently, I happened to glance over at the magazine rack when I noticed the recent copy of Cosmopolitan Magazine.  The model on the cover looked young, and in fact, she did not look old enough to be on the cover.  It was Dakota Fanning, who is only 17 years of age, and the headings around the cover provided the usual standard of sex advice.

I was disgusted by this display.   I turned around only to see a little girl pick up a copy of the magazine only to run back to her mother and say how pretty the model was.  The mother of the girl also looked disgusted by the magazine and told the little girl to put back the magazine.

Fox News has focused on this recently, and they were shocked by this recent image as well.  In fact, Rachelle Friberg, a media expert who was interviewed by Fox, said:

Cosmopolitan is going overboard by putting an underage girl on its cover surrounded by such article titles. It is one thing to educate young women about sex and their bodies, but putting a young, underage girl on the cover of a magazine that had long been known to push the limits is sending the wrong message.

Cosmopolitan, of course, defended its decision to have Fanning as the magazine’s cover model.  Of course, their decision generated controversy, and there is no doubt that teenagers, who are fans of Fanning are lining up to buy the issue and being exposed to Cosmopolitan’s agenda of promoting immodest behaviors and promiscuity.

Today, I was glad to read that a former model is calling out Cosmopolitan for its practices and is calling for the magazine to be marketed as an adult-only publication, which would require the magazine to be sold in packaging that would not show the cover.  Nicole Weider is leading this effort and has a petition urging the FTC to help protect our youth from vulgarity.  The petition has almost 21,000 signatures, and there is no doubt that will garner more signatures from those who agree the magazine has gone too far.

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My Mainer friend, Bob Knight, called me last night with the news: our old colleague Tom Landess had died in South Carolina. He apparently suffered an aneurysm while watching a football game Sunday night. I hope it was Tim Tebow’s. Tom was a tireless laborer in the vineyard. A social conservative for decades, we was still in the harness at age eighty.

I had not seen Tom in ten years and had spoken to him only a few times since he returned to the sunny South. Tom joined our staff at the U.S. Department of Education in 1986. That’s when reporters, not so kindly, referred to that agency as “Fort Reagan.” I would joke we were all committed to disestablishing that department, as our brave president was. But if liberals in Congress would not let us do that, we should conduct ourselves so that they will wish they had never created it.

Shortly after meeting Tom, I started laughing. And never stopped. Like Shakespeare’s Falstaff, Tom was not only witty himself, but “the occasion of wit in others.” If you wanted to find him on the fourth floor of that dreary government building, you could just go down the hall, turn right, and follow the peals of laughter.

Very soon I learned that Tom was an American by birth and a Southerner by choice. He exemplified the best in the South. He told us endless stories of the Agrarians, an important literary school of the 1930s and 40s. But he sure could puncture the pieties. He’d tell you the whole story of Allan Tate’s writing of “Stonewall Jackson,” relating the almost worshipful feeling that Southerners have for that intrepid Presbyterian warrior. Then, he’d catch you up by saying: “It’s not a very good book.”

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I confess it’s been awhile since I read the feisty conservative publication, Human Events.

I picked up a copy from a stack at the Capitol Hill Club yesterday and instantly remembered why I loved this journal so when I was a young conservative coming up.

There is a bright blue banner above the Masthead of Human Events that proclaims a celebration of Ronald Reagan’s Centennial. Well should this grassroots conservative hold high that banner. Ronald Reagan was their most famous reader in the 1950s and 1960s.

He continued reading Human Events in the White House. There’s a famous story that White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III tried to keep Human Events out of the president’s pile of reading because this spirited journal fearlessly criticized any backsliding or and named the backsliders. (The powerful and efficient Mr. Baker was forever leading the backslider lobby.)

Picking up my copy of Human Events, I showed it to Attorney General and Mrs. Ed Meese. With a wink, I said: Sir, the statute of limitations has run out by now. Am I correct in thinking there may have been someone “with Reagan” who made sure the president got his weekly copy of Human Events? The ever-gracious Mr. Meese smiled as he signed a copy of his book, With Reagan.

How fully modest he is. Most Washington Bigs write their memoirs focusing on themselves and their own self-importance. Dean Acheson, the very important Secretary of State in Harry Truman’s administration, set the pattern with his memoirs, Present at the Creation. Well, Acheson was there when much of the shape of the modern world was formed in those tumultuous years after World War II. Still, many of us think of something even more awe-inspiring when we see “Creation” with a capital C.

Ed Meese was with Reagan throughout those years. And he continues to serve the conservative cause with distinction, warmth, and good humor.

Human Events has lost none of its brio. “STUPID COMES TO WALL STREET” reads one headline. You won’t doubt where they stand.

Editor Jason Mattera is taking Human Events into a new era. He confronted Vice President Biden last week on Capitol Hill. Jason wanted to question the outspoken v.p. about his claims that rapes and murders would increase if we didn’t pass President Obama’s phony jobs bill. The ever-ungracious veep rounded on Jason: “Don’t ____ with me!”

Of course, it’s not just plucky Human Events reporters who think the Vice President may have stepped in it again. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler awarded Joe B*Den four “pinocchios” for his outlandish claims. Kessler’s “Fact Checker” column is a rare gem in fair and balanced journalism.

I confess I have missed most my friend John Gizzi’s stellar reporting. And what would we do without Gizzi’s weekly “How’s Your Political I.Q.?” John Gizzi has forgotten more about American politics than most of us will ever know. Who was the last president to carry Michigan? George H.W. Bush in 1988. Which three candidates lost the New Hampshire primary but went on to win the White House? They were Bill Clinton (1992),

George W. Bush (2000) and Barack Obama (2008). I knew those, but I missed two others. Will it be time to retire when I can get a 100 on the Gizzi political IQ test?

Does your public library carry Human Events? Chances are they carry a host of liberal publications. If they don’t subscribe to Human Events, maybe they should. Liberalism is parasitic. In government it moves and breathes and has its being. Deprived of government subsidies, would it survive at all? Human Events is one way to fight back against liberal Big Government dominance. But do not, I repeat, do not Occupy the Public Library. I wouldn’t want stupid to come to the stacks.

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Exposing one’s undergarments traditionally has been viewed as poor form, at best, and more often than not, just plain immodest.

While it’s true there is no accounting for taste (polyester leisure suits for men and gigantic shoulder pads for women are among happily-jettisoned fashions), subjecting one’s fellows to the sight of one’s underpants is, quite literally, too much.  Thus, the town of Albany, Georgia has instituted a ban on “anyone from wearing pants or skirts more than three inches below the top of the hips, exposing the skin or undergarments. First-time offenders face a $25 fine. On further offenses, the fine can rise to $200.”

As a conservative, I dislike the idea of government taking upon itself the right to measure pant length or hip exposure.  Yet such intrusions are inevitable if people lack the common sense – and common decency – to dress with at least some semblance of normality and decorum.  People only stand for so much before they call for legal fences to protect them against bad neighbors.

That should serve as a broader warning for a society enmeshed in narcissism, immorality, and the general abandonment of truth.  Moral erosion leads to anarchy.  Anarchy threatens lives, which results in a popular call for the restoration of order.  And, thus, fascism emerges in the guise of strident leadership proclaiming “bread and peace” (Bolshevism) or “one people, one empire, one leader” (Nazism) or “socialism builds and capitalism destroys” (Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez).

In his book Twelve Types, G.K. Chesterton wrote that “politeness … is everywhere understood and nowhere defined.”  Such definition really is unnecessary, since the rites of courtesy are only the formalization of intuitive conscience, of the moral stirrings that cause us to help an elderly woman up a staircase or open a door for a mother with a stroller.  Or keep one’s pants pulled up over his briefs.

Our Founders argued that if we lack self-restraint and basic virtue, we were unfit for self-government.  “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt,” wrote Samuel Adams.  In the era of such diverse but somehow connected phenomena as Lady Gaga, eroticized childhood, abortion on demand, and bizarre cosmetic surgery, is such universal corruption far behind?  Only if Christians are willing to stand against it, and work to restore a society where honor, courage, kindness, and enterprise are fostered and not demeaned.

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Dr. Charles Krauthammer has been hailed by National Review as “The Leader of the Opposition.” He is indisputably one of Washington’s wise men. His critiques of the manifold errors of the Obama administration are legendary. But in one particular, I suspect, he is flat wrong.

He recently opined that “voter intensity” does not matter because all the votes are equal on election day. He’s correct that you cannot pull the lever five times to indicate your impassioned support of your candidate (sorry Chicago).

But voter intensity is the key to winning elections. Voter intensity counts because the number of votes will depend on how motivated is the electorate. One radio talker this week mourned that GOP voters had “to hold their noses” last time and, “unfortunately, there weren’t enough of them.” Try to envision those nose-holders rushing to the polls. It would be funny if it were not so sad.

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New York’s 9^th Congressional District this week elected a conservative Republican to fill the seat of the disgraced Anthony Weiner. The winner of the special election will be the first from his party to represent a district that also sent the late Geraldine Ferraro and current U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer to Congress.

When the insiders acknowledge the role the marriage issue played in this race, it’s gratifying. It’s even nicer when they recognize FRC Action for the part it played.

The Democratic nominee had, as a State Assemblyman, voted to give legal recognition to same-sex couples. But that’s not usually how the media describes it. Instead, the winner of the special election will be described as “anti-gay marriage.”

How did we, the “I Do” people, become “I Don’ts?”

Marriage has been recognized as the union of one man and one woman in this country, and in most countries, for centuries. The U.S. Census has so recognized it since Thomas Jefferson directed the first census in 1790. The Republican Party wrote its first platform in 1856. We all know the Republicans took a strong stance against the extension of slavery. But how many of us know the Republicans also opposed polygamy? “Slavery and polygamy are the twin relics of barbarism,” the Republicans said forthrightly, from its beginning.

We’re also routinely described as the “anti-abortion rights” people. We don’t agree that so great a wrong could ever be a right. Hillary Clinton once agreed with us. She told Newsweek (October 31, 1994) that “abortion is wrong.” That was then. Before that time and since that time, she has gone into every nation, even unto the ends of the earth, pressing for abortion as a right.

Again, we ask this question: Doesn’t everyone deserve a birth day?

We say yes. They say no. But somehow we are the antis.

Public relations experts will tell you it is better to be pro- than anti-.  That’s why Ronald Reagan, described in the 1960s as a “former General Electric pitchman,” understood the power of pro-life, not anti-abortion. He was the first political candidate to describe himself as pro-life. Even today, the Washington Post—when they cannot avoid it—puts “pro-life” in scare quotes. As they never do with Hamas, al Qaeda, or Hezbollah.

When they call us the Taliban wing, they don’t even put Taliban in scare quotes. Pretty scary.

Several years ago, at a large Washington gathering I attended with the Prime Minister of Israel, a well-dressed gentleman stood to ask a question:

Mr. Prime Minister. I run a large public relations firm here. I give as much as I can to support Israel. But I have to say, it would be so much better if you could sometimes put Israel’s position in more positive terms. It’s an advantage in selling anything. The media is forever portraying you in negative terms. You’re always the NO man.

Menachem Begin looked thoughtfully at the questioner. He did not seem irritated, and answered with Old World courtliness.

Mr. Public Relations. I thank you for coming. I am grateful for your support of the Jewish state and for this question. I will ask my ministers what we can do about putting Israel’s case to the world in more positive terms, as you suggest.

But you will grant me this: In our part of the world, there are certain great precedents for

“Thou Shalt Not.”

Should marriage survive? YES! Does this child deserve a birth day? YES!

Next question.

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It’s safe to say our relations with the British have probably never been worse in our lifetimes. Recall that just before he went to London and bowed to beheaders, the newly inaugurated President Obama let it be known he had returned the bust of Winston Churchill to the British Embassy. He might as well have tossed it out of the Oval Office into the snow.

Then, he gifted Her Majesty with, what else, recordings of all his speeches. He followed that up with the amazingly thoughtful gesture of bestowing on Prime Minister Gordon Brown a $29.95 collection of DVDs of Hollywood’s greatest films. Mr. Brown is doubtless enjoying them now, in his retirement, if he can get an adapter.

The “Special Relationship” fostered so carefully by the World War II alliance of Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt is in tatters. The Obama State Department is happy to tell us that Britain is no more special to us than any of the other 192 countries in the UN. (Of course, President Obama is known to think the U.S. itself is no more exceptional than Britain, or even Greece.)

It was fairly easy to be the new broom sweeping clean – back in 2009. Now, however, as Rev. Wright might say, Obama’s chickens are coming home to roost. Along with his sagging approval numbers is coming increasing disrespect. Rep. Maxine Waters is asking permission from her constituents to take the president to the woodshed. Former backer Peggy Noonan briskly calls him a “loser” on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and asks aloud if he might just be “snakebit.”

The worst example of dissing the commander-in-chief, doubtless came from leftist Bill Maher. He told a nationwide audience, in an obscenity-laced routine, that he had been hoping for a president who would shoot the BP executives after the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

A short review of our Special Relationship might be in order. When Churchill crossed the U-boat infested North Atlantic seventy summers ago in the HMS Prince of Wales, he forged an alliance that lasted through World War II, the Cold War, all the way into the hills of Tora Bora, in Afghanistan and the oilfields of Basra in Iraq. Churchill, it was said in that 1941 First Summit, felt as if he was “going to meet God Almighty.” FDR’s son told the British Prime Minister his father thought him “the greatest man in the world.”

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That Was the Week That Was was a BBC satire show of decades ago. It set the pattern for many American imitators. I almost feel the past two weeks have been a satire of reality. The last week in August seems like it was a month ago. We began normally enough. With Congress out, the commute in to Washington was eased. Then, on Tuesday, August 23rd, the East Coast shuddered through the strongest earthquake since 1897. Happily, there were no reported deaths or serious injuries. And most property damage was limited. In Washington, the foundations of the Washington Monument seemed more seriously damaged than was originally thought. And the National Cathedral lost some portions of its century-old towers. They’re stringing netting inside the Gothic structure as a precaution. The stained glass windows of that magnificent edifice contain a fragment of Moon rock. It would not do to have the Moon land on worshipers.

I was on the sixth floor of my building when Earthquake Elvis started–a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on. “Out we go, by the stairs,” I yelled to co-workers as I made for the exits. Those twelve flights of stairs never seemed so long. The next day, I was mildly chided for doing the wrong thing. Earthquake Advisories from Janet Napolitano—Big Sis—say you’re supposed to stay inside your building in the event of earthquake. But the local news acknowledged that a decade after 9/11 there is no way to persuade folks to stay inside.

We had just recovered from after-shocks when Hurricane Irene, blew in over the weekend. Downgraded to a tropical storm, she hit the Metro area hard enough. My home in Annapolis was one of the 750,000 customers without power. Not just for a few hours, but for days. We had summoned our son home from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where the storm was forecast to be most intense. Salisbury might flood and lose power, we heard. So home he came.

As it happened, he was on hand to help us pitch a 12-foot limb that had fallen into our backyard. It was like Scottish games—tossing the caber. Others in our neighborhood would spend the week without power as crews chain-sawed huge uprooted trees. Now, just days later, the street is all spruced up, if not oaked or mapled.

Once the earthquake aftershocks were over and power had been restored, life could return to some semblance of normal, we thought. My wife and I sat down to watch a movie. The windows were open to receive cool breezes, the first time in days the night air was not being torn by the roaring of generators. Ah, peace and quiet returns.

Brrr-rrr-ring! The phone seemed more insistent than usual. A robo-call—from the Anne Arundel County Police and Emergency Services. We’d never received such a call before.
The call was to inform us that one Bonrick Lee Barksdale had escaped from the District Court Building while awaiting extradition to North Carolina. The caller said he was armed and dangerous.

Off went the TV; we closed and locked the doors and windows. The robo-call advised us if Mr. Barksdale should come rapping at our door to call 9ll.

As my friend, Sig Swantstrom, a former SWAT team member, likes to say: When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. We listened to helicopters and sirens wailing in the cool night air. Our house is pretty secure, especially since we had new deadbolts installed. But I had taken Sig’s advice. This soft-spoken, calm and deliberate law enforcement veteran and his friends at Texas Republic Firearms Academy hope to persuade all Americans to take seriously their Second Amendment rights—and responsibilities.

With the morning light, our neighbor told us her teenage son had already learned that Mr. Barksdale had been apprehended by police. The neighbor boy learned all of this on Facebook.

We also learned that Barksdale had been able to overpower a female security guard from a contract firm—not even a city or county police officer—who had been assigned to accompany him to his hearing. The Baltimore Sun’s website noted: “The authorities in North Carolina wanted Barksdale on numerous charges including kidnapping, attempted 1st degree rape, first degree sex offense and robbery among other charges.”

How was it that such an accused perpetrator, with a previous record of escape attempts, had been placed in a situation where he could easily overpower a hired security guard and take her weapon? Does this record convince us we should put our family members lives in the hands of the authorities?

I was prepared if Mr. Barksdale came rapping at our door. He was described as armed and dangerous. I wanted him to know: So was I.

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Did that 12-foot limb from the oak in my back yard actually fall on my head when Irene blew through? I have never before agreed with an editorial in the Washington Post.  This time, though, I have to agree with them: the Washington region’s utility companies deserve kudos for the way they handled the hurricane/tropical storm.

Yes, if you’d been watching the Weather Channel, you’d probably figure that the Battle of Armageddon would be child’s play compared to the punch Nature had in store for us.

For nearly a week, the TV stations hyped the coming hurricane. By the time the storm actually hit, Irene had been downgraded to a Category One tropical storm. Still, she was bad enough.

Did I mention we had an earthquake last week, too? Say, how come they don’t name earthquakes the way they do storms of wind and rain? Let me suggest to the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey that they name earthquakes for Al Gore, Prince Charles, and some of the planet’s more famous Greens.

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Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter is a brave man.  Anyone doubting this should watch his 25-minute exhortation to the African-American community of his city.

Nutter, himself black, began his message with a moving call for all Americans to pray for our men and women in uniform.  And then: “Now: I’m gonna say some things this morning that many of you from time to time may think, but may not say.  It will not be PC.”

The mayor’s message was volcanic in intensity but targeted in its aim: In vivid terms, he described the results of the break-up of the black family.  His evaluation is entirely consistent with the research done by FRC’s Dr. Pat Fagan, who has found “only 17% of African-American youth (less than one in five) live with both married parents.”  Given that children need parents, there should be little wonder that so many black youth are adrift and moving into lives of crime or promiscuity.

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Once again, theMSM—mainstream media—is giving us an anniversary better left unnoted. This time, they’re telling us that on this day 45 years ago, a lone shooter climbed up into the Tower at the University of Texas in Austin and began randomly shooting at students and visitors to that beautiful campus.

This is exactly what our friends in theMSMshould not do. They should know this by now. Do we want more mass murders, like the recent bloody episode inNorway? Then go ahead and put the killers’ pictures on the covers of news magazines, publicize their names and their bloody deeds, show photos of their victims, provide timelines, print graphics of their bullets’ trajectories, and always, always show the grieving family members of their victims.

But if we want to stop this madness, we should listen to researchers who have studied suicide and mass killings. They know that contagion and suggestibility play a real role in sparking these events. They know, for instance, that when a single car accident claims the life of a famous movie actor or singer, there is a measurable increase in “copy cat” deaths that may well be hidden suicides.

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The National Mall in Washington is our nation’s showplace.   It’s intended to be that centerpiece that we share with millions of our fellow Americans who flock to the capital each year, as well as with tens of thousands of foreign tourists who are drawn to see this Great Republic.   I had the honor of taking two young New Zealanders on a trek around the Mall earlier this week.   I always enjoy sharing our great monuments with friends new and old. Dr. Sam Bloore and his wife, Julia, were my guests.

I was, frankly, embarrassed by the mess on the Mall.   Not just the trash left over, but the torn-up, boarded-up, barricaded mess that they’ve made of this great public space.

Everywhere there are Jersey walls, chain-link fences, ugly signs, plastic orange cones.

Is it the fault of this administration?   Frankly, yes, it is. I know, I know. People will say that President Obama is hard-pressed. He’s busy driving the unemployment from 9.1% to 9.2%.   He’s got three wars where he’s trying to “lead from behind” [their phrase].   He’s heavily engaged in evolving on marriage.   Apparently, a 41% out-of-wedlock birthrate is not high enough to produce enough low-income voters who will “share the wealth around,” so he’s working hard to repeal welfare reform and make marriage a total irrelevance.

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Today, CNN.com posted an online guest editorial by Family Research Council President Tony Perkins with his analysis of what social conservatives want in a presidential candidate:

They are looking for that credible leader who can cast a coherent and compelling vision — a vision that unites the three powerful cords of conservatism and draws them snugly together. They want a candidate who realizes our nation and its economy will be no stronger than the core building block called the family. In the meantime, expect the passion of conservatives to grow as they search for a suitor who can rescue a nation that is in distress internationally, economically and morally.

Read the whole thing at CNN.com.

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Each morning, as I drive into Washington, D.C. along the John Hanson Highway from Annapolis, I read the road sign that says “Bladensburg, Upper Marlborough, Washington.” Most commuters, I’m sure, don’t pay much attention. We all know the route.

But I never fail to be reminded of the engravings outside the Library of Parliament in Ottawa, Canada. They list the same three names. And they are monuments to British victories in the War of 1812. Our Virginia and Maryland militiamen ran away when the British fired off their Congreve rockets. And the British burned the White House, the Capitol, and the Library of Congress. Former President Thomas Jefferson had said that conquering British Canada would be “a mere matter of marching” for the far more numerous Americans. Not so fast, Mr. Jefferson. It’s not one of his better predictions.

Thanks to British victories in Canada in the War of 1812, our northern neighbor is a very different country. For starters, their Conservatives are blue and their Liberals are red. Now, that’s the way it ought to be. And they can stage an election whenever the Prime Minister thinks it would be advantageous to do so.

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Okay, I’ll admit it: I cannot sing anybody’s national anthem. When I sing in the shower, the water stops. To carry a tune, I’d need a forklift.

So I think I’m an impartial judge of anthems. And I don’t take kindly to liberals knocking the Star Spangled Banner. Their latest excuse is the mess of a job done by Christina Aguilera at the Super Bowl. They call it the star mangled banner in Washington’s political insider sheet, The Hill.

First, the singers at these events aren’t singing the national anthem at all. They’re singing their own made-up versions. The national anthem is a “sprightly military air.” That means there’s one way to sing it. All the improvisations, all the fresh and new interpretations, are not our national anthem.

Now, Ray Charles’s America is a wonderful adaptation of the century-old patriotic song. Nobody is saying you can’t have variations in old music. And, too, you can add new tunes all the time.

God Bless America was once new before it was the Republican national anthem. It was especially moving, however, when it was first aired. Then, war in Europe seemed inevitable and Kate Smith’s rendition of the Irving Berlin song struck a powerful chord  with Americans who thought God had indeed blessed America—with 3,000 miles of anti-tank trench to keep Hitler’s panzers away.

Similarly, Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. hit at exactly the right moment in history. After a decade of oil shocks and the humiliation of seeing Americans held hostage in Iran, Americans yearned for affirmation. Lee Greenwood’s hit song came at the moment when Country and Western music even took Manhattan. It’s hard to imagine Greenwood’s song taking off if Fritz Mondale had been elected president.

So, there are plenty of ways to interpret old chestnuts and, if you’re not satisfied with that, write a new one. But leave the Star-Spangled Banner Alone.

We are coming up on the two-hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812. Maryland is already out with a commemorative license plate that shows “the bombs bursting in air” over Baltimore’s Fort McHenry. I know; it’s confusing. It’s the War of 1812, but most of the exciting stuff—the burning of Washington, D.C., the shelling of Fort McHenry—takes place in 1814.

More confusing still, the war was concluded with the Treaty of Ghent, signed by British and American negotiators in that Belgian town on Christmas Eve, 1814. Yet the greatest battle was fought on January 8, 1815, when Gen. Andrew Jackson, crushed the invading British at New Orleans. If  peace treaty-maker John Quincy Adams had only “friended” Old Hickory on Face Book when the war was over on paper, we might never have had our great victory, or Johnny Horton’s classic country hit, The Battle of New Orleans:

We fired our guns and the British kept a’comin.
There wasn’t nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin’ on
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, I’ll concede it, if Christina Aguilera wants to do her own interpretation of Johnny’s song, I’d say: “Honey, have at it.” She can probably only improve it.

Deep down, I suspect, liberals don’t like the national anthem because there’s all that talk of “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.” They don’t like to be reminded that sometimes you have to fight for freedom.

In fact, if the Toronto Blue Jays play the Baltimore Orioles at Cambden Yards, you’ll hear a battle of the bands. O Canada contains the lines: “We stand on guard for thee.”

Those rockets and bombs in our anthem were British and hostile. Those Canadians were loyal to Britain and were standing on guard—against us Yankees.

The final reason liberals don’t like the Star-Spangled Banner, I think, is that last stanza. Check out these lines:

Oh! thus be it ever when free men shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation,
Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

It took an Act of Congress to make the Star-Spangled Banner our national anthem back in 1921. That was a Republican Congress. It seems the new House majority has shown up just in the nick of time.

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A recent Pew Internet Project Survey focused on the online activities which each generation participates in and the changes that have occurred over time.  This survey is particularly interesting, especially in the areas of using the internet to obtain religious information and donating to charity.

According to the survey, the “G.I. Generation,” those ages 74 and older are more than 50% likely to go online to look up religious information among other things, like email or social networking.  Compared to the “G.I. Generation,” the other groups surveyed were less than 50% likely to go online for the same information.  This demographic did not change over time either.

On the other hand, donations to charity remain at less than 50% likelihood across the generations.  The statistics on giving were constant without any noticeable increases, and this can be attributed to the current economic climate.

Overall, the results from this survey are not surprising, since there is a generational shift towards social networking.

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Yesterday the Vermont Supreme Court upheld a 2009 family court ruling that awarded sole custody of Isabella Miller-Jenkins, now eight, to Janet Jenkins as a result of a bitter lesbian custody case. Jenkins and her then-partner Lisa Miller had entered a VT civil union in 2000 which lasted until 2003. Later, their own “private business” of Lisa’s 2002 artificial insemination would become the business of a nation, the VT court system, and, sadly, one very innocent and undeserving little girl.

Miller, fearing this outcome of lost custody, failed to appear for both the court-ordered January 2009 custody exchange, as well as the VT Supreme Court ruling yesterday. She has long-since renounced her homosexuality and, to date, she and Isabella are attempting to remain underground.

This case is a loss for all involved. It is a tragic consequence of the civil “right” that, unfortunately, Lisa Miller, fought for – and now has to live in spite of. Only this time, an innocent child suffers at the hands of adults in a political milieu where the innocent loses and no one, especially little Isabella, wins.

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Laura Blumenfeld’s excellent story was run by the Washington Post on Sunday, July 4^th.  Was that a way of burying it? It was, after all, right there on the front page. But there aren’t many people who race to read the Post on the nation’s birthday. In her report, Miss Blumenfeld details all kinds of interesting information about our national security team.  It’s filled with the kind of portentous sentences (“Headlights approach on an empty road. A government agent steps out of an armored SUV, carrying a locked, black satchel…”) that give Tom Clancy readers their sense of being in on really big events.

Why did this story appear at all? Was it a good idea to splash all over the front pages specific information on who is briefed by whom, where, and about what?

We are led to believe by the weighty headline—Up All Night—that some very important people are very serious about our security. Why, Attorney General Eric Holder is described as occupying the “loneliest perch” among the President’s nighthawks. Here he is at 1 a.m., munching Chips Ahoy and deciding that the 9/11 terrorists should be tried in a civilian court in Lower Manhattan. His late-night deliberations are so important that he’s even left his Jay-Z and Tupac music back at his massive office in the Justice Department. Here, we are told in ponderous tones, Holder is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States and the President’s good friend. “The tension is to be independent, yet part of the administration,” he says. Chip Chip Ahoy!

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano can’t quite get her antiquated FAX machine to function reliably. But she’s dead sure that the borders have been secured. She’s depicted fussing in a matronly manner over her midnight cup of tea. Tea party, anyone?

Most indelible of all the impressions in this longish holiday article is the portrait of retired Marine Gen. James Jones. He’s the President’s National Security Advisor. And he just resigned today.

He should be remembered well. It is with Gen. Jones that we get inside the White House Situation Room. The story is worth quoting here:

12:35 a.m.

White House Situation Room

The night duty officer can’t hear his own voice. A White House maid is vacuuming. “Can you wrap it up?” He plugs a finger in his ear and presses his mouth to the classified, yellow phone: “This is the Situation Room. We are going to try to connect Gen. Jones with his Russian counterpart.”

“Yes, sir,” replies a communications officer at the end of the line, cruising with Jones on the C-40 toward Pakistan.

The national security adviser is 37,000 feet over the Atlantic, bunking with Leon Panetta. Jones has changed out of charcoal pinstripes into a Georgetown sweat shirt. He checked an e-mail update about his pregnant daughter-in-law. “No baby yet,” his son said. There are complications, and Jones is concerned.

Before he can sleep, Jones also needs to talk to Kremlin foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko, to help negotiate a tougher stance on Iran’s nuclear program. The Situation Room officer who handles secure calls for the West Wing is trying to locate Prikhodko, who’s traveling in Kiev.

All most impressive, perhaps even reassuring—if you didn’t know anything about national security. While I thank Gen. Jones for his service and revere his Marine Corps, I am not comforted by the fact that he felt the need to connect with his Russian counterpart.

Gen. Jones does not have a Russian counterpart. The general serves a constitutional republic. The leaders of this republic, ever since that first Fourth of July in 1776, have been chosen by our free people.

Segei Phkhodko serves the regime of Vladimir Putin. Putin spent a career in the Soviet KGB before making a quick transition to become Prime Minister to the last democratic leader in the Kremlin, the only freely chosen leader in Russia’s thousand-year history of tyranny. That was the heroic, but drunken Boris Yeltsin.

It was Putin who gave President Yeltsin the heave-ho on New Year’s Eve, 2000. While the West was distracted by Millennium celebrations and absorbed with Y2K jitters, Yeltsin doubtless woke up on Jan. 1, 2000 with a hangover, a pension, and a security detail whose purpose it was to keep him closely guarded. Interesting, isn’t it, that no one ever saw ex-President Yeltsin anywhere in the West?

President George W. Bush gushed early in his administration met President Putin. It was then that he looked into the Russian ruler’s eyes, had seen into his soul, and pronounced him “a good man.”

Nice to hear it. Vladimir Bukovsky, the great Russian dissident, said he had looked into the eyes of many a KGB agent. He didn’t find the experience especially souful. Nor did he pronounce any of his jailers and torturers good men.

On the same day Gen. Jones has resigned, the Post reports a memorial service in Moscow. Four years after the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politikovskaya, there have been no breakthroughs in the investigation of her killers. Brave Russians gather to remember this wonderful woman. Does anyone think Sergei Phikhodko would be among her mourners? Or that he and Putin would stir themselves to find her killers? Politikovskaya is one of fifty-two Russian journalists murdered since 1992.

It is deeply depressing to learn that our emperors are naked, that they have no idea what they are doing to render us safe from espionage and foreign attack. I never had the chance to meet anyone so powerful as Vladimir Putin or Sergei Prikhodko. I operated at the lowest level, dealing with Soviets as a Russian language interpreter for the Coast Guard.

We were doing fisheries patrols in the Bering Sea, boarding the floating garbage scows they call trawlers. Very low level stuff. But I learned then not to trust the Soviets. I saw their newly printed posters—approved by the state censors at Glavlit in Moscow—that showed nothing but a violent hatred of the United States of America.

I did not hate the Russians. I felt compassion for them in their cheap, shoddy clothing, their cardboard shoes, and their ill-fitting uniforms. I tried always to respect their human dignity. I could feel their resentment, though, their wounded sense of inferiority that made them a dangerous adversary.

Never for a moment did I forgot that I was a representative of the Great Republic. My authority came from a good and free people whose liberties and constitutional government are the wonder of the world. I never doubted American Exceptionalism. And I had no Russian counterpart.

Gushing all this sensitive information to the Washington Post is unwise in the extreme. Has anyone in this administration ever heard of the spetsnats, the Soviet-era assassination teams whose function it was to decapitate the governments of Western democracies, to render them incapable of responding to a Soviet assault? Do we seriously think that all those spetsnats units have been disbanded? If we’re not worried about Russians, do we think jihadists in nearby Falls Church, Virginia, can’t read the Post?

Winston Churchill explained Russia’s behavior to us at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, back in 1946. It was that famous speech in which he described an Iron Curtain, giving that phrase currency for the first time. He said the Russians did not want a war. What they wanted was the fruits of war without war.

They wanted all they could get through espionage, deception, and Western naivety. And now, with this administration, they are getting all they want. The Post article, “Up All Night,” has had me up all night on a number of occasions. I find myself praying late nights that our unprepared, irresolute leaders learn what we need to know before a tragedy strikes.

Robert Morrison served as a Russian language interpreter and Top Secret Control Officer in the Coast Guard, when we had top secrets.

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The National Portrait Gallery, across from my office in Washington, has a fine poster of President Barack Obama. He is shown wearing a rumpled fedora, riding in an open car, smiling that dazzling smile of his, and clenching a cigarette holder in his teeth at that same jaunty angle that was familiar to millions of Americans as that of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Every Democratic president tries to recap FDR.

I thought about that poster today as word of President Obama’s most recent misery spread. It seems he has folks in Los Angeles in a fury about his recent fund-raising trip to the City of Angels. His motorcade held up traffic for hours—the one thing you definitely do not want to do to harried California commuters.

This great city ought to be Obama’s oyster. After all, he carried California by three million votes in 2008. But the president is increasingly getting raspberries wherever he goes.

Just last Friday night, he was speaking at an iftar dinner in the White House to a group of his Muslim admirers. I didn’t even know they had iftar dinners in the White House. But he began his remarks in that deep and resonant tobacco baritone of his: “Let me be clear…” He proceeded to offer a very clear endorsement of building a mosque near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. His dinner guests applauded enthusiastically.

Next morning, the president began backpedaling furiously. He was not commenting on the “wisdom” of putting the mosque near the place where 3,000 Americans were murdered on 9/11, only on the Muslims’ constitutional right to build it. In other words: “Let me be less clear. Let me try to lay down a smokescreen and beat a hasty retreat.”

I can imagine Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) burning up the wires to the White House political operation after hearing that one. He is his party’s campaign chairman for this fall. “Are you trying to lose control of the House of Representatives,” Van Hollen might have said.

The mosque at Ground Zero issue is a 70%-30% split. By a commanding margin, Americans do not want a mosque built near the site of the bloodiest attack yet on our homeland. Public officials who defy the people so heedlessly can expect to feel their wrath in the voting booths come November.

I have a recommendation for our beleaguered president: Do what FDR did. Show less of yourself. Yes, I know that was before the TV era. But Roosevelt knew that the mystery and aura of the presidency was enhanced by making presidential speeches and appearances less frequent. President Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, cannot resist being in our faces 24/7. Hasn’t he ever heard the old saw “familiarity breeds contempt?”

One of my favorite political photographs is on sale at the store of the New York Times. Notice how the people are gathered on the train platform in Warm Springs, Georgia. Franklin D. Roosevelt is nowhere to be seen in this classic black and white picture. But his presence is felt.

Those hopeful, expectant Americans are excited at the prospect of seeing their elected chief.

Like all conservatives, I have serious questions about FDR’s economic policies. And detailed study has shown me how seriously Roosevelt misjudged the threat of Communism. Still, as a political actor, he had no rivals.

An unapologetic Christian, Roosevelt never neglected religious minorities in this country. He faced down the bigots of his day who said his New Deal was actually a “Jew Deal.”  FDR regularly worshiped in his Episcopal Church and his administration was not afraid to express an openly religious sentiment when fighting the Nazi menace.

The U.S. Government published this poster showing Nazis trying to destroy the Christian Bible. The Obama administration is afraid even to mention jihadist terrorists or speak of Muslim extremists.

The hope for change expressed by that Obama-as-FDR poster at the National Portrait Gallery seems to have faded. Now, the only common tie between our 32^nd and  44^th presidents is the cigarette smoke. And, tragically, that smoke probably killed Franklin Roosevelt.

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