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A Return to Enumerated Powers

Posted by Dakota Voice on Thursday, July 31, 2008 4:30:00 AM
The Founders of the United States saw the danger of unrestrained government and worked very hard to limit the power and scope of government.

For instance, they divided the authority and responsibility of different functions of government into three main areas: executive, legislative and judicial. They established the doctrine of separation of powers, which meant that these three branches of government would not only have different scopes of operation, but that they would overlap as little as possible. The founders also established a system of federalism in which the central or federal government would have specific powers, with everything else retained by the individual states.

Perhaps the key thread which wove together this tapestry of limited government was the doctrine of enumerated powers which is found in Article 1 Section 8 of the United States Constitution...

 
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The Experiences of Women Who Have Had Abortions

Posted by Dakota Voice on Thursday, July 31, 2008 4:00:00 AM
Dakota Voice is reviewing the Report of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, in light of the upcoming November vote on Initiated Measure 11 to end most abortions in South Dakota.

Pertinent sections of the report will be reviewed each week for the next several weeks which may shed light on Initiated Measure 11.

First week: The Incorrect Assumptions of the Roe v. Wade Decision

Second Week: What Has Been Learned From the Practice of Abortion Since the Roe v. Wade

Last Week: The Current Practice of Abortion in South Dakota

The following is from Section II.A.5 on the findings of the report:
===================================

We received and reviewed the testimony of more than 1,940 women who have had abortions. This stunning and heart-wrenching testimony reveals that there are common experiences with abortions. Women were not told the truth about abortion, were misled into thinking that nothing but "tissue" was being removed, and relate that they would not have had an abortion if they were told the truth.

They relate that they were coerced into having the abortion by the father of the child or a parent, and that the abortion clinics also apply pressure to have the abortion. They almost uniformly express anger toward the abortion providers, their baby's father, or society in general, which promote abortion as a great right, the exercise of which is good for women. They almost invariably state that they were encouraged to have an abortion by the mere fact that it was legal.

They are stunned by their grief and the negative impact it has had on their lives...
 
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Tags: abortion  
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Senator Thune Votes Against Pork

Posted by Dakota Voice on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 5:30:00 PM

In this day of tight energy resources and drilling obstruction from liberals in Washington, we need power from every source where it can be reasonably obtained.

With the huge amount of wind that rips through the plains states, wind power could be a boon for South Dakota.

The Argus Leader reports that despite Senator John Thune's support for wind power, he voted against a wind energy tax credit bill because it was full of pork:

The bill includes $1.2 billion for New York City to build a rail line to John F. Kennedy International Airport and a $1.6 billion tax benefit for trial lawyers.

Far too much legislation is loaded down like this with garbage that...
 
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Tags: pork   Energy  
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Traditions are More than One or Two Democrat Administrations

Posted by Dakota Voice on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 5:15:00 PM

ABC is one of the many outlets reporting on Barack Obama's egocentric, self-aggrandizing statement:

"I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions," Obama said, a witness told the Post.

Excuse me, but Bill Clinton's socialist leanings and Jimmy Carter's all-around economic and international incompetence do not constitute "traditions."

The "best traditions" of America are the ones upon which she was founded, and the ones which brought us to greatness.

They include freedom, limited government...
 
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Tags: election  
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Democrats Want to Stop Successful Immigration Raids

Posted by Dakota Voice on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 12:15:00 PM

The headline today from CNS News was "Democrats Want to Stop Immigration-Enforcement Raids."

The headline might as well have read "Democrats Want to Stop Enforcing the Law."

Immigration reform advocates, including Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, are calling for an end to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at businesses that knowingly hire large numbers of illegal aliens.

Meanwhile, a report published Tuesday by a Washington think tank shows that raids, along with other enforcement measures, are doing exactly what they are supposed to do: reducing the number of foreigners illegally working and residing in the United States.

So like liberals: find out what's working and stop it.

The report from Dr. Stephen Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) says...
 
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Tim Johnson Controversy Indicates Democrat Lack of Confidence

Posted by Dakota Voice on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 8:00:00 AM

It's looking like Senator Tim Johnson's campaign and his liberal friends in the "mainstream" media are going to milk his illness for all it's worth.

David Kranz' latest hit piece on the Joel Dykstra campaign in the Argus Leader today takes aim at Dykstra's website for a statement it makes: "South Dakota's Voice for the U.S. Senate."




Democrats seem to be making the most of the fact that Johnson's speech has been hindered by his brain hemorrhage and it is difficult for him to speak--and are trying to portray anything said or done by Republicans as a slur against Johnson's impairment.

The Kranz hit piece does point out...
 
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Life Prizes: A Contest for the Soul of a Generation

Posted by Dakota Voice on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 6:00:00 AM
GUEST COLUMN

BY CATHY RUSE
Executive Director of Life Prizes

Powerful forces in our culture fight for the attention of the next generation. Marketing firms spend billions trying to turn the heads of young consumers and keep their gaze. But the most profound contest for the soul of our youth is between those working to build a Culture of Life and those bent on tearing it down.

Last week the “pro-choice” organization Choice USA announced the winners of its “Generation Awards,” a prize given to young people under the age of 30 who have “made cutting edge contributions to the reproductive justice movement through service, research, communications and organizing.” One winner is a young woman just 24 years old who wrote a book entitled Hooking Up: A Girl’s All-out Guide to Sex and Sexuality, and whose website lists abortion advocacy organizations such as the National Abortion Federation and the Feminist Women’s Health Center as “pregnancy resources.”

Perhaps it is not surprising that the abortion lobby launched...
 
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Tags: abortion  
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A Close-Up Look at Coal Mining

Posted by Dakota Voice on Monday, July 28, 2008 12:00:00 AM
My family and I took a field trip today to the Eagle Butte Mine north of Gillette, Wyoming today.

The mine is owned by Foundation Coal West, Inc. According to some of the figures supplied (which are a few years old), the mine has shipped over 43 million tons of coal and employs over 600 people. Their operation has contributed about $50 million in federal revenue, $37 million to the state of Wyoming, and $15 million to the local Campbell County.

According to our tour guide, the coal seam they're working on is buried under about 250 feet of dirt and the seam itself is about 120 feet thick. She said they expect to continue mining coal from this seam for another 30 years. They ship coal all over the Midwest and as far away as Georgia.

One thing I was struck by was the environmental impact. The pit is huge, looking like a miniature section of the Grand Canyon from a distance. There is an area adjacent to the open pit that has been "reclaimed," meaning the mine has put dirt back in over the open pit area and reseeded it with grass and trees. If you didn't see the open pit area nearby, you'd never suspect that tons of coal had been mined out of there and the dirt replaced.



This is part of the reclaimed pit area, looking out the window of our tour van to the east. We saw a herd of antelope grazing along here, and along the open pit area itself. The wildlife seemed unperturbed by the mining operation.


To see more photos, click here.
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ANWR Photos: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Posted by Dakota Voice on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 12:00:00 AM
Republican U.S. House of Representatives candidate Chris Lien visited several areas of Alaska last week including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

He went with six other House candidates: Luke Puckett of Indiana, Mike Sodrel of Indiana, Greg Goode of Indiana, Jason Chafets of Utah, Paul Stark of Wisconsin, and Craig Williams Pennsylvania.

I met with Lien at his campaign office in Rapid City yesterday where he showed me some of the pictures he took on the trip.

Several of those pictures are featured below because, as they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words." This is even more true of the oil issue in ANWR, since a lot of misinformation and misrepresentation is presented by opponents.
 

 
Click here to view more pictures from Chris Lien's ANWR trip.
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Review: The World Without US

Posted by Dakota Voice on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 12:00:00 AM
How many times have you seen the images on television of people in foreign countries railing against American presence and influence overseas? How many times have you seen angry mobs marching and burning the American flag in protest over something the United States has said or done on the world scene?

How many times have you seen this from crowds within our own country? Maybe you’ve heard people in your own political party say, “Everything would be so much better if we just kept out of the world’s business.”

If the United States really did that—pulled out our troops from around the world and just kept to ourselves—what would the world look like?

“The World Without US” is a 2008 documentary film by Mitch Anderson and Jason J. Tomaric, and through interviews with public figures around the world and some dramatic “what if” clips, it presents a startling vision of what that that world might look like.

And it’s not the rosy globe of peace and love some wish it might be.

 
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Does Barack Obama Speak 50 Languages?

Posted by Dakota Voice on Friday, July 11, 2008 12:00:00 AM
GUEST COLUMN

BY ANTON KAISER

Why should we worry about immigrants learning to speak English, Barack Obama tells us. Instead, “You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual.”

What is it about learning to contort and twist the tongue, in harmony with guttural and melodic sounds, that supposedly would make American children better? By fact, shouldn’t we all learn to speak our own native language first, before attempting to acquire any elementary skills in one or more other languages?

“We should have every child speaking more than one language. It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beacoup, right?” says Obama.

Ignoring the terrible construct of Obama’s own extemporaneous English (a man so praised for his eloquence when reading from a teleprompter), we are now told that every American child should learn to speak Spanish. (Personally, I would prefer if they learned to speak proficient English first.) Like most liberals, Obama believes that to be multilingual is to be worldly, educated, sophisticated, inclusive, progressive, futuristic, admired, and respected in the world. Really?

Why learn Spanish? Why not the most common language in the world, Mandarin Chinese. Why not Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu), the third most common language after English? Better yet, why learn another language at all?
 
 
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Global Warming: Earth is Not a Museum

Posted by Dakota Voice on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 12:00:00 AM
Investors Business Daily yesterday provided a brief but fairly recent catalog of considerations which illustrate the mushy ground upon which the contention of anthropogenic global warming rests.

Against the backdrop of the hysteria from the "mainstream" media last week in response to the prediction from the National Snow and Ice Data Center that the North Pole will be free of ice this summer, the piece points out that a similar prediction was made in 2000...yet the end of the world did not arrive as predicted.

The IBD piece also references the story I mentioned last week about the underwater volcanoes beneath the Arctic pouring lava and belching out greenhouse gasses.

To read more, click here.
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For the Bible Tells Me So: A Review

Posted by Dakota Voice on Monday, May 05, 2008 12:00:00 AM
There's a new so-called documentary DVD out this year called "For the Bible Tells Me So." It was shown by a local homosexual advocacy group in Rapid City last month, and it was fairly well attended. It was also shown in Sioux Falls last month, and the DVD continues to be played for small groups across the country.

The film claims to examine what the Bible really says about homosexuality.

There are moral and practical reasons to discourage homosexual behavior.

From a practical perspective, the increased health risks associated with homosexuality are staggering: higher rates of AIDS, other STDs, anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicide. Of course, homosexuals have become very practiced in casting aspersion on the numerous studies which show this, but to the objective mind the evidence speaks for itself, including a report from the Centers for Disease Control which shows 72% of male AIDS cases spring from homosexual activity.

From a moral perspective, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which makes up the vast majority of religious belief in the United States, all condemn homosexual behavior.

Though American culture is becoming increasingly secular, on the whole we remain a people with a worldview founded on Christianity. A recent Gallup poll found that 82 percent of Americans say they identify with Christianity. And the religious views held by people can affect their public policy views as powerfully as health statistics.

Therefore, if homosexuals and other apologists are serious about achieving widespread acceptance of homosexual behavior in our society, they must successfully deal with the religious question and undermine the traditional understanding.

Homosexuals believe they now have the right tool to accomplish this with "For the Bible Tells Me So." And given the fact that only about four percent of the U.S. population has a good grasp on what the Bible teaches, they may succeed.

"For the Bible Tells Me So" (FTBTMS) has been been viewed in dozens of showings in churches, community centers and activist organizations in the past few months. I've been monitoring news and blog coverage, with at least a couple of mentions of the DVD showing up every day. So far, I've seen only one article that spoke of the DVD in a negative light, and that one was fairly superficial.

Yet while the film severely distorts what the Bible says, very little of it deals with what the Bible actually says. The majority of the 98 minutes is spent cultivating sympathy toward homosexuals and antipathy toward people who actually believe what the Bible says about homosexuality.

At first glance, and to the mind not familiar with Scripture, it makes a compelling case. That is, until you take a closer look.

So I sat down and watched this DVD several times, transcribing several lengthy quotes to show context, and examining the film's contentions against what the Bible says. I also analyzed some of the films emotional ploys.

Tomorrow I will begin an 8-part series I'm calling "For the Bible Tells Me So: The Real Story." My hope is that the series will be helpful to to the person who wants to know the truth, but may be misled by slick packaging. Not only is it a scary thing to misrepresent what God has said, the safety and welfare of many people struggling with homosexuality is at stake.

If the Bible affirms homosexual behavior or is even neutral toward homosexual behavior, then despite the health risks, the Bible shouldn't be used as justification to oppose homosexuality.

But what if the traditional contention is actually what the Bible says? Then those who call themselves Christians have a decision to make: to follow the "way that seems right to a man," or to follow God's way.

Part 1 - Building Sympathy Without Exegesis
Part 2 - The Bible as a 'Truth Buffet'
Part 3 - Understanding the Bible...Or Rewriting It?
Part 4 - Science or the Bible...or Neither?
Part 5 - Why Was Sodom Destroyed?
Part 6 - What Does the New Testament Say about Homosexuality?
Part 7 - Do Activism, Sympathy and Self Supersede Biblical Authority?
Part 8 - What the DVD Does--And Doesn't--Answer
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