Friends,
One of my readers has sent the following for posting. I am doing so without comment except to say that it is well thought out and expressed.
Dan
Why I must vote for John McCain
I want to start this off from the beginning. I had never planned on voting for John McCain. Matter of fact I told many friends that if John McCain won the nomination I would switch to the Independent party. Now that was quite shock for my friends considering one of my favorite sayings is, “An Independent is someone who can’t make a decision.”
I started with supporting Mike Huckabee. Later I realized that his views and mine weren’t quite inline, but I was willing to overlook it since there was no other candidate that came as close. I ended my Primary journey supporting Alan Keyes. To this day I believe he is the best candidate for America.
Then the bad news struck. John McCain won the Primary. I was extremely disappointed and decided I was going to vote for Alan Keyes anyway.
However, I decided I would pull a Benjamin Franklin and get a piece of paper and write down the pros and cons for voting for John McCain. The cons filled up fast, but there was one glaring pro that caught my eye and made me think. Supreme Court Judges!
Most likely, over the next four years, a handful of liberal judges will be retiring. Who will take their place? Well, if Obama gets elected I have a pretty good idea, liberal judges. If John McCain wins, at least there is would be a chance for more constructionist judges.
Most people today think that the war on terror is the main issue.
Perhaps that issue is neck-and-neck with the economy. Some people believe that gay marriage is at the top of the list. But I believe that Supreme Court Judges are the main issue. Why? Since the start of our country, but even more in the last 40 years, Supreme Court Judges have been writing law with their decisions. Over the next four years (and most likely even longer) a judge will determine whether we even fight the war on terror, how we will fight the war on terror and to some degree when we fight. A judge will determine whether the states are separate governments or simply a map point made available so google maps will work easier. Now don’t get me wrong, I do not think judges should have that kind of power, but since the American people have allowed them to have it, I want judges who will use that power sparingly.
For those who plan on sitting out this election out or who just can’t seem to bring themselves to vote for McCain I completely understand, but I would like to plea with you to think about this. Can we really afford 30 more years of liberal Supreme Court Judges?
--
Shawn Mullen
Dan Lanotte
- The Carpenter's Mate
- Falcon, Colorado
- I am a 31 year Navy veteran, 15 years as a SONAR Technician and 16 years as an Intelligence Officer. I am a Goldwater-Reagan Conservative with a deep love for this wonderful country of opportunity and am concerned about the continued abrogation of our freedoms. In addition to putting my thoughts and political philosophy in these pages I enjoy teaching firearms and personal protection in keeping with the spirit of the Second Amendment. My courses are listed at www.carpmateconsulting.com.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Friends,
Since I started these postings, I have never hidden the fact that I am a strong supporter of Congressman Lamborn. His campaign has asked me to forward the following. The only comment I will make regarding the blog contained within is that I have met Mr. Crater and am familiar with the Wilberforce Center. I have found Mr. Crater to be a highly intelligent individual who fully understands and espouses Conservative Values. You are invited to consider this posting.
Dan
Subject: The Transparency of Congressman Doug Lamborn
In the Interest of Full Transparency...
In the interest of full transparency Congressman Doug Lamborn has released his funding requests. http://lamborn.house.gov/issues click on FY2009 Funding Requests
"There are only 110 lawmakers in the House and Senate who either don't request any earmarks or disclose their earmark requests." - Steve Ellis, Vice President of Taxpayers for Common Sense
Taxpayers for Common Sense is a nonpartisan group that demands and promotes fiscal responsibility and government accountability. They vigorously watch for and report on earmarks.
Congressman Lamborn's funding requests simply divert existing funds in the defense budget to areas with higher priority and away from failing or stagnant projects. This does not raise overall spending.
The Congressman has repeatedly been acknowledged and praised for his fiscally responsible and conservative actions.
Among these acknowledgments are:
- The "Taxpayers' Friend Award" from the National Taxpayers Union.
- A 100% anti-pork rating from the Club for Growth.
- A 100% rating from the American Conservative Union.
- A 100% pro-growth rating from the Club for Growth.
In fact, National Journal has ranked Congressman Lamborn as one of the top eight most conservative members of Congress.
______________________________________________________________________________
Here is a blog entry we found interesting and informative.
We thought you might want to read it.
Defend Doug
By Dave CraterJune 8th, 2008
http://backboneamerica.net/2008/06/08/1017/
“If You Care About Taxes, Spending, and Earmarks, Defend Doug”
It’s Republican primary time, when ambitions, conservative promises, and Reagan invocations are in full flower. And the only way to tell real conservative defenders from perennial conservative pretenders is to examine their records..
Let’s start with the record of incumbent congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado’s Fifth Congressional District. Mr. Lamborn is finishing his first term in Congress and in that time, according to Congressional Quarterly, he voted against the Democrat agenda in Congress more than any other Republican (“CQPolitics.com Candidate Watch,” Congressional Quarterly, Aug. 10, 2007). This includes social, economic, and fiscal votes.
Mr. Lamborn was also one of five members of Congress – that’s five out of 535, and only three of the 435 members of the U.S. House – that the nation’s leading fiscal conservative group, Club for Growth, has given a rating of 100% for 2007. Club for Growth tracked votes on a range of tax, fiscal, and regulatory issues in the last Congress and determined that Mr. Lamborn voted correctly every time. See the entire 2007 Club for Growth scorecard here:
http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2008/05/the_2007_congressional_scoreca.php
This is no new pattern. Over the twelve years he was a member of the Colorado legislature, Mr. Lamborn consistently led both the Colorado House and the Colorado Senate with his record of opposition to big-government spending, pork projects (these days fashionably referred to as “earmarks”), and tax increases.
With this kind of record, it is striking that Mr. Lamborn has a Republican primary opponent, Jeff Crank, attempting to criticize him on his fiscal record. It is well-known that, in justifying his own candidacy against a man who for a decade and a half has consistently defended all the things Mr. Crank claims to believe in, Mr. Crank has settled on one fundamental, earth-moving issue that gets the blood boiling of every principled Republican everywhere: franking expenditures.
That’s right, franking expenditures.
The franking privilege dates to the founding of the United States and covers expenses members of Congress incur in sending mail to their constituents. The purpose is obvious: communication between congresspeople and their constituents is a good thing. Clearly, this privilege like any legitimate privilege can be abused, so there are processes in place in Congress by which all franked mailings must be approved. Mr. Lamborn is a first-term congressman whose constituents need to get to know him and what he is doing on their behalf – again, this is not empty campaign-speak, but a rationale endorsed by the framers of American government – and all his mailings have been approved by congressional leadership. All such mail, moreover, is paid for out of a congressman’s official budget; what he does not spend on constituent communications he is fully authorized to spend on other things, and what he spends on constituent communications is not available for other things.
The use of this kind of issue against someone with the fiscal record of Mr. Lamborn says more about Mr. Crank than it does about the Congressman: from the standpoint of conservative policy, there simply is nothing more substantial on which Mr. Lamborn can be criticized.
Mr. Crank raised the franking issue most recently in a May 30 opinion column in the Colorado Springs Gazette, where he also offered glowing promises to, if elected, “rock the boat” of the Washington establishment, eliminate earmarks, eliminate the federal departments of Education, Commerce, and Energy, and cut federal spending by 20%.
Aside from the fact that even Ronald Reagan was not able to accomplish such heroic feats, if Mr. Crank were sincere in these convictions, he would be supporting Mr. Lamborn for Congress rather than running against him.
No Republican in the last two years, and very few Republicans in Colorado in the last half century, have more consistently, philosophically, and courageously opposed Washington (and Denver) excesses than has Doug Lamborn. It is the lack of people in Washington like Mr. Lamborn, and the interest of too many self-proclaimed conservatives in running against them, that is at the heart of the very Washington excess Mr. Crank now decries. It is also at the heart of the national Republican malaise that is quickly heading the GOP toward an electoral cataclysm in November.
Mr. Crank waxes poetic against earmarks. Again, if this conviction were superior to his personal ambition, Mr. Crank would be supporting Mr. Lamborn. Here are all Mr. Lamborn’s funding requests for fiscal year 2009, a list the Lamborn office has made public. All directly relate to defense spending, a core purpose of government, all Mr. Lamborn has offset in the budget by equivalent cuts in other programs so that there is no net increase in the federal budget, and all ironically recall Mr. Crank’s criticism of Mr. Lamborn during the 2006 campaign for allegedly not being as strong as Mr. Crank on defense:
Land Acquisition for Peterson Air Force Base
Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center
ACES 5 Ejection Seat
Expeditionary Alternative Power Generator
Radiation-Hardened Memory Technology
Digital Engine Technology
Military Information Management Software
Space and Electronic Warfare Analysis Tools
High Altitude, Long Endurance Communications and Surveillance System
Improved Ground Access to Peterson AFB
Improvements to Ft. Carson Gates 5 & 6
With requests like these, and with Mr. Lamborn now occupying a seat on the House Armed Services Committee, it is no wonder the defense criticisms have given way in Mr. Crank’s rhetoric to complaints about franking. As with his fiscal record, Mr. Lamborn’s history at the state level on issues of national security and defense was as impeccable as his federal record has now become.
As a side note, if Mr. Crank should criticize Mr. Lamborn for the above funding requests and call them “earmarks” as if they were pet pork projects, Mr. Crank should explain why as a lobbyist on behalf of a defense company in 2005 he requested, according to public lobbying records, “increased spending for the HH-6OL program” in defense authorization bills. The name of Mr. Crank’s lobbying company was Rocky Mountain Government Relations, and the HH-6OL is the Blackhawk medical evacuation helicopter now in use in the Army and National Guard. Earmark, or legitimate modernization of the armed forces that defend us and that are such central issues in the Fifth Congressional District?
In addition to franking, Mr. Crank can regularly be heard calling for better “leadership” in Washington, presumably implying that Mr. Lamborn’s leadership is somehow defective. For starters, here is a short summary of Mr. Lamborn’s legislative resume, a kind of resume of which Mr. Crank has not the beginning: Colorado House of Representatives, 1995; House Republican Whip, 1997; Colorado Senate, 1998; Senate President Pro-Tem, 1999; U.S. Congress, 2006; U.S. House Armed Services Committee, 2007. Mr. Lamborn is also a member of two other U.S. House committees.
Moreover, here is a quotation from a letter written to Mr. Lamborn last week by the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Crank’s former employer, concerning Mr. Lamborn’s funding requests. The letter is dated May 28, 2008 and is signed by the Chamber’s CEO.
“Your policy of only making requests that promote our nation’s defense, as well as providing full disclosure on these projects reflects not only their legitimacy, but also their important role in improving our nation’s defenses…It is with great pleasure that we offer our support, on behalf of the Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, for not only the appropriations you’ve requested, but also the manner in which you have done so. In a time where real transparency is lacking in Washington, your actions provide a refreshing change of pace.”
Sound suspiciously like leadership?
It should be noted clearly what many noted during the 2006 primary contest between Mr. Lamborn and Mr. Crank. Nobody doubts that Mr. Crank maintains a coherent conservative philosophy of government and a genuine desire to serve his country. Given Mr. Lamborn’s stellar record at both the state and federal levels, what is in doubt is Mr. Crank’s ability to subordinate his ambition to his desire to see the things he believes implemented in government. There simply is no improvement he could possibly make to the record of Mr. Lamborn, and plenty of ways he would not likely match Mr. Lamborn; indeed, at least according to the Club for Growth, there are only a handful even among current members of Congress who are in Mr. Lamborn’s league.
There is only one wise route for Fifth Congressional District Republicans on the ground to follow this August: ignore empty criticisms and empty promises, and say a prayer of thanks that in this age of messianic Democrats and the empty-headed crowds who love them, Colorado and Colorado Springs have a congressman with the kind of real wisdom, real mettle, and real leadership that will far outlast the latest political fad and the latest self-promoting Republican challenger.
The author can be reached at crater@wilberforcecenter.org
Since I started these postings, I have never hidden the fact that I am a strong supporter of Congressman Lamborn. His campaign has asked me to forward the following. The only comment I will make regarding the blog contained within is that I have met Mr. Crater and am familiar with the Wilberforce Center. I have found Mr. Crater to be a highly intelligent individual who fully understands and espouses Conservative Values. You are invited to consider this posting.
Dan
Subject: The Transparency of Congressman Doug Lamborn
In the Interest of Full Transparency...
In the interest of full transparency Congressman Doug Lamborn has released his funding requests. http://lamborn.house.gov/issues click on FY2009 Funding Requests
"There are only 110 lawmakers in the House and Senate who either don't request any earmarks or disclose their earmark requests." - Steve Ellis, Vice President of Taxpayers for Common Sense
Taxpayers for Common Sense is a nonpartisan group that demands and promotes fiscal responsibility and government accountability. They vigorously watch for and report on earmarks.
Congressman Lamborn's funding requests simply divert existing funds in the defense budget to areas with higher priority and away from failing or stagnant projects. This does not raise overall spending.
The Congressman has repeatedly been acknowledged and praised for his fiscally responsible and conservative actions.
Among these acknowledgments are:
- The "Taxpayers' Friend Award" from the National Taxpayers Union.
- A 100% anti-pork rating from the Club for Growth.
- A 100% rating from the American Conservative Union.
- A 100% pro-growth rating from the Club for Growth.
In fact, National Journal has ranked Congressman Lamborn as one of the top eight most conservative members of Congress.
______________________________________________________________________________
Here is a blog entry we found interesting and informative.
We thought you might want to read it.
Defend Doug
By Dave CraterJune 8th, 2008
http://backboneamerica.net/2008/06/08/1017/
“If You Care About Taxes, Spending, and Earmarks, Defend Doug”
It’s Republican primary time, when ambitions, conservative promises, and Reagan invocations are in full flower. And the only way to tell real conservative defenders from perennial conservative pretenders is to examine their records..
Let’s start with the record of incumbent congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado’s Fifth Congressional District. Mr. Lamborn is finishing his first term in Congress and in that time, according to Congressional Quarterly, he voted against the Democrat agenda in Congress more than any other Republican (“CQPolitics.com Candidate Watch,” Congressional Quarterly, Aug. 10, 2007). This includes social, economic, and fiscal votes.
Mr. Lamborn was also one of five members of Congress – that’s five out of 535, and only three of the 435 members of the U.S. House – that the nation’s leading fiscal conservative group, Club for Growth, has given a rating of 100% for 2007. Club for Growth tracked votes on a range of tax, fiscal, and regulatory issues in the last Congress and determined that Mr. Lamborn voted correctly every time. See the entire 2007 Club for Growth scorecard here:
http://www.clubforgrowth.org/2008/05/the_2007_congressional_scoreca.php
This is no new pattern. Over the twelve years he was a member of the Colorado legislature, Mr. Lamborn consistently led both the Colorado House and the Colorado Senate with his record of opposition to big-government spending, pork projects (these days fashionably referred to as “earmarks”), and tax increases.
With this kind of record, it is striking that Mr. Lamborn has a Republican primary opponent, Jeff Crank, attempting to criticize him on his fiscal record. It is well-known that, in justifying his own candidacy against a man who for a decade and a half has consistently defended all the things Mr. Crank claims to believe in, Mr. Crank has settled on one fundamental, earth-moving issue that gets the blood boiling of every principled Republican everywhere: franking expenditures.
That’s right, franking expenditures.
The franking privilege dates to the founding of the United States and covers expenses members of Congress incur in sending mail to their constituents. The purpose is obvious: communication between congresspeople and their constituents is a good thing. Clearly, this privilege like any legitimate privilege can be abused, so there are processes in place in Congress by which all franked mailings must be approved. Mr. Lamborn is a first-term congressman whose constituents need to get to know him and what he is doing on their behalf – again, this is not empty campaign-speak, but a rationale endorsed by the framers of American government – and all his mailings have been approved by congressional leadership. All such mail, moreover, is paid for out of a congressman’s official budget; what he does not spend on constituent communications he is fully authorized to spend on other things, and what he spends on constituent communications is not available for other things.
The use of this kind of issue against someone with the fiscal record of Mr. Lamborn says more about Mr. Crank than it does about the Congressman: from the standpoint of conservative policy, there simply is nothing more substantial on which Mr. Lamborn can be criticized.
Mr. Crank raised the franking issue most recently in a May 30 opinion column in the Colorado Springs Gazette, where he also offered glowing promises to, if elected, “rock the boat” of the Washington establishment, eliminate earmarks, eliminate the federal departments of Education, Commerce, and Energy, and cut federal spending by 20%.
Aside from the fact that even Ronald Reagan was not able to accomplish such heroic feats, if Mr. Crank were sincere in these convictions, he would be supporting Mr. Lamborn for Congress rather than running against him.
No Republican in the last two years, and very few Republicans in Colorado in the last half century, have more consistently, philosophically, and courageously opposed Washington (and Denver) excesses than has Doug Lamborn. It is the lack of people in Washington like Mr. Lamborn, and the interest of too many self-proclaimed conservatives in running against them, that is at the heart of the very Washington excess Mr. Crank now decries. It is also at the heart of the national Republican malaise that is quickly heading the GOP toward an electoral cataclysm in November.
Mr. Crank waxes poetic against earmarks. Again, if this conviction were superior to his personal ambition, Mr. Crank would be supporting Mr. Lamborn. Here are all Mr. Lamborn’s funding requests for fiscal year 2009, a list the Lamborn office has made public. All directly relate to defense spending, a core purpose of government, all Mr. Lamborn has offset in the budget by equivalent cuts in other programs so that there is no net increase in the federal budget, and all ironically recall Mr. Crank’s criticism of Mr. Lamborn during the 2006 campaign for allegedly not being as strong as Mr. Crank on defense:
Land Acquisition for Peterson Air Force Base
Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center
ACES 5 Ejection Seat
Expeditionary Alternative Power Generator
Radiation-Hardened Memory Technology
Digital Engine Technology
Military Information Management Software
Space and Electronic Warfare Analysis Tools
High Altitude, Long Endurance Communications and Surveillance System
Improved Ground Access to Peterson AFB
Improvements to Ft. Carson Gates 5 & 6
With requests like these, and with Mr. Lamborn now occupying a seat on the House Armed Services Committee, it is no wonder the defense criticisms have given way in Mr. Crank’s rhetoric to complaints about franking. As with his fiscal record, Mr. Lamborn’s history at the state level on issues of national security and defense was as impeccable as his federal record has now become.
As a side note, if Mr. Crank should criticize Mr. Lamborn for the above funding requests and call them “earmarks” as if they were pet pork projects, Mr. Crank should explain why as a lobbyist on behalf of a defense company in 2005 he requested, according to public lobbying records, “increased spending for the HH-6OL program” in defense authorization bills. The name of Mr. Crank’s lobbying company was Rocky Mountain Government Relations, and the HH-6OL is the Blackhawk medical evacuation helicopter now in use in the Army and National Guard. Earmark, or legitimate modernization of the armed forces that defend us and that are such central issues in the Fifth Congressional District?
In addition to franking, Mr. Crank can regularly be heard calling for better “leadership” in Washington, presumably implying that Mr. Lamborn’s leadership is somehow defective. For starters, here is a short summary of Mr. Lamborn’s legislative resume, a kind of resume of which Mr. Crank has not the beginning: Colorado House of Representatives, 1995; House Republican Whip, 1997; Colorado Senate, 1998; Senate President Pro-Tem, 1999; U.S. Congress, 2006; U.S. House Armed Services Committee, 2007. Mr. Lamborn is also a member of two other U.S. House committees.
Moreover, here is a quotation from a letter written to Mr. Lamborn last week by the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Crank’s former employer, concerning Mr. Lamborn’s funding requests. The letter is dated May 28, 2008 and is signed by the Chamber’s CEO.
“Your policy of only making requests that promote our nation’s defense, as well as providing full disclosure on these projects reflects not only their legitimacy, but also their important role in improving our nation’s defenses…It is with great pleasure that we offer our support, on behalf of the Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, for not only the appropriations you’ve requested, but also the manner in which you have done so. In a time where real transparency is lacking in Washington, your actions provide a refreshing change of pace.”
Sound suspiciously like leadership?
It should be noted clearly what many noted during the 2006 primary contest between Mr. Lamborn and Mr. Crank. Nobody doubts that Mr. Crank maintains a coherent conservative philosophy of government and a genuine desire to serve his country. Given Mr. Lamborn’s stellar record at both the state and federal levels, what is in doubt is Mr. Crank’s ability to subordinate his ambition to his desire to see the things he believes implemented in government. There simply is no improvement he could possibly make to the record of Mr. Lamborn, and plenty of ways he would not likely match Mr. Lamborn; indeed, at least according to the Club for Growth, there are only a handful even among current members of Congress who are in Mr. Lamborn’s league.
There is only one wise route for Fifth Congressional District Republicans on the ground to follow this August: ignore empty criticisms and empty promises, and say a prayer of thanks that in this age of messianic Democrats and the empty-headed crowds who love them, Colorado and Colorado Springs have a congressman with the kind of real wisdom, real mettle, and real leadership that will far outlast the latest political fad and the latest self-promoting Republican challenger.
The author can be reached at crater@wilberforcecenter.org
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