Top of Drudge RN: New Yorker Mag cover with Harris, and it says Kamalot, and she’s perched on a coconut. And the dems are doing bongo dances all around her.
So ray-cyst.
ghostsniperJuly 29, 2024, 2:59 PM
And the massive smoke screen/lying/gassing is over the top.
The rumor is the fix is already in.
Are your bayonets ready?
DTJuly 29, 2024, 4:22 PM
No doubt the fix is in … but I still doubt we know which names (either) will be on the ballot – let alone know who will take office in Jan. If we have that long.
I picture Murphy and God playing some godly equivalent of poker or gin …
ghostsniperJuly 29, 2024, 2:57 PM
The actor Gary Cooper developed the habit of paying for everything by check, knowing that people would keep it for his signature and never cash it. It was a trick also used by Pablo Picasso, who once said he had seldom paid for anything–from lunches to cars to houses–because of it.
Now a days paying for stuff with a check might get yoll ace kicked. Everybody’s in a hurry.
Casey KlahnJuly 29, 2024, 6:07 PM
Picasso (supposedly, but as a line in a movie) gave a napkin doodle to the waiter for his whole table of guests. The waiter remarked that it wasn’t signed, to which he replied: “I’m buying dinner, not the whole restaurant!”
ghostsniperJuly 30, 2024, 6:46 AM
“Open Range”
==========
Boss (to cowboy thug): “Gitcher britches off.”
Cowboy Thug: “I ain’t takin’ my britches off for nobody.”
Boss: (rifle butt upside the skall)
Cowboy Thug: britches was flyin’
Mose (to Charlie): “That Boss sure can cowboy!”
Charlie: “They broke the mold after him.”
If you ain’t seen it yet you ain’t American.
azlibertarianJuly 30, 2024, 9:40 AM
Open Range is one of the finest modern westerns in film. Costner, Duvall, Benning and the supporting cast are all top-notch.
AnneJuly 30, 2024, 10:58 AM
We have this upgrade today on the “BOY” scouts: https://www.city-journal.org/article/girling-the-boy-scouts
I have a question that maybe you can answer: Given that the claims of paedophilia are true and that some of the scouts were raped by “leaders” and that is why the scouts got sued (lawfare) into absolute fiscal failure and given that the “organization” needed to be cleaned up to protect young boys, how in the world does a new “organization” dedicated to allowing everyone to join–male, female, gender confused help to save the boys? Isn’t there a greater chance that gender confused male leaders will be supportive of paedophilia also?
Second question: If child rape (under 16) is against the law in most states, how come more of the accused leaders didn’t end up in jail?
Third question: how do we reclaim our young boys–our sons?
ghostsniperJuly 30, 2024, 12:03 PM
To answer your question, we should not UNCLAIM them in the first place.
I read about 1/4 of the article, I’m already familiar with the issue.
At it’s base it is about criminality, and laziness in dealing with it.
As long as ignorant and/or lazy people continue to support that organization it will continue to exist and thrive.
Me? I kept our son out of it.
More then half a century ago I was a cub scout, a boy scout and I was also a member of Boys Brigade.
John A. FlemingJuly 30, 2024, 1:00 PM
With apologies to Pink Floyd, ♫ Hey women and girls, leave those boys and men alone. All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall. ♫
I ‘m gonna say some unpopular things. It’s just based on my experience.
I learned it early. We boys were out in the vacant lot doing boy things, probably building forts and throwing dirt clods at each other, yucking it up just fine. The neighbor girl showed up and wanted to play in with us. She was a little bigger than us, and rather than starting at the bottom being a clod heaver and receiver, she started in trying to organize us and change our games. She wanted us to stop and talk about what we were doing and how to make it … different, more to her liking I suppose. We had to listen to her and try, because we had already been trained to be chivalrous, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun when our games were changed and we were being bossed by a girl. All the boys drifted away. That was the summer we learned about bossy girls.
Boys start doing and learn as they go. Girls want to talk about it and organize it before they start doing. That’s not to say all boys or all girls, but in the main that is how boys in groups and girls in groups behave.
That’s what’s happening to Scouting. The girls and women saw a successful social organization and agitate to join it, by any means. Then, when they get in, they start trying to change it to suit themselves. And the now-trapped men and boys have to go along, because it ain’t right to fight with girls.
There is nothing boy/girl specific in the ideals and methods of Boy Scouting. Ideals: duty to God, others, country, yourself; trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent. Methods: Ideals, Patrols, Outdoor Programs, Advancement, Association with Adults, Personal Growth, Leadership Development, Wearing the Uniform. Note the method “association with adults”: the spectrum of interactions between boys and men is different than between boys and women, and likewise between men and girls. It just is, it’s inescapable. The things that motivate boys and girls are different. The outdoor programs change. And boys don’t care about what girls want, and collectively want to do. So the program, the organization will wither, the boys will drift away.
It is happening in my organizations. The girls and women come in, and things start to change. They joined us because we are successful, but now we have to change our ways to accommodate them. The things we used to do, they tell us we can’t do it that way anymore. Ok, bossy girls.
It’s downright dangerous for men to resist the changes. Women and girls fight dirty, they will escalate to any level to get what they want. Men and boys learn conflict restraint early: don’t hit girls at all ever, and when men fight one of them goes to the hospital or the grave and the other to prison.
There are counter-examples. I’ve been with girls and women who were the equal in temperament and bravery, enthusiasm and hardiness of any boy or man. And those girls and women want to do everything the boys do, they are repelled by what the female-dominated organizations do. They are the exception that proves the rule. It’s like the old saying: one cat is part of the family, two or more cats and they act like cats.
So the best course of action I think, that we will have to learn the hard way, is to keep girls and women out of boy’s and men’s organizations.
♫ Hey women and girls, leave those boys and men alone. ♫
ghostsniperJuly 30, 2024, 2:07 PM
Maybe unpopular, but not wrong.
I agree with everything you wrote there John.
My question is, since there was ALREADY a Girl Scouts, why did the Boy Scouts let the girls invade in the first place?
Side road.
From 1962-1966 I lived in outside a small town just north of Gettysburg, where I was born and spent the first 7 years of my life, named Carlisle. A very historic place and the location of the Carlisle War College. I joined Cub Scouts at 8 years of age and the meetings were held in one of the old buildings at the War College. A guy that went to school with my dad was the Scoutmaster and several of the other scout’s mothers were Den Mothers.
Anyway, at one of the evening meetings in the winter I some how got ahold of a wild mouse that was running loose and was holding it when it bit my finger. I just happened to be standing by the open door and when the mouse bit me I threw it in the snow. Never to be seen again.
Well, since the mouse was now unfindable I had to get 14 Rabies shots, 1 a day, in the belly.
The first one made me sick then after that no problems. My dad was a hardcore asshole at times. He told me if I didn’t get the shots and the rabies took hold it would make me go insane and start foaming at the mouth. I was terrified. He was probably partly kidding, but he fukked me up none the less. LOL
ghostsniperJuly 30, 2024, 2:47 PM
Keep Your Eyes on Founding Principles
============================
If only George Washington could see us now … what would he say?
“Didn’t I warn you that political parties are a bad idea?”
“Have you forgotten my advice about avoiding foreign entanglements?”
“Just look at your credit cards. $34 trillion in outstanding debt. Apparently you ignored that part of my Farewell Address that urged you to pay your bills quickly so as not to burden the next generation.”
Yet here we are – so politically divided that an assassination attempt of our former president surprised almost no one.
So entangled in global affairs – we’ve committed 175 billion dollars in Ukraine-related aid and, according to the Stacker newswire, are involved in more than a dozen shadows wars from Afghanistan to Yemen.
My latest check of the national debt clock put it at 34.9 trillion and counting. We have burdened the next generation beyond anything George Washington could have imagined.
What would Washington and our other founding fathers have to say?
That was the question — and premise — behind the publication: Indiana Mandate, A Return to Founding Principles, An Agenda for the 2020s. I worked on this book with Craig Ladwig, executive director of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, with the intention of examining current issues — local, state and national — from the lens of the founding generation.
With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence right around the corner, we hoped to get people talking about the many ways this country has strayed from the principles of limited government, rule of law, individual rights and economic freedom that have been the foundation of our country since 1776. And we asked the question: Can we return to those founding principles before it’s too late?
What is the evidence that the United States — in many ways — has lost its way? Consider the following:
On a global index of economic freedom, the United States ranks 25th – trailing such countries as Lithuania, Cyprus, Chile and the United Arab Emirates. The 2024 Index, conducted by the Heritage Foundation, looked at economic policies and conditions in 184 sovereign countries from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023, and ranked the countries on a 100-point scale. It found that the average global score for economic freedom is the lowest it has been since 2001 — at 58.6.
What’s notable is the continuing decline of the United States, whose score dropped to 70.1, its lowest level ever in the 30-year history of the Index. According to Heritage, the primary reason for a decline in economic freedom here is excessive government spending, which has resulted in mounting deficit and debt burdens. These threaten the quality of life of our children and grandchildren. Placing in the top three in the ranking are Singapore, Switzerland and Ireland.
Political freedom is likewise on the decline globally and in the United States. A ranking conducted annually by Freedom House looks at political rights and civil liberties on a 100-point scale. The organization reports that “Global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023. The scope and scale of deterioration were extensive, affecting one-fifth of the world’s population. Almost everywhere, the downturn in rights was driven by attacks on pluralism — the peaceful coexistence of people with different political ideas, religions or ethnic identities — that harmed elections and sowed violence.”
The United States registered a score of 83, down from 86 prior to the pandemic, and behind such countries as Uruguay, the Bahamas, Slovenia and Portugal. Now, Freedom House has a bit of a left-wing ideological bias, so I disagree with them on the culprits behind the U.S. decline but I certainly agree that our political freedom is under attack. Political division and discord in this country have resulted in suppression of views, especially of conservatives and Christians, an increase in political violence, and concern for election integrity. And the Justice Department has been weaponized for political purposes.
What can we do about these trends?
The Indiana Policy Review believes the place to start is educating ourselves. We the people and our elected officials need to understand what the issues are and how we can apply founding principles to them. And some of these issues are complicated.
We started by picking 75 topics that are of concern today and researching what if anything the founders might have said about them. In some cases, there is clear and convincing evidence of what they thought. On some issues, we had to extrapolate. And in some, we stretched a bit in order to include them. It was a fascinating exercise and one I think all policy minded people should do before staking out a position on anything. After establishing the founders’ views, we offered context and data for the issue in today’s times. And whenever possible we suggested actions steps policymakers should take to take into consideration founding principles.
Let me share some examples.
Let’s start with the economy, which voters consistently indicate is a top issue heading into the 2024 elections. On many of the economic issues on which Republicans and Democrats disagree, the founders’ philosophy is indisputable. They opposed excessive taxation.
While their primary concern in the revolutionary era was taxation without representation, they understood that government should tax only for urgent need. George Washington wrote, “… towards the payment of debts there must be revenue … to have revenue there must be taxes … (and) … no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.” Today, the combined rate of federal, state and local taxes on the average middle class wage earner is approaching 50 percent … talk about unpleasant. As Craig Ladwig noted, that’s a rate that would make even King George blush. The solution is self-evident. Government must spend less in order to tax less. The public has to demand discipline from our elected representatives.
The founders were firm in their support of property rights. Thomas Jefferson borrowed heavily from John Locke’s second treatise in which Locke said that even in a state of nature, where no government exists, “No one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” Jefferson’s wording transformed Locke’s thought into “life liberty and happiness,” suggesting that happiness and property are related. George Washington said, “Freedom and property are inseparable. You can’t have one without the other.”
The founders warned against incurring government debt that couldn’t be paid off quickly. Washington referred to it as “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.”
The founders opposed earmarks – those bills that direct tax dollars to specific projects in lawmakers home districts. James Monroe said federal money should be limited to “great national works only, since if it were unlimited it would be liable to abuse and might be productive of evil.” Did you know that in January 2021 Congress brought back earmarks after a decade long moratorium? In 2023, Congress passed 7,396 earmarks costing $26 billion. Notably and worthy of kudos, Indiana ranked near the bottom in pork per capita at $5.70. Alaska ranked at the top at $668. Some would contend Indiana’s congressional representatives are failing to get Indiana its fair share. But this should not be a competition to fleece the taxpayers. The only solution: Ban earmarks altogether.
In sharp contrast to the national government, Indiana’s lawmakers are conscientious about spending and debt, our constitution places limits on debt, and our laws protecting private property are commendable. However, there are threats aplenty at the state level to our fiscal freedom. Economic development policies, as one example, distort market forces by picking winners and losers. This was one of the few issues on which the Republican gubernatorial candidates actually disagreed in the primary campaigns.
Economic development sounds worthy. The stated purpose of the Indiana Economic Development Commission and related municipal and regional agencies is to grow the economy and create good paying jobs. Their chief strategy, however, is to offer tax relief or subsidies to certain types of business ventures – from hotels to convention centers. We taxpayers fund all sorts of things that benefit some but not all — such as Lucas Oil Stadium where the Indianapolis Colts play. Indianapolis taxpayers are right now helping to finance the new Signia by Hilton Hotel downtown because the project couldn’t get loans from the private sector.
The example that you all are familiar with and that has been in the news is the LEAP (Lebanon Innovation District). At first blush, it sounds fantastic. It’s been billed as the economy of the future. 9,000-plus acres with advanced manufacturing, ag-bio science, defense, high tech logistics. The IEDC, which by the way is a quasi-public agency that receives minimal legislative review, has committed almost a billion dollars in tax dollars to it.
The case can be made – and was strongly made by Eric Doden and Brad Chambers in the GOP primary — that this will benefit Indiana’s economy, employ thousands, lead to technological advances etc. But what would the Founders say about it?
I think they’d object. The First Congress rejected a bill to loan money to a glassmaker as unconstitutional favoritism. In a debate during the second congress, South Carolina Rep. Hugh Williamson opposed a bill to pay a bounty to New England cod fishermen because it sought to – “gratify one part of the union by oppressing the other.”
We hear the term crony capitalism thrown around a lot. It’s something we need to be concerned about because it limits economic freedom. The founders would point out that crony capitalism caused the Boston Tea Party. Colonists objected to the Tea Act of 1773 because it granted the East India Company a monopoly on tea exported to the colonies, exempted the company from the export tax and guaranteed it a “drawback” or (refund) of duties owed on surplus quantities of tea in its possession. The tea act benefited some at the expense of all.
Let’s move from the economy to election integrity. If the Indiana Policy Review were to prioritize one issue above all others in “Indiana Mandate,” it would be election integrity. If we cannot trust the accuracy and fairness of our electoral process, our republic is sunk.
The latest survey I could find on this was CNN’s from August 2023, when 69 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters questioned the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election. That’s a lot of “election deniers.” Many in the Republican Party are saying the only solution is to beat the Democrats at their own game – to do everything possible to maximize early voting and mail-in ballots so the GOP’s lead can’t be eroded by “middle of the night” vote-counting shenanigans. Elon Musk just committed $45 million a month to a political action committee that will focus on early voting efforts.
What would the founders say?
The earliest elections occurred by voice vote or paper ballot, and — as today — fraud was a concern. Candidates greeted voters at the polls, often offering food and drink to opponents as well as supporters. Elections in the early republic sometimes lasted two or three days to accommodate those traveling long distances to the courthouse. The idea of month-long early voting periods or mail-in ballots, however, would defy the founders’ understanding of “election day” as a patriotic and social affair that brought citizens together for what Samuel Adams called “one of the most solemn trusts in human society.”
Absentee and early voting are modern inventions. Absentee voting began during the Civil War so soldiers could participate in the 1864 presidential election, but it wasn’t until 1921 that a state — Louisiana — enacted the first absentee law. California was the first state to offer absentee voting for any reason in the 1970s, and Texas offered early in-person voting starting in the late 1980s.
This trend continued and accelerated during the COVID pandemic. In 2016, two in five ballots cast for the general election were early, absentee or by mail. In 2020, 43 states allowed early voting with windows ranging from a few days to almost 50. In Indiana, early voting starts 28 days prior to the election.
Early voting sounds democratic but creates a huge risk of fraud and ballot damage, misplacement or accidental destruction. As observed by political commentator Deroy Murdock, “Making early ballots disappear from overwhelmingly Democratic or Republican precincts could throw elections. Even if nothing inappropriate happens, as ballots gather dust, they generate suspicions of monkey business, especially in skin-tight races. Such doubts corrode confidence in institutions and officials.”
Early voting is changing the fundamental nature of campaigning, making it more expensive and thus more likely to benefit incumbents, who have budgets, staff and tactical ability to conduct get-out-the-early-vote efforts. Further, early voting changes the very nature of the election season. From Labor Day until early November, candidates have the opportunity to appeal to the people, and citizens have the opportunity to debate. According to constitutional law professors Eugene Kontorovich and John McGinnis, “The integrity of that space is broken when some citizens cast their ballots as early as 46 days before the election, as some states allow. A lot can happen in those 46 days. Early voters are, in essence, asked a different set of questions from later ones; they are voting with a different set of facts.”
Indiana can be a leader here. Under the Elections Clause of the Constitution, state legislatures hold the power to determine time, place and manner of federal as well as state elections. Any effort to address the chaotic hodgepodge of voting rules and procedures that exist around the country needs to begin at the state level.
Indiana lawmakers could and should return to single-day voting on Election Day, expand voting day hours (6 a.m. to 9 p.m.), increase the number of polling sites and continue to offer absentee ballots to Hoosiers with legitimate reasons they cannot vote in person at the polls. Indiana has the opportunity to create a model law that restores the integrity of Election Day but preserves the opportunity for all eligible citizens to vote.
At the federal level, we should make Election Day the most important national holiday, rivaling Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Countries that do this have higher voter participation rates than the United States.
Turning to education, another issue that continues to be at the top of voter priority lists. Here’s what is absolutely clear: The Founders were not worried about college or career readiness, which are the obsession of politicians and business leaders today. They saw the primary purpose of education as “civic” — as unifying. as essential to character development. They understood that the ability to read, write and think is essential if citizens are to take part in representative democracy.
That thought was written into the Declaration by Thomas Jefferson: Governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and it was assumed education made that consent possible. It was never suggested that the government order students to attend certain schools, and the wording in subsequent state constitutions made clear that the establishment of public schools was for regions where schools had not yet been established.
The Founders considered civic education essential to continued good government. In his Farewell Address, George Washington said, “A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of our country.”
At that we have failed abysmally. We laugh when the late-night comedians air “man on the street” interviews showing just how ignorant Americans are of their history. I watched one on Prager U’s channel the other morning conducted at the National Mall. When was the Declaration of Independence signed? 1904. To what political party did Lincoln belong? Democratic. In a recent Annenberg survey, less than half of Americans were able to name all three branches of government.
To our great detriment, we have lost the Founders understanding – that the new country would remain free only ifs its people were educated in good government and history – and we need to get that understanding back.
As a side note, the Founders were all-in on phonics. Noah Webster, best known as the author of the dictionary, noted that “every child in America … should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice.” Webster’s “blue-backed spellers,” used during the 18th and 19th centuries, taught children to spell and read by learning explicitly the relationship between letters and sounds. The Indiana General Assembly has been trying to get “science of reading” back into the schools, but it hasn’t been easy because of resistance from the education schools and teachers unions.
Moving on to the administrative state, the bureaucracy, the swamp. The Founders would be aghast at where power lies in our country today – it lies with executive branch agencies and employees. They would surely be in favor of Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposal to cut the federal workforce by 75 percent.
The Founders created a system of checks and balances with separation of powers to ensure no one branch overpowered the others.Their writings, however, make clear that they considered the legislative branch the most important because it was elected by the people. It’s horrifying to report that executive branch agencies enact more policies each year than Congress itself.
In 2023, the Biden administration issued 3,018 regulations with the force of law, compared with 65 laws passed by Congress during the same period. This directly relates to the economic freedom rankings I mentioned earlier. The National Association of Manufacturers reports that the cost to the economy of regulatory compliance exceeded $3 trillion in 2022. For a typical U.S. business, regulations cost about 19 percent of payroll expenditures. This system has been decades in the making and will take time to solve, but Congress can start with a simple accountability measure. Require lawmakers to vote all major rules into law. Congress should feel empowered in this regard by the Supreme Court’s recent, welcome decision to overturn the Chevron precedent, which had essentially allowed federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer with almost no oversight.
Let me finish by sharing a few of things that surprised and delighted me about the Founders.
As you might imagine “Indiana Mandate” does not buy into the validity of climate change. The Founders would not have supported President Biden’s effort to shut down coal plants or to phase out fossil fuels; they would have agreed with the philosophy of energy independence as a matter of national security.
That said, they liked trees, and would probably approve of tree-planting and tree conservation as the best method of carbon capture, which reduces air pollution.
British historian Andrea Wulf, in her book “Founding Gardeners,” credits James Madison, the father of the Constitution, with being a forefather of the American environmental movement. “Madison feared that if society lived off nature at the current rate it would eventually destroy it and that man had to return to nature what man took from it,” Wulf writes. Notably, Madison’s residence in Montpelier, Va., maintained hundreds of acres of untamed forest, which he saw as a treasured asset. The fourth president demonstrated his affinity for forests into retirement when he protested unnecessary logging in an 1818 address to the Agricultural Society of Albermarle County, admonishing farmers for “the injudicious and excessive destruction of timber and fire wood.”
The Founders would not have supported subsidies of electric vehicles, but they probably would have been fascinated by the technology. They were noted tinkerers, Ben Franklin’s experiments with lightning being just one example.
For that reason, they might think ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence are pretty cool – but surely they would worry about their use in K-12 classrooms before students acquire the necessary skills of reading, writing and critical thinking.
Finally, an issue of great importance to the next generations. They would tell the Indiana legislature: Do not follow the crowd. Do not legalize marijuana. They would tell the Biden administration: Treat fentanyl as a public health emergency. Dr. Benjamin Rush, founding father and founder of the first medical school in the United States, warned his colleagues that overconsumption of distilled spirits negatively affected industry, health and morals. His then novel theories about alcoholism and addiction have all been proved correct by subsequent research.
The founders of our country knew what they were doing when they created the United States of America. They had insight into almost every issue confronting us today. We talk in “Indiana Mandate” about such diverse issues as the autism epidemic, vaccine mandates, Midwest exceptionalism, term limits, wind power and abortion.
Our country is on the verge of squandering a great inheritance. Let us honor the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by reclaiming their wisdom, their political philosophy, and their founding principles.
Andrea Neal, formerly editorial page editor of the Indianapolis Star, is a history teacher and the author of three books, including “Road Trip: A Pocket History of Indiana” and “Pence: The Path to Power.” This essay has been adapted from a talk she is giving to Indiana groups preparing for the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The Indiana Policy Review Foundation is a nonprofit education foundation focused on state and municipal issues. It is free of outside control by any individual, organization or group. It exists solely to conduct and distribute research on Indiana issues. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors, the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, or its board of directors. The Indiana Policy Review Foundation is a nonprofit education foundation focused on state and municipal issues. It is free of outside control by any individual, organization or group. It exists solely to conduct and distribute research on Indiana issues. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors, the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, or its board of directors.
This explains why the counter sniper was confused when the shots started. And why he didn’t fire on Crooks earlier. He was watching him through his scope, then looked up seemingly confused. That’s likely because shots were coming from elsewhere and he knew Crooks hadn’t fired.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
A lovely start to the week.
Is that a chrysanthemum?
That is a rose.
Top of Drudge RN: New Yorker Mag cover with Harris, and it says Kamalot, and she’s perched on a coconut. And the dems are doing bongo dances all around her.
So ray-cyst.
And the massive smoke screen/lying/gassing is over the top.
The rumor is the fix is already in.
Are your bayonets ready?
No doubt the fix is in … but I still doubt we know which names (either) will be on the ballot – let alone know who will take office in Jan. If we have that long.
I picture Murphy and God playing some godly equivalent of poker or gin …
The actor Gary Cooper developed the habit of paying for everything by check, knowing that people would keep it for his signature and never cash it. It was a trick also used by Pablo Picasso, who once said he had seldom paid for anything–from lunches to cars to houses–because of it.
Now a days paying for stuff with a check might get yoll ace kicked. Everybody’s in a hurry.
Picasso (supposedly, but as a line in a movie) gave a napkin doodle to the waiter for his whole table of guests. The waiter remarked that it wasn’t signed, to which he replied: “I’m buying dinner, not the whole restaurant!”
“Open Range”
==========
Boss (to cowboy thug): “Gitcher britches off.”
Cowboy Thug: “I ain’t takin’ my britches off for nobody.”
Boss: (rifle butt upside the skall)
Cowboy Thug: britches was flyin’
Mose (to Charlie): “That Boss sure can cowboy!”
Charlie: “They broke the mold after him.”
If you ain’t seen it yet you ain’t American.
Open Range is one of the finest modern westerns in film. Costner, Duvall, Benning and the supporting cast are all top-notch.
We have this upgrade today on the “BOY” scouts:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/girling-the-boy-scouts
I have a question that maybe you can answer: Given that the claims of paedophilia are true and that some of the scouts were raped by “leaders” and that is why the scouts got sued (lawfare) into absolute fiscal failure and given that the “organization” needed to be cleaned up to protect young boys, how in the world does a new “organization” dedicated to allowing everyone to join–male, female, gender confused help to save the boys? Isn’t there a greater chance that gender confused male leaders will be supportive of paedophilia also?
Second question: If child rape (under 16) is against the law in most states, how come more of the accused leaders didn’t end up in jail?
Third question: how do we reclaim our young boys–our sons?
To answer your question, we should not UNCLAIM them in the first place.
I read about 1/4 of the article, I’m already familiar with the issue.
At it’s base it is about criminality, and laziness in dealing with it.
As long as ignorant and/or lazy people continue to support that organization it will continue to exist and thrive.
Me? I kept our son out of it.
More then half a century ago I was a cub scout, a boy scout and I was also a member of Boys Brigade.
With apologies to Pink Floyd,
♫ Hey women and girls, leave those boys and men alone. All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall. ♫
I ‘m gonna say some unpopular things. It’s just based on my experience.
I learned it early. We boys were out in the vacant lot doing boy things, probably building forts and throwing dirt clods at each other, yucking it up just fine. The neighbor girl showed up and wanted to play in with us. She was a little bigger than us, and rather than starting at the bottom being a clod heaver and receiver, she started in trying to organize us and change our games. She wanted us to stop and talk about what we were doing and how to make it … different, more to her liking I suppose. We had to listen to her and try, because we had already been trained to be chivalrous, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun when our games were changed and we were being bossed by a girl. All the boys drifted away. That was the summer we learned about bossy girls.
Boys start doing and learn as they go. Girls want to talk about it and organize it before they start doing. That’s not to say all boys or all girls, but in the main that is how boys in groups and girls in groups behave.
That’s what’s happening to Scouting. The girls and women saw a successful social organization and agitate to join it, by any means. Then, when they get in, they start trying to change it to suit themselves. And the now-trapped men and boys have to go along, because it ain’t right to fight with girls.
There is nothing boy/girl specific in the ideals and methods of Boy Scouting. Ideals: duty to God, others, country, yourself; trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent. Methods: Ideals, Patrols, Outdoor Programs, Advancement, Association with Adults, Personal Growth, Leadership Development, Wearing the Uniform. Note the method “association with adults”: the spectrum of interactions between boys and men is different than between boys and women, and likewise between men and girls. It just is, it’s inescapable. The things that motivate boys and girls are different. The outdoor programs change. And boys don’t care about what girls want, and collectively want to do. So the program, the organization will wither, the boys will drift away.
It is happening in my organizations. The girls and women come in, and things start to change. They joined us because we are successful, but now we have to change our ways to accommodate them. The things we used to do, they tell us we can’t do it that way anymore. Ok, bossy girls.
It’s downright dangerous for men to resist the changes. Women and girls fight dirty, they will escalate to any level to get what they want. Men and boys learn conflict restraint early: don’t hit girls at all ever, and when men fight one of them goes to the hospital or the grave and the other to prison.
There are counter-examples. I’ve been with girls and women who were the equal in temperament and bravery, enthusiasm and hardiness of any boy or man. And those girls and women want to do everything the boys do, they are repelled by what the female-dominated organizations do. They are the exception that proves the rule. It’s like the old saying: one cat is part of the family, two or more cats and they act like cats.
So the best course of action I think, that we will have to learn the hard way, is to keep girls and women out of boy’s and men’s organizations.
♫ Hey women and girls, leave those boys and men alone. ♫
Maybe unpopular, but not wrong.
I agree with everything you wrote there John.
My question is, since there was ALREADY a Girl Scouts, why did the Boy Scouts let the girls invade in the first place?
Side road.
From 1962-1966 I lived in outside a small town just north of Gettysburg, where I was born and spent the first 7 years of my life, named Carlisle. A very historic place and the location of the Carlisle War College. I joined Cub Scouts at 8 years of age and the meetings were held in one of the old buildings at the War College. A guy that went to school with my dad was the Scoutmaster and several of the other scout’s mothers were Den Mothers.
Anyway, at one of the evening meetings in the winter I some how got ahold of a wild mouse that was running loose and was holding it when it bit my finger. I just happened to be standing by the open door and when the mouse bit me I threw it in the snow. Never to be seen again.
Well, since the mouse was now unfindable I had to get 14 Rabies shots, 1 a day, in the belly.
The first one made me sick then after that no problems. My dad was a hardcore asshole at times. He told me if I didn’t get the shots and the rabies took hold it would make me go insane and start foaming at the mouth. I was terrified. He was probably partly kidding, but he fukked me up none the less. LOL
Keep Your Eyes on Founding Principles
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If only George Washington could see us now … what would he say?
“Didn’t I warn you that political parties are a bad idea?”
“Have you forgotten my advice about avoiding foreign entanglements?”
“Just look at your credit cards. $34 trillion in outstanding debt. Apparently you ignored that part of my Farewell Address that urged you to pay your bills quickly so as not to burden the next generation.”
Yet here we are – so politically divided that an assassination attempt of our former president surprised almost no one.
So entangled in global affairs – we’ve committed 175 billion dollars in Ukraine-related aid and, according to the Stacker newswire, are involved in more than a dozen shadows wars from Afghanistan to Yemen.
My latest check of the national debt clock put it at 34.9 trillion and counting. We have burdened the next generation beyond anything George Washington could have imagined.
What would Washington and our other founding fathers have to say?
That was the question — and premise — behind the publication: Indiana Mandate, A Return to Founding Principles, An Agenda for the 2020s. I worked on this book with Craig Ladwig, executive director of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, with the intention of examining current issues — local, state and national — from the lens of the founding generation.
With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence right around the corner, we hoped to get people talking about the many ways this country has strayed from the principles of limited government, rule of law, individual rights and economic freedom that have been the foundation of our country since 1776. And we asked the question: Can we return to those founding principles before it’s too late?
What is the evidence that the United States — in many ways — has lost its way? Consider the following:
On a global index of economic freedom, the United States ranks 25th – trailing such countries as Lithuania, Cyprus, Chile and the United Arab Emirates. The 2024 Index, conducted by the Heritage Foundation, looked at economic policies and conditions in 184 sovereign countries from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023, and ranked the countries on a 100-point scale. It found that the average global score for economic freedom is the lowest it has been since 2001 — at 58.6.
What’s notable is the continuing decline of the United States, whose score dropped to 70.1, its lowest level ever in the 30-year history of the Index. According to Heritage, the primary reason for a decline in economic freedom here is excessive government spending, which has resulted in mounting deficit and debt burdens. These threaten the quality of life of our children and grandchildren. Placing in the top three in the ranking are Singapore, Switzerland and Ireland.
Political freedom is likewise on the decline globally and in the United States. A ranking conducted annually by Freedom House looks at political rights and civil liberties on a 100-point scale. The organization reports that “Global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023. The scope and scale of deterioration were extensive, affecting one-fifth of the world’s population. Almost everywhere, the downturn in rights was driven by attacks on pluralism — the peaceful coexistence of people with different political ideas, religions or ethnic identities — that harmed elections and sowed violence.”
The United States registered a score of 83, down from 86 prior to the pandemic, and behind such countries as Uruguay, the Bahamas, Slovenia and Portugal. Now, Freedom House has a bit of a left-wing ideological bias, so I disagree with them on the culprits behind the U.S. decline but I certainly agree that our political freedom is under attack. Political division and discord in this country have resulted in suppression of views, especially of conservatives and Christians, an increase in political violence, and concern for election integrity. And the Justice Department has been weaponized for political purposes.
What can we do about these trends?
The Indiana Policy Review believes the place to start is educating ourselves. We the people and our elected officials need to understand what the issues are and how we can apply founding principles to them. And some of these issues are complicated.
We started by picking 75 topics that are of concern today and researching what if anything the founders might have said about them. In some cases, there is clear and convincing evidence of what they thought. On some issues, we had to extrapolate. And in some, we stretched a bit in order to include them. It was a fascinating exercise and one I think all policy minded people should do before staking out a position on anything. After establishing the founders’ views, we offered context and data for the issue in today’s times. And whenever possible we suggested actions steps policymakers should take to take into consideration founding principles.
Let me share some examples.
Let’s start with the economy, which voters consistently indicate is a top issue heading into the 2024 elections. On many of the economic issues on which Republicans and Democrats disagree, the founders’ philosophy is indisputable. They opposed excessive taxation.
While their primary concern in the revolutionary era was taxation without representation, they understood that government should tax only for urgent need. George Washington wrote, “… towards the payment of debts there must be revenue … to have revenue there must be taxes … (and) … no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.” Today, the combined rate of federal, state and local taxes on the average middle class wage earner is approaching 50 percent … talk about unpleasant. As Craig Ladwig noted, that’s a rate that would make even King George blush. The solution is self-evident. Government must spend less in order to tax less. The public has to demand discipline from our elected representatives.
The founders were firm in their support of property rights. Thomas Jefferson borrowed heavily from John Locke’s second treatise in which Locke said that even in a state of nature, where no government exists, “No one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” Jefferson’s wording transformed Locke’s thought into “life liberty and happiness,” suggesting that happiness and property are related. George Washington said, “Freedom and property are inseparable. You can’t have one without the other.”
The founders warned against incurring government debt that couldn’t be paid off quickly. Washington referred to it as “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.”
The founders opposed earmarks – those bills that direct tax dollars to specific projects in lawmakers home districts. James Monroe said federal money should be limited to “great national works only, since if it were unlimited it would be liable to abuse and might be productive of evil.” Did you know that in January 2021 Congress brought back earmarks after a decade long moratorium? In 2023, Congress passed 7,396 earmarks costing $26 billion. Notably and worthy of kudos, Indiana ranked near the bottom in pork per capita at $5.70. Alaska ranked at the top at $668. Some would contend Indiana’s congressional representatives are failing to get Indiana its fair share. But this should not be a competition to fleece the taxpayers. The only solution: Ban earmarks altogether.
In sharp contrast to the national government, Indiana’s lawmakers are conscientious about spending and debt, our constitution places limits on debt, and our laws protecting private property are commendable. However, there are threats aplenty at the state level to our fiscal freedom. Economic development policies, as one example, distort market forces by picking winners and losers. This was one of the few issues on which the Republican gubernatorial candidates actually disagreed in the primary campaigns.
Economic development sounds worthy. The stated purpose of the Indiana Economic Development Commission and related municipal and regional agencies is to grow the economy and create good paying jobs. Their chief strategy, however, is to offer tax relief or subsidies to certain types of business ventures – from hotels to convention centers. We taxpayers fund all sorts of things that benefit some but not all — such as Lucas Oil Stadium where the Indianapolis Colts play. Indianapolis taxpayers are right now helping to finance the new Signia by Hilton Hotel downtown because the project couldn’t get loans from the private sector.
The example that you all are familiar with and that has been in the news is the LEAP (Lebanon Innovation District). At first blush, it sounds fantastic. It’s been billed as the economy of the future. 9,000-plus acres with advanced manufacturing, ag-bio science, defense, high tech logistics. The IEDC, which by the way is a quasi-public agency that receives minimal legislative review, has committed almost a billion dollars in tax dollars to it.
The case can be made – and was strongly made by Eric Doden and Brad Chambers in the GOP primary — that this will benefit Indiana’s economy, employ thousands, lead to technological advances etc. But what would the Founders say about it?
I think they’d object. The First Congress rejected a bill to loan money to a glassmaker as unconstitutional favoritism. In a debate during the second congress, South Carolina Rep. Hugh Williamson opposed a bill to pay a bounty to New England cod fishermen because it sought to – “gratify one part of the union by oppressing the other.”
We hear the term crony capitalism thrown around a lot. It’s something we need to be concerned about because it limits economic freedom. The founders would point out that crony capitalism caused the Boston Tea Party. Colonists objected to the Tea Act of 1773 because it granted the East India Company a monopoly on tea exported to the colonies, exempted the company from the export tax and guaranteed it a “drawback” or (refund) of duties owed on surplus quantities of tea in its possession. The tea act benefited some at the expense of all.
Let’s move from the economy to election integrity. If the Indiana Policy Review were to prioritize one issue above all others in “Indiana Mandate,” it would be election integrity. If we cannot trust the accuracy and fairness of our electoral process, our republic is sunk.
The latest survey I could find on this was CNN’s from August 2023, when 69 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters questioned the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election. That’s a lot of “election deniers.” Many in the Republican Party are saying the only solution is to beat the Democrats at their own game – to do everything possible to maximize early voting and mail-in ballots so the GOP’s lead can’t be eroded by “middle of the night” vote-counting shenanigans. Elon Musk just committed $45 million a month to a political action committee that will focus on early voting efforts.
What would the founders say?
The earliest elections occurred by voice vote or paper ballot, and — as today — fraud was a concern. Candidates greeted voters at the polls, often offering food and drink to opponents as well as supporters. Elections in the early republic sometimes lasted two or three days to accommodate those traveling long distances to the courthouse. The idea of month-long early voting periods or mail-in ballots, however, would defy the founders’ understanding of “election day” as a patriotic and social affair that brought citizens together for what Samuel Adams called “one of the most solemn trusts in human society.”
Absentee and early voting are modern inventions. Absentee voting began during the Civil War so soldiers could participate in the 1864 presidential election, but it wasn’t until 1921 that a state — Louisiana — enacted the first absentee law. California was the first state to offer absentee voting for any reason in the 1970s, and Texas offered early in-person voting starting in the late 1980s.
This trend continued and accelerated during the COVID pandemic. In 2016, two in five ballots cast for the general election were early, absentee or by mail. In 2020, 43 states allowed early voting with windows ranging from a few days to almost 50. In Indiana, early voting starts 28 days prior to the election.
Early voting sounds democratic but creates a huge risk of fraud and ballot damage, misplacement or accidental destruction. As observed by political commentator Deroy Murdock, “Making early ballots disappear from overwhelmingly Democratic or Republican precincts could throw elections. Even if nothing inappropriate happens, as ballots gather dust, they generate suspicions of monkey business, especially in skin-tight races. Such doubts corrode confidence in institutions and officials.”
Early voting is changing the fundamental nature of campaigning, making it more expensive and thus more likely to benefit incumbents, who have budgets, staff and tactical ability to conduct get-out-the-early-vote efforts. Further, early voting changes the very nature of the election season. From Labor Day until early November, candidates have the opportunity to appeal to the people, and citizens have the opportunity to debate. According to constitutional law professors Eugene Kontorovich and John McGinnis, “The integrity of that space is broken when some citizens cast their ballots as early as 46 days before the election, as some states allow. A lot can happen in those 46 days. Early voters are, in essence, asked a different set of questions from later ones; they are voting with a different set of facts.”
Indiana can be a leader here. Under the Elections Clause of the Constitution, state legislatures hold the power to determine time, place and manner of federal as well as state elections. Any effort to address the chaotic hodgepodge of voting rules and procedures that exist around the country needs to begin at the state level.
Indiana lawmakers could and should return to single-day voting on Election Day, expand voting day hours (6 a.m. to 9 p.m.), increase the number of polling sites and continue to offer absentee ballots to Hoosiers with legitimate reasons they cannot vote in person at the polls. Indiana has the opportunity to create a model law that restores the integrity of Election Day but preserves the opportunity for all eligible citizens to vote.
At the federal level, we should make Election Day the most important national holiday, rivaling Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Countries that do this have higher voter participation rates than the United States.
Turning to education, another issue that continues to be at the top of voter priority lists. Here’s what is absolutely clear: The Founders were not worried about college or career readiness, which are the obsession of politicians and business leaders today. They saw the primary purpose of education as “civic” — as unifying. as essential to character development. They understood that the ability to read, write and think is essential if citizens are to take part in representative democracy.
That thought was written into the Declaration by Thomas Jefferson: Governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and it was assumed education made that consent possible. It was never suggested that the government order students to attend certain schools, and the wording in subsequent state constitutions made clear that the establishment of public schools was for regions where schools had not yet been established.
The Founders considered civic education essential to continued good government. In his Farewell Address, George Washington said, “A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of our country.”
At that we have failed abysmally. We laugh when the late-night comedians air “man on the street” interviews showing just how ignorant Americans are of their history. I watched one on Prager U’s channel the other morning conducted at the National Mall. When was the Declaration of Independence signed? 1904. To what political party did Lincoln belong? Democratic. In a recent Annenberg survey, less than half of Americans were able to name all three branches of government.
To our great detriment, we have lost the Founders understanding – that the new country would remain free only ifs its people were educated in good government and history – and we need to get that understanding back.
As a side note, the Founders were all-in on phonics. Noah Webster, best known as the author of the dictionary, noted that “every child in America … should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice.” Webster’s “blue-backed spellers,” used during the 18th and 19th centuries, taught children to spell and read by learning explicitly the relationship between letters and sounds. The Indiana General Assembly has been trying to get “science of reading” back into the schools, but it hasn’t been easy because of resistance from the education schools and teachers unions.
Moving on to the administrative state, the bureaucracy, the swamp. The Founders would be aghast at where power lies in our country today – it lies with executive branch agencies and employees. They would surely be in favor of Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposal to cut the federal workforce by 75 percent.
The Founders created a system of checks and balances with separation of powers to ensure no one branch overpowered the others.Their writings, however, make clear that they considered the legislative branch the most important because it was elected by the people. It’s horrifying to report that executive branch agencies enact more policies each year than Congress itself.
In 2023, the Biden administration issued 3,018 regulations with the force of law, compared with 65 laws passed by Congress during the same period. This directly relates to the economic freedom rankings I mentioned earlier. The National Association of Manufacturers reports that the cost to the economy of regulatory compliance exceeded $3 trillion in 2022. For a typical U.S. business, regulations cost about 19 percent of payroll expenditures. This system has been decades in the making and will take time to solve, but Congress can start with a simple accountability measure. Require lawmakers to vote all major rules into law. Congress should feel empowered in this regard by the Supreme Court’s recent, welcome decision to overturn the Chevron precedent, which had essentially allowed federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer with almost no oversight.
Let me finish by sharing a few of things that surprised and delighted me about the Founders.
As you might imagine “Indiana Mandate” does not buy into the validity of climate change. The Founders would not have supported President Biden’s effort to shut down coal plants or to phase out fossil fuels; they would have agreed with the philosophy of energy independence as a matter of national security.
That said, they liked trees, and would probably approve of tree-planting and tree conservation as the best method of carbon capture, which reduces air pollution.
British historian Andrea Wulf, in her book “Founding Gardeners,” credits James Madison, the father of the Constitution, with being a forefather of the American environmental movement. “Madison feared that if society lived off nature at the current rate it would eventually destroy it and that man had to return to nature what man took from it,” Wulf writes. Notably, Madison’s residence in Montpelier, Va., maintained hundreds of acres of untamed forest, which he saw as a treasured asset. The fourth president demonstrated his affinity for forests into retirement when he protested unnecessary logging in an 1818 address to the Agricultural Society of Albermarle County, admonishing farmers for “the injudicious and excessive destruction of timber and fire wood.”
The Founders would not have supported subsidies of electric vehicles, but they probably would have been fascinated by the technology. They were noted tinkerers, Ben Franklin’s experiments with lightning being just one example.
For that reason, they might think ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence are pretty cool – but surely they would worry about their use in K-12 classrooms before students acquire the necessary skills of reading, writing and critical thinking.
Finally, an issue of great importance to the next generations. They would tell the Indiana legislature: Do not follow the crowd. Do not legalize marijuana. They would tell the Biden administration: Treat fentanyl as a public health emergency. Dr. Benjamin Rush, founding father and founder of the first medical school in the United States, warned his colleagues that overconsumption of distilled spirits negatively affected industry, health and morals. His then novel theories about alcoholism and addiction have all been proved correct by subsequent research.
The founders of our country knew what they were doing when they created the United States of America. They had insight into almost every issue confronting us today. We talk in “Indiana Mandate” about such diverse issues as the autism epidemic, vaccine mandates, Midwest exceptionalism, term limits, wind power and abortion.
Our country is on the verge of squandering a great inheritance. Let us honor the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by reclaiming their wisdom, their political philosophy, and their founding principles.
Andrea Neal, formerly editorial page editor of the Indianapolis Star, is a history teacher and the author of three books, including “Road Trip: A Pocket History of Indiana” and “Pence: The Path to Power.” This essay has been adapted from a talk she is giving to Indiana groups preparing for the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The Indiana Policy Review Foundation is a nonprofit education foundation focused on state and municipal issues. It is free of outside control by any individual, organization or group. It exists solely to conduct and distribute research on Indiana issues. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors, the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, or its board of directors. The Indiana Policy Review Foundation is a nonprofit education foundation focused on state and municipal issues. It is free of outside control by any individual, organization or group. It exists solely to conduct and distribute research on Indiana issues. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors, the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, or its board of directors.
https://bcdemocrat.com/2024/07/30/keep-your-eyes-on-founding-principles/
Shooter(s)?
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This explains why the counter sniper was confused when the shots started. And why he didn’t fire on Crooks earlier. He was watching him through his scope, then looked up seemingly confused. That’s likely because shots were coming from elsewhere and he knew Crooks hadn’t fired.
video:
https://x.com/BadKellyLeak/status/1817653894320722050