Government - September 2006

I was raised to believe that my freedom is directly in correlation to my strength knowlage and wisom....

2006-09-17 12:45:22 · 17 answers · asked by Dan the car man 5

Why is it that the US can demand that Myanmar's military dictatorship and Cuba's new leadership hold elections when Bush supports Musharrif's military dictatorship of Pakistan, the repressive gov'ts of the former Soviet Central Asia, and the murderous regime of Saudi Arabia? Not to mention the American track record of close dealings with oppressive, unelected dictatorships such as South Korea, South Vietnam and Chile. Why can't the US be more consistant and stop compromising morals for immediate gains in resources and military base rights?

2006-09-17 12:40:56 · 9 answers · asked by ? 3

2006-09-17 12:18:06 · 20 answers · asked by agentsmith015 1

If Republicans are to retain control of Congress this year, they need to return to the winning formula Ronald Reagan used to win his 1980 campaign and Republicans used in the successful 1994 Contract with America campaign to take control of the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years. This formula would require the Republicans to re-identify themselves with the values of the American people.

House Republicans can create a winning agenda for November with eleven issues. (The Senate’s constitutional design, its institutional rules, and the center-left coalition currently dominating its agenda make it too slow to take action on the eleven but could benefit from a successful House effort). I call them the “American Eleven” because each issue defines the right solution, which not coincidentally enjoys overwhelming support from the American people.

The American Eleven begins with our nation’s security.

As President Bush emphasized this week in his September 11 address to the nation, America’s war against Islamic fascists is a struggle for civilization. Republicans in Congress must effectively demonstrate that they are the party doing what it takes to defeat our enemies. Republicans must force those who would retreat and withdrawal to bear the burden of defending their proposals. The full responsibility of undermining our alliances and strengthening our enemies must be placed on those who would seek peace at the cost of defeat and who would advocate weakness in the face of hatred and tyranny.

First, it is impossible for the American people to believe that we are waging a serious campaign to defeat our enemies while our borders remain unprotected. Therefore, the House should pass a bill to secure our borders. Once passed, conservatives in the Senate should move everyday to bring it up for a vote, requiring its opponents to publicly explain why they are blocking efforts to keep terrorists from entering our country.

Second, Republicans in Congress should pass legislation to equip the president with increased powers for tracking terrorists and conducting military tribunals.

Third, Republicans must lift the nation’s national-security dialogue beyond Iraq and explain the reality that America is engaged in an emerging third world war which we are not yet winning. In this conflict, we face not only terrorist enemies like al Qaeda but terrorist states like Iran and North Korea. Iran actively supports terrorists and is seeking nuclear weapons. North Korea likely already has nuclear weapons. Both countries are developing their missile capabilities. With their words and deeds, the dictators of these two countries have been unambiguous in their enmity toward the United States. Americans should take very seriously the fact that North Korea deliberately ignored international warnings when on our Independence Day, it launched a ballistic missile that was developed to be capable of hitting the United States.

Congress should hold hearings on the scale of the threat posed by both Iran and North Korea and commit America to replace these regimes — the only strategy that will ensure that they will be unable to threaten the United States. Our efforts should be directed to bringing about this change about through peaceful means, in the model Ronald Reagan so brilliantly used in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. In this context, Republicans must force those who seek to cut and run in Iraq to explain why a dramatically weakened America would not further embolden a defiant Iran, as it most assuredly would.

Fourth, House Republicans should demonstrate that they have a “do-what-it-takes” attitude about energy independence. They should pass Rep. Jim Nussle’s (R., Iowa) bill on renewable fuels as well as a tax-incentives system toward the development of new automobile technologies that will help change the underlying nature of our energy economy.

Fifth, Republicans must remind Americans that they are the party that protects America’s unique civilization against those who would radically redefine America. A good first step in this effort would be to pass legislation to protect the right to say “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Our founding political document — the Declaration of Independence — asserts that we are “endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights.” It is an attribute fundamental to the cultural DNA of America. But since the 1963 Supreme Court decision outlawing school prayer, the courts have steadily waged a 43-year assault on the core values of American liberty. It is time to return to a balanced constitutional system in which there is no constitutional case for five appointed lawyers on the court to act as if in a permanent constitutional convention.

Sixth, while Americans have always respected and honored a diversity of languages throughout the country, we should embrace English as the language necessary for success in America. Congress should pass a bill making English the official language of government, abolishing multilingual ballots, and reaffirming that new citizens should be required to pass a test on American history in English. Despite what the elite media may report, there are no anti-English congressional districts.

Seventh, Congress should move a bill requiring voters to present a photo ID card in order to vote. We must make certain that only legal U.S. citizens are voting. The bill should provide a mechanism for those without a valid photo ID to obtain one from their state for free. A photo ID for voting would be a huge step toward ensuring honest elections, strengthening our democratic system, and upholding the value of American citizenship.

The final set of initiatives in the American Eleven reasserts that Republicans are the party of taxpayers instead of the party of tax spenders.

Eighth, the House should force the Senate to vote on repealing the death tax, for good. It should pass the bill every week attaching it to various Senate bills until the Senate adopts it. It is simply un-American to ask a grieving family to visit the tax collector and the undertaker in the same week. The death tax destroys family businesses that, in the long run, collectively produce far more tax dollars to the government than the death tax ever collects. The death tax is like killing the goose that is laying America’s economic golden eggs and we should abolish it.

Ninth, the Congress should take steps to restore the property rights that were undermined by the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision that weakened citizen protections against the federal government’s eminent-domain power. Expanding the power of local governments to seize private property simply invites corruption. This decision will almost certainly lead to abuse at the expense of the citizenry’s property rights, especially those of the poor. Congress should pass legislation that restores the constitutional law to pre-Kelo rules and blocks the Supreme Court from reviewing this new law in the future.

Tenth, Congress should pass legislation to control spending with a step-by-step plan for returning to a balanced budget in seven years (the length of time we gave ourselves after winning the majority in 1994). In the mid-1990s, we balanced the budget for the first time in a generation and we did it four years in a row. We were able to achieve a balanced budget while cutting taxes and increasing defense and intelligence spending. Balancing the budget is not just a political issue; it is a moral issue because it forces politicians to set priorities. If politicians continue to spend as if they had open-ended credit with no consequences, then “yes” is the answer to every special-interest request — which is how we ended up with the current absurdly bloated, undisciplined federal budget.

Finally, Congress should tie education funding to school accountability. The No Child Left Behind law is making it blaringly obvious just how many schools are crippling and destroying children. We should save the children. Congress should require school systems to institute metrics-based performance standards in order to receive federal funding to ensure that every child is getting the education that they deserve.

House Republicans have two months to change history. With the American Eleven, they have a chance not only to save their majority in Congress, but also to return the Republican party to the center-right populist values of Ronald Reagan and the Contract with America. They can bring back the Reagan-Contract formula of listening to the American people and identifying with their values.

The choice is theirs — and ours.

Author = Newt Gingrich

2006-09-17 11:59:39 · 13 answers · asked by Anonymous

2006-09-17 11:43:49 · 6 answers · asked by cirque de lune 6

what should I do tomorrow? Go to work as normal or something completely different?

2006-09-17 11:39:01 · 9 answers · asked by Essex Dweller 1

2006-09-17 11:23:27 · 8 answers · asked by Anonymous

In examining the modern day judicial structure, does the judicial branch exceed its constitutional powers? Is it more powerful than the framer's inteded, or would they be satisfied with its application?

I have about 800 words for my essay and I need 1000 does anyone have a website I can see or maybe some insight on stuff they know?

2006-09-17 10:50:56 · 8 answers · asked by myxendxlessxlove 1

People answer questions saying one thing to start with and then totallly say something else that defeated the whole purpose of what they believed originally. If you answer a question know what your talking about first before you begin typing up nonsense

2006-09-17 10:26:58 · 11 answers · asked by Anonymous

2006-09-17 10:07:54 · 4 answers · asked by Chris M 1

2006-09-17 09:09:56 · 10 answers · asked by Pseudo Obscure 6

Unregulated as agribusiness and meat-packign is, How dirty and disgusting can it get before anything changes< or will it ever?

2006-09-17 09:01:22 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous

2006-09-17 08:49:37 · 13 answers · asked by Nastya 1

2006-09-17 08:28:51 · 23 answers · asked by Anonymous

2006-09-17 08:07:32 · 15 answers · asked by thebest 1

2006-09-17 08:06:45 · 2 answers · asked by Anonymous

2006-09-17 08:06:06 · 7 answers · asked by cameron p 1

Has all America watched it, I mean has it been widely broadcast on TV over there? If it IS true AND proven....how would that effect the peoples perception of the government and could anything be done about it?

I know in Australia, if a government deception is suspected or known....the people can demand Governer General intervention/investigation and dissolution of the Prime Ministers term. Do you have a similar thing in USA?

In the light of so many unanswered questions....why is the government not allowing all video tapes, black box info and entire calls to be freely available? I just dont understand why the government are not transparent in their dealings with the American people...and why the people including TV presenters dont demand it also?

2006-09-17 07:55:12 · 7 answers · asked by Scully 4

...by finding the will to stand up and be counted, rather than sleepwalking into worse disasters?

2006-09-17 07:16:09 · 17 answers · asked by mesun1408 6

They shot a nun in the back today in Somalia in respose to the pope's obviously truthful and accruate quotation. Do these Muslims really think the civilized world can ever respect them? I am proud of the pope.

2006-09-17 07:15:25 · 6 answers · asked by njl433 2

Besides using the Bill of Rights as toilet paper, some of his hobbies include "amending" the constitution to fit a very narrow Christian view, being arrogantly ignorant, taking a lot of vacations, and violating the Geneva Conventions (violating people's human rights the constitution of our country stands for). How is this not enough for impeachment? Watergate pales in comparrison to Bush's terrorism programs (i.e. the Patriot Act, his "interpretations" of the Geneva Concventions). I mean I guess I'm a little old fashioned but I kind of like the whole humane treatment of even our enemies thing, it shows a higher moral standard than they show us. Why don't people see that he isn't doing anything righteous, just sinking to their level? To so many people over there Americans can rightly be called terrorists.

2006-09-17 07:14:31 · 19 answers · asked by Anonymous

2006-09-17 06:55:10 · 3 answers · asked by Chaldol 1

2006-09-17 06:47:17 · 13 answers · asked by TheBoy 1

2006-09-17 06:42:11 · 2 answers · asked by Anonymous

can u please give an answer and tell y HW assignment crusial

2006-09-17 06:41:57 · 18 answers · asked by Anonymous

If Saddam is found innocent, does he get back his country and Bush be charged with war crimes for the invasion of Irac?

2006-09-17 06:34:45 · 8 answers · asked by Anonymous

2006-09-17 06:12:26 · 9 answers · asked by mikeygonebad 2

but Canadians, Swiss, Germans, French, etc love their free healthcare systems?
Pooled tax resources buy cheaper efficiencies of course

2006-09-17 05:57:12 · 12 answers · asked by Anonymous

2006-09-17 05:55:46 · 13 answers · asked by mikeygonebad 2

2006-09-17 05:44:37 · 8 answers · asked by super_saucy112 1