by Andi Elliott, Jefferson County

I’ve seen the poster of the 9 bridges of Jefferson County that have been determined by the Idaho Transportation Department to be structurally deficient. And these bridges need to have diminished speed limits and weight limits and immediate repairs. I’m reminded of the nursery rhyme, London Bridge is Broken Down.

“London Bridge is broken down…How shall we build it up again?”

“We’ll build it up with gravel and stone,” or we can prop it up with railroad ties and plywood, as has been done in Jefferson County.

“Gravel and stone will be washed away….” or the railroad ties and plywood can slip and rot.

“We’ll build it up with iron and stone….” which probably would be prudent if we’re planning for long time structurally sound bridges and public safety.

One of my neighbors, upon hearing about the public safety hazards posed by the county bridge system, lamented about what would happen if a potato truck passed over such a bridge and brought it down. I’m thinking about what would happen if one of our school buses loaded with children were to result in “London Bridge came falling down”. Perish the thought and the law suits that would ensue. Am I the only one thinking that safe and reliable bridges are more important than a new high school?

Andi Elliott

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Idaho Chooses Life

The now notorious abortionist Kermit Gosnell is in prison for the rest of his natural life. Given the difficult judgment facing him, one could imagine that he is hoping that prison time lasts for a long, long time. He was held accountable for but a fraction of the crimes committed, but we can give thanks for the fact that a jury of ordinary men and women had the strength of character to endure a horrific trial to render a guilty verdict.
Imagine for a moment the dire social consequences had they failed to find such a man guilty.

Now our attention can turn to the possible fallout from the Gosnell trial.

Many on the Left would have you believe that he was an evil aberration. Some would have you buy the notion that abortionists are simply kind, gentle souls rendering a public service. But abortion is, by its very nature, a grisly and bloody business. Gosnell is no by means an “outlier”. (In fact, several abortion operations have come in for public scrutiny since the Gosnell trial began – Texas and Delaware come to mind).

What is genuinely unique about the Gosnell case is that it has forced the public to see and hear the sordid details of America’s abortion culture. The nation, including media personalities impersonating journalists, have been cornered into actually seeing behind the dark curtain which surrounds abortion mills. We are collectively nauseated, our hearts hurt over the evil we silently tolerate.

Will the revulsion last? No. The nation is all too anxious to move along, to think of more pleasant things. But a deep crack in the foundation has nevertheless developed. For all our denial, somewhere in our minds the images and descriptions of industrialized child murder linger. Seeds of doubt have been planted in even the most virulent defenders of abortion. Some abortion supporters have even publicly changed their minds on the matter.

The fact that Gosnell was even tried proves that the nation’s conscience still exists, that there are boundaries of decency left.

We must take encouragement from this demonstration of decency and nurture the seeds into mighty shade trees of relief from this national scourge.

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Idaho Chooses Life

U.S. Federal Judge Edward Korman (New York) issued an order on Friday making “Emergency Contraception” available to girls without restriction. His order was a direct answer to the Obama Administration’s attempt to limit easy access to girls 15 and older.

By the terms of Korman’s order, girls of any age can purchase the potent drug without identification or prescription from the shelves of any drug store. By the terms of his order, parents will, of course, be cut out of the process. And so will medical personnel, including pharmacists. Girls will have easier access to “Plan B” than adults do sinus headache medicine.

As we’ve noted before, this imperious social engineering will have devastating implications for the health and safety of America’s daughters. Allowing grade school girls to ingest these dangerous and powerful hormones without adult supervision is simply madness. Which is to say nothing about the deaths of untallied preborn children and the further erosion of parental authority.

Nearly every profound social ill is on display with this story: the abuse of power by our federal judiciary; disregard for the family; and an evil agenda by the American Left to destroy the lives of America’s youth by imposing a dysfunctional and degrading sexual ethic upon the culture.

With our federal and state authorities so compromised by this whole dynamic, pro-Lifers must focus significant prayer time on behalf of our nation’s vulnerable daughters.

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By Richard Larsen

One of the most specious and inane arguments in politics today is that the Constitution is an arcane, anachronistic document created by imperfect men, and that it is therefore illogical to interpret it literally. They assert that the founding fathers didn’t have a “crystal ball” and couldn’t have foreseen issues like privacy in the 21st century, and so those of us who believe the Constitution to be a social contract limiting the powers of government must be “out of our minds.”

The first of those arguments is a logical fallacy. The tu quoque fallacy asserts that since the founders were imperfect, whatever they may say or do is equally imperfect or questionable. That would be tantamount to saying that because a certain physics instructor is specious, illogical, and misinformed about history and our system of governance, that he’s equally inept and tenuous in physics. Such a conclusion is obviously faulty logic, and based on a false premise.

The second argument is equally misguided. The founders didn’t need a “crystal ball” to foresee 21st century challenges. A constitution is by definition, “a body of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state is to be governed.” Consequently, the founding fathers didn’t need to be aware of “privacy” issues, or the internet, or any historically contextual development that may prove intellectually taxing to those who presuppose in their unwarranted arrogance, that they should have.

The structure established by the Constitution created legislative bodies that could adapt to changing times, by passing laws to deal with such vicissitudes, while the foundation, or fundamental principles, could endure, protecting the individual over the presumed and evolutionary expansion of the “rights” of the state. Plus, provision for changing the text of that social contract was made through the amendment process, which has been done 27 times to date.

Our Constitution established a system of governance that could stand the test of time, as long as citizens valued freedom more than tyranny. A system that, if held fast to, would assure that no one person, or oligarchical self-anointed leaders, could become totalitarians in a republic so structured. And it included guaranteed rights and privileges, for the first time in history, not granted by a monarch, ruler, magistrate, or benevolent dictator, but acknowledged to have originated from deity for all men. This is perfectly illustrated by our current president’s admission that, “I am constrained by a system that our Founders put in place,” although there’s precious little evidence of such constraint.

Is it a perfect system? Obviously not, especially in light of our contemporary crony-capitalism, that corrupts government and capitalism. The founding fathers maintained that for the republic to endure, we must have a moral people, which is the only real anachronism from our founding era, casting the most ominous clouds of doubt over the perpetuity of the republic.

When it is argued that the Constitution is a “living” document, implication is made that the precepts and principles of the Constitution are not applicable to today and provides an excuse for all types of scurrilous and specious assertions for expanded government largesse at the expense of our freedom and our money. To say that the Constitution is a “living document,” hence, not to be taken literally, is akin to asserting that the Ten Commandments are really just “Ten Suggestions.” It also affords proponents of the “living document” theory latitude to pick and choose cafeteria-style, which rights established by the Constitution are legitimate or applicable today. Some like freedom of speech for themselves but not for those they disagree with, for example. And some absolutely detest the freedom to bear arms.

Judicial precedent and daily judicial decisions are judged against the basic principles and rights specified by the Constitution and statute to provide applicability to today’s milieu. In that way alone is it a “living document.” Statute is how the fundamental principles of the Constitution are codified in a changing social structure, but the Constitution provides the baseline.

James Madison, regarded as the Father to the Constitution, said, “There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” We have witnessed this over the generations since the founding of the country, and we see that process of “silent encroachment” of government on the freedom of the people accelerated over the past few years in a way never before witnessed. We see government dictating terms of property ownership, dictating terms of access to health care, and dictating terms of energy use and private consumption, for starters.

The Constitution is not a “living” document. The Founders were specific in their language and did not mince words. They meant what they said. It was written precisely to prevent the incursion of government into our lives to the extent that we see it occurring today proving it is not an anachronism. It is a social contract to assure and guarantee fundamental freedom and liberty for all generations of Americans, and its relevance is reasserted every time a new official is sworn into office, vowing to “uphold and defend the Constitution.”

The survivability of our republic is dependent upon a knowledgeable and informed electorate, committed to liberty. We need to be intimately familiar with our founding documents, especially the Constitution, and hold those accountable who seek to subvert the freedoms of those who are intended to have ultimate power in this republic: We the People!

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Idaho Chooses Life

Sen. Marco Rubio has come under gentle pressure from some conservative quarters over his adoption of the term “undocumented ” in his bid to persuade Americans that the Rubio/McCain/Schumer plan to deal with illegal immigrants is good for the country.

The left has been using the power of language to manipulate Americans for many years, and this debate gives us an opportunity to examine how it is done, why it is done and the impact on public policy.

Breitbart traces the fight by the left wing to cleanse the media of the term “illegal immigrant” because it is “offensive”: As far back as 2004, academics have been pressuring the Associated Press to drop the terminology. For years, the AP resisted, saying that the term was accurate because it described a “person who resides in a country unlawfully”. But politics is everything.

Just this month, the AP announced that it would no longer use the term.

The same cleansing has occurred in the abortion debate, though over a much longer period of time. The media refuses to call groups like Idaho Chooses Life as “pro-life” – while having no trouble describing Planned Parenthood as “pro-choice”. Of course that is frustrating because it drains so much of the debate of its importance.

But the manipulation of language by the Left often has real-world consequences. During this past legislative session, abortion advocate John Rusche – Democrat leader in the Idaho House – “officially objected” to the use of the term ‘abortifacient’ during floor debate because “Emergency Contraception doesn’t cause abortions”.

Of course, what Rusche would not admit is that the Left – including members of the medical profession – have conspired to change definitions so that pregnancy no longer means what we all understand it to mean. By their cynical cleansing of the abortion debate, a new life simply doesn’t exist until the fertilized ovum manages to attach itself to the uterine wall. Since Emergency Contraception is specifically designed to interfere with that process, pregnancy doesn’t happen. And you can’t have an abortion if you don’t have a pregnancy to begin with.

Pretty slick, right? So slick in fact, that it is very difficult to even address Emergency Contraception in legislation because of the intentional abuse of language by operatives like John Rusche and the liberal media.

Even more important: Manipulation of language, words, has profound consequences because it is the medium of rational thought. An idea generally requires words to exist, and we certainly need words to communicate our ideas to another. Win the battle for the dictionary and you can sometimes deprive your fellow citizens of truth altogether.

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By Jesse Higgins

Dear Governor Otter,

As a longtime supporter and a conservative I am writing, and asking others that read and agree, to ask you to explain some recent actions. Note: Representatives and Senators may be contacted at www.legislature.idaho.gov.

Although I agree with your veto of H0121(smoking in bowling alleys) I am not sure I agree with all of your reasoning. Since you stated in your veto letter “Given legislative concerns about “social engineering,” particularly in regard to my proposal for targeted expansion of the grocery tax credit” (more about that later) it appears you are acting like a spoiled child, saying, if you will not give me what I want I will not give you what you want.

The supporters of the “Clean Indoor Air Act H0121 state “Public Place” as their justification. They confuse public and private property. Just because I allow the public on my property I should not be forced by government to relinquish what is left of my PRIVATE PROPERTY rights. As I look at the last few years of legislative action, I see an attempt by government to remove even the illusion of PRIVATE PROPERTY in Idaho.

House bill H081a is a different matter. How dare you veto a bill that will return 31 to 32.4 million dollars to the taxpayers of Idaho and claim the state cannot afford it! You were elected on a platform of conservative principles that include smaller government, lower taxes (this is what we are talking about), and less intrusive government. I am not even asking you to cut the budget of any government agency – just reduce the rate of growth by 1.5%. This is not you’re money. This money belongs to the people of Idaho. Give it back when you have the chance.

I am sending a copy of this letter to each of my legislators urging them to allow your veto of H0121 to stand and asking them to over-ride your veto or H081a. I am also asking the media to print this letter and asking each person that reads it to contact their legislator in support of these requests.

Sincerely
Jesse Higgins
Aberdeen, Idaho

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By Andi Elliott, Idaho State Tea Party Patriots Coordinator

I used to hate Wednesdays. It was the day my music teacher would come to our home and I despised my piano lessons. But now I can hardly wait for Wednesdays to arrive and with it my next edition of the Jefferson Star. The investigative journalism is awe inspiring. It’s as if I am reading a serial thriller and don’t want to put it down.

Our elected prosecutor, Rob Dunn, is being portrayed as a multi-headed Hydra wearing many hats resulting in multiple conflicts of interest. And this week’s edition talks of secret council meetings and improper use of the legal technique of “quiet title” in order to acquire property for the city. And it gets better. The resignation of a City Councilman (too bad, we need a “good guy” in there) because he cannot continue to work under the circumstances in which he feels people are being deceived heightens the suspense even further.

Then to top it all off, a councilman comes forward with a recording about Dunn’s threat towards him. And to think, all this in our little Jefferson County where weeks go by with nothing more exciting than a trespassing citation being issued. I’d better check to see that my Star subscription isn’t due to expire soon. I’d hate to miss the next exciting issue.

Andi Elliott
Hamer

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By Richard Larsen

Just when we think the secular assaults against the nuclear family unit can’t get any worse, we disturbingly learn that they can. Now a host on a minor cable news network claims that we have to get over the idea that our children are ours, and accept the fact that they belong “collectively” to all of us.

Melissa Harris-Perry, a host for a weekend show on scarcely watched MSNBC, was taped in a “lean forward” (euphemism for “lean more left”) promo for the network, said that children don’t belong to their families they belong to the collective.

The host declared, “We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”

The context seems innocuous enough; continue to engage in insanity (doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results) by throwing more money toward education. The answer to our educational inadequacies and failings is always more funding, to some. Heaven forbid that we should consider using what resources we have more efficiently and effectively, and focus on teaching content that increases academic performance, instead of all the social engineering, and politically correct indoctrination that is so pervasively “taught” in our public schools.

Some don’t even think her terminology, referring to collective ownership of our kids, in the promo is controversial. The New York Times, and other media and extremist organizations have leapt to her defense. What should not be lost on us is that such entities are ideological compatriots to the host, and are firmly predisposed to the collectivist ideals of the left.

I’m sure the folks over at NAMBLA would rejoice over such a concept of collectivist ownership of our kids! And what about all those unborn children that are never given a chance to take their first breath? Should that not likewise be a grave concern to the collective?

In free societies, as America was originally founded to be, private property ownership is sacrosanct. The second line in our Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Lockean Creed, upon which that statement is based, equates private property with pursuit of happiness.

While children are not considered property, and are not “owned,” the responsibility for rearing, teaching, and nurturing them is a private one, owned by the parents who brought them into the world. For those who lack the temporal means to support those children, there are safety nets that allow for community support of such disadvantaged children. Even that, however, does not diminish or transfer the very personal and private responsibility of rearing children to the state, or to the collective.

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. Last year in the midst of the presidential campaign Team Obama posted a slide show on the campaign website, with much fanfare, about the Life of Julia. It revealed the Obama Team dream of governmental (in this context, euphemism for “the collective”) involvement at every stage of life, from birth to death, and how the government would be the nurturing parental surrogate through each stage.

Karl Marx said, “The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.” Ms. Harris-Perry mirrors this sentiment: the children are not ours, they belong to the collective, and we need to abolish the notion that they are ours. Marx also said, “Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.” The MSNBC host would make Marx proud.

Who has the right to dictate how a child is to be reared? Certainly not the “collective,” and certainly not the government. It’s a private parental, and familial matter. Or at least it should be. The more government encroaches into health care management, social-engineering dictates, and redefinition of fundamental roles in society, the less control parents have over something as fundamental as the rearing of their children.

It is not just the economic aspects of socialistic and fascistic collectivism that must be resisted and repulsed, but perhaps even more significantly, the social and cultural collectivist agenda must be rejected. We have to recognize this steady encroachment for what it is, and that it is clearly antithetical to a free America.

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Idaho Chooses Life

It’s been about a week since the new Legislature finished the work they intended, with legislators returning to their districts.

So how did Idaho fare?

Democrats and powerful lobby groups are clearly happy with the session, to judge by their public comments and other press reports which show that Democrats have a new sense of power in the 62nd Legislature. That is particularly true in the House, where Democrats and moderate Republicans combined to impose Obama’s Insurance Exchange upon the people of Idaho.

Despite fierce protests from Idaho business leaders, citizens, pro-Life groups, agriculture and the Idaho Republican Party, Idaho is now a full-fledged junior partner in an unconstitutional scheme to remake the economy and culture under the guise of “health care”.

Idaho Chooses Life strenuously fought ObamaCare coming to Idaho, but we were simply overwhelmed by the immense resources Blue Cross and their allies brought to bear. We were further hamstrung by the large number of freshmen in the building who seemed dazzled by the attention given them by some of the state’s most powerful lobbyists. It proved nearly impossible to reason with some of these folks, who clung to the mythology that, somehow, Idaho would be able to protect its sovereignty by submitting to federal control of our health care industry.

Particularly disappointing was the failure of the Legislature to adopt our “Religious Liberty Amendment” – which would have at least pushed back at the Obama Administration’s evil plan to force Christian employers to pay for abortion-causing drugs as part of their company insurance policies. Many of those voting against our amendment proclaim pro-Life values, some even voted for a “memorial” to Congress just last year on this very topic; but when it really mattered, too many were apparently intimidated by the power of the insurance lobby or the federal government or both.
Idaho’s religious liberties, as guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions, remain unguarded.

All in all, it was a very disappointing session for the pro-Life movement. Not only did we suffer defeat on the Obama Exchange – this legislature failed to pass a single pro-Life bill. That has not happened since the late 1990’s.

We will have more to say about all this in coming days. But know that our resolve is strong to move Idaho forward in defending the innocent and their mothers from the scourge of abortion. It is too early to give up on this Legislature, despite its horrible beginning.

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By Richard Larsen

Two cases were argued before the U.S. Supreme Court last week addressing the issue of same-sex marriage. This is not an issue of rights, as proponents maintain, nor is it an issue of Biblical marriage, as opponents contend. It is, rather, based in natural law, and is an issue of seismic significance to our culture, our society, and our civilization, and cannot be cavalierly “redefined.”

Dr. Patrick Fagan, a sociologist and psychologist has said, “The family is the fundamental building block of society and predates the state and even the societies it builds…At the heart of the family is the mother and father who bring their children into existence.” This is a self-evident truth, regardless of who said it, and anthropologists, biologists, sociologists, and politicians have reiterated that very sentiment. The family is the building block of society and civilization, and the cornerstone to that foundation, or the genesis of it, is a mother and a father.

Foundations must be strong, and built to withstand the elements, corrosion, and the test of time. Otherwise, the structure built thereon will inevitably crumble. If a foundation is made with unmixed cement or just water, as same-sex marriage tries to do, the foundation is weak, and the structure (our civilization) built thereon will crumble. When we tamper with, and attempt to socially-engineer the foundational elements and institutions to civilization and our society, the results will be destructive.

Redefining marriage based on who one purportedly loves, is a spurious dilution of our societal foundation. Rarely in human history, has marriage been based on who one loves, but has always been about perpetuating the species, and forming familial units that construct the foundation to civilization. Sometimes it’s included multiple spouses of one sex or another, but always it has been based on propagational properties, whether age or fertility exceptions apply or not. Any semantic change to the definition is only that, semantic, and does not change the biological or anthropological verities etymologically embedded in the term. Such a change to accommodate same-sex “marriage” would therefore be nothing more than creating a verbal counterfeit to the real thing. Simply calling my Tahoe a Hummer is a lie, and does not change the fact that it’s still not a Hummer.

Nor is there a “right” to marry whomsoever or whatsoever we please, or profess love for. Such a right is as most other “rights” claimed by those in our society who feel somehow shortchanged, slighted, or disadvantaged. The “right” is not codified in any legal document, much less our founding documents, just like the “right” to health care, or the “right” to a good job. Heterosexual marriage, however, is codified in natural law, as attested by biological and anthropological fact. The test is simple: try building a civilization or a society from scratch with anything other than natural law, heterosexual marriage.

Marriage, historically, has always represented the legal, moral, and cultural recognition of the binding relationship of opposite sexes. Merely definitionally reducing marriage to nothing more than a state legitimized relationship between “people that love each other” is antithetical to the factual basis to our existence as a civilization. The fact is, marriage has always been about protecting society, at least in part, through the possibility of propagation, protection and the creation of family units.

The law of unintended consequences has certainly been manifest elsewhere as natural law, social mores, and societal conventions and institutions like marriage have been redefined and engineered to accommodate exceptions.

Scandinavian countries that have redefined marriage are experiencing a meltdown of traditional marriage. British demographer David Coleman and senior Dutch demographer Joop Garssen have written that “marriage is becoming a minority status” in Scandinavia. In Denmark, a slight majority of all children are still born within marriage. Yet citing the 60 percent out-of-wedlock birthrate for firstborn children, Danish demographers Wehner, Kambskard, and Abrahamson argue that marriage has ceased to be the normative setting for Danish family life and poses a significant risk to the future stability of Danish society.

There are undoubtedly exogenous contributory factors for the Scandinavian states. But the eradication of natural law and social mores in favor of a politically correct or supposedly amoral redefinition of basic social conventions indisputably are the incipient causes to the unraveling of the family unit.

Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, recently said, “I think you can have social stability without many intact families, but it’s going to be really expensive and it’s going to look very ‘Huxley-Brave New World-ish.’ So [the intact family is] not only the optimal scenario … but it’s the cheapest. How often in life do you get the best and the cheapest in the same package?”

Pastor Rick Warren made a fundamentally true and valid observation in this regard. He said, “Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear them or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.” Many are the arguments against same-sex marriage, and none of them frankly have anything to do with discrimination or homophobia.

Doug Mainwaring, an avowed homosexual, proves Warren’s assertion. “Two men or two women together is, in truth, nothing like a man and a woman creating a life and a family together…Marriage is not an elastic term. It is immutable. It offers the very best for children and society. We should not adulterate nor mutilate its definition, thereby denying its riches to current and future generations.”

Words have meaning, and marriage, as the cornerstone to civilization, is copiously imbued with it. I have yet to hear a logical or cogent explanation as to why a binding homosexual relationship must be a marriage as opposed to a civil union or legal partnership. Rather than weakening and diluting the foundation to our society, we should be strengthening and encouraging it. After all, our future, and stability, as a society is dependent on it.

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