Some of us may have been so focused on the differences between Rick Santorum (who I favor), Newt Gingrich and Mitt “etcha-sketch” Romney during this GOP Presidential primary, that you may not have noticed there’s a crowd out there which doesn’t care, because they hate us all the same.

For them, the “line in the dirt” is very clear and they are taking dead aim to all of us they see on the other side of that line from them.

Yes, they hate us, you and me and all of us, regardless of which of these three candidates we support.

To these haters, there’s not a “dime’s worth of difference between Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

To the haters there’s only two sides in this battle – and most people who are RED STATE and Human Events readers and who support any of these three candidates for President, are on the wrong side of the line, are the enemy.

And they hate us.

Which side of this line do you stand on?

The street protestors who hate all conservatives and Republicans but especially Rick Santorum – their “flavor of the month” lately, or on the other side from them?

I do not know if your mother or father ever told you they did not want you to be friends with someone you wanted to be friends with.  I had such a situation at a very young age.

I listened to my parents but I was really upset about it what I thought was unreasonable interference with my private life (makes me sound either very young or else, like a liberal or libertarian?).

Well, that kid ended up being arrested a few years later and went to jail.

Whereupon, it dawned on me that “there but for the grace of God” while true, is incomplete until you add, “and the choice my parents forced on me at that youthful age, of who I should NOT associate with.”

Harken.  (“listen well” for you youngsters, per Merriam Webster).  Therein lies a lesson.

For most of us today it is your choice, not your parents, who you associate with.  Who would that be?  It tells the world a lot about you, who your choice is.

We oldsters, not as well versed as the “now” generation with their “smartass” phones and their 2-thumb typing, their “social” media and their Facebooking, know something you might not have yet figured out.

You are who you hang out with.

Oh you can argue about that – but few argue with Plato’s old “perception appears to be reality” idea (popularized into what he did NOT say – perception is NOT reality it just appears so).

Your choice of friends, gives the appearance of WHO you really are.

Or as some who “bastardized” the original Plato might put it today, “your friends SAY WHO YOU ARE.”

As we listen to complaints from our libertarian friends about the surveillance and “information mining” (as it was called by Admiral John Poindexter who under our hero Ronald Reagan, first proposed it), that the “guvamint” is “collecting” information on all of us – and they are – the people who complain the loudest should HARKEN the most.

You are who you hang out with.

In today’s facebook age you go to someone’s facebook page and you see some real crazy people sometimes, on their facebook page as their “friends.”

What do you conclude about that person, whose page you are looking at?

If you are like me, a little older and “choosier” about who you might want to be friends with, you draw a conclusion – and in some cases you say OK, and accept their friend request – or even initiate it.

But in other cases you run like heck the other way – perhaps you click IGNORE (that is Facebookese for “no I do not accept”).  Or you go further in your flight and you click BLOCK (which means, we have each turned “invisible” to each other using the “Facebook” search).

But how many of those young people who laugh at us oldsters, how many of those libertarians worried about the “guvamint’s surveillance” of publicly available information – such as our Facebook page – have ever considered this question: WHO are your friends, and what does that tell the world about YOU?

I recently had one of my friends “refer” or recommend someone, using the Facebook mechanism, to become MY friend – I had but to do one “click” to accept the invitation and invite that person.

After looking at that referral’s facebook page, I wrote this, which I wanted to share with you (blocking out the name of the friend of mine who kindly suggested this for me).

“(name of my friend), just wanted to thank you for your recent “referral” but I must decline in this instance.  Although I am more of a “mainstream/full spectrum” conservative, people who identify themselves as a capital L libertarian (ie. Libertarian Party) tend to call people like me “neocons” and they especially hate the Christian-right.  It is not a mutual feeling, ie. I do not know any people on the Christian-right who ‘hate’ anybody, much less hate Libertarians. 

“But for an example of what people like this GET ANGRY ABOUT (ie. who you recommended to me), read my column of today.  The people who were there to jeer and express hatred towards Rick Santorum (Tues. nite in in Gettysburg, PA), as I report from eyewitness accounts, were BOTH the Libertarian (capital L libertarians) and the Occupy Wall Street, and from the perspective of any fair minded observer they are the same thing, they mingled together comfortably, and they hate the same thing/same people/same candidate. 

That would be my friends standing in the line to hear Rick.  And it includes (especially) Rick.  And it would include people like me, who gave a ‘fair and balanced and truthful’ report on what ‘Libertarians’ were up to yesterday. 

“So long as somebody identifies themselves as your friend did who you recommended to me, not as an open minded, fair minded, affable lower case ‘L’ libertarian that Ronald Reagan spoke of over 25 years ago but instead as a partisan, anti-conservative, Santorum-hating, capital ‘L’ libertarian, I am not interested in being publicly identified, not on Facebook and not anywhere else, as a ‘friend’ with such a person, or even of being associated with such a person in any way.  See my RED STATE column of today for specific reference  … and thank you again for thinking of me in making the referral, I do appreciate it.  -PAT HENRY”

Now the liberal left is big on the theory of “free speech” and the first amendment, although they never do read the entire text – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Notice it does not say there, that your “freedom of speech” is absolute?

Notice the First Amendment ALSO refers to our right to assemble, petition, and to practice our religion?

Notice most of all, it does say that I must give you a platform on my Facebook page to express YOUR views which oppose mine, nor do I have to give you access to MY FRIEND LIST so you can go spew forth onto them, views with which I don’t agree?

Most of all, notice that it does not say, you have the right to “pose” as if you were my friend – using Facebook – while you post on MY WALL and speak to MY FRIENDS, views I don’t at all agree with and don’t wish to be associated with?

It is one thing to be “friends” with someone who is for Rick Santorum while you are for Mitt Romney or for Newt Gingrich.  You might disagree on a few things and friends can do that but still remain respectful and amiable towards one another.  Especially if they say that they are Christians.

But when the core of your belief is that there’s no difference at all between the two political parties, that you want to stand side by side with Occupy Wall Street protesters expressing hate towards Rick Santorum and with those who are standing in line to hear him and see him – as happened at Gettysburg, PA, then it is time to draw a line, and see which side of that line you want to stand on.

Yes I know.  I’m not Colonel Travis, and last night was Gettysburg and Santorum, not Alamo and Davey Crocket.

But the line is there, nonetheless.  On this side of that line stand I, and most of those who support Santorum, Newt Gingrich and yes I do believe, Mitt Romney as well (even though many are far more moderate than those of us who support Rick or Newt).

Most of us are not at all Olympia Snowe Republicans (though some are) and if we live in Pennsylvania most of us didn’t agree with Santorum and didn’t vote for Arlen Specter as he suggested..

On the other side of this line, are those who stood with Occupy Wall Street last night in Gettysburg.  Who think it is great sport to brandish about – on their Facebook pages in some cases – the symbol of leftwing Occupy Wall Street – the terrorist Guy Fawkes’ mustachioed cartoon drawing or even the most “popular” image in the world (see wiki’s entry) of that other terrorist thug, Che Guevara.

They love that quote, those on THAT side of the line, about the blood of patriots and tyrants refreshing the tree of liberty (as did I until I kept seeing it on their pages), they sport photos of guns and knives and happily of themselves bearing it, of “speaking truth to power,” and “throwing them out” and even “resist.”

Sounds like the Black Panthers from the 1960′s so far?

They hate all GOPers, most often hate all conservatives who they say are just apologists for the wicked Republicans.  They say they cannot see any difference between the GOP and the Democrats.  It is all “the establishment” to them, all needs to be torn down and lets start anew.

They are for “power to the people” and most often have no clue that is exactly what the 1960′s leftists used to chant, and it is what the Occupy Wall Street crowd says, and why they are so comfortable with them, and with their rhetoric.

They don’t like you is an understatement because so many of them HATE you and they say it loud and clear.  And some of you my friends, are THEIR friends on Facebook because, I suppose you would say, you have “an open mind”?

When it comes to trash and filth and those tearing down America I must tell you plainly, I do not have an open mind at all.  My mind is very made up.

When it comes to protecting my wife, my family, my country and my faith, my mind is very, very made up.

And you and I my friend, should be far more “choosy” about these matters and about the friends we have – especially on place like “Facebook” where your choices very much help define WHO you are and what you stand for.

I’m very happy with the company I keep, here at RED STATE online and in what some of us still call “the real world” – the people that would NEVER be seen associating with the people on THAT side of the street in Gettysburg, PA.

It has nothing to do with Rick Santorum, who was there in Gettysburg on Tuesday night, nor with Mitt Romney nor with Newt Gingrich.

The sooner the supporters of these three candidates understand the real “line in the dirt” is not between us, but between all of us and those people in the street at Gettysburg last night, the sooner we can get back on track to throwing out of office those people who are destroying our country and defeating in primaries those who won’t stand up to them but wish to run away from battle.

Most of us here agree with the purpose of RED STATE – to help the most conservative, articulate and experienced candidate available win primaries and then help them win elections.

We can only win in general elections by defeating in primaries the wishy-washy “etcha-sketch” Republicans who RED STATE’s Erick Erickson warned us about – one of whom won renomination anyway on Tuesday in Illinois’s 16th Congressional District (A Case Study in Why Republicans Do Not Fear Conservatives).

That is what happens when we don’t stand together.  That is what happens when we say “oh I’m just too busy” instead of doing what several hundred people did this past Tuesday night – turn off their TV set, get out of their comfortable house and drive off – some drove a few hours – to stand up on the other side of the line from the Occupy Wall Street leftists and their hater-allies in Gettysburg.

The winner when we don’t stand together, are those people in the street at Gettysburg two nights ago – the Occupy Wall Streets, the direct descendants of the hateful radical left of the 1960′s, those who line us all up in their gunsights and say, “we do not see any difference between them.”

Despite some differences in primaries – and I do remain a steadfast supporter of Rick Santorum – the real “line in the dirt” is between us, and those who would either help, or stand to the side, while Barack Obama and his army tramples us to win reelection in 2012 and continue their “transforming” work on our beloved country.

Defriend them on facebook.  Stand apart from them.  Take issue with them.  They are not your friends and they think all of us are the same thing, all of us are “neocons” and all of us conservatives, are the same thing as the liberals.

They cannot tell the difference between conservative Senator Marco Rubio and leftist Senator Chuck Schumer.  The two parties are the same thing they keep chanting.  It is right there on their Facebook pages, and some of these people are listed as YOUR friend.

They are either stupid and/or misinformed or they are purposely lying with the purpose of destroying us, discrediting us, defeating us.

Either way, stand apart from them.

It is time for us to have a clear field of fire, regardless of which candidate for President each of us on THIS side of that line support.

Take a good look, at who is throwing the rotten eggs and tomatoes, the epithets and angry words at us.

It is clearly there to see.  In the street of Gettysburg this past Tuesday night.

On the pages of Facebook, all over the internet, at hate sites like Daily Kos and at the Facebook pages of those who echo that hatred and that defamation of conservatives and in some cases use the material from the leftwing hate sites to attack conservatives.

Take a good look at those who hate us, and then make a decision.  And then I pray, you will do something about it.

As for me and my house, we serve the Lord, and we stand with Ronald Reagan in urging, “hold up that banner of no pale pastels but of bold and vibrant colors.”  The Colors of concerned Christians who will not lay aside our faith when we step into the public square.  The colors of conservatives, proud of our country’s heritage and determined to preserve all that is good.

We did terribly in Illinois watching conservative Don Manzullo go down to defeat in a primary at the hands of a GOP “regulars” candidate.

As Erick Erickson said, so often, conservatives “won’t pony up for their own. (therefore we are) Paper Tigers… desk ornaments, not cause for concern.”

Men of the West, to echo Tolkien’s King, make your stand now.

Oh.  And as for a choice of friends?

Were I there this past Tuesday night I’d have happily stood on the Santorum side of the line, and this weekend, I’ll be there with Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney’s emissary Gov. Nikki Haley at the PA Leadership Conference.  Stand with me there in Harrisburg, now and onward, and I’ll happily be friends with most anybody there.

Stand with me, with RED STATE activists, on this side of that line in the dirt.

HanoverHenry is Pat Henry on Facebook, and I’m on the lookout for new friends there.

Links to articles I wrote at RED STATE at my Facebook Notes section.

Once again as I review the newly passed voter ID law sponsored by State Representative Daryl Metcalfe in Pennsylvania which requires you to show a photo ID as a condition of being allowed to vote, I am reminded how good laws are, and should be, based upon right and wrong, and the liberal-left ignores this fundamental truth at its peril.

Pennsylvania became the 16th state to enact such a law, although the Justice Department of President Obama has moved to disqualify Texas’s law recently and the Wisconsin passed law is tied up in the courts.

Aiming at the 2012 election and hoping that enough new American (legal immigrant) voters, Hispanics and black voters will be ignorant enough to believe them, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Pennsylvania branch argues that he thinks this is “an attempt at voter suppression.”

Conjuring up images of the Klu Klux Klan rampaging in Pennsylvania and the other states in America that require you to show a photo ID – available on request free if someone does not have the means to pay for a low cost identification such as a drivers license or an alternative available at the same office you get your drivers license, the hope is that there will be an army of black, Hispanic and other immigrant voters marching to the polls to throw out the evil racist Republicans.

In defense of the measure that he sponsored and which has now been signed into law by the Republican Governor, my “Facebook friend” State Representative Daryl Metcalfe, a champion of many different conservative causes over the years, said on his facebook “fan” page:

“I believe every single individual has a right to have their vote counted and if any individual vote is being canceled out by a fraudulently cast vote, that is one too many.”

Many forget that passage of this measure is no small accomplishment because Rep. Metcalfe had to overcome an alliance of determined liberal left politicians in both chambers of the legislature, allied to liberal leaning Republican legislators plus the weak kneed Republicans who call themselves conservative but “run for the tall grass” at the first sound of battle from the left.

This is a tremendous accomplishment for Rep. Daryl Metcalf – who appeared on Greta Susteren‘s Fox TV “On the Record show being interviewed last night – and for conservatives in Pennsylvania and around America owe a tremendous THANK YOU to him for passing such a bill in a blue state like this – you can send him an email at dmetcalf@pahousegop.com and you can also “like” his facebook page, “PA State Representative Daryl Metcalfe.”

The ACLU and their leftwing allies have assembled their armies to make this a major issue in this year 2012.

In states like Pennsylvania, which went RED the last time around and elected a Republican Governor, and a majority in the State House of Representatives and State Senate, the liberal-left aims to reverse this and restore Democrats to power in both chambers of the legislature and setup to retake the Governor’s mansion two years later.

Their first counter-attack against conservative legislators like Rep. Metcalfe, is to use the courts to reverse what elected officials have enacted as law with popular support.

Before you dismiss their chances of success, consider this.

In Wisconsin a judge has supported the ACLU’s request in court to throw out the simple requirement enacted by the representatives elected by the people that a reasonable requirement to vote is to prove you are who you say you are.  And the Eric Holder/Barack Obama Justice Department’s “ruling” to throw out a similar law in Texas is now being challenged in court there.

In many states you do not even have to prove that you are an American citizen eligible to vote, to receive a photo ID which in turn would then enable you to register to vote and to vote.

But even that requirement is called “onerous” and “burdensome” for blacks, Hispanics and other Americans who, the liberals argue, are being blocked from voting because of this simple requirement that they prove they are who they say they are at the polling place.

Putting such a requirement to prove you are who you say you are, into the same category of hateful, bigoted, masked and robed Klu Klux Klansmen out marauding, pillaging and lynching uppity blacks for trying to speak out, to register other blacks and to vote, is absurd, ridiculous, and is a clear and present danger to free elections in the United States.

Not to mention, this tactic by the liberal left is a repugnant, despicable and misleading fright to legal black, Hispanic and recent immigrant voters in America, who should be reassured that of course this does not interfere with their ability to vote in elections.

The clear aim of liberal-left strategists is to terrify a voter segment they think is totally stupid and gullible.

Those in the know in Washington, DC and who have been politically active as conservatives for more than 10 years are already aware that Congressman Robert K. Dornan was defeated in 1996 by a very slim margin provided to his liberal-left backed Democrat opponent via illegal aliens voting in his Congressional district.

Because the Congressman was very popular with conservatives but detested by moderate Republicans, his appeal of the rigged election results resulted in a one-sided denial by the House of Representatives – his court of appeals- where some moderate Republicans joined a phalanx of Democrats in denying him the right of an incumbent with the evidence he carried to the table, to have a formal investigation launched to review the evidence he presented.

Radical leftist activist and “author” of smear/hit-books aimed at conservatives, Al Franken is widely reported to have “earned” his U.S. Senate seat the same old fashioned way – cheating when the Republican running for that seat started out with a very clear lead after the polls closed but they kept “finding” more stacks of votes and the results were “switched” to declare radical Franken a new U.S. Senator.

Plenty of people are still upset that in Iowa, Rick Santorum did NOT lose to Mitt Romney as originally reported but actually WON that election.  It did him no good finding out three weeks later because two more primaries had gone by during that time – the precious time needed to “boost” your fundraising from that “victory lift” was gone, stolen, poof.

Whether that was a simple mistake or an example of the Republican “regulars” stealing an election we may never know.  But we do know that the sanctity and security of American elections was once again thrown into question – to those who voted, to those who sacrificed so much so that America could continue as a self-governing society as founded in 1776, and to those around the world who look to us an example.

In Florida the 2000 election virtual tie that was then tied up in courts until the Supreme Court finally decided on a 5-4 vote to uphold the state’s election results awarding the electoral college votes and therefore the U.S. Presidency to George Bush, the popular mythology to this day is that somehow the Republicans “stole” the election and the Republican majority on the Supreme Court upheld that robbery.

The truth is it was ballots designed by Democratic Party officials in Democratic Party controlled counties which they were criticizing.

And it was THEIR third party problem that year – Ralph Nader – who siphoned off enough votes from Al Gore to enable George Bush to win in a squeaker.

But the most important – and almost totally unreported – factor in the Florida election result is that military voter’s absentee ballots were trashed (as they so often are), if they even made it from around the world and to the states and to Florida where an out-of-country stationed American soldier, sailor, airman or marine was stationed.

Those who gave up the most for us to have the right to continue as a self-governing Republic were in fact, the most disenfranchised voters of the past quarter century.

But in Florida their being disenfranchised almost enabled the Democrats to win that state in 2000 and to elect radical left, phony environmentalist Al Gore to the Presidency.

In Pennsylvania, Rep. Metcalfe spoke very clearly about the previously reported fraudulent voting in cities which is a matter of record in his previously cited interview with Fox TV’s Greta Van Susteren last night.

Metcalfe said in that interview, “As a veteran, I want to ensure every citizen that wants to vote is able to vote and that their vote is not canceled out by the forces of corruption, as we’ve seen taking place throughout the history of Pennsylvania, with overturned elections, prosecutions — prosecution of a Pennsylvania congressman back in 1998 in the Philadelphia area” (entire transcript).

Now we come back to the 7th Commandment, “Thou Shalt not Steal.”

And we come back to the belief by Christian conservative activists that all good law is law based on the very basics of right and wrong, exactly as the founders intended when they first announced the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and then later when they created the Constitution with the Bill of Rights.

Democrats aim to steal the 2012 election by having people vote who have no right to vote.

Democrats aim to win the 2012 election by scaring the heck out of blacks, Hispanics and recent immigrants who DO have the right to vote, falsely claiming that their franchise to vote is about to be stolen from them by Republicans.

This “invented” issue very simply is: unless they return Barack Obama and the Democrats to power in Washington and the states, then the evil Republicans aka Klu Klux Klan, will forever disenfranchise them and rob them and their children of their precious right to vote.

In states like Virginia where a U.S. Congressional seat last time was decided by less than 1 percent in favor of a liberal Democrat, having enough illegal alien voters participate and having them believe they have to stop the Republicans who are trying to steal their rights, would be more than sufficient to decide that and many other contests.

In the last election the $700 million raised by Barack Obama included many clearly illegal donations – as has been documented in a cover story several years ago by Newsmax magazine.

There were so many variations on “Mickey Mouse” and “Santa Clause” making $25, $50 and $100 donations as to defy belief.

There was even a photo distributed by the Associated Press and carried in many newspapers across America, showing someone described by the pro-Arab, anti-America photographer/reporter as a “Palestinian refugee” who appeared to be 20 or 25 years of age at most, making phone calls the article said, to Americans urging them to vote for Barack Obama.

There was nothing in this widely reprinted photo with caption to confirm if this person in the photo was an American citizen or if he had legal permanent American resident status which alone allows him to donate and participate in an American election.  To the contrary, he was identified by name and only as a “Palestinian refuge” who supported the election of Barack Obama for President.

For those who do not know the history two facts are critical to understand the significance of this photograph and the caption:

First, the term “refugee” is from a U.N. resolution in 1948 recognizing displaced people in the middle east as “refugees” after they fled Israel at the end of the first Arab-Israeli war.

Not to wade into middle East politics but, the question is, how can a 25 year old making phone calls be a “refugee” from a war that ended 52 years earlier?

And most critically, why is a foreigner making illegal calls to Americans to tell them how to vote, and this is being blithely reported without question by all of the newspapers across America who use material provided to them by Associated Press, including the work of this so-called “photographer-reporter” who is actually an activist supporting all the usual anti-America, anti-Israel causes in the middle east and paid by AP?

Another important detail is that the actual place where the phone call came from was noted for its people – the “Arab Street” as they are called – going out in wild celebrations outdoors on two specific occasions we might want to remember: first when the “Blackhawk Down” incident happened and 19 American Army Rangers were killed by Taliban-trained militia trying to steal the aid we were donating.

And second, the “Arab Street” of Palestinian “refugees” where this fellow was calling from to urge votes for Barack Obama, was wild with joy and celebration on September 11, 2001 when they heard of the suicide bomber attack that killed 3000 Americans.

So as the liberal-left gears up for what may very well promise to be the biggest election robbery in American history this year – with both fundraising, campaigning and actual vote counting threatened to be the most blatantly illegal of all time, we have a new battleground in Pennsylvania emerging.

The Republican Governor, Tom Corbett, said he signed this measure into law “to prevent voter fraud.”

The ACLU’s man on the scene, Vic Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, said in what passes for eloquence on the left, “that’s a crock.”

Regardless of whether the courts follow Walczak and the ACLU or not, the left is aiming to galvanize enough angry immigrant and black voters with the charges that their votes are “being suppressed” so as to win Pennsylvania and other battleground states which have large cities and large populations of this fertile recruiting territory for them.

Remember, the last election put Pennsylvania into the Obama column for two reasons: in the “red state” parts of the state such as my own Hanover area and south central PA 19th Congressional district where Republicans always win, there was about an 8 percent drop off in voter turnout.

While in the “blue” state part of Pennsylvania – mainly Philadelphia and Pittsburgh – there was an enormous JUMP in the usual vote turnout as the ACORN and liberal-left “get out the vote” (GOTV) apparatus did its work to turn out votes, any votes.

Now this is another of the “issues” they aim to use to boost voter turnout in the same “blue state” parts of Pennsylvania and indeed, across America in the precincts normally voting for Democrats.

The two things that will decide whether they get their way is this:

First, will their ploy with blacks and recent legal immigrants and Hispanics, work?

Will this “issue” they have created produce more voter turnout?

Their entire assumption is that those they are targeting, are completely stupid.

Their entire assumption is that the blacks, Hispanics and recent immigrants will only have the information THEY provide – that Republicans hate them and are trying to suppress their votes.

It is a totally concocted issue and will only work if in fact, the central premise the radical left holds up: their target audience is both stupid, and willing to steal.

“Thou shalt not steal,” can be a stumbling block to the left in its goal of galvanizing this particular target audience.  An enormous number of them are in fact, Christians.  That means they have more than passing familiarity with this idea, THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.

The liberal Democrats are basically saying: we want people who have no right to vote, who are not American citizens, to be able to vote in American elections.

The liberal left and the Democrats are saying THOU SHALT NOT STEAL except for blacks, Hispanics, recent immigrants and most of all, for illegal aliens not registered to vote.

Is it possible they miscalculated and a large number of these people know right from wrong, and know that this “gift’ being offered to them, actually trashes their sacred right to vote which they earned if they are immigrants and which is a sacred birthright if they were born American?

Is it possible a large number of blacks, Hispanics and new Americans will say: but you want to let people citizens, vote the same as me … me who am an American… you are stealing, you are cancelling out my vote… could this happen?

I pray that our side does in fact convey this argument in the year ahead at every opportunity we can.  I pray  that we do in fact, convey our respect for the right to vote for all legal Americans and that we will fight vigorously to defend this right – and not let the liberal-left destroy our lawful votes being cast by American citizens.

We do have powerful and eloquent champions who argue our side in this battle against the liberal left and if you did not know it let me tell you plainly: the liberal left despises them beyond anything you can really understand.

You will never fully understand what I am talking about unless you go ahead and speak to one of these fearless champions of our cause to the “new Americans” immigrant community, Hispanics, blacks.  It is important that we support and encourage such emissaries wherever we find them.

Several examples come immediately to mind of such champions.  If there are others who you think of I will appreciate your adding a comment at the end of this article about who they are and how you think they can be reached to be thanked.

Tito Munoz in Virginia has a regular radio show and gained fame (or “notoriety” to the radical left which hates him) as “Tito the Builder” in campaigning for GOP candidate John McCain for President and many Republicans before and since.

A popular fixture at many TEA Party rallies including some in DC I have attended, I know that the battering Tito receives from the left and his critics takes a terrible toll on him and his truly wonderful and supportive wife, very articulate a champion of our cause in her own right.

You can support TITOpac or you can simply send him a THANK YOU message at his PAC webpage.

Another articulate champion for our conservative cause who speaks with tremendous credibility to the “new Americans” community is Ana Puig, the Freedomworks Pennsylvania State Coordinator, whose country of origin is Brazil (she is actually of Brazilian-Portuguese background).

I have heard Ana speak about American freedom and know she is a terrific, fearless and articulate advocate for our cause.  She is also my “facebook friend.”  You can send Anna a thank you note encouraging her to redouble her efforts this election year at apuig@freedomworks.org.

And a third champion for our cause to one of these liberal-left targeted communities is the organization which I have written of before, Americans for Christian Traditions in our Nation, which has a number of black pastors attempting to communicate with their own congregation about the importance of looking beyond color of skin or past proclivity to vote for one political party but to look at the issues and the values of the candidates.

Three examples of champions of this ACTION of PA cause are the York County Chairman, Pastor Ken Gibson, and black Pastor Thaddeus Godwin, who both spoke at a recent gathering of pastors – many of whom are black – sponsored by Action of PA’s York County, PA chapter.

Pastor Gibson is responsible for bringing the terrific pro-family, pro-fatherhood, Christian movie Courageous to York County by organizing 1000 Christians to attend the first weekend showing at a movie theater and he showed the movie again at his congregation last week.

Pastor Thaddeus Godwin has spoken out on radio interviews about the genocide of black babies in inner cities by the crime of abortion administered by Planned Parenthood.  A registered Democrat, Pastor Godwin is a member of the Board of Directors of ACTION of PA’s York County Chapter, in itself a “profile in courage” given his situation.

Both Pastors Gibson and Godwin are educating their congregations, registering them to vote, and persuading them why they should vote for ideals and issues not just for political parties.

And, also speaking at that recent lunch gathering of Christian Pastors hosted by ACTION of PA of York County was Father Samuel E. Houser of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church.

Introduced by one of his parishioners at the lunch as “a genuine profile in courage” for doing the same thing as Pastors Godwin and Gibson in the inner city of York, PA – urging his parishioners to register to vote, to ask questions of the candidates, to consider issues of concern to us as Catholics and to look past political parties and to how the candidates answer those questions before deciding how you will vote (you can send him a thank you note at SamuelHouser@yahoo.com).

Thou shalt not steal

“Thou shalt not steal” means very simply, we want everyone to remember there is a gang of thieves at work trying to steal this 2012 election.  The thieves are every leftist, every liberal, and every Democrat, who thinks having a photo-ID as a condition of voting, should be outlawed by the courts.

I do not know if they will succeed in their goal of using stark terror to increase the turnout of these targeted voter constituencies who sometimes vote as high as 90 and 95% for the liberal-Democrat candidate, but the critical work of good people like Tito Munoz in Virginia and Ana Puig in Pennsylvania, of Pastors like Thaddeus Godwin, Samuel Houser, Ken Gibson and so many others like them in Pennsylvania and across America could in part, help foil them this year.

The second thing the left is counting on in their gambit to make an “issue” of this “right to steal” for illegal voters, is that THEY will galvanize more voters than our side will.

Will conservatives who are not happy that their choice for President, actually fall asleep again as so many did in the McCain 2008 election?

Will many heed the siren call of those who chant “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two parties, the old rally cry of such disparate forces in American politics as George Wallace in1968, Ross Perot (who was sufficiently successful in pulling enough votes away from GOP Bush that he enabled Bill Clinton to win with a plurality of 43% of the popular vote) and the last dozen years of Libertarian Party candidates?

So the next time somebody tells you that they cannot see any difference between the two parties, Republican and Democrat, ask them which party in Wisconsin and in Texas and now in Pennsylvania, is the party that defended the sanctity of the election process, defended our votes, and put in place a measure to STOP the Democrats from stealing more elections?

And which party is the one that supports overturning this law in Wisconsin, Texas, in Pennsylvania and every other state that has enacted such a provision to prevent stealing votes?

Which party applauds the recent complaint by Mexico to the United Nations, to investigate how America is “disenfranchising” Hispanic voters (who also vote in Mexican elections if they are dual citizens)?

Remember, the Mexican government of course, requires her citizens to show a photo ID to vote.  The same Mexican government which is asking the United Nations to “investigate” America for disenfranchising Hispanic Americans.

Regardless of whether you prefer Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, or (my favorite) Rick Santorum to win the GOP nomination to run against Barack Obama, there is without a doubt, a lot at stake in this year ahead in thwarting the liberal-left’s attempt to turn Thou Shalt not Steal upside down, establish by court and federal Justice Department edict “the right to steal” and brand Republicans as the modern day resurrection of the Klu Klux Klan.

The despicable and hateful work of the liberal-left to terrorize blacks, Hispanics and new American immigrants should be thwarted by conservatives who are thankful that we have champions like Republican Daryl Metcalfe leading the charge.  And we should follow where they lead and put more like him into legislatures here in Pennsylvania and across America.

HanoverHenry is Pat Henry on Facebook, and I’m on the lookout for new friends there.

Links to articles I wrote at RED STATE at my Facebook Notes section. 

Contrary to leftwing chants echoed in some chambers of the conservative cause, Rick Santorum is not running as the soulmate of Jerry Falwell and the religious right but as a full spectrum conservative.

But they keep focusing on any instance in which he does exactly what Ronald Reagan always used to do – give thanks to God and refer to “the Centrality of Faith” to him as he champions conservative values.

This refusal to back down on this “faith” topic puts Santorum in marked contrast to another Catholic who ran for President over 50 years ago, Senator John F. Kennedy, who as I wrote in a previous REDSTATE column, said in a now “famous” speech (I think of it as notorious along with Santorum) that those who step out into the public square must be silent on this most critical subject of what animates, motivates and guides them in life and as a person seeking office in the United States.

That “separation of church and state” pretext has been hurled at conservative Christians ever since, designed to silence or discredit us.

As so often happens with the radical left they simply establish a strawman – a fictional accouint of Rick Santorum’s beliefs – and then attack that strawman.

As John F. Kennedy did in 1960, these critics claim say they oppose having our priests, ministers and rabbis TELL us who to vote for, which political party to support, which legislation to support and which we must oppose.  As if any of us ever advocated such a thing.

And you can count on them trotting out these 50 year old “strawman arguments” every time someone who is a conservative makes any reference to his faith.

And you can count on them ignoring it every time one of their friends on the left does the same thing – such as supporters of Barack Obama openly recruiting “congregation captains” to help reelect their candidate, at each Church in America.

To put things in perspective we ought to focus on what Rick Santorum actually said.  As opposed to what his critics CLAIM he said.

Therefore today, irritated as I am by reviewing the strawman arguments this week after another Santorum string of victories in Alabama and Mississippi, I thought I would bring you two segments of his victory speeches.

Both of Santorum’s speeches outrage the left because he specifically refers to his faith in God in both of them and relates that to the issues we face in seeking the defeat of Barack Obama.

And both of these Santorum victory speeches energize and fire up his supporters while reaching out to new friends

And that is the reason that Rick Santorum is the biggest threat to the left.  When people actually hear him instead of the version brought to them by the likes of Rachell Maddow, MSNBC, Media Matters, Daily Kos, Huffington Post and all the other extremist hate websites, groups and personalities, together with those who echo their words while posing as a part of our conservative cause or those who are simply gullible, there is a huge difference in their perception.

Rick Santorum sounds very reasonable when you actually listen to him instead of the distorted echo of his words reported by the left and the conservative-Christian haters.

One of the two Santorum victory speeches is from 48 hours ago when he won in these most recent two states.  The other is from his string of victories on Super Tuesday.

Santorum speaks of Obamacare and what motivates him to run for President.  But he speaks clearly as to one major difference between us and Obama – that we along with the founders know that our rights under threat today, come from God, not from the State.

And in his second victory speech he very specifically refers to “the centrality of faith” at the conclusion.

If you do believe in God, if you do believe He created us, and if you do believe that in the end He will judge us, then why is it that the left makes Santorum out to be such an extremist for simply saying that such a belief – shared with most Americans – is “central” in his life?

Read first, what Santorum said after his Super Tuesday victory where he won in Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota and tied in Ohio, despite being massively outspent and facing a multi-million dollar blitz of anti-Santorum advertising from the Gingrich and Romney campaigns.

Santorum Victory Speech, March 6, 2012 (partial text)

We have a group of people in Washington and in other places around this country who believe that the elites in Washington are the ones who should be making the decisions for all of us, and they have systematically gone and grown the size and scale of government to beyond where it’s — well, it’s just unrecognizable. We are running deficits, where we’re borrowing 40 cents of every dollar.

And as you look at all of the young people here, the leaders in Washington are saying to you, on your tab, and you will pay for this, the rest of your life.

What right does the government have to do that to the next generation?

We have people who believe that America’s best days are behind us. They believe that it’s no longer possible for free enterprise, a free economy, and free people to be able to build strong communities and families and be able to provide for themselves and their neighbors. No, we now need an increasingly powerful federal government to do this for us.

The reason that Karen and I ultimately decided to get into this race was because of that issue, and in particular one issue. I’ve said it almost every stump speech I’ve given. If it wasn’t for one particular issue that to me breaks the camel’s back with respect to liberty in this country, and that is the issue of Obamacare.

What we have — what we will go to in a very short period of time, the next two years, a little less than 50 percent of the people in this country depend on some form of federal payment, some form of government benefit to help provide for them.  After Obamacare, it will not be less than 50 percent; it will be 100 percent.

Now, every single American will be looking to the federal government — not to their neighbor, not to their church, not to their business or to their employer, or to the community or nonprofit organization in their community — will be looking always to those in charge, to those who now say to you that they are the allocator and creator of rights in America.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the beginning of the end of freedom in America. Once the government has control of your life, then they got you…

Ronald Reagan, in his farewell address to the American people, worried about whether America would remember what made us great, that we are not a great country because we have a great and powerful government. We are a great country because we believe that rights don’t come from the government, but as in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, says, our rights come to us from our creator.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is an election about fundamental liberty. And the signature piece, the signature piece of legislation that points this out, where you have economic rights created by the government, and then the government using its heavy hand to force you to buy insurance, to force you to take policies that you don’t want, and, of course, to force you to take coverages that may even violate your faith convictions…

…in this race, there is only one candidate who can go up on the most important issue of the day and make the case, because I’ve never been for an individual mandate at a state or federal level.

And this gem is the conclusion of his victory speech two days ago after winning another two states:

Santorum Victory Speech, March 13, 2012 (last paragraph)

“You stood with a guy ….you knew, shared your values, and was going to go out and work for you to make sure this country was free and safe and prosperous based on believing in free people and free markets and the free economy and, of course, the integrity of the family and the centrality of faith in our lives.”  

Because I believe he represents our best chance against Barack Obama I’m for Rick Santorum for President.  Because I believe with Bill Buckley we should always support the candidate who is the most conservative and who has the best chance of winning, I support Santorum.

Because I think we can get a better deal than Mitt Romney, who if he were the nominee I’d happily vote for, I’m for Rick Santorum.  Because I think he would do a far better job of representing our views opposing Obamacare and its “edict-mandate” I’m for Santorum.

Because I continue to respect Newt Gingrich, am proud to own books and videos he has produced and written and I want those ideas to prevail in this contest, I’m for Rick Santorum.

Because I want to win against Romney and then against Obama I beg Gingrich supporters who read this to BOTH publicly switch to Santorum – announce it on your Facebook page, in these pages and to everyone who will listen.  And write to tell Newt Gingrich you have switched and beg him to join you.

I do not know if we will prevail at the GOP convention, or against Barack Obama.  I know because of “the centrality of faith” and our duty to the next generation and the future of America, that it is our responsibility to try, and I believe Rick Santorum would be our best bet as an advocate.

And if in the end we lose, let it be with a standard bearer who truly represents our beliefs and articulates them accurately and courageously.  Rick Santorum.

HanoverHenry is Pat Henry on Facebook, and I’m on the lookout for new friends there,

Links to articles I wrote at RED STATE at my Facebook Notes section. 

While there seem to be a large number of people active on Facebook and other social media swearing they won’t vote for one or another of the candidates if their own choice is not the winner of the GOP presidential primaries, Rick Santorum’s new string of victories will surely make him the top target of the naysayers in the next week.

The Santorum victory in Alabama and Mississippi simply means that, whether it is Santorum or it is another candidate, Mitt Romney’s trouble with the conservatives and the “values voters” isn’t fading or going away.

The pundits and pols continue to echo this myth that to win a GOP presidential primary you “run to the right’ in the primary and then as soon as you have it locked up  you swing “back to the middle” (ie. to the left).

The proponents of this view never suggest this idea to liberal Democrats and that’s funny… they ARE liberal Democrats.

With a few exceptions, the people who buy into this “run to the right, then go left” idea are either liberals or people who do not have an enormous capacity for intellectual discussion, to put it as gently as I can.

So if you swing over to MSNBC TV you get the usual suspects there giving their “advice” to the Republicans, and what are they advising us?

As usual, they say that women don’t like conservatives.  And most especially, they aver, women don’t like Christian conservatives.

They insist that the government has to pay for their contraception or else it diminishes or eliminates their constitutional right to sex before and after and for those who unlike Rachel Maddow are engaged in heterosexual marriage, marriage-sex with your own partner.

Therefore, women have to be against Santorum because he is a Catholic trying to take away their ability to have sex, and their rights to have a healthy life.

This really is the level of discourse on the left, going past the theatre of the absurd..  And it reminds me of what people used to say about Jerry Falwell, the first major “social conservative” or “values voter” leader from over 30 years ago.

Falwell and his “Moral Majority” they said, were (also) trying to tell people how to live their lives, and using the power of the government to make people do what they believe is right.

Like the Taliban terrorists, which the Rachel Maddows of MSNBC and the hate-sites of the left always love to say, the Christian rightwingers or “wingnuts” as MSNBC’s Christopher Matthews likes to call us, are on a fresh new campaign to steal away all of our rights, trash the Constitution and impose our religion on everybody and run the government and everybody’s lives.

The liberal left and their witting and unwitting allies within our GOP and conservative ranks continue to say that only a more reasonable “moderate” like Mitt Romney has a chance to beat Barack Obama.

I wonder: who are the people with a handicapped ability to reason, who think this repeated argument that the left has made forever and ever, is one we should listen to?

Of course many of the people supposedly within our ranks, actually hate all Republicans and conservatives who they view as “neocons” and apologists for the liberal Republicans.

These are the people who have within their ranks the Ronald Reagan haters, and those people who love to repeat that mantra “there’s no difference” between GOP and Democrats they are all the same.

While these anti-GOP advocates get a serious hearing from people who are frustrated with how things have gone for our cause in Washington, there are a few of us who know how absurd this “Dem-GOP the same” argument is – which don’t forget goes all the way back to the 1968 “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two parties.

I’ve yet to hear a good answer from these anti-conservative, anti-GOP partisans, as to which political party has 19 U.S. Senators with a 0% rating from the American Conservative Union, and which party has 9 U.S. Senators with a 100% rating last year – and why wouldn’t we want to switch that around so there’s twice as many 100% conservatives as there are 0% conservatives?

And which party has a Marco Rubbio, a Jim DeMint and a Jim Inhoffe in the Senate?

Which party has an Al Franken, Harry Reid and a Chuck Schumer in the Senate?

I do know why some keep saying “I cannot see any difference” between the parties.  They have an anti-GOP, anti-conservative axe to grind.  Or they are a little slow on basic logic and short of essential facts.

And why do so many people – supposedly within our GOP and/or conservative ranks, echo the “party line” of the Huffington Post, Media Matters, the New York Times, Rachel Maddow, Daily KOS and their ilk, claiming that candidates like Rick Santorum are trying to “make” people do anything?

These are the same people, groups and websites who “cannot tell the difference” are most often, the very same people expressing the same visceral hatred of Rick Santorum and setting up strawman arguments against him.

They have the same purpose, the same design, and they are fired up to stop evil – which is to them, those of us who are supporting Rick Santorum or any more conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.

And of course, some of them are the same old liberal-progressive forces within the GOP which we have nicknamed “RINO’s” (Republicans in Name only) like Senator Olympia Snowe.

It is a strange alliance between the RINO’s, the anti-GOP group within the Tea Party and within the GOP, and the liberal-left.

Increasingly, the top target of this group which has been the historical opponent of conservatives within the GOP, is Rick Santorum.

Meanwhile, as Santorum continues to rack up victories against all odds, Newt Gingrich continues his role as Mitt Romney’s best friend, siphoning off enough votes so that even with his 2nd and 3rd place finishes he prevents a “blowout” win for Santorum over Romney again and again, as he did tonight.

I have no doubt that Mitt – and certainly the good people supporting him – means well.

The books and videos of Newt Gingrich – which I have purchased and highly recommend – will continue to sell well because Newt stays in the public eye as a candidate.

But in my view they would continue to sell well because they are masterpieces of wit, logic and fact and very well put together.  Newt doesn’t need to continue as a candidate and as an inadvertent spoiler for Mitt Romney for his books and videos to continue to sell.

But more and more of us are wondering: do his supporters not feel worried that his continued presence in this close contest will enable Mitt Romney to emerge as the winner with less than 40% of the primary votes but a possible majority of delegates?

Many states are like Pennsylvania, where you have a “beauty contest” where you vote for your choice of Presidential nominees, but it is a separate deal who you vote for as the delegates.

That means that Santorum may win a contest but some Ron Paul delegate candidates run a stealth campaign and are elected as convention delegates, who will ignore the election results and vote for Ron Paul.

Others will be people put forward by the GOP establishment who will run and win, and vote for Romney.

That means you cannot expect to defeat Mitt Romney with a bare minimum of delegates.  You need a large number of “not-Romney” delegates.

I believe the only hope for conservatives right now is enough of the Newt Gingrich supporters do what I would be doing if I saw Rick Santorum losing again and again – as a donor and supporter of Rick I’d be writing and begging him to withdraw as Rick Perry graciously did, and endorse a candidate with a better chance of defeating Mitt.

I do believe this question is in the hands of the supporters of Newt Gingrich more than anything.  I pray they will use their influence because I think that is the ONLY way that Newt would withdraw as a candidate and endorse Rick Santorum.

At one time and in two different primaries (going into South Carolina and again going into Florida) I said on my facebook wall that I endorsed and would support Newt Gingrich if I lived there at that time, despite my earlier support for Rick Santorum.

I thought at that time that Newt had the best chance going into both primaries to derail Romney.

A clear majority of self-described conservatives in both states did do that, including a 2-to-1 margin with self-described “values voters” who ignored the earlier endorsement by 2/3 of the Christian-right group leaders meeting in Texas to endorse Rick Santorum.

I hope Gingrich supporters will do the same thing now – switch, do it publicly, write it on your facebook page, post a message here, write to Newt Gingrich, and get behind Rick Santorum to stop Romney.

Not because he is the most stalwart conservative.  Not because he is a Christian.  Not because his track record is so much better than Newt.  Not because you like his ideas better (personally I like Newt’s ideas about colonizing space so go ahead and expel me from the Tea Party).

These views may or may not be yours.  They are irrelevant.

The reason to get behind Santorum is that this is the very best way we have right now to get a better deal than Mitt Romney as our nominee.

I’ll vote for Romney as the nominee if he wins.  I’m delighted Ron Paul has become totally irrelevant to this contest earning less than 5% of the vote, the same that libertarian-anarchists running as pro-drug and anti-war candidates do here in Pennsylvania (yes I like libertarians like John Stossel and many at the CATO Institute despite disagreeing with them on some things).

I’m delighted and thrilled with many of the speeches I’ve heard from both Santorum and from Gingrich and even listening to Mitt Romney is a real treat after several years of President Obama speeches.

But tonight’s victories in Alabama and Mississippi totally demolish the aura of inevitability and of invincibility for Mitt Romney, end any need for anyone to take Ron Paul seriously any longer, eliminate any chance that Newt Gingrich can be a viable candidate, and show that Rick Santorum has the horsepower to seriously challenge Mitt Romney and emerge as the GOP nominee.

I hope enough Gingrich supporters step up to the plate at this critical time and thank Newt Gingrich for his many years of service, for his wonderful work as a candidate for President (well, at least most of the time), and urge him to withdraw, while openly switching to Rick Santorum for President.

And most of all, I pray that conservatives will not let differences over their choice of Presidential nominee block them from cooperating and working together on the host of important issues our country faces in the future.

HanoverHenry is Pat Henry on Facebook, and I’m on the lookout for new friends there, https://www.facebook.com/HanoverHenry

Links to my RED STATE articles at my Facebook NOTES section.  

Liberal-left nightmare.  Catholic and Protestant Ministers had a private “Pastors Lunch” in York County, PA under the auspices of Americans for Christian Traditions in our Nation.

The very definition of an “ecumenical” (“gathering promoting… Christian unity or cooperation” see Merriam-Webster), what brought this otherwise disparate group together?

One attendee told me the pastors are concerned as never before about the threat to religious liberty and wanted to discuss what they can do to alert their congregations.  The threat – specifically including the recent “edict” from the federal government which I have written of here recently – bothers all of them a great deal.

(see two previous articles: A Tale of 2 churches: Obama Campaigners violate Law vs ACTIONofPA fidelity to law to organize Christians, and The Gates of Hell Will not Prevail: Here Come the Angry Catholics)

No doubt we have Barack Obama, Obamacare and this threat to religious liberty to thank for this record gathering at the annual Pastors Luncheon.

These Christian pastors of York County, PA – 38 in all – gathered to discuss these issues and how they could increase the influence of Christians over government policy and who is elected to office to represent York County.

The York County Chapter of Americans for Christian Traditions in Our Nation (ACTIONofPA), the lunch sponsor is Pastor Ken Gibson of Pleasant View Brethren in Christ Church (Red Lion, PA), who was the “Master of Ceremonies” for the luncheon.

The pastors heard keynote remarks from Joe Watkins, pastor of Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, the oldest African-American church in Philadelphia, PA , a past CNN commentator and radio talk show host and former candidate for Lt. Governor of PA.

In addition, Father Samuel E. Houser of St. Patrick Catholic Church in York, PA spoke of his recent efforts to persuade every member of his congregation that they must register to vote if they haven’t.

He has done this repeatedly – providing parishioners with the official registration forms in his church.

Father Houser made sure his Catholic churchgoers understand it is their duty to vote, and they must be very careful to vote for candidates who oppose abortion and who reflect their own views, who will defend our right to religious liberty, not just follow a “party line” out of habit.

Father Houser was introduced by one of the members of his congregation, who noted that the parish priest  has been “sounding this call to arms” to his Catholic congregation repeatedly since the Feb. 10 edict from the Obama Administration, forcing Catholic Churches which teach that abortion and certain contraception they would be forced to provide are actually “life threatening” (as the Harrisburg diocese website describes it) and violate the religious liberty of those who oppose these practices.

To thunderous applause, the Catholic prelate was introduced as a true “profile in courage” for taking such a strong and courageous stand and urging his congregation to write in protest to all their elected officials and to make sure they only vote for candidates who will defend our religious liberty.

“It takes courage” said the member of his congregation introducing him, “because some of those who will vote for the straight line ticket of President Obama and to restore Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker will be very angry with their pastor for taking this stand and will no doubt complain loudly.”

Elected officials who came in for criticism in Father Houser’s remarks include the Obama Administration for launching this new assault on religious liberty and trying to persuade female voters that it is about contraception – which it is not, incumbent US Senator from Pennyslvania, Bob Casey, and most especially former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who keeps reminding everyone she is a Catholic but who then attacks her own Church.

Father Houser was especially critical of Pennsylvania Senator Robert Casey, who many people voted for thinking he was like his late father in being anti-abortion, but they were deceived.

We understand from one of the attendees that Father Houser has in fact confirmed some in his congregation are unhappy with him – but also that he has apparently gained some fans around the country, at least one of whom wrote to him as a result of our earlier story.

He also has heard from a large number of his parishioners who are very supportive of his recent and repeated remarks from the pulpit in defense of religious liberty and urging his churchgoers to register to vote and to vote.  You can write to Father Houser to thank him,  SamuelHouser@yahoo.com.

The keynote remarks at the luncheon were delivered by Pastor Joe Watkins, introduced by Steve Johnson, a member of the board of directors of Americans for Christian Traditions in our Nation.

Steve Johnson, like Joe Watkins, is a recent candidate for Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania.  The two struck up a friendship as they competed in that race and shared various platforms around the state, during which they learned that they shared a strong Christian faith and conservative philosophy.  Steve recommended Joe Watkins as the speaker at this annual Pastor’s Luncheon.

Joe Watkins is a former staffer for Vice President Dan Quayle and has been a longstanding conservative advocate.  Despised by the radical left, he has been attacked by one of the top leftwing blogsites, Daily Kos, with one blogger writing of him after his TV appearance on CNN:

“The most fervent attacker of Rev. Wright was the African-American commentator Joe Watkins, who I haven’t really paid much attention to.  He was practically frothing at the mouth…”

You may recall the news – ignored by the “mainstream” media – about radical leftwing, anti-America Pastor Jeremiah Wright in 2008 with his blatantly racist, anti-white views who preached his filth from the pulpit of Barack Obama’s church for 20 years.  Wright has made additional “pronouncements” covered “religiously” (if I may say) by the “mainstream” press since President Obama’s election.

That Jeremiah Wright “Church” was Obama’s “base of operations” for 20 years which helped launch his organizing and political career, starting with the “organizing” of black churches in Chicago to “get out the vote” and elect leftwing Democrats – including himself – to office.

Funny how silent the left is about the “separation of Church and state” with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama supporters recent efforts to recruit “congregation captains” in every Church, engage in partisan politics at their churches to reelect him, but goes crazy about Pastor Joe Watkins.

The hate site Daily Kos posting I found, attacked Joe Watkins because on CNN recently he dared criticize  the radical, anti-America comments of Rev. Wright.

The Daily Kos blogger asked, “Just who is this ‘analyst’ and what is his agenda… attacking Barack Obama and Rev. Wright…”

Oh that leftwing Daily Kos blogger was upset with Joe Watkins, especially that Joe dared to have been born black and chose to be a conservative instead of a faithful little leftist.

The leftwing blogger who attacked Joe Watkins used vicious and racist language to describe him as an “oreo” (black on the outside but white on the inside – because he is a conservative).

It isn’t hard to see why Human Events described Daily Kos as the sixth worst “hate site” on the internet.

But on the other hand, anyone who whips up this much of a frenzy by militant leftists has plenty to recommend to conservatives.

I hope to obtain more details on the remarks of Joe Watkins at this luncheon to report in this column later this week (a videotape may be made available to me).

We applaud the efforts of Joe Watkins, ACTIONofPA (York Chapter) President, Pastor Ken Gibson, Catholic Priest, Father Samuel E. Houser, and ACTIONofPA (York Chapter) board member Steve Johnson, and all 38 who attended this “Pastors Luncheon” for their efforts to get more Christians to vote and to defend against this year’s worst attack on religious liberty in history.

If those who attended this annual “Pastors Luncheon” – in this case a most “ecumenical” gathering of Catholics and Christians – follow through on what they discussed this past Thursday and they turn out more of their congregation to vote then in the past watch for some changes.

Without ever telling anyone specifically who to vote for or against, these pastors may be responsible for Pennsylvania electing a different United States Senator (goodbye Democratic Bob Casey), and may change Pennsylvania from blue Barack Obama to a “Nobama” RED STATE, and on that happy note I will conclude today’s RED STATE column.

HanoverHenry is Pat Henry on Facebook, and I’m on the lookout for new friends there, https://www.facebook.com/HanoverHenry

It’s time for Democratic politicians like Elizabeth Warren who are courting Catholic voters, or who – like Senator Bob Casey – profess the Catholic faith themselves, to distance themselves from Daily Kos over the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing bigotry of Contributing Editor David Waldman.

Waldman, @KagroX on Twitter, is one of the leading figures at Daily Kos, the largest left-wing blog; a former Hotline staffer, he’s a contributing editor and front-page writer, runs the affiliated site Congress Matters, and his tweets are frequently quoted and retweeted by Markos Moulitsas. In an angry, profanity-laden tirade last night on Twitter over a flap between a local Virginia church and the Girl Scouts, Waldman unloaded his hatred of the Church, grasping for every anti-Catholic trope he could reach (examples: “Catholic Church: the ones we don’t rape, we’ll alienate by calling them communist b****es” or “Catholics are the next Shakers. No one under 35 will ever stay in this church”) and complaining that there are too many Catholics on the Supreme Court (“Oh that’s right. Six Catholics. Fantastic.”) Waldman’s vicious rant would have been right at home with the anti-popery screeds of the Klan in its heyday, the Know-Nothings of the 1840s or the “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion” trope that cost James G. Blaine the 1884 presidential election.

Waldman’s full outburst, in reverse chronological order, is below the fold; warning, it includes language we do not ordinarily permit on this website):

This Klan manifesto from 1923 – see Points 6-8 – seems positively restrained by comparison:

Politics ain’t beanbag, and Twitter is often not a place for the most thought-out opinions. But by any stretch, this is far over the line to simple hatemongering. It may not surprise us, but it should still offend us. And it should offend and embarrass Democratic officials that this is a loud voice in their coalition.

It may seem unfair to ask public officials to anticipate that stoking the fires of anti-Catholicism will be seized upon by extremists like Waldman, but they can certainly denounce it – unless it’s precisely what they aim to accomplish. There is a long and dolorous history of anti-Catholicism in this country. The Know-Nothings’ anti-Catholicism and hatred of new Catholic immigrants were intertwined. Then House Speaker Blaine sponsored the anti-Catholic 1875 Blaine Amendment to the Constitution (defeated in the Senate but enacted in many states and still used as a sword by the public school teachers’ unions to this day) and lost the 1884 presidential election when he stood by as one of his surrogates branded the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion”. The Klan was the leading voice against the Church in the 1920s, and as late as 1960, John F. Kennedy was forced to defend his faith against conspiratorial charges of papal control of the federal government. Catholicism has been the faith of many waves of immigrants to this country and strivers for upward social mobility – Irish and Italians and Poles, Filipinos and Hatians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans. There have always been those who find our faith threatening and seek to control it.

And the Catholic Church has been in the Democrats’ crosshairs in this election season, moreso than in any election since at least 1960. It’s not hard to see why. The four remaining GOP presidential candidates include Rick Santorum, an outspokenly traditional Catholic who has faced questioning on such uncontroversial Catholic beliefs as the existence of Satan, and Newt Gingrich, a late-in-life Catholic convert. Catholics are prominent and rising in GOP ranks, including John Boehner, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush (a convert), Bob McDonnell, Pat Toomey, Rudy Giuliani, Kelly Ayotte, Susan Collins, John Hoeven, Sam Brownback, Tom Corbett, Susanna Martinez, and Luis Fortuno. The six Catholics on the Supreme Court include all five Republican appointees: Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito. (The sixth is the first Hispanic Justice, Sonia Sotomayor).

The Obama Administration has played wedge-issue politics against the Church for reasons of both policy and politics, most recently with the rule, enacted by the Department of Health and Human Services, requiring Catholic institutions to provide health care plans including coverage of contraception, in violation of the Church’s own position – a rule condemned by all 180 Catholic Bishops and scores of Catholic institutions, but which Democrats gleefully predict will be an electoral asset against the GOP precisely because defending the Church’s religious freedom is a point of principle on which neither the GOP nor the Church can bend. In Washington State, Democrats are pressing even further, to require all health plans to cover abortions. These moves are all about taking away the Church’s freedom, in its capacity as an employer, to follow its own conscience, and thus eliminating one of the last major institutions in this country not beholden to government. And the DSCC is using the confrontation in fundraising emails:

Will no one rid the Obama Administration of these meddlesome priests? The harder the Administration pushes the Church for political and financial gain and to achieve government dominance over social issues, the more the excitable followers of the Administration work themselves into lathers of Catholic-bashing. This is as good a time as any for Democrats to admit that this tactic has gone too far. (It’s a recurring issue – Evangelical Christians and Mormons have come in for the same treatment before and will again).

Catholics are a majority in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania and over 40% of the population of in Massachusetts; Catholics are the largest religious denomination in 33 states, and in particular the predominant faith of Latinos in this country. We deserve to know that our elected leaders, regardless of party, will not encourage Waldman’s sort of bigotry. Catholic politicians like Bob Casey, Joe Biden, Patty Murray, Jack Reed, Nancy Pelosi and Dick Durbin – or politicians like Elizabeth Warren who are seeking the votes of Catholic voters – should think long and hard about associating themselves with Daily Kos as long as Waldman is part of it. But moreso, they have an obligation not to encourage the extremist bigots in their midsts.

It’s time for Democratic politicians like Elizabeth Warren who are courting Catholic voters, or who – like Senator Bob Casey – profess the Catholic faith themselves, to distance themselves from Daily Kos over the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing bigotry of Contributing Editor David Waldman.

Waldman, @KagroX on Twitter, is one of the leading figures at Daily Kos, the largest left-wing blog; a former Hotline staffer, he’s a contributing editor and front-page writer, runs the affiliated site Congress Matters, and his tweets are frequently quoted and retweeted by Markos Moulitsas. In an angry, profanity-laden tirade last night on Twitter over a flap between a local Virginia church and the Girl Scouts, Waldman unloaded his hatred of the Church, grasping for every anti-Catholic trope he could reach (examples: “Catholic Church: the ones we don’t rape, we’ll alienate by calling them communist b****es” or “Catholics are the next Shakers. No one under 35 will ever stay in this church”) and complaining that there are too many Catholics on the Supreme Court (“Oh that’s right. Six Catholics. Fantastic.”) Waldman’s vicious rant would have been right at home with the anti-popery screeds of the Klan in its heyday, the Know-Nothings of the 1840s or the “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion” trope that cost James G. Blaine the 1884 presidential election.

Waldman’s full outburst, in reverse chronological order, is below the fold; warning, it includes language we do not ordinarily permit on this website):

This Klan manifesto from 1923 – see Points 6-8 – seems positively restrained by comparison:

Politics ain’t beanbag, and Twitter is often not a place for the most thought-out opinions. But by any stretch, this is far over the line to simple hatemongering. It may not surprise us, but it should still offend us. And it should offend and embarrass Democratic officials that this is a loud voice in their coalition.

It may seem unfair to ask public officials to anticipate that stoking the fires of anti-Catholicism will be seized upon by extremists like Waldman, but they can certainly denounce it – unless it’s precisely what they aim to accomplish. There is a long and dolorous history of anti-Catholicism in this country. The Know-Nothings’ anti-Catholicism and hatred of new Catholic immigrants were intertwined. Then House Speaker Blaine sponsored the anti-Catholic 1875 Blaine Amendment to the Constitution (defeated in the Senate but enacted in many states and still used as a sword by the public school teachers’ unions to this day) and lost the 1884 presidential election when he stood by as one of his surrogates branded the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion”. The Klan was the leading voice against the Church in the 1920s, and as late as 1960, John F. Kennedy was forced to defend his faith against conspiratorial charges of papal control of the federal government. Catholicism has been the faith of many waves of immigrants to this country and strivers for upward social mobility – Irish and Italians and Poles, Filipinos and Hatians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans. There have always been those who find our faith threatening and seek to control it.

And the Catholic Church has been in the Democrats’ crosshairs in this election season, moreso than in any election since at least 1960. It’s not hard to see why. The four remaining GOP presidential candidates include Rick Santorum, an outspokenly traditional Catholic who has faced questioning on such uncontroversial Catholic beliefs as the existence of Satan, and Newt Gingrich, a late-in-life Catholic convert. Catholics are prominent and rising in GOP ranks, including John Boehner, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush (a convert), Bob McDonnell, Pat Toomey, Rudy Giuliani, Kelly Ayotte, Susan Collins, John Hoeven, Sam Brownback, Tom Corbett, Susanna Martinez, and Luis Fortuno. The six Catholics on the Supreme Court include all five Republican appointees: Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito. (The sixth is the first Hispanic Justice, Sonia Sotomayor).

The Obama Administration has played wedge-issue politics against the Church for reasons of both policy and politics, most recently with the rule, enacted by the Department of Health and Human Services, requiring Catholic institutions to provide health care plans including coverage of contraception, in violation of the Church’s own position – a rule condemned by all 180 Catholic Bishops and scores of Catholic institutions, but which Democrats gleefully predict will be an electoral asset against the GOP precisely because defending the Church’s religious freedom is a point of principle on which neither the GOP nor the Church can bend. In Washington State, Democrats are pressing even further, to require all health plans to cover abortions. These moves are all about taking away the Church’s freedom, in its capacity as an employer, to follow its own conscience, and thus eliminating one of the last major institutions in this country not beholden to government. And the DSCC is using the confrontation in fundraising emails:

Will no one rid the Obama Administration of these meddlesome priests? The harder the Administration pushes the Church for political and financial gain and to achieve government dominance over social issues, the more the excitable followers of the Administration work themselves into lathers of Catholic-bashing. This is as good a time as any for Democrats to admit that this tactic has gone too far. (It’s a recurring issue – Evangelical Christians and Mormons have come in for the same treatment before and will again).

Catholics are a majority in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania and over 40% of the population of in Massachusetts; Catholics are the largest religious denomination in 33 states, and in particular the predominant faith of Latinos in this country. We deserve to know that our elected leaders, regardless of party, will not encourage Waldman’s sort of bigotry. Catholic politicians like Bob Casey, Joe Biden, Patty Murray, Jack Reed, Nancy Pelosi and Dick Durbin – or politicians like Elizabeth Warren who are seeking the votes of Catholic voters – should think long and hard about associating themselves with Daily Kos as long as Waldman is part of it. But moreso, they have an obligation not to encourage the extremist bigots in their midsts.

So, Erick Erickson decided to make a big push against SOPA today, again bringing out the primary threat card. I also had a post on SOPA and PROTECT IP today.

We were heard. On the House side, Speaker John Boehner echoed Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and said the committee needs to find consensus before the bill can get a vote. And again, conservatives like Darrell Issa, Justin Amash, and Jason Chaffetz aren’t going to lie down and quit. So as long as Boehner and Cantor are true to their words, SOPA is dead in the House this Congress.

On the Senate side, of the 16 Republicans co-sponsoring PROTECT IP, I’ve received word of six of them changing their minds. Kelly Ayotte, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, and Marco Rubio are dropping their support. Moe was keeping track, but I think Ayotte flipped after the posted.

The threat of electoral consequences is all a politician will listen to. Democrats know that the online left won’t lift a finger, so Democrats are still backing SOPA and PROTECT IP, much to Markos Moulitsas’s disappointment. We stood on principle, while Daily Kos just whined. We got results, he got blown off.

Erick even tried to make this a bipartisan thing, where both sides would primary the SOPA and PROTECT IP supporters, but he got crickets.

Lamar Smith remains primary target number one though, as he does his best impression of the Saddam Hussein Ministry of Propaganda. The Allies are not in Iraq! SOPA is still in control of the country! It’s all lies! Also, Lamar Smith is himself an E-PARASITE. Will he resign and report to prison?

And remember: being against the SOPA/PROTECT IP plan is not the same as being pro-infringement. There are better, more workable ideas.

I started talking about PROTECT IP last May, back when the Kos left was all in favor of Internet regulation. So I’m staying ahead of the game and will continue to beat the drum about the next fight: national and Internet sales taxation. There’s a plan gaining steam called the Marketplace Fairness Act, and we all know what it means when people talk about “tax fairness:” Grab your wallet.

Governors love the plan, no, really, as it’s a way of raising taxes while claiming you’re not raising taxes. That saves them a political fight to cut spending.

They then resort to personal attacks on the opposition, by claiming they’re “evaders” or “cheats” or other such nonsense. Those shameful attacks change the subject from the undeniable fact that the Constitution reserves the regulation of interstate commerce to the Congress. Without an interstate compact, state attempts at interstate taxation defy the Constitution and are illegal.

Beware the compact plans currently coming about though. Demand that they contain safeguards, such as the compact being dissolved immediately, or state accession documents requiring the states to withdraw immediately, in the event of a national sales tax plan, in the style of the Canadian HST. Demand that tax rates be limited. Tell these sponsors that you oppose back-door national sales taxes with the full brunt of income tax left in place.

News flash: it’s not illegal for Google to do something just because you don’t like it. It annoys me that there are people who want to bring government into this. Bunch of whiners. Use something else if you don’t like it. Grow up!

Bad spectrum regulations harm access to the Internet. Yes, yes they do. I’m not going to adopt the language of these groups and say it’s a “civil rights issue,” but I agree that we need more competition. And that means less regulation and smaller government, not a runaway Justice and FCC. We need to let firms large and small get the spectrum they need.

So, Erick Erickson decided to make a big push against SOPA today, again bringing out the primary threat card. I also had a post on SOPA and PROTECT IP today.

We were heard. On the House side, Speaker John Boehner echoed Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and said the committee needs to find consensus before the bill can get a vote. And again, conservatives like Darrell Issa, Justin Amash, and Jason Chaffetz aren’t going to lie down and quit. So as long as Boehner and Cantor are true to their words, SOPA is dead in the House this Congress.

On the Senate side, of the 16 Republicans co-sponsoring PROTECT IP, I’ve received word of six of them changing their minds. Kelly Ayotte, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, and Marco Rubio are dropping their support. Moe was keeping track, but I think Ayotte flipped after the posted.

The threat of electoral consequences is all a politician will listen to. Democrats know that the online left won’t lift a finger, so Democrats are still backing SOPA and PROTECT IP, much to Markos Moulitsas’s disappointment. We stood on principle, while Daily Kos just whined. We got results, he got blown off.

Erick even tried to make this a bipartisan thing, where both sides would primary the SOPA and PROTECT IP supporters, but he got crickets.

Lamar Smith remains primary target number one though, as he does his best impression of the Saddam Hussein Ministry of Propaganda. The Allies are not in Iraq! SOPA is still in control of the country! It’s all lies! Also, Lamar Smith is himself an E-PARASITE. Will he resign and report to prison?

And remember: being against the SOPA/PROTECT IP plan is not the same as being pro-infringement. There are better, more workable ideas.

I started talking about PROTECT IP last May, back when the Kos left was all in favor of Internet regulation. So I’m staying ahead of the game and will continue to beat the drum about the next fight: national and Internet sales taxation. There’s a plan gaining steam called the Marketplace Fairness Act, and we all know what it means when people talk about “tax fairness:” Grab your wallet.

Governors love the plan, no, really, as it’s a way of raising taxes while claiming you’re not raising taxes. That saves them a political fight to cut spending.

They then resort to personal attacks on the opposition, by claiming they’re “evaders” or “cheats” or other such nonsense. Those shameful attacks change the subject from the undeniable fact that the Constitution reserves the regulation of interstate commerce to the Congress. Without an interstate compact, state attempts at interstate taxation defy the Constitution and are illegal.

Beware the compact plans currently coming about though. Demand that they contain safeguards, such as the compact being dissolved immediately, or state accession documents requiring the states to withdraw immediately, in the event of a national sales tax plan, in the style of the Canadian HST. Demand that tax rates be limited. Tell these sponsors that you oppose back-door national sales taxes with the full brunt of income tax left in place.

News flash: it’s not illegal for Google to do something just because you don’t like it. It annoys me that there are people who want to bring government into this. Bunch of whiners. Use something else if you don’t like it. Grow up!

Bad spectrum regulations harm access to the Internet. Yes, yes they do. I’m not going to adopt the language of these groups and say it’s a “civil rights issue,” but I agree that we need more competition. And that means less regulation and smaller government, not a runaway Justice and FCC. We need to let firms large and small get the spectrum they need.

We suffered a malfunction. The lights went out on our main site. At first I thought, okay, it must have been the article that Dee recently managed to slip by the editorial staff at the Daily Kos. My imagination summoned a legion of spittle-drooling, knuckle-dragging hackers in their mothers’ basements mounting an assault against our sites.

We had certainly stirred up an ants nest over there, as it was. There were some panties over there so twisted up it was cutting off their circulation. We had much the same thing happen a couple of times when the Huff ‘n Puff Post published a couple of our articles, probably because an editor published off a headline or a sub-head without reading the article. The results were hysterical. It was just as though we took a stick and stirred up a nest of Texas Fire Ants. Some of them actually actively looked for us for several months. Cute trick, since we publish from ‘somewhere’ in Wales.

So the lights went out and it was because of the bank’s apparent inability to post a payment on time. Gee, there it is, Dee… we’re victims. Victims of big banking. What a hoot. That’s exactly what the whole ‘progressive’ movement is all about. Taking victimization and attempting to codify it.

As genuinely sick and tired as I am of listening to the statist Lame Stream Press carry water for the left and its Marxist agenda, I can take solace from readers comments on the subject saying much the same things. They are (the statists) steadily losing ground and influence, and they know it.

The leftists have a largely deaf ear to those of us outside of the political class. Until, that is, their political agenda is threatened and then they quickly morph into their ‘party of the people’ mode to once again convince the ‘victim’ class that the visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads will come true… if only they wait. The real and present problem for the left, trying to re-ignite the spark that swept Barack Hussein into office, is that many of his base really believed the things that were said and promised.

As the first glow of victory faded and the light of reality shone on Barack Obama’s stewardship of the country, even his most ardent supporters had trouble defending him and his visibly destructive policies. The exodus of support continues to this day, three years down the road. Even the ‘victims’ are tired of waiting.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011