In 2004, after narrowly defeating John Kerry, President Bush boasted he had earned political capital and he intended to spend it.

What political capital, then, have Democrats just earned?

The dust has settled, most of the results are now in, and for Republicans, the results are not good. Democrats have taken solid control of the House, capturing 27 Republican-held seats and leading in two other races. They are on the verge of taking the Senate as well, with Democratic wins in Virginia and Montana likely, although not yet certain.

Ultimately, one can point to two things that cost Republicans this election: Mark Foley and Iraq. Exit polls indicated many voters were unhappy with Bush, with the war in Iraq, and with what they perceived to be corruption in Congress.

The jury is still out on the corruption—that issue will undoubtedly come up again and again in the not so distant future—but clearly Iraq is not going to go away anytime soon. To paraphrase an old saying: Republicans made their own bed on that one, and now they have to lie in it.

The “good” news for conservatives? We’ve essentially been operating with a Democratic-controlled Congress since Bush became president. Republicans technically controlled Congress, but the result was out of control government spending and big government policies. Maybe now that they’re no longer the party in power, Republicans will make some sort of attempt to return to their fiscally conservative roots.

Republicans are between a rock and a hard place right now. No one can defend Foley’s actions of course, but it would also be hard to defend the actions of any politician who knew what Foley was up to and failed to do his utmost to stop it. It’s also hard to defend the initial reaction to the Foley scandal (documented above), and that initial reaction itself now undermines Republican efforts to counteract frenzied Democratic attacks.

That’s one paragraph from my article “A Democrat’s Dream,” which appears in the latest issue of Civilized Revolt. The article deals with, perhaps obviously, the recent Mark Foley scandal and how Republicans should handle it.

Other articles include:

If I Were A White House Press Secretary by Jarret Mock
Accepting the Giants by Noah Stansbury
God-In-A-Box by Darcy Ingraham

So head on over and check it out. In addition, remember that a new issue of Virtue Magazine will be coming out next week!

Did you know the United States Treasury has an Office of Financial Education? The mission of this office is to teach Americans how to “make wiser choices in all areas of personal financial management.”

We’ll pause to let the irony of this situation—a federal office advicing Americans on how to manage their finances—sink in for a bit.

Granted, the advice the department offers is quite sensible: don’t spend everything you make, save, etc. The only problem is that our federal government itself doesn’t follow this advice—if it did, we probably wouldn’t have an “Office of Financial Education” in the first place. (The office, which was created in May 2002, undoubtedly cost a few million dollars to start up and a few million more each year to keep running.)

Writes the New Ulm Journal editorial page:

This agency . . . is emblematic of myriad nice ideas upon which the GOP-controlled Congress and the Bush administration evidently felt compelled to spend our money. With no sense of limitations on what government ought or ought not to do, seemingly every nice idea becomes a tentacle of ever bigger government.

This leads me to another excellent thought, this one from Bryce at Blog of Bryce. In a post titled “It Flies Away,” Bryce writes:

Please don’t tell me that Bush cut taxes. I really don’t care. In fact, if one more person reminds me of his tax cuts, I may just scream. You think I should be delighted because tax cuts are lifting the burden from me while concurrently deferring a greater weight of debt to my children and grandchildren?

Exactly. What good are tax cuts if the government continues to spend money at rates not seen since the days of Lyndon Johnson and The Greaty Society? Do conservatives think money grows on trees, and 20 or 50 years down the road we can pluck $100,000 dollar bills off the branches to pay for our government’s annual spending deficits and mounting debt? No; unless a future president and Congress drastically reduces spending—which seems highly unlikely—the taxpayers will once again foot the bill and be burdened with higher taxes than before.

It’s unfortunate that the federal government can’t take its own advice when it comes to spending. Perhaps the Office of Financial Education should be directing its message toward the federal government and not the American people.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.

The filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald also describes Cheney’s involvement in I. Lewis Libby’s communications with the press.

There was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Valerie Plame’s CIA identity. But it points to Cheney as one of the originators of the idea that Plame could be used to discredit her husband, Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Tom DeLay, the scandal-plagued former House Majority Leader, announced today that he is resigning from Congress. He presumably will also be ending his current re-election campaign.

This is probably the best thing for everyone involved. Regardless of whether DeLay actually committed any crime himself or not, the corruption surrounding him is impossible to defend and did not reflect well on him.

From the AP:

DeLay reflected Republican concerns that the GOP could lose the seat in November, saying his love and loyalty to the party played a role in his decision and adding, “I refuse to allow liberal Democrats an opportunity to steal this seat with a negative, personal campaign.”

President Bush said Tuesday that DeLay had informed him of his decision Monday afternoon.

“I wish him all the best,” Bush told reporters during a brief White House session, adding, “It had to have been a very difficult decision for someone who loved representing his district in the state of Texas.”

Bush said the Republican Party won’t suffer from DeLay’s decision to resign from Congress. “My own judgment is that our party will continue to succeed because we are the party of ideas.”

DeLay relinquished the post as House majority leader last fall after his indictment in Texas as part of an investigation into the allegedly illegal use of funds for state legislative races. He decided in January against trying to get the leadership post back as an election-year corruption scandal staggered Republicans and emboldened minority Democrats.

As part of a sculpture project for a design class, I recently bought several decks of playing cards. Four of the decks had fairly traditional designs and patterns on both the front and the back of the cards. The fifth deck was unique, however, since the back of the cards featured patriotic images. The American flag set over beautiful mountain scenery, the Statue of Liberty with the Stars and Stripes in the background, a bald eagle in flight—they were definitely some nifty and entertaining ipictures.

At class the next day, my art teacher stopped by to talk to me about my plans for this sculpture project. After discussing it for a while, I indicated to the teacher that I probably wouldn’t be using the deck of cards that featured those patriotic images.

My teacher completely understood. “Those have some loaded images,” he said.

Loaded images? I wondered. Is he talking about what I think he is?

Sure enough, he was. My teacher indicated he agreed with my concern that the whole “patriotic theme” is a big thing in today’s world, and that it could be kind of controversial, and that. . .

I chimed in, explaining that my decision to not use the cards was purely a design decision. While the exchange was not exceptionally notable, I did have to shake my head at the time. Since when are images of the American flag and other American icons “controversial”?

This incident appears to be a symptom of a problem that is much larger and more serious. Images and themes that aren’t controversial at all are increasingly being treated as controversial, while images and themes that should be controversial are increasingly being treated as normal and undeserving of criticism. Why do cartoons depicting Muhammad cause world-wide outrage—sparking even protests and violence—while “art shows” that feature dung and genitalia-covered pictures of the Virgin Mary receive barely a blip on the radar? Rapper Kanye West recently posed as Jesus on the cover of Rolling Stones magazine—complete with whip marks and a crown of thorns—and an art musuem in Brooklyn once displayed a figured of Jesus submerged in a jar of urine. Where is the outrage and controversy by the general public over these things?

As Pat Buchanan noted in a recent column, “What hypocrisy . . . What has happened in Europe is that the secular press, which loves to mock the beliefs and symbols of religious faith, has now insulted a deadly serious religion that answers insults with action.”

What does the word “loaded” mean? Dictionary.com defines it as meaning, “To charge with additional meanings, implications, or emotional import: loaded the question to trick the witness.” As the example given indicates, “loaded” has a negative connotation to it that implies trickery, deceit, or dishonest motives. Is this what my teacher had in mind when he looked at these beautiful images of the Stars and Stripes, the Statue of Liberty and the bald eagle? Maybe not. Maybe when he used the phrase “loaded images,” he had a slightly different and more kind meaning in mind. But between his use of that phrase and his recognition or belief that using these images in a piece of art would be “controversial,” I can’t help but think that the negative connation was there.

The following is a letter to the editor that appeared in my town’s newspaper today:

I am weary of hearing every Tom, Dick and Harry criticize the president of the United States and trying to convict him of lies and other dastardly deeds. Most of the Democrats ought to be convicted of lying or misrepresenting the laws and what the president is doing. They are traitors to our country and should be treated like traitors. How can the president conduct a war successfully if he has no authority to find out what the enemy is planning? All other presidents beginning with George Washington have had these powers by virtue of being commander-in-chief and president. The USA cannot take these constitutional rights away.

I think many or all people of our country should rise up and demand that the president should be allowed all the powers and privileges he needs to conduct the war, and all people in the media or Congress be convicted of treason if they try to take these powers away. All through our history eavesdropping and other devices were used. If our privacy is hamstrung, so be it.

During World War II people couldn’t say or write one word against the war without being punished or investigated. Let us go back to that.

Unbelievable. The sad thing is, I have a feeling a lot of war supporters would agree with this sentiment, even while they have the audacity to call themselves “conservatives.” I don’t think this woman deserves to live in America; she seems better suited to living in the Soviet Union—circa 1945.

After the indictment of “Scooter” Libby over the “Plamegate” scandal, there was a lot of talk about whether—and if so, how much—Vice President Dick Cheney was involved in the matter. Would Cheney face possible legal trouble as well?

Today’s article in the National Journal may provide us with some clues:

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been “authorized” by Cheney and other White House “superiors” in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein’s purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

This should be very interesting to watch unfold.

A little fun with past State of the Union addresses:

“Let this be our national goal: At the end of this decade, in the year [fill in the blank!], the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need to provide our jobs, to heat our homes, and to keep our transportation moving.”

“[Saddam Hussein’s] war machine is crushed. His ability to threaten mass destruction is itself destroyed.”

“We will defend our security wherever we are threatened, as we did this summer when we struck at Usama bin Ladin’s network of terror.”

(Thanks to Cultural Revolutions Online at the Chronicles Magazine website.)

I’m sitting here at my college’s library, typing on a computer. I just got out of a Sociology class where, after a lecture on domestic abuse, the professor decided to have a class discussion about gay marriage.

For the record, this is the professor who has, in previous classes, praised Karl Marx for having “a lot of good things to say,” condemned the U.S. government for not building houses for the homeless, criticized Bush for his supposed mistreatment of Muslims post 9/11, and so on and so forth.

In short, I am stuck in a class with a professor who is the perfect example of the far-left professors who dominate our nation’s (mostly) far-left universities. (Thank goodness for places like Hillsdale College and Patrick Henry College, no?)

Anyway, it appeared that a large majority of the kids in this class saw nothing wrong with gay marriage. Of course, maybe it just appeared that way since maybe all the conservative kids (like me) stayed mostly quiet. But on an estimate, I’d say that probably two/thirds of the class appeared to support gay marriage.

If this is any indication of what’s on the way for our nation, gay marriage is coming soon. And there won’t be anything we as conservatives will be able to do. Right now a majority of Americans oppose gay marriage, but how many of those Americas are, say, 40 years and older? In 20 years, our population will have changed, and it seems to me that our population will be growing more liberal. And there is nothing we can really do about it.

Depressing thought, no? I agree. Sitting through a college class like this is the most depressing things a conservative can do. Especially when you listen to some of the things students (and the professor say):

Gay marriage won’t affect heterosexuals, so why should they object?

If two people love each other, they should be allowed to marry, and it doesn’t matter if they’re the same sex.

And so on and so forth. My question to our readers is this: what do you think is the most effective way to refute the above arguments? And what do you think about the future of our country?