Tea Party Catholic by Dr. Samuel Gregg Is One of the Best Books of 2013

If you're a Tea Party activist, run, don't walk to purchase this outstanding new book by Dr. Samuel Gregg:

Tea Party Catholic: The Catholic Case for Limited Government, A Free Economy, and Human Flourishing

Dr. Gregg, a native of Australia who received a D.Phil in moral philosophy at the University of Oxford currently serves as the Director of Research at the Acton Institute.

In this book, Dr. Gregg superbly integrates the Anglo-American tradition of individual liberty with the theological teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. He begins with the fascinating personal story of Charles Carroll of Maryland, the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, and takes us to the modern struggle within the Church between the "social justice" and "free market" viewpoints.

Here are the highlights, which most Tea Party activists will find compelling.

"Catholics," Gregg writes, "can bring ...a deeper and coherent understanding of why freedom really matters, and especiallly in the economy. More specifically, they can demonstrate that:

1. Entrepreneurship, economic liberty, and the market economy are not simply more efficient than the alternatives; they also create tremendous opportunities for human flourishing.

2. A highly economically-activist state is not just economically ineffective but also tends to damage the moral culture and undermines human flourishing.

3. There are better ways for Americans to realize their concrete obligations to those in need than large welfare states (not least through churches and other intermediate associations), and in a manner which contributes to the integral development of those being assisted.

4. A robust conception of religious liberty is essential for human flourishing and limiting government power--including in economic life.

5. The market economy and the ideal of limited government are more reliant on a strong civil society, intact families, and a robust moral culture than many people realize."

In his fifth and final point here, I see echoes of Dr. Gregg's Roman Catholic predecessor, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, whose classic 1830's work, Democracy in America, is as relevant today as it was almost two centuries ago.

This is exactly the kind of blending of two traditions that you would expect from a devout Roman Catholic who also happens to be a Commonwealth Scholar.

The Establishment's Creed

The Establishment’s Creed

February 27, 2013

by Bill Hennessy

I believe in cash, the money almighty, creator of happiness and wealth; and in Big Corporations, its only friend, which were conceived by the holy government, born of the power to tax, suffered under regulations, were criticized, bankrupted, and neglected. On the second vote, the bail-out passed, and they ascended into The Fed. They are seated at the right hand of Government from whence they shall come to lobby for tax breaks with more debt.

I believe in the holy income tax, the holy eminent domain, the forgiveness of squishes, the resurrection of the Bushes, and government everlasting.

Amen.

Why CNN is Failing

CNN published an article by Shannon Travis yesterday,"Has the Tea Party 'Sold Out' to the Mainstream GOP?," that illustrates why that once dominant media company is now failing.

I received a phone call from Mr. Travis at 11 pm Saturday night as I was driving back the 310 miles from the Bristol Motor Speedway to my home in Nashville. Over the weekend, I had been part of a group of "Volunteers for Virginia" who had driven the round trip between Nashville and the Bristol Motor Speedway where we spent two days at the NASCAR race registering Virginia residents to vote. As might be expected, we learned during our stay there that the large crowd of 165,000 was almost entirely conservative, pro-tea party, and pro-Romney. With the exception of one union member from Toledo, Ohio every single person we spoke with or registered to vote was intensely committed to defeating Obama in November.

Mr. Travis, who had interviewed me previously about my role as the co-founder of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, the informal group of local tea party leaders from around the country who launched the Tea Party movement in a conference call on February 20, 2009, wanted to get a "grassroots" perspective for his story. But it became apparent through his questions that he had already written the narrative of his story and was simply looking for a few "grassroots quotes" he could throw in to support that misleading narrative.

Mr. Travis was trying to support his theme that the grassroot activists in the Tea Party were somehow upset by our level of involvement at the Republican National Convention.

I told him he was asking the wrong question, that grassroots activists are focused on get-out-the-vote projects like Volunteers for Virginia. " We're not upset about the level of engagement or visibility the grassroots of the Tea Party movement is receiving at the Republican National Convention," I told him. "We're focused on getting-out-the-vote, which is far more important in my mind than the convention. If you're writing a story about what the various 'national groups' are doing at the Republican National Convention, you're not writing about the far more significant story of the great grassroots get-out-the-vote effort."

"Volunteers for Virginia" is a collaborative project announced last week by grassroots leaders from the red states of Texas and Tennessee designed to help WeRVirginia, the independent get-out-the-vote effort, to defeat Barack Obama in that state this November.

"The real issue you should be focusing on, Mr. Travis, is the phenomenal level of commitment at the grassroots level going on right now to get-the-vote-out to defeat Barack Obama in November," I said. "In addition to our own "Volunteers for Virginia" project, you should be writing about the "Paint Florida Red" project that the Birmingham Alabama RainyDayPatriots.org Tea Party and Zan Green have launched, as well as the "NobamaNevada" project that the Bay Area Patriots in San Francisco and Sally Zelikovsky have launched. That's the real story," I told him.

Not surprisingly, none of my comments made it in to Mr. Travis's story, because they didn't fit his incorrect preconceived narrative.

You can read the rest of this article here at Breitbart News.

Grassroots Leaders in Texas and Tennessee Launch “Volunteers for Virginia”

August 20, 2012 - Local grassroots leaders from the red states of Texas and Tennessee today announced the launch of “Volunteers for Virginia,” an independent get-out-the-vote project that will support Virginians in defeating Obama in November.

The project’s first event will take place this weekend at the NASCAR race held at the Bristol Motor Speedway where volunteers from Virginia, Texas, and Tennessee will be registering Virginia residents to vote. Many of the expected crowd of 165,000 who will be attending the Food City 250 Nationwide series NASCAR race on Friday, August 24th and the Irwin Tools 500 Sprint series NASCAR race on Saturday, August 25th are Virginia residents.

Volunteers for Virginia will be working side by side with We rVirginia, an organization which is committed to coordinating the efforts of local grassroots leaders that are focused on getting out the vote on November 6th. We rVirginia will provide all the resources necessary to Volunteers for Virginia, including all lodging and food.

Lorie Medina, founder of the Frisco, Texas Tea Party and currently Chief Strategist for Texas Faith & Freedom Coalition said, “After Texas grassroots conservatives helped Ted Cruz become the Republican nominee for US Senate in an incredibly hard-fought Primary, we’re ready to help other states. Activists around the state are ready to give their time and energy to support Virginia. And, we have several newly-elected Texas State Representatives that have won their Primary Election. Now they don’t have a Democratic challenger to contend with and want to lead activists from their District to Virginia to walk door-to-door.”

You can read the rest of this press release at the Volunteers for Virginia website.

Democrat Erksine Bowles Called Ryan Budget 'Sensible, Straightforward, Serious'

Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chairman of President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, called the Paul Ryan budget "sensible, straightforward, serious" at a speech given at the University of North Carolina last September. The video of the speech, first reported at HotAir via Morgen Richmond, provides a compelling case that a growing number of independents and Democrats are acknowledging President Obama has failed to offer a serious solution to our expanding fiscal crisis.

You can read the rest of the story here at Breitbart.com.

Portman as VP Won't Get in Way of Coming Romney Landslide

It's fun to play the "Who will Romney pick as VP?" parlor game, but the identity of who Romney selects won't have an impact on the election in November. As I've been saying since April, Romney is going to win in an electoral college landslide. The decisive factor in that victory will be President Obama's poor performance these past three and a half years, not who Romney selects as VP. The sample skewed polls the mainstream media have been pushing lately are meaningless exercises in liberal wishful thinking. The intensity of opposition to the odious statism practiced by Obama and his cronies is so great, tea party activists will literally crawl over broken glass to get to the polls on election day. The get-out-the-vote effort they will launch will be an historic turning point in American political history.

Rob Portman is one name on everyone's short list for VP, but outside of Ohio, very few people know much about him. Who is Rob Portman and why is he on Romney's short list? A native of Ohio, Portman attended Dartmouth and the University of Michigan Law School, served a dozen years in Congress, had a cup of coffee as George W. Bush's Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and was handily elected to the United States Senate from Ohio in 2010.

His political philosophy and personal style is standard brand Republican establishment. There's little to see in his background that suggests he's particularly sympathetic to the tea party's core values of constitutionally limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility. The tea party friendly Club for Growth, for instance, rates Portman as only the 29th most conservative Senator--tied with the recently defeated Richard Lugar of Indiana, defender of the Republican establishment.

But Portman's ideological blandness will have little to do with his performance as a potential VP candidate. He's smart, loyal, and won't make many unforced errors. And in this election, the VP candidate's ability to handle the job of President if that need arises will be the key point upon which the Romney team will focus. Perhaps most important to those calculating the odds that he will be picked as VP is the observation that Romney seems very comfortable with his cautious, buttoned down, intelligent reliability.

Portman does get some style points for his skill and interest in canoeing and kayaking. In fact, he wrote an article recently about a kayaking adventure he had in China. As such, Portman has enough experience navigating through rough waters to predict that, if Romney selects him for the VP slot, he won't do anything during the campaign that will capsize the good ship Romney.

You can read the rest of this article here at Breitbart News.

Harvard Knew Elizabeth Warren Was a Poor Scholar When They Hired Her

When Harvard Law School offered Elizabeth Warren a tenured faculty position in February 1993, administrators at the school knew that her scholarship had been criticized harshly. Between 1989 and 1991, three leading academic experts on bankruptcy wrote devastating critiques of the 1989 book she co-authored with Teresa Sullivan and Jay Westbrook, As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America. The reviews, published in highly respected academic journals, belied claims made at the time of her hiring by Harvard Law School Dean Robert C. Clark that her work reflected "excellent scholarship" and by Appointments Committee member Professor Charles Fried that she was "at the very top of her profession as a scholar."

Charges from one expert, Professor Philip Shuchman of Rutgers Law School, that Warren and her co-authors engaged in "scientific misconduct" were made in a 1990 edition of the Rutgers Law Review. Those charges remain controversial to this day. Breitbart News has learned that at least one member of the faculty at Harvard Law School brought the Shuchman allegations to the attention of the Appointments Committee in late 1992 as it began to consider Ms. Warren's qualifications to join the faculty on a permanent basis. Neither former Dean Robert C. Clark nor Professor Charles Fried, both of whom served on the Appointments Committee at the time, have confirmed this report.

Another member of the Harvard Law School faculty during that period, Professor Alan Dershowitz, told Breitbart News that he was unfamiliar with the Shuchman allegations. "I was not on [the Appointments] [C]ommittee," he said, "and do not recall any such charge." Professor Dershowitz noted that Ms. Warren's qualifications as an instructor were strong. "She was regarded as the best classroom teacher at the law school," he added. His knowledge of Ms. Warren's scholarly qualifications, however, was limited to what the Appointments Committee communicated to him during the meeting held on February 5, 1993 to consider her appointment to a tenured faculty position.

Based on the evidence currently available to Breitbart News, it appears that neither the Appointments Committee nor Dean Clark investigated the merits of Shuchman's allegations of "scientific misconduct," nor did they inform the full faculty that such charges had been made. In addition, they appear not to have informed the full faculty of the two other substantive critiques of Ms. Warren's work that did not involve allegations of "scientific misconduct." Indeed, based on their subsequent public statements that incorrectly characterized the quality of Ms. Warren's record of scholarship, it is possible to speculate that both Professor Fried and Dean Clark likely failed to point out Ms. Warren's academic shortcomings.

You can read the rest of this article here at Breitbart.com.