Friday, July 3, 2009 at 9:57AM The Sons of Liberty Blog will be taking a break for the long 4th of July weekend, but as we head out the door to enjoy the 233rd annual celebration of our great nation's Independence Day, we leave you this...
Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 3:47PM 
Who is your daddy and what does he do? Because if he works for the state you better develop a taste for Beef-a-roni and RC Cola pronto.It's come to this. Reuters reports that,
California officials, facing a cash crisis without a state budget agreement, approved on Thursday a 3.75 percent interest rate and an October 2 maturity date for registered warrants, or "IOUs," the state will issue in lieu of payments to vendors, local agencies and individuals.
Don't worry, those IOU's are as good as money Mr. Samsonite. The next plan put forward by officials is that the state temporarily abandon cash payments and substitute 'free backrub' coupons. These massages will, of course, be performed by the Governator himself, as he lays his catchers-mit-sized hands upon the naked backs of Californians who have lost their shirts amidst the state's economic crisis. These massages will also double as cancer screenings since Arnold gained considerable experience in the art of tumor detection during his portrayal of Detective John Kimble in Kindergarten Cop.
Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 12:35PM Arne Duncan is President Obama's Secretary of Education and the head of the DOE. I must give him credit. He supports the establishment of a merit pay system for public school educators. Unsuprisingly, his support for merit pay is incurring the wrath of the National Education Association (NEA). The NEA is not only the nation's largest teachers union, but the largest union in the United States and the tenure jockeys who mount themselves atop this bloated outfit would rather be whacked with a hickory switch and made to wear dunce caps than incentivize teachers to work hard and produce better educational results.
If a train leaves Pittsburgh at 60 mph, and another leaves Fresno at 81 mph, how long will it take a pitchfork wielding citizenry to raze DOE headquarters?However, as much as I support the notion of merit pay, the federal government (and the Department of Education in particular) is in no position to mandate the creation of such a system. Indeed, the DOE is a constitutional abomination that should be destroyed and cast down to the hoary netherworld of discredited liberal, communitarian ideology from whence it sprang. Would that President Reagan had succeeded in killing this Carter era monstrosity or that President George W. Bush had consulted the founding document before he enacted No Child Left Behind.
Show me where among the constitutionally enumerated responsibilities of the federal government (Article I Section VIII) it is written that the central authority has allowance to involve itself in the education of our nation's citizenry, and I'll eat my tricorn hat. The very existence of the DOE does violence to the Constitution (as does the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Energy, the Envrionmental Protection Agency, public television, the National Endowment for the Arts...I could go on endlessly).
Furthermore, imagine the beauracratic nightmare that would result from the imposition of federal merit pay standards. The sheer manpower it would take to design, monitor and enforce such subjective criteria over 6.2 million American teachers would make the building of Rome look like the assembly of a lincoln log fort (not to mention the ensuing festoonery of such a system with the requisite amounts red tape, graft and abject waste).
The founders were wise to leave educational responsibility decentralized, and in so doing sidestep the cumbersome interference of the federal monolith. While the proposal of President Obama and Secretary Duncan has its merits, it is entirely without practicality and, more importantly, legality.
The 10th Amendment to our Constitution says that all powers not specifically vested in the federal government reside with the states and with the people, and the authority to enact merit pay protocols rests exclusively with them - end of discussion.
Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 9:28AM 
A U.S. Marine from 5th Battalion 10th Marines patrols with a member of an Afghan border guard unit in the desert of the lower Helmand River valley, in southern Afghanistan July 1, 2009. (Reuters)Thousands of U.S. marines and Afghani troops (supported by American armor and air) stormed into Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan's Helmland province today in a major operation which signals the beginning of President Obama's Afghan surge offensive. Fox News reports,
Officials described the operation, dubbed Khanjar, or "Strike of the Sword," as the largest and fastest-moving of the war's new phase and the biggest Marine offensive since the one in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004. It involves nearly 4,000 newly arrived Marines and 650 Afghan forces. British forces last week led similar, but smaller, missions to clear out insurgents in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar provinces.
"Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson said in a statement.
To read the full story click here.
Here's the numbers game: President Obama is in the process of deploying 21,000 additional troops to the troubled nation and by year's end, the American troop commitment in Afghanistan will be approximately 68,000. Conversely, by the year 2011, the Obama Administration hopes to increase the size of the Afghan army from 80,000 to 134,000 soldiers.
Much like the succesful troop surge in Iraq, it is thought that a dramatically increased military presence will enable our soldiers to maintain broad control of Taliban hotspots, rather than forcing American commanders to play a game of counter-terrorist whack-a-mole, hampered by a dearth of manpower necessitating the constant shifting of forces.
As I am sure all our thoughts are with our brave soldiers at this time, I think it fitting to close with the words of General Eisenhower, spoken to the landing forces, immediately prior to the D-Day invasion.
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you....
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory.
Good luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
Aaron
For anyone who may doubt the need to defeat the Taliban enemy in Afghanistan or the justness of our cause, I would suggest reading this piece in the Washington Times which details how truly abhorrent these terrorist murderers are. It has come to light that Taliban agents are purchasing children (as young as 7 years old) and using them as suicide bombers. Here is a quick excerpt,
Pakistan's top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, is buying children as young as 7 to serve as suicide bombers in the growing spate of attacks against Pakistani, Afghan and U.S. targets, U.S. Defense Department and Pakistani officials say.
A Pakistani official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the topic, said the going price for child bombers was $7,000 to $14,000 - huge sums in Pakistan, where per-capita income is about $2,600 a year.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009 at 4:09PM 
The Honduran Capital City of Tegucigalpa. Also an answer to the Jeopardy question, "What world capital is the most fun to say excluding Addis Ababa, and Bishkek?"The interim Honduran government continues in its righteous defiance of world opinion, declaring that the deposed president, Manuel Zeyala, will not be restored to office. I find it troubling that no democratic nation of note has backed the Honduran constitutionlists amidst this crisis. While this is not particularly surprising, it should be considered tellingly symptomatic of Western societal decay when the brigandage of a power crazed executive is overlooked in favor of more pressing concerns for 'governmental stability'.
Remember, Hitler was freely elected as well. I doubt anyone would look askance at any intrepid time traveler who journeyed back into history and 'illegitmately' exiled der Fuhrer prior to the invasion of Poland.