Prepography

Robin Hood.. could probably get elected the Mayor of Nottingham.

Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times

…government should not be engaged in marriage at all.

Congressman Justin Amash

Andrew’s Note:  Congressman Amash is right…the only equitable solution that promotes freedom, freedom of action and freedom of belief is to get government out of the marriage business altogether.  In addition, this approach would let us avoid a multi-year political battle that, in the end won’t make anyone happy and allow us to expend our energies on more productive pursuits like getting our economy back on track.  I also like his pun.

Nothing will be quite the same in Boston or in America after Monday’s terrorist attack. Psychologically, the bombings bring terrorism to the streets of an American city, on a sunny Patriot’s Day, during a road race, the Boston Marathon.

The bombings mean that any street corner, in any American City, is vulnerable — that terror need not come from the sky, nor target iconic skyscrapers and national landmarks. It can target people where they gather just for fun, on any given day.

…Here is the irony: We are vulnerable, because we are free and strong.

On Monday, Boston and America joined cities like Jerusalem and nations like Ireland, which have long known that safety is relative, that the danger that comes from asserting the values we hold dear is omnipresent, that life itself is a gift that can be taken not only by cancer and heart disease, but by the disease of terrorism.

We are no more vulnerable today than yesterday, but we will feel more vulnerable, because we had no known hint of what was to befall us.

…With all our TSA security, with the Homeland Security Act, with the government nosing around in our emails and deploying drones at home and abroad, with the (nonsensical) talk in Washington about banning assault rifles or restricting access to ammunition, an 8-year-old boy was blown up Monday, two adults were blown up on Monday, and more than a hundred others were injured, some losing limbs.

Here is the irony: We are vulnerable, because we are free and strong. These qualities attract the ire of those who would have us shackled and weak, who are consumed by hatred for individual possibilities, rather than love for what a free person can dream about and strive for and accomplish.

Please tell your children this: We are attacked in America because we speak about and believe in the power of people to guide themselves through life, to make their own decisions, to think their own thoughts, to speak freely and to pursue their own happiness.

Tell them that as long as the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial and the Statue of Liberty grace our great land that those opposed to equality and freedom will always see us as enemies. Tell them that we must always be vigilant, but never afraid.

Tell them that we cannot be defeated, because the truth wins, every time.  And we, in America, hold great truths to be self-evident.

Tell them that liberty is a marathon.

Dr. Keith Ablow via The pursuit of liberty is a marathon | Fox News

All of us need to be reminded that the Federal government did not create the States, the States created the Federal Government.

President Ronald Reagan, January 20, 1981

The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients.

Edmund Burke

…We meet again at democracy’s great port of call. Every two years, at this hour, the Constitution brings a new order to this House. It is an interlude for reflection, a glimpse of old truths.

To our new members and their families, welcome. You are likely feeling awestruck right about now. History runs through here. And now you are among a select few to share in this privilege.

For those who are returning, who have walked these aisles before, maybe it’s time we feel awestruck again.

The way our founders envisioned it, the republic would be led by citizens who recognize that the blessing of governing ourselves requires that we give something of ourselves. Everything depended on this. So they made each other – and their successors – swear an oath of allegiance.

In a few moments, I will take this oath for the twelfth time as representative of the Eighth District of Ohio. It is word for word the same oath we all take.

Note that it makes no mention of party, faction, or title … contains no reference to agendas or platforms – only to the Constitution

The one addition we dare to make, as George Washington did at the first inaugural, is to invoke the assistance of our Heavenly Father.

This covenant makes us servants of posterity. It calls us to refuse the pull of passing interests and follow the fixed star of a more perfect union…

Speaker of the House John Boehner via FULL TEXT: Speaker Boehner Addresses the Opening Session of the 113th Congress | Speaker.gov.

A long time ago I made me a rule…I let people do what they want to do.

John Wayne as the title character in Hondo

…we are in danger of forgetting that the Bill of Rights reflects experience with police excesses. It is not only under Nazi rule that police excesses are inimical to freedom. It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy. It is too easy. History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end.

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter in his dissent to Davis v. United States June 10, 1946

No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and Constitution of his country.

Daniel Webster