Political Junkie

2019 marks the 60 th anniversary of Alaska’s admission into the Union as the 49 th state and Hawaii’s admission into the Union as the 50 th state.   1959 marks the most recent time that the United States of America admitted a new state into the Union.   Since then, the number of states has stood at 50; leading to the number of Senators remaining constant at 100. The number of states grew on an almost constant basis between 1791 and 1912 as the United States continued to expand west to the Pacific.   For the most part, people did not take politics into account when creating the thirteen original colonies and the subsequent 37 states; usually relying on rivers as boundaries. However, the admission of Maine and Missouri into the union roughly a year and a half apart had an explicitly political purpose, designed to balance the number of slave states and free states.   60 years after the 50-state nation became a reality, new efforts have popped up to add some new states i

With great power comes great responsibility.   Or perhaps more accurately, with great freedom comes great responsibility.   After all, Americans, myself included, have had the freedom to engage in more activities as we have gotten older. Some of these responsibilities date all the way back to early childhood.   In kindergarten, everyone had a right to play on the swings at recess, weather permitting, but if we did not stop using the swing when recess was over, we had to face the consequences of not using the swings for a day.   I should know.   That happened to me once. Everyone has the freedom not to do their homework. But by not doing their homework, students almost always face the consequences of a lower grade; either because the teacher gives them a zero on it or because completing the homework served as a vital step in preparing for a test. Look at the consequences that Felicity Huffman, Lori Loughlin, and many others must face because they cheated in one form or a

It looks like liberals see no minimum age when it comes to drilling the dictates of  political correctness into the skulls of the next generation.   Because they have established footholds in Academia, the media, and Hollywood, they have seized the opportunity to do just that as they have sought to develop a permanent upper hand in the culture war. For nearly my entire life, the PBS series “Arthur,” based on the children’s book series featuring an anthropomorphic ardvaark and his friends, has provided entertainment and educational benefits to young children across America.   Between 1976 and 2011, author Marc Brown wrote nearly four dozen installments.   As a matter of fact, I had the privilege of meeting Brown’s sister Kim, who served as the inspiration for the character DW, 16 years ago as a second grader.   Sorry, I do not have any photographs to prove that I actually met her.   I also had a computer game called “Arthur’s Thinking Games” at one point based on the books (an

Based on the rhetoric of Democratic leadership, it would seem as if pro-life voices have completely vanished within the Democratic Party.   However, recent developments at the state level have called that conventional wisdom into question. At the national level, almost every single Democratic member of Congress sympathizes with the pro-choice movement.   That number could dwindle following the 2020 election.   Republicans will surely target Minnesota’s 7 th Congressional District as they seek to take back the House from the clutches of pro-abortion Nancy Pelosi.   Its representative, pro-life Democrat Collin Peterson, has survived re-election battles for nearly three decades; even as his district voted for President Trump with more than 60 percent of the vote in 2016.   His vote share has dropped off in the most recent elections; he won re-election in 2018 by a margin of only four points . As he will have reached the ripe old age of 76 by Election Day 2020, Peterson may f

Several politicians and media figures claim to have put their finger on the civil rights issue of this generation.  Presidential hopeful Cory Booker sees gun control as the civil rights issue of our time.  Margaret Hoover saw the legalization of same-sex marriage as the civil rights issue of the 21 st century.  As for me, I see the battle to end abortion as the civil rights issue of my generation. For this reason, I included the overturning of Roe v. Wade as item number one on my “ political bucket list ” and listed the passage of a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution as item number two. I wrote a blog identifying the battle to end abortion as the civil rights issue of this generation early last year, identifying it as “the civil rights issue no one is talking about.”  A lot has changed since then.  The year 2019 has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that this civil rights battle has heated up, whether people want to come out and call it a civil rights issue or not. 

Good news!   After returning from a luxurious, two-week vacation, it looked like members of Congress might have finally developed a desire to do their job: legislating.   So far, the 116 th Congress has accomplished little in actual legislative accomplishment; besides virtue-signaling measures such as the condemnation of bigotry that failed to call out the anti-Semitic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar directly and the attempt to override President Trump’s national emergency declaration.   While it should not come as a surprise that the Democratic-controlled House has failed to pass meaningful legislation into law, even the Republican Senate has seemed unable to do its job: confirming people.   Four Republican Senators came out against the nomination of Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve board, including his formal rival Mitt Romney. Cain ultimately withdrew his nomination after left-wing heroine and fair-weather feminist Gloria Allred threatened to humiliate Cain if he did not bo