At a Breakfast in support of

Senator Dan Rutherford

Candidate for Illinois State Treasurer

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

7:30 AM Coffee

7:45 AM Breakfast

8:15 AM Program

Hunters Ridge Golf Course

12927 IL Highway 26

Princeton, IL

$35 per person, $60 for two,

$150 Red Sponsor*   $250 White Sponsor*   $500 Blue Sponsor*

*Sponsorship includes participation in the Breakfast and name on Sponsors’ Recognition Board

Reservations to be held at the door.

RSVP to Barb@DanRutherford.org or 815-842-2475

Host Committee: Chris Arndt, Marshanne & Eldon Entwhistle, Dan Hyson, Kent Parrish,
Judge Louis J. Perona, Sue Pratt, Bob & Barb Vickrey, Hon. Barry Welbers

Click Here to Download Printable Invitation

President Obama’s decision to nominate Kagan, and thus add a progressive to the Supreme Court, could be considered a stealth move. Having never served as a judge, she has no paper trail indicating her judicial philosophy or leanings. In fact, even after the Senate hearings, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that 57% of Americans had either no idea who Elena Kagan was or were not sure what to think of her.The press and Senate, however, seemed enamored with her humor. While having a sense of humor is an admirable attribute, it does not qualify one for the Supreme Court.
Along with her sense of humor, here are some things that we do know about her:

1. Kagan did admit that she would be a judicial activist. This is important because she studied at the feet of Judge Abner Mikva, a known liberal judicial activist, and Justice Thurgood Marshall. Marshall is noted as saying, “you do what you think is right and let the law catch up.”
2. She called Israeli activist Judge Aharon Barak “my judicial hero” and stated that he was the judge that “in my lifetime whom I think best represents and has best advanced the values of democracy and human rights, of the rule of law and of justice.” Barak wrote in his book, The Judge in a Democracy, “a good judge is a judge who, within the bounds of legitimate possibilities, makes law that, more than other law he is authorized to make, best bridges the gap between law and society and best protects the Constitution and its values.”
3. She worked for the Clinton administration, where she advocated against guns and for partial birth abortion.
4. She now works for the Obama administration as Solicitor General. Here she filed briefs against Arizona immigration laws, and has shown hostility toward the Second Amendment.
5. As dean of Harvard’s Law School, she condemned military recruiting policy as “moral injustice of the first order”, and banned US military recruiters from the campus. She signed two amicus briefs seeking to strike down the Solomon amendment; the Supreme Court later unanimously upheld the law in 2006.
6. She has stated under oath that she “has no view of natural rights”. This could be taken to mean that she believes that our rights come from our Constitution and not that the Constitution is there to protect our unalienable, God-given human rights. In other words, she apparently believes that our rights come from the government; carried out, this would mean that rights can be taken away by our government.
7. She believes that the courts, as well as the Supreme Court, should look to courts’ international law and the laws and precedents of other countries in examining our own Constitution and determining the outcome of cases. When asked by Senator Chuck Grassley if judges should “look to foreign law for ‘good ideas?’” Kagan responded, “I am in favor of good ideas wherever we can get them.” Senator Grassley then asked if she would “rely on or cite international foreign law when deciding cases” if she were confirmed. She responded, “It depends. There are some cases in which the citation of foreign law or international law might be appropriate.” This also implies picking and choosing laws that are contrary to the U.S. Constitution to support an agenda.
8. While Elena Kagan was dean, Harvard Law School added International Law as a required class, but U.S. Constitutional Law became an elective class.

There are two actions to be taken to help stop nomination. First, we need to call our Senators to let them know we do not want Elena Kagan confirmed. Second, we can call the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and ask them to vote no. If all Republican members vote no, the nomination can be stopped. The Republican members of the Judiciary Committee are:

• Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
• Orin Hatch (R-UT)
• Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
• Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
• Lindsay Graham (R-SC)
• John Cornyn (R-TX)
• Tom Coburn (R-OK)

Call the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for the Senator’s office.
We can make a difference!

FOXNews.com

In his latest swipe at the modern media environment, President Obama used a commencement speech over the weekend to bemoan the onslaught of information in the digital age and suggest that the gusher of news out there is too much of a good thing.

While knowledge is power, the information age could be too much of a good thing. That’s the message some heard in President Obama’s weekend commencement speech in which he bemoaned

Speaking at Hampton University in Virginia, the president raised alarms when he said “information becomes a distraction, a diversion” that is putting “pressure on our country and on our democracy.”

The president suggested less is more when it comes to absorbing news content and urged graduates to take a skeptical eye toward news from blogs, cable television and radio as well as modern gadgets like iPods and PlayStations.

The class of 2010 is “coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter,” the president said, earning an honorary doctorate of laws degree during the ceremony.

“And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — (laughter) — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy,” he said.  >> read full article

Website

We hope that everyone visits the Bureau County Republican Women’s website on a regular basis. Our desire is to start adding more fresh content to the site on a regular basis, causing it to be a website that garners important information to help educate our members and the general public. We are looking for volunteers to help supply this information and to help write articles for the website. Education will be key in the upcoming elections, so county, state, and national interests should be covered. Please consider volunteering!

“I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.”

–James Madison, letter to Henry Lee, 1824

“They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please…. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.”

–Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on National Bank, 1791

“I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.”
–James Madison, letter to Henry Lee, 1824