Consistent Pro-life Message

Jane and I attended the 30^th annual Maryland March for Life. The organizers did an excellent job, the speakers were great, and Steve Peroutka’s treat for refreshments, made this year’s event, the best.

Before the March, Archbishop O’Brien con-celebrated the Holy Mass with about a dozen priests. The Archbishop painted a dismally honest picture of our struggles ahead with this pro-abortion administration. He also challenged the pro-lifers’ positions on the death penalty and immigration. His plea was to have a “consistent pro-life message”. He concluded his homily with the statement, “We have much to pray about”. The Archdiocese of Baltimore is blessed to have a man of the Archbishop’s stature.

I am on board with his anti-death penalty position, but I have reservations about how illegal immigration warrants a mention, when trying to save unborn children? Either way, it is good news, that there will be consistency in how the Bishops deal with these issues.

Having seen Bishop Madden marching next to the Governor and Lt. Gov., to the “repeal the death penalty rally” in Lawyer’s Mall (C.R. 3/5/09), I expected to see a bishop at our March for Life, which rallied at Lawyer’s Mall. If one was there, I didn’t see him.

It is also good to know that Bishop Madden will take these repeal the death penalty events, as opportunities to specifically mention the need to “repeal abortion”. Let’s be consistent.

Honest Money Update

During our effort to promote the Honest Money Resolution, some of us took the time to lobby Delegates at the Maryland House. Others promoted the effort to friends and family, and still others networked with existing groups who may be like-minded. I was excited about this resolution and I volunteered to help with all three. I specifically volunteered to contact Save a Patriot to ask for their support.

Save a Patriot’s founder, John Kotmair, was glad to see the effort. He got right on it, and made several suggestions on the wording of the resolution, to make it more constitutionally correct.

When I contacted Joe Arminio, the lead proponent of the Honest Money Resolution in the Maryland Republican Liberty Caucus, he was not interested in considering John’s suggestions, and wished to distance the effort from Mr. Kotmair and his SAP group. I disagreed, and have not received any further updates from Joe. My understanding is that the resolution is awaiting its death in Rules Committee.

If you are interested in John Kotmair’s view of Honest Money, John will be speaking at the Maryland Constitution Party’s Meeting, Saturday morning, April 4th, 10:30 a.m. at the Howard County Central Library.

Yeave Me A Yone!

My wife and I attended the Campaign For Liberty Forum, last Friday evening, as part of the CPAC Convention in Washington D.C. We listened to six great speakers, which included Congressman Ron Paul, Thomas Woods, and Judge Napolitano. The ballroom had to be stuffed with at least four hundred liberty-loving patriots. We cheered for over two hours as we were enlightened, and inspired, by statements like Judge Napolitano’s, “Lincoln was our nation’s worst president!”

One of the guest speakers enumerated some of our liberties: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to bear arms, etc. Then he condensed them into a broad but encompassing right: “The right to be left alone!” This is what the American, and for that matter foreign, freedom lovers really want: to be left alone.

Our empire, is not only entangled with 135 foreign countries, is destroying the economic future of our financial system, our families, and the dollar, but has its crosshairs set on our right to own a firearm, and a mandatory draft. Our foreign neighbors are hollering, our free market is hollering, and our families are hollering, “Leave us alone!”

When my youngest son, who is 21 years old, was three, he prophetically coined our battle cry. He has always been strong willed, and at three, he had not quite mastered the roll of the tongue, which is necessary for the “l” sound. That didn’t stop him from exercising his freedom of speech. Whenever he was corrected, and decided he had had enough, he would let loose an emphatic directive, “Yeave me a yone!” He didn’t need the “l”; we knew what he said.

Having lived through this almost primordial sound of command, I could not get Friday’s message out of my mind. The truth of government's intrusion into our lives, begs the question of credibility. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are they still recognized rights in the USA?

So today, as I drove through a suburban wooded park, I opened my window, and let it rip: “Yeave me a yone!” It felt great. Try it. The revolution has begun.