Sibby Online

SamSphere Chicago introduces Ballotpedia

Last weekend I attended the SamSphere Chicago blogger conference that was hosted by the Sam Adams Alliance. One of the most interesting things I picked up on was the Ballotpedia website that is a ballot initiative specific wiki that is much like Wikipedia. And with all the ballot issues that South Dakota voters will be dealing with in 2008, I think that link can become a very valuable resource for bloggers and media who want to cover the various ballot issues in the months to come. There is also a web page dedicated to the laws that govern South Dakota initiative process and also a page that covers some of South Dakota history in regard to initiatives and another page with the 2006 South Dakota initiatives.

I have put a Ballotpedia links section on my sidebar, so check it out. And note that all are welcome to help edit, add, and correct the information, plus there is a discussion section for those who want to argue points.

And a note to the legal eagles, there is also a Judgepedia that is intended to provide information of judges who are up for election and also coverage on court rulings.

South Dakota Dems motivated

In case conservatives and Republicans haven’t figured it out, the South Dakota Democrats are working hard to take power at the state level:

Candidate recruitment for the state Democratic Party zoomed to record highs this week when 101 slots were filled for their House and Senate races, according to Rick Hauffe, the state party executive director. It topped the previous record of 97 in 1988.

Hauffe credits recruitment work by State Sen. Scott Heidepriem, Sen. Ben Nesselhuf and Sen. Nancy Turbak Berry and other party officials.

"We had major help in the last month from Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin," Hauffe said.

Meanwhile Republicans are fumbling the ball:

District 9 state Sen. Tom Dempster, a Sioux Falls Republican, did not meet this week's deadline to file petitions for re-election to the state Senate. Dempster, assistant Senate majority leader, now might have to run for re-election to a fourth term as an independent candidate.

Secretary of State Chris Nelson verified Thursday that not all of Dempster's petitions were valid.

"He submitted petitions, and several sheets were complete. But some did not have a completed declaration of candidacy. If they are not complete, we cannot validate the signatures on those sheets," he said.

That means there likely will be no Republican on the ballot for state Senate in District 9.

I wonder if Pat Powers will accuse Dempster of splitting the SD GOP by running as an independent like he did me? While the current power elite in the SD GOP push conservatives like me to the door of their so-called big tent, the Democrats are working on recruitment. And Bob Mercer has a column in today’s Mitchell paper (not online) that points out the impact of the growing number of independents that the Democrats are targeting. More on that later.

Abortion back on the ballot

Looks like the abortion issue is going on the ballot in South Dakota this November:

A group seeking a statewide abortion ban announced Sunday its intent to put the question before voters this November.

VoteYesForLife.com said it collected double the signatures required to put the proposed ban on the ballot. The ban would prohibit abortions except in cases of rape or incest.

The anti-American Hollywood

Joseph Farah has a column that gives insight into another cultural institution that is driven by the worldview of Humanist Marxism…Hollywood:

Two decades ago this month, the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship held star-studded fundraising dinners in both New York and Los Angeles ostensibly to pay tribute to its new chairman – one of Hollywood's own – the late Tony Award-winning actor and self-proclaimed Marxist John Randolph.

The National Council of American-Soviet Friendship was a well-known Communist front group, actually supported financially by Moscow. But that didn't dissuade the likes of Jane Alexander, Ed Asner, Tyne Daly, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Roscoe Lee Brown, John Houseman, Rita Moreno, James Whitmore, Paul Winfield, Dennis Weaver, Lee Grant, Linda Lavin, Ellen Burstyn, Jamie Lee Curtis, Patty Duke, Jack Lemmon, Howard Hesseman, Valerie Harper, Tony Randall, Rip Torn, Eli Wallach, Esai Morales and Sam Waterston from attending or sponsoring the affairs.

Senators, mayors and other elected officials wrote letters of encouragement, spoke at the dinners and lent their support. Both the New York and Los Angeles city councils declared March 13, 1988, "John Randolph Day" to honor this Soviet apparatchik. The glitzy, bicoastal shindigs raised more than $25,000 for the NCASF, which the State Department openly labeled, at that time, one of the most important Soviet active measures used in the U.S.

I'll never forget it. I witnessed this event. I reported it. I couldn't wait to bathe myself after breathing the air in that room full of caviar comrades.

I guess it was possible back then for useful idiots in Hollywood to be in denial about what it was they were supporting. Maybe they believed their own State Department was still caught up in "Cold War hysteria." Gorbachev, they might have thought, was really a different kind of Communist Party leader than his predecessors who killed tens of millions of their own people.

But a year later, that kind of wishful thinking was no longer possible.

On Feb. 8, 1989, still years before the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union, the FBI arrested the Rev. Alan Craft Thomson, a Presbyterian minister and the executive director of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, and charged him with trying to conceal the origin of $17,000 provided to the group directly from Moscow.

Not one of those Hollywood celebrities took a career hit as a result of playing footsie with a Soviet front group – not even Randolph, the chairman of the group.

In fact, Randolph's career was rehabilitated by the visibility the position afforded him. He told the Communist Party USA newspaper People's Daily World in 1988 that his phone wouldn't stop ringing with movie and TV offers after his coronation as chairman of the Communist front.

What's the lesson here?

Hollywood celebrities have learned they do not need to be discriminating in their political allegiances and social crusades. There is no cost to supporting even the most tyrannical, oppressive and murderous madmen on the planet. Of course, it's not entirely true that any political cause can be supported within the entertainment industry with impunity.

There is one cause that will bring harsh rebuke, censure, maybe even blacklisting even in the 21st century.

And that would be the cause of supporting freedom, self-government, decency and human rights. And, whatever you do, don't ever dare say a kind word about America.

Sebert provides his side of the story

I received a phone call from Mitchell May Lou Sebert regarding the controversy involving a land give away to entice a credit card company to start up in the city of Mitchell. He said he heard that this issue has grown some legs on the Blogosphere.

Sebert basically said that his intention was to get the pubic and taxpayers involved at the City Council level, not within the authority of the Park Board. His intentions was to begin the first reading, second reading, and adoption process during the next City Council meeting, but wanted to give a heads up to the members of the Park Board so that they can think about and then prepare a response to the proposed deal. He was not trying to keep the deal secret from the public.

I have gotten to know Lou during his time as legislator and always found him to be a straight shooter and stands on principle, even when that position is not all that popular.

With all of that said, I told Lou that I have always had a problem with economic development through the government. I explained that I am about to spend a weekend in Chicago to attend a bloggers conference on free markets and limited government. Philosophically I have a problem with the land deal. And I went on to explain that as these public-private partnership deals become more and more popular, we have to have more and more transparency.

Then Lou gave be the practical side which is that if Mitchell don’t do it, another city will. And this is where I reiterate me belief that Sebert is well intended, but we need transparency to prevent others from thinking otherwise. And we did not come up with a solution to the current economic development atmosphere where businesses use jobs as ransom in order to get the best deals by putting state and local governments in competition with each other. The end result is not more overall economic development, but simply a process to determine where that development ends up. And at the end of the day we have wealth redistribution from the taxpayers, to those business that get these seat heart deals. And it is unfair when a large business has more leverage than a small business. The bigger gets bigger, and the small operations go broke.

And Lou used Aberdeen as an example and wonderered where are they getting all the money to bribe [bribe is my word, not Lou's] business owners. I said we probably need to look more deeply into the business leaders who are a part of the student loan finance group and Great Plains Education Foundation. That was a point that we agreed on and ended the conversation.

I did not say this to Lou last night, but I say it again here, this economic development through public-private partnerships is giving a bad taste in the mouth of some who suspect corruption within that process. And with the South Dakota GOP opposing transparency measures, the distrust increases and people think the capitalists pigs of the GOP are using secrecy to line their pockets. We saw the impact of that at the end of the 2006 election cycle. It looks like it may continue into this election cycle. The GOP is being looked at as a representative of power and not a representative of the people.

Far-left promoting Cultural Marxism

Yesterday I posted a WorldNetDaily introduction to a new columnist Erik Rush. The ending to his first WorldNetDaily column confirms what I have been providing the readers of this web site…Cultural Marxism is being used by the far-left to destroy traditional American principles of freedom:

Jack and Bobby Kennedy were Democrats, although they would likely be considered arch-conservatives today. They were, as we all are aware, staunch supporters of civil rights, particularly in areas affecting blacks, who were then marching under the banner of Dr. Martin Luther King. With the deaths of the two brothers and King, elements of the far left and those in the Democrat party who had supported segregation exploited emotional ties the black community had for the Kennedys to ingratiate themselves by association to blacks.

The chief leaders in the black community at the time were pastors, who were targeted and corrupted through the "gospel" of personal gain. Concurrently, other pastors (such as Rev. Wright) were formulating what we now understand as "Black Liberation Theology," the false Christian doctrine promulgated by Marxist-leaning black writers of the 1950s and 1960s.

The result has been that the far left wound up doing more damage to the black community than segregation ever did, in part because segregation was overt, while the far left's agenda was clandestine in nature.

Some black pastors – including such luminaries as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton – may not actually believe there's a bigot lurking underneath every white hide in America; rather, they are simply captains of the civil rights activism industry, which has made some of them quite rich. Other pastors, activists and black Americans no doubt do believe that the United States is a racist, imperialist country.

In the moral sense, herein lies the crime, particularly if said activist falls into the former category. Speaking on one's delusional, retrograde beliefs is one thing; doing it for personal aggrandizement is quite another. Some contend that compromising the cultural integrity of one's own ethnic group only intensifies the hypocrisy and evil of such comportment.

We're all Americans. This is the truth from which we are being continually diverted by the far left and ethnic activists. Were this truth taken to heart on a wide enough scale, it would sink these professional race-baiters faster than one could say "poverty pimp."

Abortion is unconstitutional

From Joseph Farah:

believe the Constitution outlaws abortion – and I think I can prove it to you.

To understand why abortion is still illegal, despite Roe v. Wade, you must begin by doing something few Americans bother with anymore – reading the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America," it says.

Important words all. But I want you to focus right now on those to whom this document applies. Who are the subjects and beneficiaries of the Constitution, as stated clearly in the preamble?

The answer? "… to ourselves and our posterity …"

The word "ourselves" in this context refers to those men who wrote it – and to their generation of Americans.

"Posterity," which literally means "descendants" or all succeeding generations, refers, in this context, to all those Americans yet unborn.

Is your great, great, great, great granddaughter your posterity? Absolutely. Is she born yet? Absolutely not. Does the fact that she is not yet born make her any less your posterity? No.

Now, specifically what rights are ascribed by the Constitution to ourselves and our posterity?

"Amendment V: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

Clearly, the Fifth Amendment establishes that our posterity – those yet unborn – shall not be deprived of life without due process. Bingo!

This same principle was contained in the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Obama’s racist religion

From WorldNetDaily:

Erik Rush, the columnist who was writing and talking about the incendiary comments and views of Sen. Barack Obama's longtime pastor and mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, long before the mainstream media began reporting the story, has joined the WorldNetDaily commentary lineup as an exclusive weekly contributor.

Rush, who has been a guest columnist for WND since 2003, was the first to publicize the controversial views of Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ in a piece published Feb. 20, 2007.

"Is Barack Obama seeking to be our first black president, or our first stealth black supremacist president?" Rush asked in opening the column.

"To say that the Trinity United Church of Christ is afrocentric in the extreme would be a gross understatement. It's not simply afrocentric, it's African-centric. In fact, one could argue that this organization worships things African to a far greater degree than they do Christ, and gives the impression of being a separatist 'church' in the same vein as do certain supremacist 'white brethren' churches – or even Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam."

Rush ended his groundbreaking column saying: "Obama's affiliation with this church, if I must call it that, should be as alarming to the American voter as a Republican candidate for president belonging to the Aryan Brethren Church of Christ. Any argument against this assertion is politically correct delusion, reverse discrimination and a hypocrisy – a very dangerous one."

The Rush column and a subsequent media appearance caused such a stir at Trinity Church, Rev. Wright posted a rebuttal on the organization's website.

A former professional musician, Rush has appeared on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," CNN and is a veteran of numerous radio appearances. He is the author of several books. His latest, "Annexing Mexico: Solving the Border Problem Through Annexation and Assimilation", was a 2007 New York Book Festival winner in the "Best Nonfiction" category.

Rush's exclusive column will run each Thursday on WorldNetDaily's commentary page.

The ACLU hate machine

From WorldNetDaily:

The San Diego City Council voted 5-2 to honor the American Civil Liberties Union with a special day of recognition, even after the organization sued the city and collected $900,000 in taxpayer funds.

The plan was offered by council member Toni Atkins, who said she stood "by the resolution" and commended "the ACLU for the work they do."

Even before the vote, a spokeswoman for the ACLU expressed gratitude for the formal honor.

"Thank you for recognizing the ACLU," said Rebecca Roberts.

Two speakers opposed the recognition, including Heather Cameron, a representative of the law firm of Charles LiMandri.

LiMandri also serves as the West Coast director for the Thomas More Law Center, which along with other organizations, including the American Center for Law and Justice, donated thousands of hours of time to fight the ACLU's demand that San Diego remove a historic cross from the Mt. Soledad Veterans’ Memorial. The case continued even after the federal government took over the site and San Diego no longer had control over it.

Cameron told the council members "one of the great myths" is that the ACLU started out as a pro-civil rights organization.

ACLU founder Roger Baldwin said, "Communism is the goal," she told the council.

Cameron said Baldwin asserted that only a "small group of highly educated intellectuals" should dictate what everyone else believes.

In San Diego, the ACLU cost the city's taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars by raising the fight over the Mt. Soledad cross and continued the battle even after 76 percent of the voters supported maintaining the cross where it was built.

James Hartline, a Christian activist in San Diego, also spoke. He said the proposal to honor the ACLU was "one of the most repugnant acts" ever accomplished by the council and blamed the ACLU for a "long-term campaign of hate and religious bias against Christians."

Democrats are suppressing voting

Rush Limbaugh again turns the tide against the far-left Democrats, this is really funny:

RUSH: I mentioned in the last hour this Nation magazine story that's urging prosecution of your host and indictment, for voter fraud in Ohio and Texas. I had a chance here to read the story because it actually came to me -- Koko sent it to me -- while the program was underway, and I read a little bit of it during a break. The clear intent in this Nation story is to intimidate you, to intimidate Operation Chaos voters from using your right to vote. If you were to read this story, they're trying to intimidate you. They want to make you think that you could get arrested for it, and they want to make you think that you could go to jail for it. Now, who are these people, these commies at The Nation? These are the same people who every election cycle claim Republicans are engaged in voter suppression and voter intimidation, and yet it is the left and the Democrats and the commies at The Nation, who are now engaging in voter suppression and voter intimidation. It is people at The Nation and others who are trying to intimidate and threaten you by intimidating you and, in the end, disenfranchise you.

You have registered to vote in Pennsylvania, and they are attempting to use the intimidation factor in order to get you to not show up and vote. They want to scare you into thinking that you will be going to jail. So disenfranchisement, voter suppression, voter intimidation: all originating from sources on the left. How can you intimidate somebody more than to threaten to arrest them if they vote the wrong way, which is what the writers at The Nation and others are attempting to do here. This is classic, and this is excellent. It's fabulous to have this on display. Operation Chaos is exceeding all objectives. It is exposing Democrats and liberals for who they really are. They suppress votes. They intimidate voters. They do their best to intimidate and disenfranchise people, by threatening to arrest them if they vote the wrong way. I mean, we're laughing about it here, but it's pretty serious, when you stop and think about it. I mean, nobody has a right to know who you voted for. You don't have to sign a pledge or a loyalty oath or any of that. The vote is private. It is yours.