Sibby Online

Herseth Sandlin married, but remains anti-family

Here is some analysis by David N. Bass regarding legislation that passed last week with the blessings of Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin:

Giving us a foretaste of what's to come if the Democrats capture the White House and maintain control of Congress in 2008, the liberal-led U.S. House approved a bill on Wednesday that would put deviant sexual behavior on par with race, gender and age in federal employment non-discrimination law.

Liberal congressional lawmakers rammed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, through the chamber by a 235 to 184 vote following a contentious debate on the House floor. The measure is expected to meet stiff opposition in the Senate, and President Bush has pledged a veto if the legislation makes it to his desk.

While supporters claim the bill would end discrimination in the workplace against those who practice homosexuality, ENDA advocates conveniently ignore the myriad rights the legislation would tromp all over, including religious liberty. The measure contains an exemption for religious organizations but appears to still muzzle many traditionally minded employers or employees from exercising their First Amendment rights.

That reality reflects a political, legal and cultural force that has been gaining steam for decades – the exaltation of free sex and sexual deviancy above virtually every other right in American life, especially religious freedom.

Does that sound far-fetched? Examine the evidence.

When the Founding Fathers drafted the Bill of Rights, they placed religious liberty at the very front in the First Amendment. Contrast that with today's world – such rights of religious expression have been forced to the back of the bus in favor of raunchy sex and "alternative" lifestyles.

Here is the anti-family aspect of the legislation:

Do supporters of such policies have any concern for the mental health of six-year-olds being exposed to such salaciousness? Not even a whisper. The ethic of sexual license trumps everything, even the innocence of toddlers.

Likewise, one of the top reasons given for support of abortion-as-birth-control is that it equalizes the sexes by giving women the opportunity to be just as sexually promiscuous as men. Never mind that abortion ends the life of an innocent unborn human child. Sex without consequences is far more important, even more important than protections of life guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

And then there is the aspect that increases the cost of health care:

Similarly, a recent study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that 11 percent of U.S. males in 2002 reported having multiple sexual relationships at the same time, a behavior pattern that significantly speeds the transmission of sexually transmitted disease.

Yet we can't pass moral judgment on such behavior without being labeled a hate monger or prig. Why? Because sexual promiscuity is the new inalienable right.

The ENDA legislation exemplifies that pathetic truth. It's a sad commentary on American life that we are beginning to value the right to engage in sordid sexual behavior above the rights our nation has held dear for centuries.

George Washington said in his Farewell Address that religion and morality are "indispensable supports" to political prosperity. Contrast that with today, when American culture is supported more by the unstable foundation of debauchery and a sleazy media conglomerate than by the forces of morality and truth.

The death knell of a free society is when a people elevate the right to engage in destructive behavior above the traits that form the very foundation of civilization –marriage, family, religion and morality. America is elevating the sexual rights of adults above the welfare of children, the right to engage in deviant sex above religious freedom, and sexual license above the sanctity of human life.

And we should understand that the the far-left's inalienable right of free sex is not one that comes from God. Perhaps we should take a read of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire:

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The great historian, Gibbons, who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, gave five reasons for the fall of the great dynasty.

First: Rapid increase of divorce, with the undermining of the sanctity of the home, which is the basis of society.

Second: Higher and higher taxes; the spending of money for bread and celebrations.

Third: The mad craze for pleasure, sports becoming every year more exciting and more brutal.

Fourth: The building of gigantic armaments, when the real enemy was within; the decadence of the people.

Fifth: The decay of religion; faith fading into mere form, losing touch with life, and becoming impotent to guide it.

A review of these principal factors in the decline of the Roman Empire can easily be related to our own time, and may portend our own decline from the status of a prominent world power. "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people." (Prov. 14:34.) Again, "Blessed is the nation whose God is Jehovah." (Ps. 33:12.)

Sandlin, the secular socialist

The Argus Leader has a report promoting Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s socialist agenda as I posted on earlier this week in regard to universal health care. Not only does Sandlin vote to increase the spending of big government, the Club For Growth has a RePork report card, that shows Sandlin refuses to reduce pork:

Even though the Democratic majority vowed to return Congress to a path of fiscal responsibility, the 2008 appropriations bills were stuffed with wasteful pork projects. While Representatives John Campbell, Jeff Flake, Jeb Hensarling, Scott Garrett, and David Obey (1 amendment) offered 50 amendments to strip outrageous pork projects from the appropriations bills, only one amendment, offered by Rep. Jeff Flake, passed.

The Club for Growth has compiled a RePORK Card of all members' votes on all 50 anti-pork amendments (see below). "Taxpayers have a right to know which congressmen stand up for them and which stand up for the special interests," said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. "Unfortunately, the Club for Growth RePORK Card shows that most congressmen care more about lining their buddies' pockets than they care about protecting American taxpayers."

If you scroll down the list, you will find Sandlin at the miserable pro-socialist 2% score. The only anti-Pork Amendment out of the 50 that Sandlin voted for was the only one that did pass:

House Vote 593 - Bars funding of $129,000 for the Mitchell County Development Foundation for the home of the "perfect Christmas tree" project. Amendment passed, 249-174.

So not only has Sandlin moved over with the far-left socialists, she has also joined in with the far-left secularists.

Sandlin votes for backdoor socialism

Representative Stephanie Sandlin voted in favor of this:

The U.S. House of Representatives last week approved a $160 billion entitlement explosion, a $53 billion tax hike, relaxed rules for illegal immigrant access to federal benefits, and a package of Medicare cuts. With this they are saddling our children with extraordinary debt, and are doing so without my vote.

All of this was rolled into a single bill: the so-called reauthorization of the SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program).

The program was established under the premise that it would provide health insurance for children whose families were too wealthy to qualify for Medicaid, but too poor to afford private insurance. In the intervening years, it has strayed far from this premise. And the bill passed this week not only doesn't return it to its roots, it expands it so dramatically that, if signed into law, two-thirds of the American people could end up under government-run health care.

The Democrats' SCHIP bill is a thinly veiled effort to shift children – and, under its own definitions, adults – from private health coverage to a government-run entitlement program.

Sandlin, global warming, and God

South Dakota War College has a post on Representative Stephanie Sandlin’s flip-flopping in regard to the Kyoto protocol. And Kevin Woster of the Rapid City Journal has been defending Sandlin from the accountability of the internet:

U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is taking some shots for her recent global-warming sojourn with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Germany, Great Britain, Belgium and Greenland.

The trip seemed reasonable enough, considering the importance of the issue and all the trips other congressionals have taken. But some folks are calling it a waste of money and time in a cause that has questionable merit.

Blog criticism and back-channel comments have a similar tone and style. And rumor has it some anti-Herseth special-interest groups are or will be running ads on the issue East River?

And Woster continued defending Sandlin with statements from Governor Rounds:

Gov. Mike Rounds, a man not normally ranked among the wild-eyed environmental extremists, told the Associated Press that most people agree that the climate is changing. The issues facing South Dakota now, Rounds said, is to determine how humans can slow down that process of change and respond to it.

To which I said:

The idea that man is above God? That is typical humanist thought. I will argue all day long on that.

Of course this sparked responses from the anti-God left. But one said that there are Christians who are on board with this movement:

Evangelical leaders have begun to come around to the issue of global warming and released a statement.
http://www.christiansandclimate.org/statement
They recognize global warming is real, induced by humans, will have serious impacts, and requires action be taken now.

The above link is to a the "Evangelical Climate Initiative". I found this background information on this movement:

My friend Justin Taylor sent me an article this morning discussing the Evangelical Climate Initiative. Concerned Women for America has done the legwork and found something quite surprising and disturbing. "A new effort to mobilize evangelical Christians on the problem of global warming received $475,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the top funders of abortion programs in the United States and abroad."

Sure enough, a couple of Google searches turn up evidence that the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has given significant amounts of funding to organizations that stand opposed to Christian values.

They go on to detail pro-abortion causes including Planned Parenthood. I also found this in yesterday’s Amanda Carpenter column:

There was even discussion of a religious program that sells carbon offsets. The Evangelical Climate Initiative, a nonprofit 501(c)(3), offers tax-deductible carbon offsets for $99 per year through a program called "Cooling Creation." Their website states that 93 percent of the carbon offset "donations" submitted "goes directly to offsets, climate change education and outreach."

Historian David Burton, summoned to the panel by Sen. Inhofe and named one of the "Twenty-five Most Influential Evangelicals in America" by Time Magazine, commented on these various campaigns: "The next time we see Jesus, He will be driving neither a Hummer nor a Hybrid."

Burton suggested that Boxer was exaggerating the religious community’s support for liberal environmentalism. "The Scriptures teach conservation, not preservation," he said. "Man was the steward of nature and environment, and while man definitely is to tend and guard it, it is to serve him, not vice versa. From the beginning, God warned about elevating nature and the environment over man and his Creator."

And here is a report on how the United Nation’s Kyoto Protocol’s carbon credit program has been a rip off:

While this EU market has failed to make any serious impact on climate change, the UN's Clean Development Mechanism has done little better. In contrast to the EU system, which sells permits to produce supposedly limited quantities of greenhouse gases, the CDM sets up projects which are supposed to reduce the quantity of greenhouse gases and then sells carbon credits which allow buyers to emit more gases.

Ten years after the idea was launched at Kyoto; six years after the guidelines were drawn up at Marrakech; a year and a half after it finally went to work: the CDM thus far has issued only 50m tonnes of certified emissions reductions to offset global warming: Britain produces more emissions than that in a single month.

There are doubts about the validity of some of these CERs, on two separate grounds. First, some of them appear to breach the CDM's requirements for sustainable development - 53% of the existing CERs come from just six monster projects, in India, China and South Korea, all of which engage in the most controversial form of carbon reduction. They manufacture refrigerant which produces as a side effect a gas called HFC-23. Although carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas, HFC-23 is 11,700 times more likely than carbon dioxide to encourage global warming. Refrigerant companies find it relatively cheap to instal an incinerator to burn the HFC-23 and, once that is converted into certified reductions of emission, each tonne saved can be sold as 11,700 carbon credits. These companies are now earning millions of euros from these credits - more than from selling their refrigerant products.

The environmental problem is two-fold, first that HFC factories tend to pour out other pollutants which don't happen to be greenhouse gases but which are unpleasant or dangerous for local communities; and second, that the potential profits from burning HFC-23 are so great that companies are being encouraged to expand production of refrigerants so they can produce more HFC-23 to incinerate, thus increasing the net amount of pollution.

Secondly, as our front-page story today reports, there is evidence that a significant percentage of current and future CDM reductions, possibly as many as 20%, may have been wrongly checked. This effects not just the 50m tonnes of CERs which have been issued already, but a massive quantity which is sitting in the pipeline as a result of hedge funds pouring an estimated €4,000m into high-profit carbon projects.

So we have a so-called Christian movement promoting a corrupt United Nations program. The Carpenter column provides us with more insight of the Democrat’s religious environmentalism:

Once she wrested control of the Senate’s Environmental and Public Works Committee from conservative stalwart Sen. Jim Inhofe (R.-Okla.), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.) was expected to aggressively pursue legislation to combat global warming. What wasn’t expected was that she would do it with blessings from the Church.

Last Thursday, Boxer held a hearing that highlighted the growing role of religion in liberal political campaigns--particularly in the name of "environmental justice." There, a coalition of 35 religious denominations called for an 80 percent reduction in global warming emissions by the year 2050, and bill S.309, sponsored by Boxer and avowed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I.-Vt.), calls for the same.

"Evangelical Christians, Catholics, African Methodist Episcopals, Jews, mainline Protestant Christians, and many other people of faith see the need for action on global warming as a moral, ethical and scriptural mandate," Boxer said.

She explained, "People of faith contacted us recognizing that science says global warming’s effects will fall most heavily on poor people. All we have to do is look at what happened during [Hurricane] Katrina, even in one of the world’s wealthiest countries."

On behalf of the National Council of Episcopal Churches, which claims to represent 45 million Americans, Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said, "Faith communities, in the area of global warming, are increasingly of one mind that action is needed." She pled with her "colleagues in the faith community [who] doubt the urgency of addressing global warming," saying: "I urge you to reconsider for the sake of God’s good earth."

Among the religious communities supporting the emissions cuts were: the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the National Council of Churches USA, PAX Christi USA, the Union for Reform Judaism and Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

The list of organization should look familiar to you. They are the same list that promotes abortion through the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, who is a coalition member with the American Humanist Association. These are humanists in Christian clothing. False prophets. They are part of the New World Order movement that wants to destroy true Christianity and replace it with a one world government. No wonder socialists like Bernie Sanders are on board.

And not only is Representative Sandlin in bed with these humanists in regard to promoting abortion, she is now in bed with them on the global warming issue. Hardly a centrist position.

Herseth votes against religious freedom

First Stephanie Herseth joined the far-left Democrats and voted to surrender in Iraq and give victory to the Jihadists. I did not see this in today’s Argus Leader, but yesterday Herseth voted with the far-left Democrats as they move to take away religious freedom:

One day after WND reported Christian activists were seeking a pledge from the president to veto a "hate crimes" bill now approved by the U.S. House, the White House issued a statement saying the proposal is "unnecessary and constitutionally questionable."

The plan, H.R. 1592 by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., is feared by opponents, as WND has reported, as a means to target Christians and to demolish both freedom of speech and religion in the United States. The House voted 237-180 for it today.

"The administration favors strong criminal penalties for violent crime, including crimes based on personal characteristics, such as race, color, religion, or national origin. However … if H.R. 1592 were presented to the president, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill," the White House said.

The statement said state and local criminal laws already provide penalties for the violence addressed by the new federal crime defined in the bill, and many carry stricter penalties than the proposed language.

"State and local law enforcement agencies and courts have the capability to enforce those penalties and are doing so effectively. There has been no persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement…" the statement said.

It said the administration believes all violent crimes are unacceptable, regardless of the victims, and should be punished "firmly."

"I think it's a good sign, for now," said Michael Marcavage, of Repent America, an organization whose members include several Christians jailed for proclaiming their beliefs on public streets in Philadelphia.

Herseth on dogs vs children

A letter published by the Argus Leader:

On March 26, Rep. Stephanie Herseth (now Herseth Sandlin) voted in support of HR137, a bill to ban the transportation of dogs across state lines for the purpose of fighting as a sport. I'm in complete agreement with Herseth Sandlin's vote, as I don't want to see Fido exploited by heartless people, either.

I find it interesting that Herseth Sandlin opposed the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, which would have protected a pregnant minor from being taken across state lines for an abortion without her parents' knowledge or consent. This exploitation of minor girls not only puts them at risk as they submit to a life-changing surgical procedure but also usurps the right of parents to be involved in their daughter's medical decisions.

Now, let me get this straight. According to Herseth Sandlin's voting record, it's not appropriate to take a dog across state lines to fight, but it's permissible to take a young, vulnerable girl across state lines for an abortion. Sounds like a disconnect to me.

Forgot the chops

Jason Folkerts has an excellent cartoon on Herseth’s far-left anti-American vote. Here is what he said:

Supposed blue dog democrat Herseth voted to withdraw troops if benchmarks aren't met. Two things about this vote withdrawal strike me funny.

1. For someone like Herseth who aligns with a blue dog mentality - this vote leaves a question mark. Makes you wonder who is pulling the chain on the Hill (I think we can guess).
2. More importantly, let's go ahead and give the opposition our playbook, let's teleplay our moves right out in the open, let's quit. Another good example of why having Liberals in power during wartime is frightening. These guys are nowhere near the cut of Harry Truman or Franklin Roosevelt. They are barely a pale image of their icon John Kennedy. In fact, all three of those leaders have to be rolling over in their graves with a wartime vote like this.

By the way - this toon really isn't about a disagreement on the way this war is handled, right or wrong, we can agree to disagree on that, as it is on an inconsistency of our representation in DC - we should come to an agreement on that. Liberal, Conservative, is not the issue - consistency is, and flip-flopping is hurting the morale of our troops and the trust of the people.

Great carton, but I think it would have been more enlightening if Pelosi was handing the dog a couple of pork chops. The dog is already drooling.

Herseth moves to the lying left

[Thanks to Sid in the City}

The Argus Leader reports, without challenge, propaganda from Rep. Stephanie Herseth regarding her anti-American vote:

Democrats on Friday successfully pushed through the U.S. House a hard-line spending bill that would pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but require combat troops to leave war-torn Iraq by August 2008, if not sooner, a direct challenge to President Bush's Middle East policy.

On a mostly party-line 218-212 vote, Rep. Stephanie Herseth, D-S.D., and just enough of her House colleagues passed a $124 billion spending bill that carries a list of benchmarks that Iraqis would have to meet, including bolstering their own security forces.

If unmet, the bill would require U.S. combat troops to be pulled out of Iraq by December 2007. If the Iraqi government is able to step up and take more control of its country, the bill would require forces to begin withdrawing from Iraq by March 1, 2008, finishing by the end of August 2008.

Herseth called it "funding with accountability."

"My constituents consistently tell me they want accountability," Herseth, before casting her vote, said of both the White House and the Iraqi government. "It serves America's interests and our troops' interests."

That is not accountability. If we are not successful in meeting benchmarks that the Democrats deem to be success, we surrender in defeat in December 2007. This is giving victory to the Jihadists. And the Jihadists will deem any Iraqis that supported a democratic Iraq to be traitors and there will be heads dropped. This is no way to encourage Iraqi efforts to be self-sufficient. The accountability argument is pure BS.

And the Argus Leader report ends with another piece of Herseth propaganda:

"I've been disappointed with both the far left and the far right," Herseth said this week. She called her vote "a centrist approach to the challenges we face abroad."

Not so, it was conservative Democrats who voted with the Republicans:

In the end, 14 Democrats voted against its passage, including several conservative Democrats who worried that the bill went too far.

Here is how the Democrat’s got the centrists to vote the far-left anti-American line:

Bush asked Congress for $100 billion to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan plus $3 billion in standby disaster relief. The House bill proposes to give him $126.4 billion.

And the extra money? Much of it is pork to buy support for the bill from reluctant lawmakers. There is money for Gulf Coast cleanup and levee repair, for spinach growers, for restoring freezedamaged farmland, for peanut storage, for rice farmers, for wildfire suppression, for shrimp and menhaden fishermen.

This is hardly the frugal fiscal stewardship the Democrats promised us. Indeed, it smacks of the wheeling and dealing that got the Republicans in so much trouble.

In deed. Herseth said one thing during her re-election campaign, but is doing the opposite in DC. And the Argus Leader is spewing her propaganda so that the good people of South Dakota will not get the truth…that Herseth will buy her votes with taxpayer’s money gotten in return for supporting those who want America to lose in Iraq. All designed by the Democrats to steal the White House in 2008. When Chad Schuldt screams "corrupt lying liars", he needs to get a mirror and learn something about himself and his ilk.

Herseth’s partisan vote

Looks like the Democrats not only want to hurt the economy by raising the minimum wage, they also want to hurt the economy by raising taxes:

One of the first key procedural votes in the Democrat-controlled House last week established legislative rules that Republicans say will make it easier to raise taxes by a simple majority vote.

The straight party-line vote received little attention Thursday as Rep. Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, was elected speaker of the House. But Republican leaders and conservative tax-cut advocates said it opened up a huge loophole in a Republican-imposed rule drawn from the Republicans' 1994 Contract with America, which requires a supermajority, or three-fifths vote, to raise taxes.

Democrats unanimously voted down a motion offered by Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio that would have prevented them from waiving the rule, a move that tax-cutters said signaled the Democrats' intention to raise taxes between now and the 2008 elections.

"American taxpayers need to hold on to their wallets because the new House rules concerning taxes are not worth the paper they're written on," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR).

"After spending an entire year on the campaign trail claiming she will not raise taxes, the first vote Nancy Pelosi brings to the floor for a vote as speaker will open the door to billions and billions of dollars of tax increases over the next two years," Mr. Norquist said.

And Herseth, who ran on the "I am an independent", followed the Democrat leader:

Democratic officials saw Mr. Boehner's motion as a move to tie their hands on future tax policy, and the majority leadership effectively held all of its troops in line to oppose it, even though some of its members ran on pledges not to raise taxes.

But I doubt the Drive-By media will inform the voters about the huge mistake they make last November.

Blue Dog means pro-life

Stephanie Herseth, South Dakota’s lone representative, claims to be a leader of the Democrat Blue Dogs, but Health Shuler may be educating her on Blue Dogs being pro-life:

The former NFL and University of Tennessee quarterback was sworn into office Thursday as a member of the 110th Congress, joining 41 other freshmen Democrats taking seats in the House during ceremonies in the nation's capital.

Shuler defeated eight-term Republican incumbent Rep. Charles Taylor in November to represent western North Carolina's mountainous 11th District. The win helped Democrats take control of both the House and Senate for the first time in a dozen years.

"This is history in the making," Shuler said after taking his oath of office in the House chamber. "The sky is the limit."

The pro-gun, anti-abortion politician ran on a platform of socially conservative and fiscally liberal values, both of which resonated in a religious district hit hard by the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs.

Shuler has become a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of conservative Democrats who favor a balanced budget and fiscal discipline. He holds some views that starkly contrast those held by newly elected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Several Republicans cheered when Shuler was sworn in, though he downplayed his differences with Pelosi after meeting with the liberal California Democrat on Thursday.

"I had a good conversation with Speaker Pelosi," Shuler said. "We talked about my conservative views. She's fully aware of the district I represent."

Shuler said he told Pelosi they would disagree on some issues, including gay marriage and abortion. But he said he supported raising the minimum wage and using existing embryos for stem cell research.