"That's God Giving Us an Amen"

The speaker is Kevin McCullough: columnist, author and radio-show host.

The occasion is the August 2nd Staten Island (NY) Tea Party held at historic Conference House Park. Despite dangerous weather, almost 700 patriots came out to make their voices heard.

Kevin makes a reference to Jesus Christ, and then...

Our Incredible Vanishing Congressman

Congressman McMahon admitted the other day that he has no intention of holding a Town Hall meeting during this summer’s recess. He did so after a particularly hard-hitting set-to with a group of bingo-playing seasoned citizens at the Assumption Senior Center in New Brighton.

Despite a withering verbal assault in between the calling of N37 and B15 (BINGO!) our fearless leader stuck to his principles – no matter how much they threatened, cajoled, browbeat and bribed, he would not take a stand.

He doesn’t know how he’s going to vote.

Now the skeptical among us might think that indecision would be a good reason to speak to a wide swath of your constituency, especially when you have all this down-time back in the district. Perhaps a strong, healthy dose of what ordinary, hard-working, tax-paying Staten Islanders are thinking might help to clarify the mind a bit, right?

Wrong. In a post-Bingo interview with NY1, our Congressman made the following statement, verbatim and in toto:

“When you have some Town Hall meetings of this sort of ‘new version’ where this certain group comes in, hijacks the meeting and tries to drown out any thoughtful discussion, then I don’t think those meetings are helpful. So I will continue having dialogue in meetings like this….”

Apparently he’s met with civic leaders, community leaders, business leaders, and, as we know, a certain demographic of Bingo players, but I guess “meetings like this,” do not include you and me. And when we’re excluded, deliberately excluded, this story stops being funny.

Mr. McMahon, I suggest you take a step back and recognize that “this certain group” you refer to so disdainfully is YOUR constituents, and voicing their opinion to their Congressman is their right in a representative democracy. That you lack the fortitude to hear what they have to say because they speak in strong and passionate voices is very telling black mark on your re-election resume. Or do you, like President Obama, feel that we should just “stop talking and get out of the way?”

Personally, I don’t hear people “drowning out” thoughtful discussion – I simply hear people drowning; drowning in a sinking ship of ill-conceived, budget-busting, socialistic legislation. I hear people who perceive these meetings as a last chance to stop our country from plummeting into the murky depths of socialized medicine.

Please understand that the reason we are not interested in debating the minutiae of the various bills is because they all share the same titanic gash below the waterline; no matter how the deck chairs are arranged, any one of these bills will sink our healthcare system.

It's time to come out of hiding and face your constituents, Congressman. Leave the "Where's Waldo" games to the kids.

The Rage and the Pride.

It seems as if this administration has taken dead aim on our freedoms - starting on Inauguration Day - and has hit the mark just about every time. Is it any wonder that the steady drumbeat of frustration has been growing ever-louder and more insistent over the months?

We watched Congress pass, and the President sign, a "stimulus" package that stimulated virtually nothing, but included big payoffs for his cronies and enablers, like ACORN. We watched them take over GM and Chrysler, trampling both the rules of law and contracts in the doing. We watched them barge into corporate boardrooms, fire CEOs, threaten ruinous taxation on legally contracted bonuses, and cap corporate pay.

We watched them take the first steps towards gaining control of our energy industry, using manufactured crises and tissue-thin excuses, all of which are based on junk-science and pie-in-the-sky "green" technological breakthroughs that are not even on the horizon.

And now, healthcare. They are trying to portray it as a system that is hopelessly broken and in need of complete overhaul. It is nothing of the kind - they know it and we know it. It needs fixes, yes, but fixes of the American kind, not the European kind. It needs free-market reforms, it needs to let competition work and it needs the government to stay out of it.

The truth is that health care reform is not about health care any more than cap and trade is about energy - the beating heart of all of this legislation is government control.

Those of us that disdain and resist this quicktime march to socialism are the ones who watched the Left demonize the former administration for 8 years - and we just kept our mouths shut and took it. Nobody said a word. Nobody pushed back. Nobody fought back. That's when the drumbeat really started.

And then along came Rick Santelli, and when he shouted those fateful words - "President Obama, are you listening?" - the fuse was lit. Because we knew the President wasn't listening, and if he was, we knew he didn't care. His agenda became perfectly clear, and the drumbeat quickened yet again, the frustration began to harden into anger, and finally, the anger into action.

We are tired of being called compassionless cretins because we don't support bailing out the irresponsible. We're tired of being called kool-aid drinking racists because we support the vigorous defense of our borders. We're tired of snide remarks that allude to us as relics of the past because we love and revere the Constitution.

We're sick and tired of the sneering condescension that drips from the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and Henry Waxman, who exult in their super-majority even as they dance on the graves of our Founding Fathers. We're tired of it all.

And so here comes August and we're stewing with this pent up rage. At the same time, the health care issue - the latest assault on our liberty - advances to the fore. This is the big one.

After the stimulus, the budget, the Detroit shakedowns, the Wall Street takedowns, the energy-industry hijacking, the finger-pointing, the demonizing, the disdain, the scolding and the ridicule, we get a chance to say our piece at a Town Hall meeting. Is it any wonder that voices are raised?

We are witnessing the rage and pride of the free citizens of the United States of America.

I am filled with the heart-breaking image of ordinary Americans struggling to decipher the legalese in a thousand-page bill so that they can debate their elected representatives, in the hope that they can slow, stop or divert this march to socialism.

I am filled with the heart-breaking image of ordinary Americans trying, with sputtering indignation, to formulate a question that will convey their feelings to a smooth-tongued politician who has been thoroughly schooled in all the answers.

I am filled with the heart-breaking image of ordinary Americans shouting and gesticulating because they are nervous and not practiced in public speaking, because they know they are not getting through to politician in front of them, because they are afraid to give up and sit down, to give up on their country, to give up on their belief that they will somehow, if they keep talking, right the ship they feel is listing so badly and in danger of sinking.

I am filled with that rage and pride - aren't you? Aren't you enraged at those that would put good, hard-working American men and women through this hell? Aren't you proud that those same Americans will not go down without a fight?

Those who demonize Tea Party protesters and Town Hall activists are blaming some nefarious plot by Republican obstructionists, or talk radio, or insurance company misinformation - because they cannot fathom the truth.

The truth is that people such as we - groping for an answer, searching for a tactic - are desperately trying to figure out a way to stop the enemy from disgorging its minions from the Trojan Horse we have allowed inside our gates.

The truth is that without the media to voice our concerns, Tea Parties and Town Hall meetings are the only way we can be heard.

This is the rage and pride of Americans, pure and uncut, pouring out in actions we never thought we were capable of taking, in words we never thought we were capable of uttering. This is the rage and pride of Americans who will sit still for these indignities no longer.


*The title of this piece has been borrowed from an essay written by the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci after the events of 9/11/01. "La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio" is an inspiring piece which can be found here.

The Obama Administration: Thugs and Slugs

Not long ago, Barack Obama exhorted his troops to use an "in your face" style when debating those who dared to disagree with his agenda of false hope and radical change. Sharpening the point, the White House set up a "snitch line," encouraging citizens to forward emails opposing Obamacare, or even report "casual conversations" that "smelled fishy."

If anything smells in this country, it is this inexperienced, radical, hateful and divisive administration - easily the most dangerous in the history of the nation. And this particular fish is most certainly rotting from the head down.

After senior White House adviser David Axelrod and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina met with Democrat senators, and promised them that "If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard" using the party and its allies, things started to get dicey. Apparently, these "allies" include union thugs and goons.

Here is the future of free speech and dialogue in the United States of Barack Hussein Obama:


According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Kenneth Gladney, a 38-year-old conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags with “Don’t tread on me” printed on them. He spoke to the Post-Dispatch from the emergency room of the St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, where he said he was waiting to be treated for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face that he suffered in the attack. Gladney, who is black, said one of his attackers, also a black man, used a racial slur against him before the attack started.

“It just seems there’s no freedom of speech without being attacked,” he said.

Downplaying the meeting with Axelrod and Messina, Senator Harry Reid told reporters “They are just helping us understand the fringe that is trying to mess up our meetings.”

Sorry, Senator, but it is we who are trying to understand. We're trying to understand how and why this fringe administration is trying to mess up the greatest healthcare system in the world. Of course, we're doing it the American way, through informed discourse and making our feelings known. Your Thug-in-Chief seems to prefer a different way, one he learned on the streets of Chi-town, I suppose. There's an old union phrase: "If we can't win with the power of persuasion, we'll win with the persuasion of power."

BHO seems to have learned that lesson well.

Running for Cover. And Not Finding Any.

As predicted, Congressman McMahon has taken refuge in a tough guy approach to the radical health care proposal being bullied through Congress. It is to be expected, since he doesn't want to be seen as a cheerleader for what will prove to be an extraordinarily painful and destructive initiative.

It won't work, though. Not as long as we vow to stay informed and engaged.

This from the Staten Island Advance (SILive) today:

Said McMahon: "... I am concerned that the proposed health care bill will be paid for at the expense of our small business owners ... essentially penalizing (them)." [snip]

But Staten Island Rep. Michael McMahon predicted there will be a new way of providing health care in this country, and paying for it, by year's end, if not by Congress' August recess..."

Sound familiar? It should. Last week we wrote:

Do not be surprised if you see the Congressman expressing "deep concerns" about the health care bill, insinuating that he may not vote for it until he knows how it will be paid for. Ultimately, though, after some minor tweaks and fixes, he will toe the Obama/Pelosi line.

Now under normal circumstances this tactic would work quite well; it makes it seem as if he is putting the well-being and interests of his constituency before party loyalty - but that's all smoke and mirrors. The truth is that we are fools if we let him shape the message this way.

The underlying theme here is that despite the "tweaks and fixes," our Congressman is in favor of socialized medicine. McMahon - along with all the other politicians who will vote for this bill but are not personally bound by it - is ultimately going to vote to dump the greatest health care system in the history of the world.

Detractors (and there are many) will say that I'm being picky, that even when the Congressman does work for the benefit of his constituents I am looking for and finding fault. This is not true. The reality is that no matter what portions of socialized medicine McMahon objects to, he will still, in the end, support socialized medicine.

As I have said before, will say here, and will say again on August 2nd in Conference House Park: "Time and time again our Congressman votes us into the twilight world of soft tyranny..."

Think Nobody's Listening?

If any of your friends, neighbors or relatives roll their eyes when you tell them you're involved in the Tea Party movement, mention this piece from today's Wall Street Journal:

...on Friday a busload of freshmen Democrats went to the White House to plead their case against sharp tax increases with the president and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. The organizer was Rep. Gerald Connolly, the president of the freshman class whose Northern Virginia district is the richest in the U.S. as measured by median household income.

"There could come a time," said Rep. Michael McMahon, a freshman Democrat from New York City's borough of Staten Island, when Democrats are in open rebellion. "We will certainly see in the next few weeks where we are going." [snip]

For now, most freshmen aren't saying how they will vote on the House health-care bill. Mr. McMahon, whose New York district also includes parts of Brooklyn, said there is no open revolt, but there have been two meetings with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and there was the White House meeting Friday with Messrs. Obama and Emanuel. Taxes dominated what Mr. Connolly described as a cordial but inconclusive discussion.

"I spend all my time here making the case that the profile of the rich doesn't stand in my district," Mr. McMahon said. "People feel that they're getting hit from all sides."

Skeptics will say that you and I had nothing to do with it. Don't buy it. This was predicted in an email you received a few days ago if you are on the Tea Party mailing list:

This is Congressman McMahon's worst nightmare - an informed electorate who cares and is energized.

Do not be surprised if you see the Congressman expressing "deep concerns" about the health care bill, insinuating that he may not vote for it until he knows how it will be paid for. Ultimately, though, after some minor tweaks and fixes, he will toe the Obama/Pelosi line.

Think nobody's listening?

On the Death of a Hero.

Never having experienced the hell that is war, it exists only in my mind; I often wonder if I am capable of conjuring, in my imagination, the real sights, smells and sounds of it, the true depths of the fear and horror that must accompany battle. I think that I cannot, and that only makes those who have been in harm's way all the more worthy of my gratitude and honor. I'm sure many, many of you share my feelings.

Recently, we lost a man that is a true America hero, and he is worthy of our recognition. That his story would be taken to his grave untold and uncelebrated, ignored by a culture that worships an entertainment-industry freak but gives nary a passing thought to a true American, is a sad but not shocking commentary on our priorities, which puts a premium on pop-stardom, but publicly cares nary a whit for true courage.

At least that's true of some of us. Not all. I believe it's not true of you and I know it's not true of me.

Ed Freeman was a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam, second-in-command of Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). On November 14th, 1965, he was supporting Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley, where elements of the 5th and 7th Cavalry of the U.S. Army engaged elements of the regular army of North Viet Nam in one of the first major battles of the war, an apocalyptic event that would last 4 days, and be memorialized in the book and movie "We Were Soldiers." [The photo above was taken in the morning at LZ X-Ray, before the battle started, as Alpha Company was being helicoptered into the zone. Little did they know of the hell they would endure before the sun set that day.]

Within hours of being helicoptered in, the landing zone became so "hot," under withering enemy fire, that Medivac flights were called off. Wounded American soldiers lay where they were shot, their life forces ebbing unchecked, and the living were quickly running out of ammunition and supplies. Into this inferno of chaos and death flew a single, unarmed HUEY - piloted by Ed Freeman. Freeman brought in water and ammunition, and brought out wounded American boys.

Not once. Not twice. Fourteen separate times, Major Freeman set down his chopper in that deadly cauldron, and fourteen times he flew out. The men he rescued numbered about 30; the men whose lives he saved by re-supplying them, probably in the hundreds.

These are the words of President George W. Bush as he awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Major Freeman:

In a moment, we will hear the full citation in all its heroic detail. General Eisenhower once observed that when you hear a Medal of Honor citation, you practically assume that the man in question didn't make it out alive. In fact, about 1 in 6 never did, and the other five, men just like you all here, probably didn't expect to.

Citations are also written in the most simple of language, needing no embellishment or techniques of rhetoric. They record places and names and events that describe themselves. The medal itself bears only one word and needs only one, valor.

As a boy of 13, Ed Freeman saw thousands of men on maneuvers pass by his home in Mississippi. He decided then and there that he would be a soldier. A lifetime later the Congress has now decided that he's even more than a soldier because he did more than his duty. He served his country and his comrades to the fullest, rising above and beyond anything the Army or the nation could have ever asked.

It's been some years now since he left the service and was last saluted.

But from this day forward, wherever he goes, by military tradition, Ed Freeman will merit a salute from any enlisted personnel or officer of rank. Commander Seevers, I'll now ask you to read this citation of the newest member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and it will be my honor to give him his first salute.

An email has been circulating recently which incorrectly dates Major Ed Freeman's death to coincide with the probable drug overdose of a major entertainment figure - I assume to make a valid point about the priorities of the mainstream media and their pop culture minions. But such fudging of the truth is not necessary.

At the time this hero actually did pass on, in August of 2008, there was little or no public mention or notice, and though in the grand scheme of things not many people read this blog, it was important to me that now you know his story.

Thanks for listening.

ANOTHER Question for Congressman Mike.

Sorry to bother you Congressman, I know you're busy, but I have to ask: Do you think we're stupid, asleep, or both?

In your one-size-fits-all, canned response defending your vote on Cap and Trade, you said:

This bill uses the same, market-based, American solution which was successfully put in place to fight Acid Rain in 1990 for carbon emissions. As a result of the Acid rain program, electricity rates fell 10 percent and 16 million new jobs were added to the American economy.

Well, sir, that seemed like quite an achievement, so I took it upon myself to do a little research. I found a decidedly left-wing website called the Center for Progressive Reform and came up with this:

This reality is demonstrated by looking at U.S. economic performance in recent years. From 1990 to 2000...the U.S. economy added a whopping 16 million new jobs.

Umm, Congressman? We have a disconnect.

You claimed that the Acid Rain program added all those jobs, but the CPR (correctly) attributes that job growth to the entire U.S. economy. Was every job created in the United States during that period the result of the Acid Rain program? No, sir, that would be a ...mischaracterization.

Oh, those inconvenient truths. Real "butt-biters" sometimes, aren't they?

I'm telling you, Congressman, if you can't be straight with your constituents they have a right not only to be angry, but to flat-out kick you out of office. You're already too comfortable by miles in Washington.

Don't get used to it - it may be a short stay.

A Question for Congressman Mike.

Umm, Congressman, according to Section 431 of the ACES Act, “The Secretary (of Health and Human Services) shall formulate and administer the program provided for in this section, which shall be known as the ‘Energy Refund Program’, and under which eligible low-income households are provided cash payments to reimburse the households for the estimated loss in their purchasing power resulting from the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.”

How is it then that, in your canned response to those who took you to task on your vote, you can say, "New York households will save on average $5.58 per month in electricity costs and $8.00 a month in fuel costs within the next 10 years under the Energy Bill."

Oh, my.

Congressman, your canard was directly contradicted by the language of the bill. If you don't believe in private enterprise and the free-market system, why don't you just say so? If you believe that the ideal way to run the United States economy is through a central planning commission populated by a collection of inept federal bureaucrats, why don't you just say so?

Don't you know that it insults us when, and I hate to be crude, you pee on our legs and tell us it's raining?

You're not being straight with us, Congressman, and the word is getting out. These votes are defining you, and WILL NOT be forgotten, even when you occasionally vote against your leadership as a sop to your center-right constituents.

Happy Fourth of July!

Today's a good day to put Washington, D.C. out of our minds, and think a bit about Washington - the original.

And John Adams, and Tom Jefferson, and Ben Franklin, and James Madison, and all the great men who pledged their lives and fortunes to create the single most unique and productive society in the history of history.

So many generations removed from the planting of the seed of independence, we who were born post-WWII grew up taking our rights for granted, didn't we? We believed freedom and individual liberty were the rule, not the exception. Until now.

Now we have to channel the passionate beliefs and determination of our founders in order to save the republic once again. If we lose it - or allow it to be taken from us - we cheapen the memory of hundreds of thousands of men and women who paid for our freedom with their lives.

And will it have been taken from us by a nefarious foe who defeats us through strength, determination and force of arms? No. In that there would be a certain honor.

Rather, we will have lost it to a gang of slugs and thugs, without a shot being fired.

Today would be a good day to think about the sacrifices made by those originals; that unique collection of men who were not asked to spend a few hours at a rally in the summer sun in a beautifully manicured park, but were asked to put their very lives on the line in the cause of freedom. When Ben Franklin said "We must all hang together, or we most assuredly will all hang separately," he wasn't just quipping - he was dead serious. For those men, failure meant certain death.

They put their lives on the line for themselves and their posterity - and we are their posterity. We speak of our fathers and grandfathers as the Greatest Generation. If we allow it all to slip away - what will they label this generation?

What's That Stench?

I don’t know the technical definition of Marxism, but I know it stinks. In fact, I bet it smells a lot like the putrid odor that is wafting out of Congress these days.

Something in those hallowed halls has gone terribly...rotten.

The House of Representatives, once populated by great men, great thinkers, great lovers of individual freedom and protectors of private property, is now, through its Democrat majority, a fully-baked product of the Obama Administration – a cesspool of radical thought, and even more radical legislation.

That we sent to Congress an individual who so comfortably swims in those foul waters is a measure of our gullibility. Gullibility and simple trust that this man would go to Washington and fight the good fight – fight to keep us free, as he is supposed to do. Fight to protect and defend the Constitution, as he is sworn to do.

Instead, time and time again he votes to enslave our economy, and by extension enslave us, to a gaggle of federal bureaucrats.

Worse yet, he votes with liars and America-haters. He votes with thugs and sneaks. He’s part of a majority that promised transparency, yet rams bills through with 300-page amendments issued in the blackest part of night, bills that are so impactful that they transform the basic relationship between government and private industry; bills that are passed before they are even presented in their final form, and hence, cannot even have been read.

I cannot call this representation, and I cannot sit idly by and pretend that a few bucks and a few jobs is a fair tradeoff for the destruction of the country that I love. American men and women have died to defend our rights and liberties for over 200 years, but now the ghosts of those brave soldiers must look on in horror, as our current so-called “representatives” filch those liberties, piece by piece, in the middle of the night like a gang of sneak-thieves.

Reprehensible. I don’t know whom you represent, Michael McMahon, but it sure ain’t me.

I cannot promise that you will be defeated in 2010, Congressman, but I do promise you this: by the time Staten Islanders march into that voting booth, they will be educated. They will know how you are voting, and what the real impacts of those votes will be – not the fluffy spin you will put on them in a four-color brochure.

No, I cannot reach everyone in the 13th, I don’t have the money or the platform - but I won’t stop trying. Your votes, and your often-insulting defense of them, have succeeded in creating a small, tough core of activists on Staten Island. Probably nothing for you to worry about – yet. But every day, the word seeps out to more and more people, and more and more people become aware and alert…and engaged.

To whatever extent I have anything to say about it, Congressman McMahon, Staten Islanders will not be sleep-walking into the voting booths in 2010. They will be voting with their eyes wide open.

We are paying attention, now. House by house, block by block, Staten Islanders are being roused from their slumber.

Gotta love it. Gotta.

"Three things taught me conservative love,
Jesus, Ronald Reagan and Atlas Shrugged"

Yup. That pretty much covers it.

Some Words on Father's Day

Happy Father’s Day, everybody. Even if you, personally, are not a Dad, the fact is we all have one, so we should all celebrate the day.

My Dad is 84, and I consider myself blessed, and more than a little lucky, that he is still with us and enjoying life; I'm 57, so very few of my friends and relatives can say the same. But I remember them all, all the Dads of my youth; so many different personalities and styles, all of them patriotic Americans, most only a generation removed from the old country.

They all, to a man, believed in the greatness of America, taught us to work hard, taught us that there is no free lunch, taught us to have compassion for those less fortunate and to be generous with them, taught us to struggle for a better life, and told us that having achieved it, no man could take it from us.

Would that the men who now run this country been taught the same way.

My father enlisted in the Marine Corp the day he turned 18, in 1943, and after a year of stateside training was shipped overseas. There, on Guam and Iwo, he trained for amphibious landings. By that time, the United States Navy and Marine Corp had island-hopped almost all the way across the Pacific – almost. There was still one to go before the invasion of Japan, and that was Okinawa.

PFC Frank Santarpia, Company I, 3rd Battalion, 29th Marine Regiment, 6th Marine Division, 20 years old, went ashore with the first wave on the morning of April 1, 1945: Easter Sunday.

There’s no time or space here for the details, but suffice it to say that Okinawa, which was in such close proximity to the home islands of Japan that it was within the prefecture of the city of Tokyo, was the most heavily defended island of the entire war.

By the time the island was secure, 12,513 brave American men were dead. Mull that number over in your mind for a moment. Twelve thousand, five hundred and thirteen. In an action that took less than six weeks.

The wounded numbered 38,916, and my father was one of them; he was shot on May 16th, during the Battle of Sugar Loaf Hill. He received a Purple Heart, spent three weeks in a makeshift island hospital, and was sent back to his platoon before the operation was completed.

And as brave as he was, as unbelievable as his story is, he was far from unique. He did his job alongside tens of thousands of other Marines and soldiers. In the same mold as any other American fighting for freedom, his actions represented the norm, not the exception – and every single detail about that battle had to be coaxed from him; he never talked about it voluntarily, and never thought it was anything special.

So here’s a salute to our fathers. May we celebrate the ones that are with us, and never forget those who are not. I remember you all: Al, Gerard, Sebastian and Ralph Santarpia, my father’s brothers; Ed Coyle, my father-in-law; Joe Graziano, Dan Rago, Frank Guigno, Russ Sabatino, Tony Muccio – the fathers of my friends, and all important, in their own way, in shaping my life.

I hope, dear readers, that you were as lucky as I - to have known such men.

We are what they made us.

It is time.

Something must be done.

We are already, in a few short months, past the point of hoping that our Congressman will awaken from his Obama-induced slumber and start voting to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Instead, we, his constituents, are less and less free every day, while our government grows larger and larger, loots our life savings, bankrupts the treasury, and spews ever-more fantastic lies about "hope" and "change."

There is no hope for the individual, only for the collective. And the change? The change is that now the looters are accepted in the halls of Congress, and usurpers are installed as "czars."

Congressman Michael McMahon votes us into the twilight world of soft tyranny, time and time again, and I am done asking why. Each week brings a new crisis, a dire threat – and always the only solution is to give up a little more of our freedom. With every new crisis and new "solution," the economy shrinks, our liberties evaporate, our options dwindle - but the government never shrinks, it expands and grows ever larger and more powerful.

With the transparency of a heavy fog, bills are rammed through committee, rammed through Congress, and every one, every one, makes us less free, gives us less choice, makes us less independent, makes us less American. That is always their solution – it is the solution of the tyrant.

I'm sick and afraid, but my sickness and fear is hardening into anger and resolve. We will rally again this summer, my dear fellow patriots, we cannot wait for 9/12.

Will you join me?

Keep Your Eye on the... Cowbird?

I witnessed a peculiar scene playing out in my backyard the other day, as I sat drinking my morning coffee. It involved a pair of birds that had alighted on the flat top of the railing that surrounds my deck, right outside the kitchen, beyond a pair of sliding glass doors.

That they had come to the railing was not a big surprise, since it was loaded with mixed seeds and nuts. This gourmet repast goes out, courtesy of moi, every morning, because it attracts a nice variety of colorful – and vocal – birds, creating a fascinating little panorama right outside my kitchen. I rarely breakfast alone.

The birds, of all species, usually take care of feeding themselves, except for certain brief periods in the late spring, like now. Then, you will occasionally see a parent bird feeding its chick. You know it’s a chick – as opposed to an adult – because, well, you can just tell. Immature and awkward in appearance, the hatchling is also devoid of the bright, fixed colors of the adult, and tends to vibrate, rather than flap, its wings, even while stationary and perched. It is also usually squealing to be fed, not unlike the newly arrived of any species.

What made this particular scene so unusual, though, were the two birds involved. The parent was a common house sparrow; small, quick, grayish-brown, an urban survivor that was the most common sighting for a kid like me, growing up in Brooklyn. I guess I’ve seen more sparrows than any other species – pigeons included.

Mom or Dad? Who knows? In this story it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the parent was feeding the chick; picking up a seed, shelling it, and hopping over to the stationary hatchling as it chirped and fluttered impatiently for its breakfast, bill agape. The adult would then delicately place the seed directly into its offspring’s throat, and without delay would hop away again to pick at the next seed, the process repeating for several minutes, or until a bigger, bossier bird came along and shooed them both away.

It was the chick that caught my attention. Hatchlings seldom have the same coloration as adults, so the disparity displayed in shades of grey and brown really was of no consequence - but it just didn’t look like the parent. Close examination, and lots of reading, would have revealed a great many ornithological differences between the two, but the thing that even the most casual bird-watcher couldn’t miss was the size.

The chick was twice as big as the parent.

This led to a double-take and some hard thinking; nothing about this hungry little dependent said sparrow. I sipped and pondered. Maybe it was a sparrow; I like watching birds, but I’m no bird-watcher, if you know what I mean. Maybe sparrow offspring looked like that – but that really didn’t make sense. What newborn is larger than its parents, and grows smaller as it matures? None I could think of, and hey, I’ve been watching all those nature channels for years. Research was in order. And that meant Google.

Now, with tongue firmly implanted in cheek, I will tell you that I’m not going to give away my search engine "secrets" – those are proprietary formulae – but let’s just say I got my answer, complete with pictures, in short order. The parent was, of course, a sparrow; the chick, however, was not. It was a baby cowbird.

Cowbirds, the adult version, look to my rank amateur eyes like small crows, with a sleek coloration that looks pitch black from a distance, but which can have an ultra-dark green sheen to it when seen up close. What makes them so easily identifiable are their brown heads. Pretty unremarkable bird, really, except that it has evolved a most unusual method of child-rearing – it lets somebody else do it.

Since the staple of the cowbird’s diet, in nature, is insects, not the seeds on my railing, it has taken to following, well, cows. When a large number of bovines move through a field, they stir up vast quantities of delectables for the bird, which therefore makes a life’s work of following the herd. This leaves no time for stay-at-home moms and dads.

So what mom does is lay her egg in someone else’s nest. Just like that. She’s not particular, virtually any nest will do; it matters not to her if the eggs are of a different size or color. What she knows is that the instincts of the host birds will insure that her offspring is properly cared for in ovum, and carefully protected, fed and tended for as a hatchling.

The scientific name for this phenomenon is parasitic brooding, and it has a dark side. Cowbird chicks are very aggressive, grow very quickly, and tend to consume most of the food brought back to the nest. This has an effect on the rest of the brood that is about as bad as one would expect – they starve to death, and if they don’t starve, they are pushed out of the nest very early on by the much larger cowbird hatchling. Either way, all the resources of the diligent parents are lavished on the offspring of another mating pair – and to boot, not even a pair of the same species.

It is taking place right before my eyes, even as I write this. I am watching a poor, hard-working sparrow busting its tail-feathers to feed this fledgling that is not its own, and the cowbird chick, for its part, is insistent, hounding the surrogate mother incessantly, its appetite never satiated, its beak never closed longer than the moment it takes for it to swallow.

As I watch I notice something else: when the sparrow leaves the fence for a bit, maybe to rest, maybe because it is frightened momentarily by something it sees, the cowbird begins to feed itself. It moves along, quite capably, pecking at the seed mix – that is, until the sparrow returns. The chick then reverts to its dependent posture, mouth open, waiting to be fed and never getting enough.

I cannot get angry at the workings of nature; everything that is playing out before my eyes is instinct that has been honed by tens of thousands of generations of adaptation – it is an evolutionary fugue being performed so exquisitely none could doubt the hand of God in the process. Nature, as we all know and have heard many times, can be infinitely beautiful – but also unspeakably cruel. So, as I said, I cannot get angry. But I do.

I think of the mating pair of sparrows and imagine they feel despair. I imagine that they had hopes and dreams for their offspring, whom they wanted to nurture and prepare for life, and for whom they worked so diligently to build a protected and secure nest. I imagine their confusion at the disappearance of the eggs or the brood, and wonder if they are aware that their nest has been hijacked, dismayingly, from within, and that they now expend their resources and energy taking care of the offspring of another.

Of course I know that they “feel” nothing, and are “aware” of none of those things, but what human being cannot feel empathetic sorrow for the sparrows, and narrow-eyed animosity toward the cowbird?

That we - human beings - are part of nature is undeniable, and I believe that all life forms, sentient and otherwise, which share this planet must adapt to each other, symbiotes and parasites alike. Indeed, human frailty might determine that some of the unfortunate among us might be rendered dependent upon the good nature and good will of others. An accident, of birth or beyond, may render one helpless, and in need of complete and total care. Only the most heartless man could or would deny another man such attention.

But there is a point at which I draw the line; where I refuse to lift a finger. That is when I am looked upon as a human sparrow through the eyes of a human cowbird. And when my government, through policies which are mistaken, misguided and self-serving, subjects me to the same treatment as the sparrow, well, I refuse to accept that, too.