The continuing drumbeat of the political assault on the Second Amendment suggests a disturbing increase in the direction of government authority. It should make every free American citizen quake in his boots. The stated goals repeatedly parroted by Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein to the media and the public almost on a daily basis are disingenuous and false.

In 1997, following several massacres in Australia like those at Newtown and Columbine, the government issued a ban on firearms. It systematically confiscated and destroyed guns and rifles in the hands of private citizen. Within a short time, robberies, assaults and homicides escalated against people made defenseless by government fiat. Those citizens who defended themselves against the intruders with knives and clubs found themselves arrested and jailed.

In the United Kingdom, a massacre in a school gymnasium in Dunblane in 1996 resulted in a kneejerk reactive gun ban. The firearms of the ordinary law-abiding citizenry were confiscated and an immediate increase in violent crime occurred. To date, there has been no decrease in violent crime and no reevaluation by the government of its mistaken policies in either country.

The most egregious and frightening example of the motive and outcome of banning firearms was in Weimar Germany. Hitler banned the private use of firearms then systematically slaughtered more than seven million helpless citizens.

David Kopel notes that it was the British ban of firearms and gunpowder in 1774on the colonies and their confiscation the following year that precipitated the American Revolution. General Gage arrogantly marched his troops into Boston discovered to his chagrin that the American colonists disagreed.

The Founding Fathers wisely understood the importance of guns in the hands of private citizens as their only means to defend themselves against tyranny. Their memories fresh with Britain’s attempt to usurp their sovereignty, the Founding Fathers drafted the Second Amendment was drafted as the guarantor of Liberty for all future generations of Americans.

Mental health has been an abysmal failure in identifying the potential mass murderer and educating the public about the nature and limits of psychiatric treatment. Freud clearly stated in his writings almost one hundred years ago that not everyone can be a patient and not everyone can be treated. That is as true in America today as it was in Vienna in the late 1800’s.

Psychiatrists need to relearn a needed skill set that will better enable their diagnostic antennae to distinguish between normal, neurotic, asocial and evil. They are vastly different. Danger should be as easily recognizable to the skilled clinician as it is to our animal cousins.

Organized mental health needs to explain to the public in PLAIN ENGLISH that psychotherapy does not fix people. It gives people tools, and sometimes tablets, to ease symptoms and to better understand themselves. No more, no less.

Moreover, the mental health establishment must separate its own private ambitions for power and more funds for research from its greater responsibility to the public. Professional organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association have the responsibility to alert the public that there is no treatment for the asocial psychopath who is consumed with anger and hates humanity.

Young men like Adam Lanza, Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Seng-Hui Cho, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are savages that walk among the unsuspecting civilized populace. They need to be identified, apprehended and isolated. They are examples of normal human psychosocial development run amok for a myriad of reasons. It is naïve and dangerous to think any of them might have benefitted from rehabilitation and remediation. Their hearts and minds are immune to all human goodness, much less therapeutic insight.

What to do with the mass killers? Veterinary medicine offers one option. Vicious animals are routinely euthanized. The human equivalent is capital punishment. It should be used just as routinely without guilt or ambivalence. It may be the most humane treatment we can offer them.

The banning of firearms would be the height of insanity. As Wayne Lapierre succinctly put it, the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

America is perhaps the most decent nation in the world. We have, however, a unique history. As befits our Christian heritage, we are tolerant and slow to react. When we do, however, we have vanquished monarchs and tyrants.

Liberal politicians need to understand the defense of Liberty is in the American DNA. King George learned the hard way not to take away our guarantors of personal liberty. We’ve done it once. We can do it again!

Robert Loewen: We need market-based immigration reform

By ROBERT LOEWEN / For the Register

Republicans and Democrats differ on immigration reform mainly as it applies to future immigration: Republicans want more of it, and Democrats want less. Both parties have a plan that would allow undocumented residents to get right with the law and eventually find a pathway to citizenship, if that is what they want.

But the parties differ on how. Democrats would prefer to limit legal immigration by keeping the status-quo. That is, preserving an antiquated, 1960s-era, visa system that prevents millions of undocumented residents already living here from working here legally, while continuing to ignore market demand for seasonal labor.

Democrats would prefer to limit legal immigration by keeping the status-quo. That is, preserving an antiquated, 1960s-era, visa system that prevents millions of undocumented residents already living here from working here legally, while continuing to ignore market demand for seasonal labor.

Republicans, on the other hand, favor increasing immigration through a new guest worker program that allows undocumented workers to stay and work legally, provided they meet certain requirements, and to travel freely between borders. This program would help meet the needs of American businesses, especially for low-wage jobs in sectors like agriculture and food processing, but would also give undocumented immigrants a chance to live and work here legally and to travel freely to their home countries without fear of deportation. A guest worker program will do more than any other proposed reform to ensure that immigration reform is not a repeat of the 1986 amnesty, where millions of illegal border crossings resulted from a lack of enforcement.

Why won’t Democrats support Republicans on a measure that would increase immigration, provide more freedom of movement for immigrant workers, and more freedom of choice for American business? Because unions oppose guest workers, who they cannot organize, and whom Democrats cannot register as new voters. It’s no secret that unions donated over $500 million to elect Democrats during the 2012 national elections.

Republicans want a guest worker program that gives more immigrants the opportunity to work here legally now, and also support a pathway to citizenship. That pathway, however, has to be fair to those who are already pursuing visas, those already “in line.”

In 2011, the Lincoln Club of Orange County proposed that Republican candidates drop their harsh rhetoric on immigration and adopt an immigration reform plan based on free-market principles that emphasized a guest worker program, enhanced border security, and a more effective e-verify system for employers. The conservative Lincoln Club has been supporting Republican candidates for over 50 years, and this plan influenced many who we helped to elect to rethink their approach to immigration reform. Since then we’ve learned that other prominent Republicans across the country – conservatives such as Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich and Marco Rubio – independently shared our sentiments and were developing similar plans for reform that include common-sense ideas like increasing visas available for highly skilled workers.

Although the rhetoric of the 2012 presidential primary drowned out these voices for a brief time, the recent discussion about the bipartisan proposal for immigration reform has revived a surge of Republican voices advocating a free-market approach to immigration. And based on the overwhelming support Lincoln Club representatives have received from Republican grassroots groups around California, it seems that most Republicans in this state favor this plan over the harsh rhetoric of the past.

The time is now for Republicans to rally around reforms that are rooted in free-market principles. Rhetoric like “self-deportation” was just a phrase made up by a failed political consultant who should never be heard from again. We can’t buy into the media-driven caricature that Republicans are racist. We are compassionate human beings, and I don’t know anyone in our Party, including any of our candidates, who believes that deportation of millions of people merits serious consideration for any purpose.

But compassion also means finding ways to assure all Americans that a 2013 solution on immigration will not be a repeat of 1986. The only avenue for entry to the United States available to millions who have come here since 1986 has been an underground human smuggling network. Ellis Island it’s not. No one should ever again have to endure the murder, rape and deprivation that accompanied the arrival of those people, undocumented or not, into the United States of America.

A new guest worker program, coupled with increased enforcement, provides a humane and sensible pathway to legal immigration, one that honestly recognizes that American businesses need immigrant labor and allows undocumented workers to fill those jobs, legally and freely. Democrats need to cast aside their allegiance to unions and support this Republican proposal for the good of our economy and of every American.

Robert Loewen is President of the Lincoln Club of Orange County.

There is a real danger that the real lesson to be learned in the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School will be lost in the brouhaha and politics over guns. Dozens of article on the subject have already been published in every newspaper in the country. Dozens of so-called psychiatric experts have been interviewed by Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly and other TV journalists who have genuinely sought to understand the link between evil and social estrangement.

The answer in a nutshell is you can’t. These individuals are a-social. They have little or no investment in humankind, not even in their own kin. They are consumed with anger and hatred. They are dangerous!
As a psychoanalytic colleague pointed out, they steadfastly refuse to look people in the eyes. It’s as if they have already symbolically wiped them out. It is behavior we should understand. If we are truly furious at someone, we can’t stand to look at them.

Such individuals are not treatable. Not Ted Bundy, the Unabomber, Jeffrey Dahmer, not Seung-Hui Cho, not Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold. The mental health establishment has failed abysmally in their efforts to educate themselves and the public about evil. It is dangerous to live with the delusion that psychiatric treatment helps everyone. It does not. Neither Hitler, Stalin or Mao would have been treatable. Nor would the Hillside Strangler or Lyle and Erik Menendez.

To not accept this reality is not only dangerous, it could be fatal. To have a gun in the presence of such folk would be the only hope you have to save your own life.

R. Claire Friend, MD
Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry and Berhavioral Medicine, UCI

It has been fifty years since Lyndon Johnson signed into law the program known as The Great Society. Ten trillion dollars later, the effects have been the very antithesis of his stated aims. This single piece of public policy has destroyed the family, caused a marked increase in illegitimacy, crime, illiteracy and drug abuse and turned traditional America into a culture of fatherlessness.

In 1960, the rate of illegitimacy was 5%. In 20012, it is 80% among inner city Blacks, 25% among Whites and 40% among Hispanics. Over eighty percent of welfare benefits go to unwed mothers. About 90% of the juveniles behind bars have mothers who never married. The figures for school grades and dropout rates are equally dismal.

Children growing up in public housing, exposed to violence and drugs in the absence of a stable two-parent home are essentially condemned to a life of poverty and failure. They have a far greater chance of winding up behind bars, pregnant, on skid row or dead than in a nice home with a family and a good job.

Life is never fair. That’s just reality. Not everyone is born wealthy or beautiful or brilliant. The refusal to accept this reality is the arrogance of liberalism. Their taxpayer-funded political un-reality has been a costly delusion that has resisted repeated revisions in SAT and IQ tests or Head Start and the more than eighty other government programs for the dis-advantaged to make reality more fair.

What is missing in these senseless federal programs is an understanding of the importance of marriage and the role of mothers and fathers in the development of intelligence, morality and social values in infants and young children. The failure to do so has been incalculably costly in terms of wasted human potential and monies.

Maternal stimulation in the first year of life is critical for intellectual and emotional development. Increased maternal interaction stimulates development of the neuronal network in the infant’s brain. A dense network means a greater the capacity to learn. Einstein’s brain had a tremendously dense neuronal network.

Maternal stimulation differs measurably between wed and unwed moms. Unmarried mothers speak about twenty-thousand words to their infants during the first year. Married mothers start talking to their babies during pregnancy and continue for about twenty million words in the same twelve-month period. IQ assessments in the infants at 18 months and again at 36 months demonstrate significant measurable differences.

It is the effects of maternal deprivation that have remained resistant to federal programs like Head Start. Despite trillions of dollars, they have never demonstrated any lasting improvements in achievement or IQ. The insult to the child dates back to earliest infancy. No program can rewrite this neuropsychophysiological reality.

What can be done that might be helpful? Christelyn Karazin suggests resurrecting the shotgun marriage to legitimize children. It’s a good idea. The time-honored practice exists in most cultures. A glance at Vanity Fair or People confirms it is still a time-honored tradition in our very own.

A social worker at a local government clinic implemented a similar program. Not only did the women clients marry, they dropped off the welfare rolls. The program was cancelled when his boss learned about the numbers of clients for whom funding would no longer fatten his coffers. Why not expand such efforts?

The two-parent family is the backbone and strength of any civilized society. Viewed from that perspective, Americans were better off one hundred years ago. Is one answer to what ails our country not enough marriage licenses?

Government policies are misguided and destructive, deliberately so perhaps. They promote illegitimacy. David Mamet notes in The Secret Knowledge that all dictators seek to destroy the family which is then replaced by the State.

Investor’s Business Daily noted in an article thirty years ago that marriage was the solution to poverty. It confers a feeling of wholeness and identity on the couple and their children. Marriage awakens a new sense of responsibility in men. Husbands work to support their families with a new-found zeal. 20% of children in two-parent homes are poor but 80% are in one-parent homes. A marriage license costs twenty-five bucks. Could it really be that simple?

MEDIA STATEMENT REGARDING
Republican Assemblyman Tim Donnelly’s exploratory committee to run for CA Governor

He continued: “We, as conservative Republicans, call upon members of our party in Congress to support real reforms to our antiquated immigration laws. That includes creating a 21st-century, market-based, temporary-worker system that pairs labor with businesses needs and gives both future immigrants and those illegal immigrants who are already here an opportunity to gain legal status so they no longer have to live in fear.”

Last year, the Lincoln Club adopted a three-point Immigration Reform Policy Statement that features a temporary guest-worker program and a pathway to legal residency, not citizenship. The policy statement, which can be found online at http://www.lincolnclub.org/aboutus/immigration-statement/ includes support for increasing border security and employer enforcement, but calls for the creation of a modern guest-worker program that allows both foreign workers and illegal immigrants already here to apply for temporary work permits, provided they pay certain fees and meet certain requirements such as proof of employment and passing a criminal background check.

Founded in 1962, the Lincoln Club of Orange County is an association of business men and women and professionals who support candidates and causes to limit the size of government, and promote low taxes and pro-business policies. More info: www.lincolnclub.org.

Check out our radio ads playing on KABC-790AM and KRLA-870AM promoting the Lincoln Club’s PAC Voter Guide:

15-second ads:

- Ad #1

- Ad #2

- Ad #3

30-second ad:

- Ad #1

A special ‘Thank You’ to Lincoln Club member Robert Micone who arranged for the ads to be created — and yes, that’s his voice! Robert is pictured below with is lovely wife & fellow LC member, Pat.

Help Get-Out-the-Vote for Romney & Prop. 32

The Lincoln Club is organizing two precinct walks before the election to help Gov Romney, Prop. 32, and other Republican candidates running for local office. Invite your friends, family and neighbors to join you– the more the merrier!! 

Sign up for one of these dates by emailing Clare:
- Sat. Oct. 27, 9-Noon
- Sun., Oct. 28, 1-4 p.m.

We will meet at the Costa Mesa OC GOP Headquarters, 2000 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa (above Skosh Monahan’s) then meet back at Skosh’s for food/drinks after our walk.

If you cannot join us, there are plenty of other ways you can help the OC GOP get-out-the-vote for Prop. 32 and other key local races, like Costa Mesa. You can:

1. Make calls to battleground states via MittRomney.com - Click here to start
2. Volunteer as a Precinct Patriot to walk neighborhoods through the OC GOP - Click here to learn more
3. Walk for Romney in Nevada – See information below
4. Volunteer as a Poll Observer on Election Day – Lincoln Club member Ann Coil has arranged for a Poll Observer Training Course on Thurs., Oct. 25, 5:30 p.m. Get all the details here and RSVP to Ann - anncoil@att.net.

These are just a few examples of how you can help. The OCGOP is always on the lookout for great volunteers who want to reach out, and make a difference! For more information and even more ideas on how you can get involved, please visit the OCGOP website and fill out their VOLUNTEER FORM, and let them know how you can help! Support local candidates and Governor Romney and ACT NOW!

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Urgent!! From Governor Romney Nevada Officials

Last Tuesday evening (10/23), Orange County received an urgent request from Romney’s  Nevada officials that volunteers will definitely be needed from Orange County to travel to Las Vegas, Nevada by bus Election Weekend.  All expenses (Bus, Hotel, Meals, etc.) will be covered (paid) by the Romney Team.

As you know, Nevada is a highly contested state, and is needed by Romney to win this Presidential race.  Orange County volunteers have traveled to Vegas on the Romney Bus Deployment for the past four weekends.

Please assist in this Romney Vegas Deployment trip, if you can possibly do so.  We need you!

Travel to Las Vegas, Nevada Election Weekend to assist Governor Romney:

Leave Orange County – Friday 11/2 @ 4pm

Leave Las Vegas to return to Orange County – Tuesday 11/6 @ 6pm

Tasks:  Walking Shifts and Calling Shifts (9am until approximately 7pm each day)

As previously stated, Orange County has been sending Volunteer Deployments to Las Vegas, Nevada for the past month of October. These dedicated Romney volunteers return enriched and energized by spending this time with others who are dedicated to the election of Governor Mitt Romney as President of the United States.

If you are able to make this commitment, please contact me by Friday 10/26 or asap:

Diane McGlinchey

mcglincheyL@aol.com

714-969-0753

Today’s New York Times lays out the importance of Prop. 32 on the California ballot this November:

The prospect that Proposition 32 could become law in an overwhelmingly Democratic state that has a rich history of union activism has alarmed labor leaders. A victory here, they argued, would pave the way for similar efforts across the nation.

Let’s hope Prop. 32 does just that. But we know it won’t be easy. This excerpt highlights the disparity between in funding between the two sides –

Unions have raised more than $37 million to defeat the proposition, with most of the money coming from the California Teachers Association. Proposition 32, which was drafted by the Lincoln Club, whose members have included Richard M. Nixon and John Wayne, has raised about $9 million.

You can help  support the Yes on 32 campaign by donating online here. Every bit helps.

From the WSJ

Mitt Romney: What I Learned at Bain Capital

My business experience taught me how to help companies grow—and what to do when trouble arises. When you see a problem, run toward it before the problem gets worse.

The back-to-school season is here, and as parents take their children to shop for school supplies, I suspect that many of them will be visiting a Staples store. I’m very familiar with those stores because Staples is one of many businesses we helped create and expand at Bain Capital, a firm that my colleagues and I built. The firm succeeded by growing and fixing companies.

The lessons I learned over my 15 years at Bain Capital were valuable in helping me turn around the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. They also helped me as governor of Massachusetts to turn a budget deficit into a surplus and reduce our unemployment rate to 4.7%. The lessons from that time would help me as president to fix our economy, create jobs and get things done in Washington.

A broad message emerges from my Bain Capital days: A good idea is not enough for a business to succeed. It requires a talented team, a good business plan and capital to execute it. That was true of companies we helped start, like Staples and the Bright Horizons child-care provider, and several of the struggling companies we helped turn around, like the Brookstone retailer and the contact-lens maker Wesley Jessen.

My presidency would make it easier for entrepreneurs and small businesses to get the investment dollars they need to grow, by reducing and simplifying taxes; replacing Obamacare with real health-care reform that contains costs and improves care; and by stemming the flood of new regulations that are tying small businesses in knots.

My business experience confirmed my belief in empowering people. For example, at Bain Capital we bought Accuride, a company that made truck rims and wheels, because we saw untapped potential there. We instituted performance bonuses for the management team, which had a dramatic impact. The managers made the plants more productive, and the company started growing, adding 300 jobs while Bain was involved. My faith in people, not government, is at the foundation of my plan to strengthen America’s middle class.

I also saw firsthand through these investments how energy costs impact the ability of a business to grow. Today, energy costs are weighing on job creators across America because President Obama has limited energy exploration and restricted development in ways that sap economic performance, curtail growth, and kill jobs. I will take a sensible approach to tapping our energy resources, which will both create jobs and make energy more affordable for every sector of our economy.

In the 1990s, when the “old-technology” steel industry in the U.S. was failing, Bain Capital helped build a new steel company, Steel Dynamics, which has grown into one of the largest steel producers in America today, holding its own against Chinese producers. The key to its success? State-of-the-art new technology.

Here are two lessons from the Steel Dynamics story: First, innovation is essential to the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. We are the most innovative, entrepreneurial nation in the world. To maintain that lead, we must give people the skills to succeed. My plan for a stronger middle class includes policies to give every family access to great schools and quality teachers, to improve access to higher education, and to attract and retain the best talent from around the world.

The second lesson is that we must have a level playing field in international trade. As president, I will challenge unfair trade practices that are harming American workers.

Running a business also brings lessons in tackling challenges. I was on the board of a medical diagnostic-laboratory company, Damon, when a competitor announced that it had settled with the government over a charge of fraudulent Medicare billing. I and fellow Damon outside board members joined together and immediately hired an independent law firm to examine Damon’s own practices.

The investigation revealed a need to make some changes, which we did. The company, along with several other clinical-laboratory companies, ended up being fined for billing practices. And a Damon manager who was responsible for the fraud went to jail. The experience taught me that when you see a problem, run toward it or it will only get worse.

That will be my approach to our federal budget problem. I am committed to capping federal spending below 20% of GDP and reducing nondefense discretionary spending by 5%. This will surely result in much wailing and gnashing of teeth in Washington. But a failure of leadership has created our debt crisis, and ducking responsibility will only cripple the economy and smother opportunity for our children and grandchildren.

I’m not sure Bain Capital could have grown or turned around some of the companies we invested in had we faced today’s anti-business environment. Andy Puzder, the chief executive of CKE Restaurants Inc., which employs about 21,000 people at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants, has said that the “current unfriendly economic environment perhaps best explains why American companies are sitting on over $2 trillion which they could invest.”

President Obama has piled on excessive regulations, proposed massive tax increases, added more than $5 trillion in federal debt, and failed to address the coming fiscal cliff—all of which is miring our nation in sluggish growth and high unemployment.

I know what it takes to turn around difficult situations. And I will put that experience to work, to get our economy back on track, create jobs, strengthen the middle class and lay the groundwork for America’s increased competitiveness in the world.

Prop. 32 will so change the landscape of California politics, that it is garnering national media attention. From yesterday’s Journal:

WSJ: Political Diary: California’s Sunshine Democrats

By ALLYSIA FINLEY

California’s paycheck protection ballot initiative has just gotten its biggest endorsement yet—from former state Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero.

Unions are expected to pour tens of millions of dollars into killing the proposition, which would prohibit unions from using members’ dues for political purposes—effectively destroying their stranglehold on Sacramento. That’s exactly why Ms. Romero, who now heads Democrats for Education Reform’s California chapter, is throwing her weight behind it.

“We’ve got to address the flow of money,” she tells me. “We need to address how the beast is fed.” And by beast, she means government. “Rome is burning. California is at the brink of bankruptcy, and we’re fiddling at the edges until we address” the special interests.

Ms. Romero, who served in the legislature for 12 years, recounts how prison and police unions squeezed legislators to kill transparency reforms. The initiative, she thinks, will provide “more opportunities for people to do the right thing.” It may also provide more opportunities for reformers to get elected.

When she ran for state superintendent two years ago, unions spent nearly $4 million to defeat her. Why? Because she had endorsed President Obama’s Race to the Top and supported basing teacher evaluations in part on student outcomes. Likewise, the teachers unions spent $500,000 in the June open primary to stop Democratic state Assembly candidate Brian Johnson, who had run Los Angeles’s Teach for America chapter and founded his own charter school. He lost by about 30 votes.

No other prominent Democrats have endorsed the initiative, but Ms. Romero says she’s spoken with several who are supportive. She thinks that some former Democratic officials may be willing to go public, “but time will tell.” Here’s hoping that her endorsement encourages more Democratic reformers to come out of the closet, or as she says, to “let the sunshine in.”