A review of FEC Candidate Summary information from pre-general election reports shows candidates for the U.S. House and U.S. Senate in Kansas have spent over $23 million in this election cycle.

View or download tables online:…

http://kansas.watchdog.org/5568/summary-and-rankings-of-kansas-political-action-committees-oct-2010/

Updated receipts and expenditure reports for Kansas Political Action Committees (PACs) were due last week at the Kansas Governmental Ethics…

HALLOWEEN

Halloween is a holiday with ancient orgins that has been gradually Americanized. Historians trace its roots back more than 2,000 years to Samhain, the first day of the Celtic New Year, observed around November 1. Samhain ("summer's end") was both a harvest festival and time when souls of the dead were believed to travel the earth.

In the ninth century, after Christianity spread to the British Isles, Pope Gregory IV designated November…

I love poetry, especially American poets of the late 1800's and early 1900's. Whitman is one of my favorites. I found his poem about America, and just thought I'd share.

These lines come from Walt Whitman's poetry collection Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855. They have become a famous tribute to the vitality and variety of America.

I hear America singing, the varied carols I…

"Liberty Cannot be Preserved Without A General Knowledge Among the People"

Today is the birthday of John Adams, born in 1735 in Quincy, Massaschusetts. As the excerpt from his Dissertation on the Cannon and Feudal Law (1765) shows, Adams believed that the best way to guard the blessings of liberty is through education.

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their…

The most recent issue of the government's Medicare & You-2011 has all the proof you need that Obamacare's $500 Billion Medicare reduction will reduce medical care for the elderly. Throughout the book (specifically on pages 30, 31, 36, 37, 40 and 53) are the words "...if the doctor…

The Rescue of the Lost Battalion

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, a suspcious US government ordered 110,000 people of Japanese descent into internment camps. Yet when offered the chance to join the Army, many Japanese Americans jumped at the opportunity to prove their loyalty. Hundreds ended up in the 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team, a Japanese American unit that saw some of the hardest fighting in World War II.

Perhaps their…

Is Bill Clinton now the Dr. Kervorkian of the Obama administration? Do Democrat candidates shudder when he, in the parlance of J.K. Rowling, apparates before them? Just…

http://kansas.watchdog.org/5537/dead-voters-in-kansas/

Current Kansas voter registration records from the Kansas Secretary of State show 93-year-old Mildred Crouch lives at the Wichita Presbyterian Manor in Wichita. Did Crouch vote in 2006…

I received this in an email and it makes the point better than I could have ever done. This would be a great political/economics lesson for our young students.…

The Statue of Liberty

On October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty on an island in New York Harbor, declaring, "We will not forget that LIberty has here made here home; not shall her chosen altar be neglected."

A gift from France, the statue was designed by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. The people of France raised money to build the statue itself, while the people of the United States raised funds to pay for its…

The Federalist Papers

October 27, 1787, saw the publication of the first in a series of essays writtien by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay urging the ratification of the Constitution. Written under the name "Publius," the eighty-five essays appeared mainly in New York newspapers and were later compiled in book form as The Federalist. They remain a brillant explanation of the principles of American government. In "Federalist No. 1,"…

Following the Obama administration's failure to defend voting rights in the New Black Panther voter intimidation trial (their position was that white citizens are not protected from violent voter intimidation, only minorities are), we now…

The Erie Canal

On October 26, 1825, a floating parade led by the canal packet Seneca Chief left Buffalo, New York, in a grand opening of the newly finished, 363-mile Erie Canal. Cannons spaced an earshot's distance apart boomed the message east: the procession had begun. Cheering crowds lined the banks, with bands, speeches, and fireworks welcoming the flotilla at every town. "Our brightest hopes are all consummated," the Rochester Telegraph proclaimed. "Let…

http://missouri.watchdog.org/5510/missouri-has-almost-half-million-inactive-voter/

Voter registration data show 471,542 of 4.1 million Missouri voters are “inactive” (11.5 percent) because they have not voted recently and may have invalid mailing addresses.

Large voting districts often have high inactive rates: St. Louis County (9.2 percent), Jackson County (10.1 percent),…

Edenton Tea Party



On October 25, 1774, one of the first organized politcal actions by American women occurred in the town of Edenton, North Carolina, when fifty-one ladies gathered at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth King and signed a proclamation protesting the British tax on tea. Led by Penelope Barker, the patriots vowed to support resolves by the Provencial Deputies of North Carolina to boycott "the pernicious custom of drinking tea" and avoid British-make…

(Will it be “power and control” or “profit and competition”?)

This time the subject will not be the imposition of government control via Political Correctness (the original P.C.), but rather…

It’s difficult to engage in a discussion of this sort when so many terms have been distorted to mean the opposite of their original intended meaning. "Liberal" has come to…