DOCTOR'S NOTES FROM A SESSION OF THE MODERATE REPUBLICAN SENATOR SUPPORT GROUP

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The Long View   •   April 08, 2013

Bethesda Mental Health Clinic
 

By Rob Long 

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

                          

                           DOCTOR’S NOTES

                      Moderate Republican Senator

                                Support Group

Tuesday’s Session:


Once again, late to get started due to J. McCain and L. Graham’s arriving late from Palm Steakhouse. Have repeatedly told them to leave the restaurant earlier — hard to do, apparently, because they’re always forced to enjoy large desserts sent to them from a large national teachers’ union. When I suggested to them that perhaps this is part of the problem they’re experiencing with rank-and-file members of their own party, they called me a crackpot. Also: They were carrying leftovers, which made the session room smell like an Outback Steakhouse. Session did not start well.



Some members of the group related, during the sharing session, that they found the term “RINO” to be hurtful and offensive. A senator from a midwestern state mused aloud about the possibilities of adding the term to a list of forbidden “hate speech” terms in a bill currently being written by Representative Maxine Waters (D., Calif.). There was general enthusiasm for this kind of thing. “Reaching across the aisle” was a phrase many members used.



Therapist attempted, at that point, to use this as a teachable moment. Could it not be, therapist asked, that the whole point of being a Republican was to oppose this exact kind of legislation? So in this case, “reaching across the aisle” wouldn’t be compromise as much as capitulation. How does the group respond to that?
Patient McCain flicked leftover mashed potatoes on therapist.
Session ended early.



Friday’s Session:


Once again the session started late, this time due to several members’ arriving from a lengthy closed-door negotiation meeting, in which serious budgetary matters were discussed. Several of the more “conservative” members of the group were frustrated by some of the other members’ intransigence on the matter of taxes. Again, therapist chose to re-frame this discussion through the lens of the members’ ongoing feelings of “displacement” and “not fitting in” to the prevailing mood of their own party. What would, therapist asked, a rank-and-file member of the party view as an
acceptable middle-class tax rate? J. McCain and others muttered, “Zero!” with great irritation.
And what was the sense of the group, therapist asked, in terms of an effective middle-class tax rate?
The group displayed great consensus and agreement. “Ninety percent,” said one member of the Senate Republican caucus.



Therapist then tried to illustrate effective compromise techniques: How about somewhere in the middle, he asked. How about a middle-class tax rate of 45 percent?
The entire group of moderate Republicans nodded enthusiastically. They saw how compromise was possible, and how a certain decision can be framed for the electorate as a “win” for both sides. All members of the group were comfortable predicting that their counterparts in the Democratic party would embrace this idea. Several left early to leak the plan to their contacts at the New York Times.
The session ended on a high note.


  

Monday’s Session:


Several members arrived early, during office hours, to request an increase in the dosage of their anti-depressants. Apparently, some members of the group are experiencing increased levels of anxiety and depression as they attempt to integrate themselves into the framework of their own party. The stress of raising taxes and increasing government programs and oversight has led several members to display erratic and irrational behavior. L. Graham and J. McCain, especially, have complained about being “dislocated” and “confused” due to the cognitive dissonance of their current position.
A few of the senators wondered if perhaps there was a sense that they had been in Washington too long, that they had become part of a system that seeks, as its primary goal, not the guarantee of the liberty and freedom of our citizens but the enlargement and solidification of the federal behemoth. Perhaps it was not the voters who needed to be educated, they suggested, but the ossified and complacent senators. These senators spoke eloquently to the group, and managed to create a powerful impression on many of the members until it was discovered that they had wandered into the wrong session room.
They were directed to the Southern Democrat Support Group session, and the Moderate Republican Senator Support Group recommenced.



Session ended early, when J. McCain and L. Graham left to attend a film screening at Arianna Huffington’s house.

BRAVO MAINE GOVERNOR PAUL LePAGE

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Meet Maine 's New Governor --- In case you haven't heard about this guy before, his name will stick in your mind! The new Maine Governor, Paul LePage is making New Jersey 's Chris Christie look like an enabler. He isn't afraid to say what he thinks. Judging by the comments, every time he opens his mouth, his popularity goes up. He brought down the house at his inauguration when he shook his fist toward the media box and said, "You're on notice! I've inherited a financially troubled State to run. Observe...cover what we do...but don't whine if I don't waste time responding to your every whim just for your amusement." During his campaign for Governor, he was talking to commercial fishermen who are struggling because of federal fisheries rules. They complained that 0bama brought his family to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park for a long Labor Day holiday and found time to meet with union leaders, but wouldn't talk to the fishermen. LePage replied, "I'd tell him to go to hell and get out of my State." The Lame Stream Media crucified LePage, but he jumped 6 points in the pre-election poll. The Martin Luther King incident was a political sandbag, which brought him National exposure. The 'lame stream' media crucified him, but word on the street is very positive. The NAACP specifically asked LePage to spend MLK Day visiting black inmates at the Maine State Prison. He told them that he would meet with ALL inmates, regardless of race, if he were to visit the prison. The NAACP balked and then put out a news release claiming falsely that he refused to participate in any MLK events. He read it in the paper for the 1st time the next morning while being driven to an event and went ballistic because none of the reporters had called him for comment before running the NAACP release. He arrived at that event & said in front of a TV camera, "If they want to play the race card on me they can kiss my ass", and he reminded them that he has an adopted black son from Jamaica and that he attended the local MLK Breakfast every year that he was mayor of Waterville. (He started his morning there on MLK Day.) He then stated that there's a right way and a wrong way to meet with the Governor, and he put all special interests on notice that press releases, media leaks, and all demonstrations would prove to be the wrong way. He said any other group, which acted like the NAACP could expect to be at the bottom of the Governor's priority list! He then did the following, and judging from local radio talk show callers, his popularity increased even more: The State employees union complained because he waited until 3 P.M. before closing State offices and facilities and sending non-emergency personnel home during the last blizzard. The prior Governor would often close offices for the day with just a forecast before the first flakes. (Each time the State closes for snow, it costs the taxpayers about $1 million in wages for no work in return.) LePage was CEO of the Marden's chain of discount family bargain retail stores before election as governor. He noted that State employees getting off work early could still find lots of retail stores open to shop. So, he put the State employees on notice by announcing: "If Marden's is open, Maine is open!" He told State employees: "We live in Maine in the winter, for heaven's sake, and should know how to drive in it. Otherwise, apply for a State job in Florida !" Governor LePage symbolizes what America needs; Refreshing politicians who aren't self-serving and who exhibit common sense. THE LAW IS THE LAW So "if" the US government determines that it is against the law for the words "under God" to be on our money, then, so be it. And "if" that same government decides that the "Ten Commandments" are not to be used in or on a government installation, then, so be it. I say, "so be it," because I would like to be a law abiding US citizen. I say, "so be it," because I would like to think that smarter people than I are in positions to make good decisions. I would like to think that those people have the American public's best interests at heart. BUT, YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE I'D LIKE? Since we can't pray to God, can't Trust in God and cannot post His Commandments in Government buildings, I don't believe Government (Federal, State and Local) and its employees should participate in Easter and Christmas celebrations which honor the God that our government is eliminating from many facets of American life. I'd like my mail delivered on Christmas, Good Friday, Thanksgiving & Easter. After all, it's just another day. I'd like the" US Supreme Court to be in session on Christmas, Good Friday, Thanksgiving & Easter as well as Sundays." After all, it's just another day. I'd like the Senate and the House of Representatives to not have to worry about getting home for the "Christmas Break." After all it's just another day. I'm thinking a lot of my taxpayer dollars could be saved, if all government offices & services would work on Christmas, Good Friday & Easter. It shouldn't cost any overtime since those would be just like any other day of the week to a government that is trying to be "politically correct." In fact....I think our government should work on Sundays (initially set aside for worshipping God....) because, after all, our government says that it should be just another day.... What do you all think???? If this idea gets to enough people, maybe our elected officials will stop giving in to the "minority opinions" and begin, once again, to represent the "majority" of ALL of the American people. SO BE IT...........Please Dear Lord, Give us the help needed to keep you in our country! 'Amen' and 'Amen' These are definitely things I never thought about but from now on, I will be sure to question those in government who support these changes.



IN WASHINGTON IT IS NOT THE SHARKS BUT THE MINNOWS (AKA DINOSAURS) WHO NIBBLE GOOD MEN TO DEATH

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MARCH 8, 2013
The tall talker and the old geezers

BY WES PRUDEN



Talking is the national sport in Washington. For the old geezers in Congress it’s more fun than watching baseball, complaining about the weather or remembering sex.



Nobody drones on like a United States senator and nobody loves the sound of his raspy voice like a senator. Rand Paul, the freshman from Kentucky who stars in the bad dreams of every Republican geezer in town, talked for almost 13 hours on the Senate floor this week to delay a confirmation vote on John Brennan as director of the CIA, and earned only the scorn of the geezers.


Mr. Paul’s remarks occasionally strayed a few degrees over the top (enough of the Hitler comparison), decrying the prospect of using drones against American citizens in America, but he strayed no farther over the top than almost any congressman on almost any day on Capitol Hill. Mr. Paul argued at length (though not at record length) that killing an American, even an evil terrorist with an American passport, deprives him of the due process guaranteed by the Constitution.
Challenging Barack Obama on anything will earn anybody the sneers and scorn of Democratic senators, but some of the Republican geezers joined the din of disdain, mostly about the temerity of a freshman senator talking when he should be listening to a housebroken geezer talk. It’s not the sharks who trouble the waters in Washington, but the minnows who nibble good men to death.


John McCain of Arizona rebuked the filibusterer just as he was sitting down, and just after Mr. McCain and a few of his Senate pals emerged from a cozy dinner with President Obama in the glow of fine wine and the warmth of a full belly of beef. Mr. McCain had a little patronizing advice for his talkative colleague: “Calm down, senator, the U.S. government cannot randomly target U.S. citizens.”

The presidential loser of '08 sent further advice on how to win friends and influence voters. “If Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids. I don’t think what happened is helpful to the American people.”


Nobody expected Mr. Paul’s filibuster to stop the confirmation of John Brennan, the senator least of all, but he set out to sound an “alarm” about the use of drones in what he calls the threat to Americans by their own government. He had written to the White House to inquire whether the government could order a drone strike against an American on American soil, and Attorney Gen. Eric Holder replied with reassurance that does not necessarily reassure. He said drones are limited to killing in conflict zones in Pakistan and Yemen, and the government has “no intention” to bomb any place specific.


So far the argument is about drones and the word “random.” How vague can the word “random” be? The U.S. government can, and already has, targeted American citizens without due process. The government had no drones at Ruby Ridge, where government agents targeted and killed a teenage American boy, and had no drones at Waco, where government agents set fire to a religious compound and 76 men, women and children burned alive, Americans all. The government’s record is not a good one. The government’s “intentions” can change, and “random” is a word even a jackleg lawyer could parse far into the next decade. It’s just not cricket to say so, and a geezer never would.


The confirmation hearings of John Brennan and Chuck Hagel reveal a lot about how Washington works, how weak and well-meaning geezers can conflate the good of the country with the good of their own biases. John McCain and Lindsay Graham took Chuck Hagel apart at his confirmation hearing, leaving him humiliated as few nominees have been humiliated. But when crunch time came, they fell into line, voting to confirm him despite all the flags they raised at his hearing, as if to say, “just kidding, guys.”


John Brennan escaped close scrutiny over his role in the fiasco at Benghazi, where four Americans, including an American ambassador, died because the Obama White House could not or would not send the help the ambassador begged for -- not even a drone.




The geezers know better, but it’s easier, quieter, and more refined to do nothing. When Rand Paul, over the top or not, stood up to demand answers to some of the questions the geezers themselves raised, he was ridiculed and told, like an irritable child, to calm down. Geezers think their role is to pour oil over troubled waters, when they should be striking a match.


Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

IT TAKES BIG BUCKS TO MEET WITH THE PRESIDENT

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MARCH 5, 2013


The fire sale at the White House

BY WES PRUDEN



Bubba was a piker. The Clinton White House sold sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom that were cheap at the price. Barack Obama is auctioning off access to His Grandiosity for really big bucks. Unlike Hillary, Michelle doesn’t even have to straighten up the room and make up the bed when the guests leave.



The White House reacted with considerable heat Monday to editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post scolding the president for putting “major campaign donors” on an “advisory board” and giving them frequent “access” to the president. This little perk was said to be going for a half-million dollars.



“Any notion that there is a set price for a meeting with the president of the United States is just wrong,” Jay Carney, the president’s mouthpiece, told reporters at the White House.




The wording of Mr. Carney’s remarks, which are usually carefully measured to make sure the spokesman’s brain is engaged before his mouth moves, raises speculation that the price of the access is set on a sliding scale. This could pose problems for the president and his men. If the CEO of Ajax Widgets LLC pays $500,000 for a cup of coffee and a breakfast bagel with the president, he won’t be pleased to learn that the CEO of Acme Anvils, Inc., got the president’s ear for $475,000, and maybe got two bagels and a strawberry shmear on the side.


The Washington Post, in its editorial, decried the sale of access as “behavior that has become all too common in this town and carries more than a whiff of influence-peddling.” The New York Times detected more than a whiff, of something like genuine stink. An advisory board, the newspaper said, “is nothing more than a fancy way of setting a price for access to Mr. Obama.”


This contretemps, so far the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, is nevertheless enough to shake the president’s supreme self-confidence, rattle the White House dishes and make the floor tremble beneath Mr. Obama’s feet. This scolding comes not from right-wing websites, but from two of the most prominent pillars of the cult. Prominent pillars are not supposed to behave like that. On what other meat might an awakening media feed?


This followed Bob Woodward’s falling out of love with Mr. Obama, partly over the president playing games with the sequestration but mostly over the president’s failure to deploy the carrier USS Harry S. Truman. Mortuary Bob, who burnished his considerable reputation with his famous interviews with the dead and the comatose, tried to make it up to the president at the end of the week with an invitation to the Obamas to dine at the Woodward manse.


Taken all in all, these are not particularly happy days for His Grandiosity. After weeks of crying wolf, the White House retreated Sunday from the president’s fervent predictions that the world as we know it would end at midnight March 1, when the sequestration cuts would take effect. The sky remained resolutely overhead, though in some places there were deep gray clouds and in some places rain, but not the sky, fell.


The track record of the doom-criers, even the president, is not good. Geezers remember when were told that airplanes would fall from the sky, everybody’s bank account would be erased, and restaurants would decline to honor dinner reservations after the beginning of the new millennium because all the computers were programmed to die at midnight on Dec. 31, 1999. Even the ancient Mayans got into the act when someone thought they remembered that their calendar predicted death, destruction and other inconvenience for the modern age. Only yesterday, everyone was about to fall off the fiscal cliff. The sequestration rescued us.


“We lost the bet on just how intransigent the Republican majority can be,” a Virginia Democrat told Politico. “We made a mistake betting on reasonable compromise ultimately prevailing. We bet on that and lost.” The president bet he could come up with the idea of sequestration and when it actually happened nobody would remember that he was the elusive daddy.



The president and his partisans in Congress were high on a champagne buzz a month ago when they thought the Republicans, dazed by the election results, had been permanently scared into raising taxes whenever the president felt a whim coming on. Mr. Obama imagined that he could cry wolf twice a day and get a new tax increase each time. The “shock” of sequestration has given the Republicans a booster shot of testosterone. And just in time, too.


Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

WE HAVE SEEN THE BOOBS AND THEY ARE US

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March 1, 2013

GOVERNMENT-BY-FAKE-DISASTER-MOVIE

By MARK STEYN 




A few weeks ago, Ann Coulter announced that she was bored of American politics and spending her days watching Turner Classic Movies. I confess that, when it comes to Beltway melodrama, I, too, am fighting vainly the old ennui, and minded to plump up the pillows and settle back with a bucket of bonbons and a beribboned Shih-tzu for an all-night Norma Shearer marathon. At least, unlike Washington, there's a chance you may catch something you haven't already seen a hundred times before. For example, I've a yen to see "Roberta" (RKO, 1935), in which Irene Dunne sings:   “Yesterdays.”

"Yesterdays
  Days I knew as happy sweet sequester'd days..."

I believe that was the last known use of this blameless and mellifluous word until it was conscripted by the political class for this month's dreary Mayan Apocalypse of the Month thrill ride. Say what you like about those Mayan guys, but they only schedule an apocalypse once every 5,126 years. Only Washington would try to pull it off every six weeks.

If I understand correctly, by the time you read this, the planes will be dropping from the skies; the drip-feeds in every emergency room will be dry; every creature on the endangered species list will have broken free from our pristine federally manned national parks to be left for roadkill in the potholed asphalt of America's crumbling interstates; you'll turn on your bathroom faucet only to find the town reservoir choked with fecal coliform; the ebola virus will be rampant across Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire and other swing states, where it will nevertheless enjoy higher approval ratings than Marco Rubio and every other prospective GOP nominee. The sequester supposedly cuts $44 billion from the federal budget – or from the rate of growth of the federal budget. Whatever. $44 billion is about what the United States government borrows every nine days, so it's not a lot. But it's apparently responsible for everything that matters in American life.


That being so, maybe it would be easier to reinstate this critical $44 billion and cut the other $3.8 trillion, which is apparently responsible for nothing other than Harry Reid's beloved federally funded cowboy poetry festival and the cost of the dress uniforms for the military detachment accompanying the First Lady at her Oscars appearance. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, warned of "over 170 million jobs that could be lost" thanks to the sequester. There are only 135 million jobs in America, but the sequester gods are so powerful they can eliminate every job in Canada, Britain and Germany, too. Why, because of this weekend's looming Mayan Apocalypse, President Obama declined to deploy a carrier to the Persian Gulf, concerned that it might be left on the other side of the planet, completely sequestered with no fuel to limp back home and insufficient stores in the mess hall larder to cook up federally compliant slop. So, when the mullahs go nuclear and drop the big one on Tel Aviv, it will be the fault of the Republicans for failing to agree to a prudent, balanced, fiscally responsible plan - like the Senate's latest deficit reduction proposal, which, as is traditional, increases the deficit (by $7 billion).


It's not just the U.S. fleet and air traffic control and clean water that have been swept into the garbage can of history by Sequestageddon, but even the most venerable Beltway colossus. In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, but surely Bob Woodward is here to stay – or so we thought until he ventured some very mild criticism of the president's negotiating technique, which appears to be a cross between a suicide-bomber and Cleavon Little taking himself hostage in "Blazing Saddles." In a flash, Woodward's four decades of loyal service were forgotten, and the court eunuchs of the Obama media turned on their own: He's about one news cycle away from being revealed as on the take from the Koch brothers and the real father of Trig Palin.


Speaking of the First Lady's Academy Awards appearance, I see she gave the Oscar for Best Film to Ben Affleck's movie "Argo." If you haven't seen the picture, it's about a group of government operatives whose ingenious plan to achieve their objectives depends on creating a fake movie as a cover story. Obama seems to have taken this inspiring tale to heart.


In the Affleck version, the fake movie is a space opera for which John Goodman rustles up a few cheesy costume designs for some generic aliens. They make a promotional brochure, take out an ad in Variety and hold a well-attended press conference, awash in cocktails and canapés. But there is no movie. And so it goes with Obama's monthly cliffhangers. The White House press corps show up for the reception, and they all excitedly report the intriguing teasers about the white-knuckle thriller coming soon to your town: This weekend, "Les Sequesterables," starring Maxine "I Dreamed A Dream" Waters and a cast of hundreds of millions of downtrodden laid-off extras; next week, "Zero Debt Thirty," in which Paul Ryan proposes cutting $30 from the federal budget, and all civilized life comes to an end; next month, "Django Short-Changed," in which a retired bounty hunter discovers his Social Security check is a buck seventy-three lower than usual because cruel plantation owners like Mitt Romney aren't willing to pay their fair share; and, coming soon, "No Silver Linings Playbook," in which Barack Obama warns yet again that total societal collapse is just around the corner but at the 11th hour manages to avert it by swooping in with a daring, last-minute tax increase.


Government-by-fake-disaster-movie seems to be going swimmingly for Obama. Every Republican attempt at fiscal discipline now ends with both higher spending and more taxes: that's the way it went with the Christmas blockbuster "Fiscal Cliff," and that's the way to bet with "Les Sequesterables," too. Even the IRS can't keep up: "tax season" is upon us, and yet they're not accepting tax returns from millions of Americans because the IRS hasn't yet managed to process the tax changes passed in the dead of night at New Year. American government is a joke – and, sadly, not one of those jokes that everybody takes seriously and kicks up a fuss about, like Seth MacFarlane's "We Saw Your Boobs" song that the New Yorker attacked for its "hostility to women in the workplace," or Joan Rivers' joke about Heidi Klum's Oscars gown that Abraham Foxman's Anti-Defamation League is busy issuing stern denunciations of. No, in an America in which every throwaway gag is a hate crime, Obama's fake disaster movie of the month is the only joke we all go along with, even though he's insulting our intelligence far more than Seth and the Los Angeles Gay Men's Chorus singing "We Saw Your Boobs" to Anne Hathaway and Halle Berry.


Can you pierce the mists of time and go back all the way to the year 2007? Back then, federal spending was 40 percent lower than it is today. In a mere half-decade, has all that 40 percent gravy become so indispensable to the general welfare that not even a teensy-weensy sliver of it can be cut?


If you really believe that, then America is going to die, and a gullible citizenry willing to give this laughable charade the time of day will bear ultimate responsibility. We have seen the boobs, and they are us.

©MARK STEYN

THE BIRD THAT CAUGHT A SPY

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Prothonotary Warblers sing "sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet!" But logging and agriculture in the U.S. and destruction of mangroves in Central and South America threaten this beautiful bird.

Back in the days of the cold war Whitaker Chambers, the Editor of Time Magazine who was formerly active in the Communist Party USA, told the FBI that he had served as a contact with a traitor in the State Department, Alger Hiss.  The FBI and Congress questioned Hiss for hours on end, but they could not get him to say anything that linked him with Chambers.  Then one of the agents of the FBI recalled that Chambers had said that in idle conversation with Alger Hiss, Hiss had said that one of the proudest moments in his life as an avid bird watcher was when he spotted and recorded a Prothonotary Warbler, a relatively rare bird.

The next time Hiss was questioned under oath the FBI interrogator asked him what his hobbies were and Hiss said that he was an avid bird watcher.  The interrogator shared with Hiss some his own successes in bird watching and Hiss not to be outdone boasted of the time that he spotted a Prothonotary Warbler.

With this confirmation of the testimony of Whitaker Chambers, the FBI was eventually able to obtain sufficient evidence to convict Hiss and send him to prison for espionage for the Soviet Union.

For this reason and for others, we should do all we can to protect this beautiful little bird.

- Leo Rugiens

TEXANS KNOW A TYRANT WHEN WE SEE ONE

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Texas Independence Day March 2, 2013

Dear friends of liberty, Texas was born one hundred seventy-seven years ago today. It was not an easy birth. The Texians, encompassing both the Mexicans with deep roots in the land and the Anglo-American settlers invited to colonize the vast country, had worked hard to sustain their ties with Mexico. They sent emissaries and petitions -- they begged for recognition of their rights -- and the majority among them counseled peace among themselves, even to the utmost extremity. But when it became clear that the tyrant in Mexico City, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, was intent upon destroying Mexican federalism and replacing it with a quasi-military dictatorship, they knew that the time had come to fight. So they fought. And in the epic fall of 1835, they swept away the instruments of power and oppression, expelling the Mexican garrisons, seizing the fortifications and armories, and restoring, for a brief moment, the liberties they had expected to enjoy when invited to build their homes and seek their fortunes in Texas. What began with a bold invitation to "Come and Take It" in Gonzales ended the year with San Antonio de Bexar in Texian hands, and an army forming to take the revolution southward to Matamoros -- and perhaps beyond. But this fight for liberty was not yet a fight for independence. Over the Presidio at Goliad, the Texians flew a flag with the red-white-green of Mexico, and the year "1824" emblazoned upon it -- the year of the federalist Mexican constitution that Santa Anna overthrew. Like the American revolutionaries of 1775, the Texians of 1835 fought to restore their rights, not to secede -- and like their predecessors, they would soon find themselves forced into a cause more grand and consequential than any they had envisioned. The arrival of Santa Anna's army changed everything. The despot had first set foot in Texas nearly a quarter-century before, where as a Spanish officer he helped crush a filibustering expedition at the 1813 Battle of Medina. The brutal suppression of that early revolt taught the tyrant his method: lay waste, terrorize, and kill all who resisted. This was the technique he brought to Texas when he crossed the Rio Grande with his solders on February 16th, 1836. One week later he laid siege to the Alamo, and sent a grim message to its defenders: surrender or die. William Barret Travis answered with a cannon shot: "Victory or Death." As the doomed garrison at the Alamo held against repeated assaults, bombardments, and harassments, the Mexican armies fanned out across Texas. The Texians, having won everything in 1835, now lost everything in 1836. They lost at San Patricio. They lost at Agua Dulce. And as February ground on into March, it was increasingly apparent that they would lose at the Alamo too -- and after that, who knew what fate held in store? The Mexicans commanded thousands -- and the Texians commanded hundreds. The flame of liberty in Texas flickered badly. This was the dark scenario that confronted the Texians gathered at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 1st, 1836, sent to the Convention to decide what to do. Would their revolution falter? Would Texas surrender? Would they attempt to negotiate? Would the cause of the Lone Star be extinguished in the face of superior force? The men assembled at the little cabin in the little town on the Brazos River took stock of the situation, and did the only common-sense thing left:    They declared independence. On March 2nd, 1836, with nothing standing between them and the power of Santa Anna but a desperate garrison and a prayer, the word went out to the world:    "We, therefore, the delegates with plenary powers of the people of Texas, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and declare, that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, Sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme arbiter of the destinies of nations." Texas, a nation in full, was born. But it was not yet won.    The same day, Texas lost at Agua Dulce.    Four days later, Texas lost at the Alamo.    Seventeen days later, Texas lost at Coleto.    Nineteen days later, Texas lost at Copano.    Twenty-five days later, Texans were massacred at Goliad. But exactly fifty days later, on April 21st, 1836, Texas won at San Jacinto. And that won it all. Today, 177 years later, we honor the men and women who stood and fought against impossible odds in the harrowing passage of spring 1836. Their spirit, born in the American heritage and made real in the Texas experience, remains our example today. They did not waver and they did not cease in their defense of liberty -- and we, who walk in the paths they blazed, can do no less. Liberty and independence, no matter the odds. That is who they were. And because of them … it is who we are.    In liberty -- and in Texas -- Brooke Rollins President & CEO TEXAS PUBLIC POLICY FOUNDATION