By Theodore King

Congress Kicks the Can Again on Constitution Day

Senator Coburn Wants to De-militarize the Local Police; We Need to Support Him!

Bureaucrats with Guns

Remember, Remember the 9th of November!

Will the Republicans Take the Senate?

The National Taxpayers' Union Rates the Oklahoma Delegation

The National Taxpayers' Union (NTU) looks at how every member of the United States House of Representatives and of the Senate voted on bills affecting taxes, spending, and debt and rates them according to their support for limited government. Here is how the Oklahoma delegation members were rated for 2013:

In the House of Representatives: Freshman First District Congressman Jim Bridenstine has an A rating for his 83%, making him a "Friend of the Taxpayer" according to NTU. Freshman Second District Congressman Markwayne Mullin has a B for his 74%. Third District Frank Lucas has at 64% a C. (As chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Lucas was responsible for the pork-laden farm bill that had to be reintroduced this year after failing to pass the House last year. Last year, Lucas' farm bill had too much pork in it for Congress to approve!). Fourth District Congressman Tom Cole received a C rating for his 64%. This is the same rating as Congressman Lucas'. The C that Cole received was the lowest NTU had given him during his 10 years in the House of Representatives. Fifth District Congressman James Lankford has a B for his 76%. In his freshman year in 2011, he received a 79% rating.

In the Senate: NTU's "Friend of the Taxpayer" award went to outgoing Senator Tom Coburn, who received an A rating from the group for his 96%, and he was rated by NTU as the second highest rated member of the Senate; in 2012 Senator Coburn was the sixth highest rated member, and in 2011 he was the highest rated senator according to NTU. Senior Senator James Inhofe was awarded "Friend of the Taxpayer" in 2013, having received an A rating for his 91%. In 2012, he had a B rating for his 79% that year. To find out more about the NTU visit www.ntu.org

Congress Kicks the Can Again on Constitution Day

On September 17th, the day the United States Constitution is formally honored, the House passed, by a vote of 319 - 108, another continuing resolution to keep the government funded until December 11th. Congressman James Bridenstine voted no. Congressmen Cole, Lankford, Lucas, and Mullin voted yes. This is called "kicking the can" down the road a little farther, rather than hammering out a budget.

The federal government is currently operating without a budget, which means continuing resolutions are the necessary funding mechanisms to keep the government afloat. There is no budget because Senator Harry Reid of Nevada is the majority leader and has opposed any budget passed by the House. Bridenstine refuses to go along with this charade while the rest of our delegation goes along to get along. James Bridenstine is the only armed forces veteran in the House delegation from Oklahoma, and he's also the only MAN; the rest are Speaker Boehner's boys.

Senator Coburn Wants to De-militarize the Local Police; We Need to Support Him!

Senator Tom Coburn recently introduced S. 2904, the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, which, if passed into law, will de-militarize local police. It is important to point out that this bill does not disarm the police. Instead, it proposes to take away from the local police the tanks, fully automatic weapons, and military hardware including grenades that the Defense Department has been giving to local law enforcement from its military surplus. Senate Bill 2904 is sitting in the Committee on Armed Services. It needs an up or down vote. It will be interesting to find out what Senator Inhofe's position on Senator Coburn's bill is. A similar bill has been introduced in the House by Democrat Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia and Republican Raul Labrador of Idaho.

On an October 3rd newscast, Lori Fulbright of Tulsa CBS affiliate Channel 6 presented a shamefully one-sided story about Senator Coburn's proposed legislation. Rogers County Sheriff Scott Walton had told Fullbright about the good things his department can do with a military humvee. Fullbright reported a perceived need by the police for military grade weapons by mentioning a February 28, 1997 shoot-out in Los Angeles in which two bank robbers had fully automatic weapons and were able to hold police at bay for several hours before one was killed and the other captured. That rare incident took place 17 years ago! Senator Coburn realizes the heavy guns are for the National Guard, and that's why we have a National Guard. I'm really going to miss his presence in the Senate, even when I don't agree with him. I agree with him about this legislation. A coalition of conservatives, liberals, and libertarians is needed for this bill to be passed into law. The police often deserve our thanks for the work they do, but they do not need tanks!

Bureaucrats with Guns

An even more pressing concern than militarizing police is the explosion of federal agencies with armed police forces. The reason we have to fear armed bureaucrats more than local law enforcement is the reality that local police have some accountability to the public. Sheriffs stand for re-election; police chiefs are fired. Policemen are fired or prosecuted for misdeeds. Federal agencies have more freedom to cause harm on the citizenry and get away with it, at least for a while.

Consider the 1992 raid at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in which agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Marshal Service raided the residence of Randy Weaver, killing his wife and son. Undercover agents persuaded Mr. Weaver to change a shotgun into a sawed off shotgun for them, and when he did, they raided and killed. It was not until 1995 that the government settled out of court with Mr. Weaver and his surviving children, but they never apologized for what they had done. The recent criminal cover-up at the Internal Revenue Service regarding the targeting of conservative groups is an example of lack of accountability.

This excerpt is from The Weekly Standard, September 1, 2014:

"According to the Wall Street Journal, in 1973 there were 507 federal criminal investigators, excluding those in federal departments with explicit law enforcement duties such as Treasury, Justice, and Defense. By 2011, the ranks of armed federal agents in civilian regulatory agencies had swollen to 3,812. In 1973, the forerunner to the Department of Health and Human Services had exactly one armed investigator. Today, HHS has 686 criminal investigators -- more than any other agency. Even the Peace Corps now has four criminal investigators in-house."

Bureaucrats with guns constitute a toxic mixture. Republican Congressman Chris Stewart of Utah has authored a bill, the Regulatory Agency Demilitarization Act, H.R. 4934, to freeze purchases of weapons by federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has its own special weapons and tactics (SWAT) team! No joke. The FDA has a SWAT team. Under Stewart's proposed bill, agencies will have 90 days to justify to Congress their purchase of weapons. These agencies will have to provide reports on weapons they possess and how much they spend in their budgets to maintain weapons. This bill has 32 cosponsors including Congressmen Jim Bridenstine and James Lankford. It sits in the House Oversight and Reform Committee and deserves a yes vote!

Remember, Remember the 9th of November!

Twenty-five years ago, the Soviet bloc nations of East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania started to unravel. The Soviet Union, Nicaragua in our own back yard, and the independent communist nation of Yugoslavia soon followed. In June of 1989, free elections were held in Poland, placing the opposition Solidarity labor movement into power and replacing the decades long rule of communist puppets of the Soviet Union. This election was exactly ten years after Pope John Paul II had visited his native Poland as the reluctantly invited guest of the then communist regime.

In East Germany, longtime communist leader Erich Honecker resigned on October 18, 1989 as general secretary of the communist party. On November 9th, the communist government sent a spokesman to the press to announce that the gates along the Berlin Wall would be opened for pedestrian and automobile traffic the following day, but the gates were opened that day, November 9, 1989. Berliners were free to move about the long divided city. The Cold War was at an end. Within a year's time, Germany was reunited under the flag of West Germany and a chorus of: "Deutschland, Deutschland, uber allies" rang out load and clear at the re-unification ceremony in front of the Reichstag in Berlin.

On Christmas Day 1989, long time Romanian communist strong man Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were executed by firing squad. Their executioners were told not to shoot Nicolae in the face because his dead face was needed for broadcast on Romanian state television to inform the people he was gone and could torment only their memories.

The mustard seed of those events was revealed in a January 1977 conversation in the Pacific Palisades home of then former California Governor Ronald Reagan between him and his future National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen. He is now a senior fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. I interviewed Mr. Allen by telephone on October 13. He told me he spent about eight hours visiting with Governor Reagan about the Soviet Union, Cuba, and other problems facing America. Toward the end of the evening, Mr. Allen asked Governor Reagan how he expected the Cold War to end. Governor Reagan replied that he was regularly accused of being a simple man with simple answers to complex questions, and then he said: "We win; they lose. What do you think of that, Dick?" Mr. Allen asked if he really believed that. Ronald Reagan's response was yes, he did, or he wouldn't say it.

In November 1978, Richard V. Allen and his wife and Ronald Reagan and his wife and speech writer Peter Hannaford flew to Germany to meet with West German leaders including Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and opposition leader Helmut Kohl, who would be chancellor when Germany was re-united. It was Ronald Reagan's first visit to Germany. Mr. Allen went with him to look at the Berlin Wall. He told me that Ronald Reagan glowered at the wall and "He then turned to me and said,'Dick, we've got to find a way to knock this thing down!' " Then in 1987, President Ronald Reagan said in front of the Berlin Wall, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" And it was torn down.

Mr. Allen went to work on foreign policy for the Republican party platform in 1980 and became President Reagan's first national security adviser. The first order of business for the new Reagan administration was to build up the military and to develop the anti-missile Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), disparagingly referred to as "star wars." Mr. Allen told me SDI was what the Soviets feared most because they could not match SDI's technology. Mr. Allen had worked in the Nixon administration, and he told me "Nixon sought to manage the cold war; Reagan sought to win it." He also told me the Cold War was won by "money, technology, and will." Twenty-five years ago, we won the Cold War, and they lost. What do you think about that?

Will the Republicans Take the Senate?

Probably, and we will soon know for sure. Democrat Senator Mark Pryor in Arkansas is toast, and Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana is french toast. On the Republican side, I hope Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran is defeated, and I'd like to see arrogant Pat Roberts of Kansas booted out by voters. However, the tide favors the Republican party, and the GOP may not need Cochran or Roberts.

"I'm not on the ballot this fall. Michelle's pretty happy about that. But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them." -- President Barack Obama speaking at Northwestern University in Chicago on October 2nd.