By Theodore King

This issue marks my 15th year of writing for The Oklahoma Constitution. I began in the Spring of 2000 while working for the Media Research Center in the Washington, D.C. area. My thanks go to Steve Byas and Ron McWhirter at the newspaper for their support of my columns all these years.

Chairman Randy Brogdon

Congratulations to former State Senator Randy Brogdon of Owasso on his election April 11th as Chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party. He is one of the few people in politics whom I trust and respect because he really believes in liberty and limited government. I know state Republicans could not have chosen a better leader. Plus, he's such a decent man he might very well be able to convert a Marxist.

House GOP Leadership Betrays its Pro-Life Base

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, who would have been fired by now if he were a football coach, pulled a vote on a bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. This sparked a small demonstration by pro-lifers in front of his Capitol Hill office on March 25th. The protesters were arrested by capitol police.Supporters of the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, H.R. 36, was promised a vote by the House leadership at the March for Life in January. The vote was to take place in March, that is until it was pulled by the Speaker. The bill has 184 co-sponsors, including three Democrats and all five members of the Oklahoma delegation. Pulling this bill confirms to me, and I'm sure others, that the Republican Party has been using right-to-lifers only to win elections, all the while never intending to enact their agenda.

Homeland Security Funding of Obama's Executive Amnesty

On March 3rd, the House voted 257-167 to approve the budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). First District Congressman James Bridenstine was outspoken in his opposition to funding the DHS because it would also allow taxpayer funding of President Obama's executive amnesty. This well-written explanation for his no vote appeared on his blog for March 3, 2015:

"Back in January, I voted to fund every constitutional DHS function and program and to defund the executive amnesty. Senate Democrats blocked the Senate from even debating the House-passed bill. Senate Democrats also prevented the House and Senate from going to conference and figuring out a way to fund DHS without the President's executive amnesty.

Ultimately, this outcome was entirely predictable. The House should have never passed the so-called "Cromnibus' back in the lame duck session in December. The strategy of passing a $1.1 trillion spending bill, but holding out DHS was never credible. The President and Senate Democrats always knew the House would capitulate. Along with other House conservatives, I voted against the Cromnibus. The federal court system is our last hope to overturn the President's lawlessness on immigration."

http://bridenstine.house.gov/blog/

The GOP leadership in the House and Senate decided on a "Hail Mary" pass to fund DHS despite the President's amnesty for illegal aliens, hoping the amnesty will be undone in the federal courts. It's a real gamble.

For his NO vote, Congressman Bridenstine was targeted in radio and television ads in the Tulsa area stating the country is vulnerable to attack because of members like Bridenstine who refuse to fund Homeland Security at this time. The ad was paid for by a group calling itself American Action Network (AAN), which is run, according to Muskogee Politico, by Barry Jackson, a former chief of staff for Speaker John Boehner, and Mike Shields, who was chief of staff for Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. AAN spent $400,000 in media buys to rein in several congressmen the GOP leadership considers renegades. In the grand scheme of things, that money was a waste. All those who did not support funding DHS because of Obama's executive amnesty will likely be re-elected in 2016.

Bridenstine's opposition was a moral victory because, unlike many other times, he was joined in his no vote by Congressmen Markwayne Mullin of the Second District, Frank Lucas of the Third, and Steve Russell of the Fifth. Tom Cole of the Fourth District was the only member of the House to vote to fund DHS, which passed in the House. The Senate had passed DHS funding by a vote of 68 - 31 on January 14th. Senators James Inhofe and James Lankford voted NO.

The Democrats in 2016

Hillary Clinton will not be elected president; she won't even be nominated by her party. The reason is Democrats want to win the 2016 election and continue their "fundamental transformation" started by Barack Hussein Obama. Democrats are the evil party, not the stupid party. (M. Stanton Evans, about whom I write in this column, called the Democrats "the evil party" and the Republicans "the stupid party.") Nominating Hillary would be stupid, and they would lose. They know this.

The recent scandal involving Hillary's e-mail use as Secretary of State is just the latest reminder to Democrats and the voting public why she cannot be trusted. Forty-one years ago, a young Hillary Rodham was fired by Democrat House Counsel Jeff Zeifman from the House Judiciary Committee, investigating the Watergate scandal of President Nixon. Mr. Zeifman cited unethical behavior on Ms. Rodham's part. This was in 1974.

Since then we have come to know Hillary Clinton through various scandals. There were the cattle futures scandal, the White House travel office scandal, her Arkansas dealings with political cronies in the Whitewater development company, her lying about being shot at on a trip to Bosnia, her denials about her husband's infidelities in her now infamous "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" claim.

As bad as all these scandals were, it was her lying to Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, who was one of the victims of the Benghazi, Libya attack was the worst. Her lie was the act of a sociopath, which she is. She blamed an Internet video about Islam for the deaths of four Americans, even though she knew by the time she spoke with Ms. Smith that the attack was planned by Islamic militants, marking the anniversary of 9/11. The following year, she asked the House committee investigating the Benghazi attack, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Hillary Clinton is former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards without the charm. An informative book about the Clintons is No One Left to Lie To by the late, leftist writer Christopher Hitchens.

Democrats have a way of surprising voters with unknown candidates. They picked a former Georgia governor (Jimmy Carter) in 1976, even though few had ever heard of him. They picked Hillary's husband in 1992, even though he was largely unknown at the time, and in 2008 they picked a freshman senator from Illinois to become our current disaster. There is some good news for Oklahoma Democrats: they won't have Barack Hussein Obama from whom to run away in future elections.

Remembering M. Stanton Evans and Charles E. Rice

Two great men of the modern conservative movement died this winter. M. Stanton Evans was a prolific author and thinker. He died on March 3rd at age 80. Mr. Evans had been the assistant editor of The Freemen libertarian magazine, associate editor of National Review, editorial writer for the Indianapolis News, and a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He became the managing editor of Human Events to which he was a contributor until his death. He was a commentator on CBS, NPR, the Voice of America, and WGMS, the classical radio station in Washington. From 1971 to 1977, he was chairman of the American Conservative Union. In 1975, he called upon former California governor Ronald Reagan to run for President against Gerald Ford.

Mr. Evans believed that traditionalism and liberty are not mutually exclusive. He was the author of Sharon Statement a conservative manifesto written in September of 1960 at the Sharon, Connecticut, home of William F. Buckley Jr. It called for free markets, less government at home, and victory over communism abroad.

Mr. Evans joked that technology would enable our cars to drive us to the police station (to turn ourselves in) if they detect we had been smoking. Governor Fallin no doubt relishes that idea.

Charles E. Rice died on February 25; he was 83. Professor Rice was a retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel. He was one of the founders of the Conservative Party in New York state. He spent over four decades teaching constitutional law at The University of Notre Dame. One of his students was Judge Andrew Napolitano, who wrote in his 2004 book, Constitutional Chaos: "When I was a law student at the University of Notre Dame Law School, I was taught by many very bright minds. Foremost among them was Professor Charles E. Rice. Professor Rice, a fierce Roman Catholic and a staunch defender of the Constitution, instilled in me the values of individual liberty, limited government, and patience." His conservatism clashed with the overall direction of Notre Dame. He once told my father on the phone, "Notre Dame practices what they preach regarding academic freedom because they allow me to teach." He frequently criticized the liberal direction of the school.

"We have two parties here, and only two -- one is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party....I'm very proud to be a member of the stupid party. Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that's both evil and stupid. That's called bipartisanship."

- M. Stanton Evans