It turned out to be a tough year. The state immediately erupted into a national spectacle, with tens of thousands of citizens, led by Wisconsin’s public-employee unions, seizing control of the capitol for weeks to protest the reforms. By early March, the crowds grew as big as 100,000, police estimated. Protesters set up encampments in the statehouse, openly drinking and engaging in drug use beneath the marble dome. Democratic state senators fled Wisconsin to prevent a vote on Walker’s plan. Eventually, the Senate did manage to pass the reforms, which survived a legal challenge and became law in July.

The unions aren’t done yet: they’re now trying to recall Walker from office. To do so, they will try to convince Wisconsin voters that Walker’s reforms have rendered the state ungovernable. But the evidence, so far, contradicts that claim—and Wisconsinites seem to realize it.

Back in 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to let public employees unionize. The unions spent the next half-century productively, generating lavish benefits for their members. By the time Walker took office in 2011, the overwhelming majority of state and local government workers paid nothing toward the annual contributions to their pension accounts, which equaled roughly 10 percent of their salaries per year. The average employee also used just 6.2 percent of his salary on his health-insurance premium. Among Walker’s reforms, therefore, was requiring employees to start paying 5.8 percent of their salaries, on average, toward their pensions and to double their health-insurance payments to 12.4 percent of their salaries. These two changes, Walker estimated, would save local governments $724 million annually, letting him cut state aid to localities and reduce Wisconsin’s $3.6 billion biennial deficit.

These measures angered unions, but Walker’s other moves were even more controversial. One was to allow government employees to bargain collectively only when negotiating wages; in other areas, collective bargaining would no longer be part of the contract-making process. The unions screamed bloody murder, decrying the loss of what they called their “right” to collective bargaining. “We are prepared to implement the financial concessions proposed to help bring our state’s budget into balance, but we will not be denied our God-given right to join a real union,” said Marty Beil, head of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, back in February. “We will not—I repeat we will not—be denied our rights to collectively bargain.”

What had the unions most up in arms, however, was a reform that ended mandatory dues for members. Wisconsin unions were collecting up to $1,100 per member per year in these obligatory payments, which they then spent on getting sympathetic politicians elected. In the last two elections, for instance, the state’s largest teachers’ union spent $3.6 million supporting candidates. Walker’s reform meant that government workers could now opt out of paying these dues—savings that could help offset those workers’ newly increased health and pension payments, the governor said. The unions knew that, given the option, many of their members would indeed choose not to write a check—and that this would strangle union election spending.

The unions’ battle against Walker’s reforms has rested on the argument that the changes would damage public services beyond repair. The truth, however, is that the reforms not only are saving money already; they’re doing so with little disruption to services. In early August, noticing the trend, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Milwaukee would save more in health-care and pension costs than it would lose in state aid, leaving the city $11 million ahead in 2012—despite Mayor Tom Barrett’s prediction in March that Walker’s budget “makes our structural deficit explode.”

The collective-bargaining component of Walker’s plan has yielded especially large financial dividends for school districts. Before the reform, many districts’ annual union contracts required them to buy health insurance from WEA Trust, a nonprofit affiliated with the state’s largest teachers’ union. Once the reform limited collective bargaining to wage negotiations, districts could eliminate that requirement from their contracts and start bidding for health care on the open market. When the Appleton School District put its health-insurance contract up for bid, for instance, WEA Trust suddenly lowered its rates and promised to match any competitor’s price. Appleton will save $3 million during the current school year.

Appleton isn’t alone. According to a report by the MacIver Institute, as of September 1, “at least 25 school districts in the Badger State had reported switching health care providers/plans or opening insurance bidding to outside companies.” The institute calculates that these steps will save the districts $211.45 per student. If the state’s other 250 districts currently served by WEA Trust follow suit, the savings statewide could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

At the outset of the public-union standoff, educators had made dire predictions that Walker’s reforms would force schools to fire teachers. In February, to take one example, Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad predicted that 289 teachers in his district would be laid off. Walker insisted that his reforms were actually a job-retention program: by accepting small concessions in health and pension benefits, he argued, school districts would be able to spare hundreds of teachers’ jobs. The argument proved sound. So far, Nerad’s district has laid off no teachers at all, a pattern that has held in many of the state’s other large school districts. No teachers were laid off in Beloit and LaCrosse; Eau Claire saw a reduction of two teachers, while Racine and Wausau each laid off one. The Wauwatosa School District, which faced a $6.5 million shortfall, anticipated slashing 100 jobs—yet the new pension and health contributions saved them all.

The benefits to school districts aren’t just fiscal, moreover. Thanks to Walker’s collective-bargaining reforms, the Brown Deer school district in suburban Milwaukee can implement a performance-pay system for its best teachers—a step that could improve educational outcomes.

Over the summer, a sign surfaced that the public wasn’t as alarmed by the Walker agenda as the unions would have liked. In August, six Republican state senators who had supported the reforms were forced to defend their seats in recall elections. Democrats, in the minority by a 19–14 margin, needed to pick up three seats to take back the Senate. In the days before the election, Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Mike Tate touted poll numbers showing Democrats leading in three races and in a dead heat in the rest. “Independents are moving towards the Democratic candidates in strong numbers,” he told a group of national reporters. Every race, he claimed, was “eminently winnable.”

The manner in which the public unions ran the campaigns was telling. Because they realized that public-sector collective bargaining wasn’t the wedge issue that they’d expected, not a single union-backed ad mentioned it— even though it was the reason that the unions had mobilized for the recall elections in the first place. Instead, the union ads cried that Scott Walker had “cut $800 million from the state’s schools.” This was true, but the ads neglected to mention that the governor’s increased health-care and pension-contribution requirements made up for those funds, just as Walker had planned. That the unions poured nearly $20 million into the races, by the way, validated another argument of Walker’s: that mandatory dues are a conduit through which taxpayer money gets transferred to public-sector unions, which use it to elect Democrats, who then negotiate favorable contracts with the unions. In this case, the newly strapped Wisconsin unions had to rely heavily on contributions from unions in other states.

In the end, Republicans held four of the six seats and retained control of the Senate. Democrats nevertheless bragged about defeating two incumbents, but that achievement was more modest than it appeared. One of the Republican incumbents was in a district that Barack Obama had won by 18 points in 2008. The other losing Republican had been plagued by personal problems relating to his 25-year-old mistress. Meanwhile, two of the challenged Republicans, Alberta Darling and Sheila Harsdorf, won more decisively than they had in 2008, suggesting that the reforms might be strengthening some Republican incumbents. (The other two senators who kept their seats, Luther Olsen and Rob Cowles, ran unopposed three years ago, so it’s harder to tell whether their popularity has grown.)

The unions’ cause has been hurt by some widely reported stories of public-sector mischief. The most outrageous was the saga of Warren Eschenbach, an 86-year-old former school crossing guard from Wausau. After he retired, Eschenbach, who lives two doors down from Riverview Elementary, kept helping kids cross the road every morning; it gave him a reason to get up each day, he told a local TV station. But the Wausau teachers’ union didn’t see it that way: it filed a grievance with the city to stop him, since he was no longer a unionized employee.

Such stories of union malfeasance may not be enough to save Walker. If the governor’s opponents succeed in mounting a recall election, it would take place at some point between April and June. A poll conducted in October for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, where I work, found that Walker had a fairly low personal approval rating of 42 percent. Further, the public opposed recalling the governor from office by a troublingly slim 49 percent to 47 percent margin.

But if Walker’s task is to convince the public that the state hasn’t devolved into unfunded anarchy, he may have an easier case to make than you’d think. According to the same poll, 71 percent of Wisconsinites believe that the state’s public schools have either stayed the same or improved over the previous half-year. More than three-quarters of Wisconsinites expect the state’s economy either to get better or to stay the same in the next year, up from 60 percent during the height of the union tumult in March. And while just 23 percent of Wisconsinites think that “things in the country are generally going in the right direction,” 38 percent of them believe that that’s the case in Wisconsin, up from 27 percent in November 2010.

At his inauguration in 1959—and shortly before he created public-sector collective bargaining—Wisconsin’s newly elected Democratic governor, Gaylord Nelson, quoted Abraham Lincoln: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . We must think anew and act anew.” It’s a good thing Scott Walker took his advice. It’s imperative for Wisconsin’s fiscal future that voters take it, too.

Editor's Note: We have reproduced here in full "It's Working in Walker's Wisconsin" by Christian Schneider from City Journal. We encourage you to visit the original.

In exit polls yesterday, Florida Republicans revealed that their top reason for choosing their candidate was “electability.” After screaming at my TV for 10 minutes, I had several drinks and sat down to write this column.

John McCain was electable. Wasn’t he?

Tom Daschle, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Howard Dean, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Keith Olbermann, The New York Times and The Washington Post all said he was. McCain was “a great guy” according to Chris Matthews. So why aren’t we in year four of the McCain administration?

Because electability is absolute, unadulterated, straight-out-of-the-cow bullshit. And I can prove it with two questions.

1.) Did anyone ever ask if Barack Obama was electable?

Potential candidate liabilities: Obama has a weird name. He’s aloof. He’s an elitist. He spent his formative years in Indonesia. His father was a Muslim. His mother was a Marxist radical. He won’t release his college records. He never served in the military. He never held a job in the private sector. He had a negligible impact as an Illinois state senator. He had a negligible impact as a U.S. senator. He had no foreign policy experience. He had no executive experience. He spent 20 years of Sundays with a lunatic pastor who despises America. He’s a product of the notoriously corrupt Chicago political machine. He had close personal ties to domestic terrorists and other unsavory characters.

2) Did anyone ever ask if Hillary Clinton was electable?

Potential candidate liabilities: She’s a left-wing feminist. She’s not attractive. She has a cold demeanor. She’s not charismatic. She and her husband were scandal-ridden and scandal-prone. She had well-known, shady business dealings. Her life’s major political achievement was staying married to a husband who cheated on her every chance he could. She was an unpopular first lady (until the Lewinsky sympathy). Her only major leadership role (Hillarycare) resulted in abject failure, ultimately causing the Democrats to lose their majority in Congress for the first time in more than three decades. She was a junior senator from New York in the second term of a legislative career without much distinction.

And the answer to each of those questions is no.

The list of potential political liabilities for Hillary and Barack could go on for days. Each had an ideology far to the left of mainstream America. Neither had an executive’s pedigree. Yet, somehow, electability wasn’t an issue for them.

It ain’t a mystery, folks.

The electability question is a liberal media con. It is posed only when discussing Republicans. And it is posed often. The purpose of the question is to cast doubt on conservative candidates and, ultimately, keep them out of office.

And, tragically, it works.

The electability meme doesn’t merely haunt Republican office seekers. It has slithered into the minds of Republican voters, leading them to be unnaturally anxious when conservative candidates take strong stands. The result of this anxiety is manifest. We either lose (see: Bob Dole, John McCain, etc.) or elect callow, mealy-mouthed imps (see: the hordes of GOP congressmen who think compromise is a cardinal virtue). In short, the electability con has been a destructive, weakening force in the conservative movement for generations. And, as dupes, Republicans continually harm themselves.

The 2010 tea party wave crushed the spirit of the Democrats. It was their biggest loss in 70 years. A more limited government was clearly the will of the people. For a few trembling months, the lame-duck Dems and a dispirited President Obama thought the world was ending because fiscal restraint was coming to town. All of the political winds were at Republican backs. Then, John Boehner insisted that he wasn’t in charge. And the capitulations of our just-elected electables soon followed.

That’s the worst part of the electable meme. It’s hard to root for weak candidates. Conservatives love America. And our country wasn’t founded and built by mealy-mouths and second-guessers. America was founded by ass-kickers, men and women who took hard stands, come hell or high water. That’s the type of candidate we want, the type they call “unelectable.” And here’s the kicker: the last one we nominated won 49 states and was re-elected in 1984.

If conservatives can learn anything from Barack Obama, it’s this: Anyone is electable.

Editor's Note: We have reproduced here in full "The Truth About Electability," by Yates Walker from the Daily Caller. We encourage you to visit the original.

Most Republican voters, and more than a few independents, would disagree. Romney apparently didn't notice that the hundreds of thousands of people who showed up at the nation's capitol to protest the impending passage of Obamacare were pretty angry. In fact, after the law was passed over their vehement objections, a significant portion of the voters were so outraged by the back-room skullduggery used to pass "reform" that many Democrats were actually afraid to hold town hall meetings and face their own constituents during the run-up to the 2010 midterms. Moreover, despite the many whoppers told by the President's accomplices in the media about the "anti-incumbent mood" of the electorate, the drubbing the Democrats received in that election was obviously driven by voter indignation about being force-fed Obamacare.

And the anger remains. That is why Obama's recent State of the Union address contained only three references to his "signature domestic achievement." This is, as Michael Barone puts it, "the strongest evidence possible" that the President sees Obamacare as "a millstone around the neck of his campaign." Thus, he and his minions will not have missed the significance of Romney's prissy rebuke of Santorum's passionate plea not to "give this issue away." They no doubt recognized it as a Freudian slip betraying Romney as a man without real convictions, and realize that this is the source of his countless flip-flops. In the art of politics, as in the art of war, the key to victory is knowledge of one's enemy. Having cut their political teeth in Chicago, the President's men know a trimmer when they see one and what it takes to defeat him.

The only real difference between Romney and Obama's long-ago-vanquished opponents is that the Chi-town pols were less amateurish. Romney's reversals of position have been so frequent and transparently self-serving that a moderately intelligent preschooler could see through them. Health reform is Exhibit A. When running against Ted Kennedy for the Senate in 1994, Romney represented himself as the champion of a free market health system: "I do not believe in a government takeover of the healthcare system." After becoming Governor of Massachusetts, however, his position changed so radically that he signed a health reform law that later became the model for Obamacare. Now, he claims to oppose Obama's version of the plan, though the two laws are identical in all important respects.

Romney would also have us believe that he will repeal Obamacare in its entirety. He has made this claim in virtually every Republican debate. During his exchange with Santorum on Thursday, for example, he phrased it thus: "It's bad medicine, it's bad for the economy, and I will repeal it." Predictably, this differs from what he said immediately after the law was passed: "I hope we're ultimately able to… repeal the bad and keep the good." It also conflicts with what his people are saying even now. During a recent interview one of Romney's most important advisors said , "We're not going to do repeal… but you will see major changes… You can't whole-cloth throw it out. But you can substantially change what's been done." This is no more than the President and the Democrats themselves have promised.

Romney's affinity with Democrat positions has not been limited to health reform, of course. He has, for example, often agreed with them on Second Amendment rights. While running for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002 he repeatedly stated that he supported that state's tough gun laws. And, in 2004, he famously signed into law a ban on so-called assault weapons and even certain types of shotguns. By the time he had begun his first presidential campaign, however, his views had "evolved." In a 2007 speech to the NRA, he declared, "I support the Second Amendment as one of the most basic and fundamental rights of every American." During his current bid for the presidency, Romney has dodged gun control questions in the debates and his campaign website offers no hint as to his position du jour.

Perhaps the most egregious of Romney's one-eighties have involved abortion. He has changed his position on that issue at least three times. During the 1994 Senate race against Kennedy he said, "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country." In 2001, however, he published a letter in The Salt Lake Tribune in which he wrote, "I do not wish to be labeled prochoice." If the "evolution" had stopped there, many would accept what could well have been a genuine change of heart. But when he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 he declared, "I will protect the right of a woman to choose under the law of the country and the laws of the Commonwealth." Now, for purposes of his current presidential campaign, he's again "pro-life." How he avoids vertigo while executing so many pirouettes is anyone's guess.

Presumably, Romney would admonish us that his about-faces are "not worth getting angry about." That may be the one thing he really believes. What he and his supporters in the GOP establishment don't get, however, is that real voters take these things very seriously. Those who vote based on abortion and gun rights are justifiably angered by politicians who make promises about which they forget the day after being elected. When Rick Santorum's tone during last Thursday's debate betrayed annoyance at Romney's health care contortions, it was because he actually cares about the threat to basic liberty presented by Obamacare. It's not an easy thing for a man of genuine principle to tolerate an opportunist like Romney, who obviously sees the issue as just another lever that he can use to hoist himself into public office.

It will, however, be very easy for Obama and his creatures to exploit Romney's flip-flops in the general election. They will make sure the voters understand that these reversals reveal Romney as just another unprincipled politician willing to say anything to win the election. That the President himself is cut of the same cloth won't matter. The reporters and bloggers whose job it is to point that out will be dutifully reciting White House talking points. One wonders if, after his resultant loss in November, Romney will find this "worth getting angry about."

Editor's Note: We have reproduced here in full "Romney Explains Why He Can't Beat Obama" by David Catron from the American Spectator. We encourage you to visit the original.

Nevada Republican Assembly

Gingrich beats Paul 48-43 in Republican straw poll, leads endorsement vote but fails to get two-thirds needed

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., beat U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, in the straw presidential poll voting of the Nevada Republican Assembly on Saturday [January 7] in Reno, giving his campaign an early polling victory with a group that bills itself as a Reaganesque “Republican Wing of the Republican Party.”

Gingrich beat Paul, 48-43. Paul won the NVRA’s presidential straw poll four years ago.

The NVRA straw poll was a fundraiserfor the group. Votes were $10 each. Voters could buy as many votes as they wished.

Gingrich also outpolled all other candidates in a vote for endorsement but did not gain the two-thirds-vote necessary to gain the group’s endorsement.

“We had a race that came down to two candidates, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich and Newt Gingrich won this in spite of a lack of organization and in the face of a phenomenal organization for Ron Paul’s candidacy,” said Kim Bacchus, Washoe County chair for Gingrich’s campaign. “We were able to win this election and the straw poll as well. We find that to be a tremendous boost for Newt.

Newt Gingrich addressing the NFRA Presidential Preference Convention

Paul and Gingrich were the only two candidates remaining on the fifth and final ballot for endorsement. Gingrich was the top vote-getter on each ballot, surpassing 20 votes in four of the five ballots. Gingrich led Paul in the final ballot for endorsement, 21-13.

The straw poll featured six candidates. Republican former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. — the top two finishers in the Iowa caucus — tied for third in the straw poll with six votes each. Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry received three votes, and Republican former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman did not receive a vote.

Although Romney is the favorite to win Nevada GOP presidential caucus on Feb. 4, the Nevada Republican Assembly is probably not Romney’s crowd, said the group’s parliamentarian, Ralph McMullen.

“This group is probably a more conservative group and there is a perception among of some here that maybe he (Romney) is not conservative enough for a lot of the members here,” said McMullen, the former chair of the Washoe County Republican Party.

Editor's Note: We have reprinted Ray Hagar's "Gingrich Beats Paul 48-43..." from RGJ.com

in full here. We encourage you to visit the original.

A key problem, of course, is that the president's two largest programs, his stimulus package and Obamacare, are both under an avalanche of criticism. The stimulus package led to a rise, not a fall in unemployment, and its pork-barrel provisions are exposed almost daily. Obamacare scores low in the polls; it is heavily challenged in the courts; and all Republicans voted against it and most ran elections against it very successfully in 2010.

Presidents Johnson and FDR have similar baggage. In Johnson's first two years, Vietnam became intractable; and increasing the payments in Aid to Families with Dependent Children gave single mothers incentives to take the cash from the government and not get married. FDR's major programs of his first two years, the AAA and the NRA, were both struck down by the Supreme Court. And FDR ended up with more than 19% unemployment in 1938 when the countries of Europe, according to a League of Nations survey, had only 11%. Is that the kind of success a president should emulate?

If we look at the opinions of historians, however, President Obama may be on the right track. They tend to give high ratings to presidents who announce big programs and increase the national debt sharply. Johnson does well, and FDR does even better -- ranking among the top three presidents in most polls. The Arthur Schlesinger Presidential Polls, for example, conducted in 1948, 1962, and 1996, consistently exalted FDR at the top, or near the top.

How do historians rank presidents who achieve prosperity and security for Americans? Let's pose the question this way: What if we had a president who, in his first two years as president, cut federal spending in half; produced budget surpluses in both years; cut tax rates, and slashed unemployment from 12 to 2%? Where should historians rank such a man?

The answer is "in last place -- the worst president in U.S. history." That has been the fate of Warren G. Harding, who was president from 1921 to 1923. He accomplished all of the above -- the federal budget plummeted from $6.4 billion in 1920 to $3.1 billion in 1923; tax rates on the rich fell from 73 to 56%; and the U.S. slashed the national debt and unemployment during Harding's two years as president -- before his untimely death in office.

True, some historians point out, Harding had two major scandals with the Veterans' Administration and with oil leases at Teapot Dome. His appointees extorted or stole public money, but Harding seems to have known nothing about it. Along these lines, Solyndra and Fast and Furious, two recent Obama scandals, may prove to be as damaging to him as Teapot Dome was to Harding.

But Harding's record at improving prosperity for Americans was strong. And shouldn't that be a major point in evaluating his presidency? Harding's humdrum cuts in tax rates and federal spending may lack drama, but they gave Americans jobs.

Under President Obama, by contrast, millions of jobs have disappeared, home values are way down, and standards of living have declined. Yet President Obama tells us he likes "what we've gotten done" with Obamacare and stimulus spending. So do most historians. But historians are safe with tenured jobs; other Americans get laid off when taxes rise, regulations increase, and debt skyrockets to pay for Obama's hope and change. And they, more than the historians, will elect the next president in 2012.

Editor's Note: We have reprinted the full text of "Obama Against Any President" by Burton Folsom, Jr. and Anita Folsom from the American Spectator. We encourage you to visit the original.

At the time, Roosevelt claimed that the sweeping program would, "act as a protection to future administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy."

He was right about the "cornerstone" part, as both parties built on the program in the decades that followed. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson brought us Medicare and Medicaid.

In 2003, President George W. Bush and a Republican Congress added prescription drug coverage for seniors. And just last year, President Obama pushed a national health care law through Congress.

But Roosevelt was dead wrong that the program would help the nation avoid deep debt. Social Security and the entitlement programs that followed its legacy of seeking to protect citizens from the "hazards and vicissitudes of life," turned out to be fiscal disasters.

With health care costs rising and the population aging, America's welfare-state obligations are bringing the country to its financial knees. If left unchecked, the growing debt burden will not only trigger runaway inflation and stifling taxes, but it will also threaten national security.

Spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare alone currently account for 46 percent -- or nearly half of -- federal spending, excluding interest payments. Over the next 25 years, that percentage will explode to 66 percent, or close to two-thirds, according to the Congressional Budget Office..

Numbers associated with the nation's debt crisis are almost too staggering to comprehend. Last month, total U.S. debt surpassed $15 trillion. But a recent analysis by Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff found that when long-term entitlement obligations are considered, the true fiscal gap is $211 trillion.

Greece, with an economy 1/50th the size of the U.S., is threatening the economic standing of the rest of Europe because of its growing debt burden, which hit 143 percent of its gross domestic product in 2010.

The U.S. is on pace to match that dubious distinction in under 20 years, according to the CBO, and to soar to 716 percent by 2080. Sustaining such debt would require raising marginal tax rates to as high as 88 percent, the CBO has told The Washington Examiner.

Of course, that's just on paper. The CBO warns that, "Such tax rates would significantly reduce economic activity and would create serious problems with tax avoidance and tax evasion. Revenues would probably fall significantly short of the amount needed to finance the growth of spending; therefore, tax rates at such levels would not be feasible."

While it's easy to dismiss such projections decades out into the future, the problem is that bond investors consider long-term projections when making their purchasing decisions.

If the U.S. doesn't get its fiscal house in order in the near future, bond markets will begin to lose faith in America's ability to repay its debts, creating a crisis a lot sooner than expected.

Just this past August, Standard and Poor's downgraded U.S. debt for the first time in American history. Once bond holders abandon America, the nation will either have to dramatically cut spending, raise taxes steeply, or print money to buy up the debt -- which would trigger massive inflation.

The growing debt burden is also a national security risk, because it reduces America's leverage against nation's such as China, which owns a substantial amount of U.S. debt. And the fiscal crunch will force devastating cuts to our military -- far beyond anything contemplated today.

Thus, the conclusion is inescapable that, if America doesn't end the welfare state as we have known it since 1935, it will end America as we know it today.

Editor's Note: We have reprinted the full text of "The Welfare State is Destroying America" by Philip Klein from the Washington Examiner. We encourage you to visit the original.

As you may know, Alinsky authored the book Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. In that book, Alinsky outlines his vision for ending capitalism, opining, "A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism."

He further argues, "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history ... the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer."

After graduating from Columbia and living in New York City for a year, Barack Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer with the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC). Both DCP and CCRC are built on Saul Alinsky's model of agitation -- which, according to Alinsky, means to "rub raw the sores of discontent." Mike Kruglik was a mentor and fellow community organizer in Chicago who took Obama in as a pupil. Kruglik considered Obama his best student. In an interview with The New Republic's Ryan Lizza, Kruglik discusses why he thought so highly of Obama. Summing up Kruglik's admiration, Lizza writes, "[Obama] was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better."

Sound familiar?

No wonder in Obama's memoir, Dreams from My Father, he says that "Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That's what I'll do. I'll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change."

Saul Alinsky's philosophical impact doesn't stop with Obama. Hillary Clinton was so inspired by his vision that she wrote her college thesis on Alinsky, comparing him to the likes of Eugene Debs, Walt Whitman and Martin Luther King.

This past week, Newt Gingrich observed that Obama is following in the footsteps of Saul Alinsky. During yesterday's White House Press Briefing, a reporter asked Jay Carney if this accusation had merit. Carney didn't deny it but deflected the question, simply saying that "[Obama's] experience in that field [of community organizing] obviously contributed to who he is today."

We agree.

Despite Obama's past efforts to alienate himself from Alinsky, let's not forget what the son of the "great community organizer" said about Obama following the 2008 DNC Convention. In a letter to Boston Globe, L. David Alinsky said:

Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.

Transcript of the exchange:

QUESTION: Newt Gingrich keeps saying on the campaign trail that the president's vision comes from Saul Alinsky, the community organizer. I haven't heard you asked about that. I'm wondering if you want to -- is there some sort of portrait of him in the White House that people look up to? Or is this just some -- is this BS basically?

MR. CARNEY: Have I said how much fun I had as a reporter covering Congress from 1996 to 1998? There was a certain bombast to it at the time, a lot of colorful things to cover.

But the president's background as a community organizer is well documented in the president's own books, so his experience in that field obviously contributed to who he is today. But his experience is a broad-based one that includes a lot of other areas in his life, so I'll just leave it at that.

Editor's Note: We have reprinted in part "Jay Carney: Obama's Community Organizer Experience Shaped Who He is Today" from the Patriot Post. We encourage you to visit the original.

As of Sunday, Roe v Wade has been with us 39 years--just a year short of a generation.

In the "Letter from Birmingham Jail,"  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr admonished his fellow clergymen for refusing to involve themselves in social issues or stand up for justice in the public square. For perspective, slavery and segregation each lasted a bit longer than two generations. American slavery lasted from before the Declaration of Independence in 1776 until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 (87 years); Jim Crow laws lasted from Reconstruction in 1876 until the Civil Rights Act 1964 (88 years). Altogether, American legalized racism lasted almost two hundred years.

Less than ten years later, the Supreme Court passed Roe v Wade in 1973. This legalized assault on human rights hitched itself to the feminist movement, the latter ostensibly a human rights movement itself.  Concern for women and children was once one cause; now the parties have been divided, alienated and estranged. The feminists somehow equate "freedom" and infanticide, telling us that birth posits an either-or choice between slavery and freedom. President Obama even commemorated abortion rights for allowing women to "fulfill their dreams"--as if a baby is merely an obstacle to the really important things in life.

This time Christian Church at large realized that ignoring the social battles has larger implications for culture and for the nation. This time no Biblical justification could gloss over such a blatant evil. This time Christians did not countenance prejudice and discrimination against the weak so easily. Roe was a hard lesson in responsibility. But where we failed before, our continued struggle shows that we have learned. We still have apathy and weariness amongst us, but we have learned.

There has been good news: the pro-life movement has won few victories against the ever-mounting death toll, but there have been victories. The number of abortions peaked in 1990 and has been declining ever since. (Though in terms of percentages, the number of abortions per 1000 live births peaked five years earlier in 1985.) President George W. Bush signed the partial-birth abortion ban into law in November 2003. Abortion has been overturned--albeit briefly--in states such as South Dakota. Sonograms have made it more difficult to dismiss the beating heart and tiny fingers as a lump of tissue. Sonogram laws are now required in several states. Informed consent laws are a further step in changing hearts and minds: now Planned Parenthood must explain to its victim (and she is a victim) what her baby is about to endure.

Planned Parenthood will fight bitterly for the "right" to kill children--and to make money while they're at it. The Lord promised to spare Sodom for the sake of ten righteous men. Now as we struggle against a legal and flagrant violation of the 6th commandment, we can take comfort that He has not and will not abandon us. He has been turning the hearts of the fathers towards their children; there is reconciliation still to come.

January 22, 1973

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS.

Syllabus:

A pregnant single woman (Roe) brought a class action challenging the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws, which proscribe procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother's life. A licensed physician (Hallford), who had two state abortion prosecutions pending against him, was permitted to intervene. A childless married couple (the Does), the wife not being pregnant, separately attacked the laws, basing alleged injury on the future possibilities of contraceptive failure, pregnancy, unpreparedness for parenthood, and impairment of the wife's health. A three-judge District Court, which consolidated the actions, held that Roe and Hallford, and members of their classes, had standing to sue and presented justiciable controversies. Ruling that declaratory, though not injunctive, relief was warranted, the court declared the abortion statutes void as vague and overbroadly infringing those plaintiffs' Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The court ruled the Does' complaint not justiciable. Appellants directly appealed to this Court on the injunctive rulings, and appellee cross-appealed from the District Court's grant of declaratory relief to Roe and Hallford.

Held:

1. While 28 U.S.C. § 1253 authorizes no direct appeal to this Court from the grant or denial of declaratory relief alone, review is not foreclosed when the case is properly before the Court on appeal from specific denial of injunctive relief and the arguments as to both injunctive and declaratory relief are necessarily identical.

2. Roe has standing to sue; the Does and Hallford do not.

1. Contrary to appellee's contention, the natural termination of Roe's pregnancy did not moot her suit. Litigation involving pregnancy, which is "capable of repetition, yet evading review," is an exception to the usual federal rule that an actual controversy must exist at review stages, and not simply when the action is initiated.

2. The District Court correctly refused injunctive, but erred in granting declaratory, relief to Hallford, who alleged no federally protected right not assertable as a defense against the good faith state prosecutions pending against him. Samuels v. Mackell, 401 U.S. 66.

3. The Does' complaint, based as it is on contingencies, any one or more of which may not occur, is too speculative to present an actual case or controversy.

3. State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. Though the State cannot override that right, it has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman's health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a "compelling" point at various stages of the woman's approach to term.

1. For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician.

2. For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.3. For the stage subsequent to viability the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.

4. The State may define the term "physician" to mean only a physician currently licensed by the State, and may proscribe any abortion by a person who is not a physician as so defined.

5. It is unnecessary to decide the injunctive relief issue, since the Texas authorities will doubtless fully recognize the Court's ruling that the Texas criminal abortion statutes are unconstitutional.

Editor's Note: We have reprinted the full text of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 ruling "Roe vs. Wade" from the Patriot Post. We encourage you to visit the original.