A two-year study by the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission released their report yesterday calling for gas taxes to be raise by forty cents per gallon over the next five years.  They cited the Minneapolis bridge collapse from last August a prime example of the need to drastically increase the price at the pump.

However, it was also released yesterday that the Minneapolis bridge collapsed due to a design flaw, not a lack of maintenance.

"Investigators said that the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, which collapsed into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1, killing 13, came down because of a flaw in its design.

"The designers had specified a metal plate that was too thin to serve as a junction of several girders, investigators say."

I doubt the commission will change its recommendations though.  These are government bureaucrats we're talking about here.  Keep in mind that the more money they take from us in taxes, the more power they have.

Besides, do you really think that that forty cents will actually go toward infrastructure?  They can't even responsibly spend the money we've already sent.


For this and other commentaries, please go to www.BoldColorConservative.com

Politicians in California is proposing that its government should have control of the thermostats of homes and businesses in the state.  I bet the Enviro-socialists are drooling over this one!

"The proposed regulations would require all residential and non-residential buildings to have a Programmable Communicating Thermostat (PCT).

"The regulations state that 'all PCTs shall be distributed with a non-removable Radio Data System (RDS) communications device ... which can be used by utilities to send price and emergency signals.' For price events, thermostats can be offset by up to four degrees, but 'customers shall be able to change the offsets and thermostat settings at any time during price events.' "

In other words, the California government is going to force taxpayers to pay for thermostats that the government can change... and that residents can instantly change right back?  No wonder they're in a financial state of emergency...

So what's the point of even installing them then?  It's simple.  Leftists are importing Socialism to this country one step at a time.  Once people get used to the idea that the government can change their thermostat, it'll be much easier for the state to take complete control of the temperature in the home or business.

This is what you call a "transitional policy."  Remember... one step at a time.


Note: The title of this post is a reference to Emma Lazarus' poem "The New Colossus," which, in 1903, was engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the Statue of Liberty.


For this and other commentaries, please go to www.BoldColorConservative.com

In perhaps the most overt demonstration of how to define "entitlement mentality" I've ever witnessed, claims related to Hurricane Katrina have now reached more than $3 Quadrillion.  To give you a little perspective, the 2007 Gross Domestic Product of the United States was only a mere $13.2 trillion.

"The figure - $3,014,170,389,176,410... - represents a fraction of the roughly 489,000 claims that residents and business owners filed against the federal government over damage from the failure of levees and flood walls following the devastating hurricane that hit the US Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005.

"The US Army Corps of Engineers says it has received 247 claims for at least $1 billion...  apiece, including one for an even $3 quadrillion...

"For the sake of perspective... a stack of one quadrillion coins... would reach to Saturn."

Maybe next time people just shouldn't buy a home or business in a high-risk flood and hurricane zone without proper insurance.  When you take on that risk, it's not the responsibility of the governement to bail you out when your gamble doesn't pay off, especially to the tune of three thousand trillion dollars!


For this and other commentaries, please go to www.BoldColorConservative.com

Following up on my post from last week, here's an update:

"A man on the run from police since his teenage daughters were found shot to death in a taxicab on New Year's Day had threatened to hurt one of the girls for dating a non-Muslim boy, according to police documents."

So, a Muslim man killed his own daughters for liking boys not of the "correct" religion... hmmm... That sure sounds like an honor killing to me.


For this and other commentaries, please go to www.BoldColorConservative.com

Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor in Chief of CNS News, writes today that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is "the most pro-abortion candidate ever," because of his refusal to support a bill in the Illinois State Senate that would protect babies that survived late-term abortions.  Even the U.S. Senate passed a nearly-identical measure 98-0 in 2002, with liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) arguing that the "amendment certainly does not attack Roe v. Wade."

Dr. Roxana Chapman, writing for the Daily Mail last October, described such a situation in her article.  Don't be mistaken.  She is not a pro-life advocate.  In fact she performs abortions and openly says in her article, "I do not believe we can or should abolish abortion completely."  But here's her account of a colleague who was performing an abortion on a set of twins at 24 weeks:

"What she told me was utterly chilling, but I make no apology for repeating it here. Discussing the termination she had just performed, she said: 'The babies were so strong and were crying so loudly that I didn't know what to do.  Eventually, I had to bash their heads to shut them up'."

Does Obama truly believe that to be an acceptable practice - killing a child outside of its mother's womb with a beating heart and functioning lungs?

Does anyone?


For this and other commentaries, please go to www.BoldColorConservative.com

I'm a little tired of reading about "mindless" Evangelical Christians who showed up to the polls in Iowa to vote for Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR), simply because he is one of our own (he's even referred to now as "former pastor" rather than "former governor" in order to propogate that point of view).  It's true that this may have been the deciding factor for some, just as I'm sure some Mormons showed up to vote for Romney.  And the case can be made for immutable traits as well.  Did some women vote Hillary just because she's a woman or did some African-Americans turn out for Obama simply because of the color of his skin?  Probably.

My choice to support Huckabee came down, not to the identity of the messenger, but to the values he espoused.  Though there are other fine men seeking the nomination, even Rush Limbaugh has said there is not a Reagan Conservative in the bunch.  And since there was not the one candidate acceptable to all, different factions of the Republican coalition have settled on different candidates for legitimate reasons, and have ruled out others based on their respective priorities.

To Evangelicals, what is most important?  Is it not that life begins at conception and is therefore worthy of protection and that the traditional family is a better institution for rearing children than the government?  What other Republican candidate has proven himself trustworthy on these issues?

Gov. Romney (R-MA) may well desire to protect the family, but did not show the competence nor resolve to do so.  Under his watch, Massachusetts became the first (and currently only) state in the union to allow gay marriage.  Sure, it was an activist court that brought it about, but that's how it will happen at the national level as well.  We're not impressed.  And though he now claims to be "pro-life," Romney ran for governor as a blatantly pro-choice candidate and his current support of embryonic stem cell research and of delegating abortion regulations to the states cause us to question the sincerity of his timely "conversion."

Mayor Giuliani (R-NY) has never claimed to be an advocate of life nor of the traditional family.

Sen. Thompson (R-TN), though running on the most truly Conservative platform, has been "mailing it in" on the campaign trail.  We want to know you're going to fight to win!

And Sen. McCain (R-AZ), despite a mostly pro-life voting record, opposes a marriage amendment to the Constitution which would define it as a union between one man and one woman.

We didn't mindlessly vote for Gov. Huckabee because he's Evangelical, but because he is the only candidate that shares our values on these vital issues.  In the same way that economic Conservatives and national security Conservatives are not expected to betray their convictions for the sake of one candidate, why should social Conservatives be asked to do so, only to be maligned as "mindless" when we don't?


For this and other commentaries, please go to www.BoldColorConservative.com

Britain's government has come up with an innovative way to lessen long waits and lower the crippling cost of universal health care to the government.  The London Telegraph explains the new plan:

"Millions of people with arthritis, asthma, and even heart failure will be urged to treat themselves as part of a Government plan to save billions of pounds from the NHS budget.  Instead of going to a hospital or consulting a doctor, patients will be encouraged to carry out 'self-care' as the Department of Health tries to meet Treasury targets to curb spending."

Coming soon to an America near you (if Democrats get their way, that is).


For this and other commentaries, please go to www.BoldColorConservative.com

When I read this story on FoxNews yesterday, I instantly got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. A man had shot his two teenage daughters in Texas and left them for dead in his taxi. One of the girls lived long enough to call 911, but authorities could not find the vehicle until an hour later, at which time both girls had already died.

There is now a massive manhunt under way for Yaser Abdel Said, a 50-year-old Egyptian immigrant now suspected of killing both of his girls. But why?

Though the Associated Press refused, not surprisingly, to mention Said's religion, reality tells us that there is no doubt that his Muslim beliefs played a prominent role in guiding his detestable actions. The Dallas Morning News is reporting today:

"Police did say they are looking into the possibility that the father was upset with his daughters' dating activities."

The feeling in the pit of my stomach was correct. This was an "honor killing." We recently posted about this Muslim sacrament being imported to Canada, but now Said has brought it within our borders. He considered his daughters' westernized behavior to be ignominious and his perverse dogma led him to take their lives. It's a foreign ideology so wicked that, until now, we could dismiss it as merely the deed of extremist nuts on the other side of the world.

Now however, the War on Terror has arrived on our soil again; Not the terror of airplanes and skyscrapers, but the trepidation faced by young Muslim women whose crime of assimilation has become a capital offense, with their own Fundamentalist fathers serving as judge, jury, and executioner.


For this and other commentaries, please go to www.BoldColorConservative.com

According to Rasmussen, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has taken the national lead for the Republican presidential nomination:

"These results come as McCain—for the first time all year--finds himself on top of a GOP national poll with support from 17% of Likely Republican Primary Voters. In the muddled GOP race, McCain becomes the third person to top the poll this month and the fourth since October."

Now, I don't think that a national poll has anything more than psychological significance (especially when the top five candidates are all between 12% and 17%), but McCain has also been making very significant progress in New Hampshire.  A victory there, and I could be seriously eating my words about the death of his campaign.

And in a primary that has focused heavily on religion, McCain's genuine credentials make him an increasingly-attractive candidate (he would still need to amend his stances on campaign finance and immigration to get my support in the Iowa Caucus though).


For this and other commentaries, please go to www.BoldColorConservative.com