Thanksgiving transcends politics

(Andrews in Denver Post 11/19, also Townhall.com 11/18) Gloomy, dejected, defeated? Not this Republican. It’s Thanksgiving, and I have too much to be grateful for.

Yes, the Democrats elected a governor, gained legislative seats, and took Congress. Yes, our judicial term limits proposal lost, and few ballot issues went as I hoped. And no, the GOP currently doesn’t have the “got’em where we want’em” defiance of John Elway’s old Broncos.

So why am I not down? Because before I am a Republican I’m a conservative, and I am an American before that. At bedrock, prior to anything, I am on a lifetime enlistment as a servant of my Maker and a soldier of the Cross, poor though my example may be.

Through such eyes, the blue wave and red rout of Nov. 7 have no more finality than a chess king tipped over at game’s end. We’ll vow to do better next time, of course – but with light hearts in the joy of a world too bright for any election to darken.

The common-sense recognition that politics isn’t everything happens to be a distinctively American trait, just as Thanksgiving is a distinctively American holiday. The day’s occurrence so soon after votes are counted is helpful in reminding us what really matters. While congratulations are due Bill Ritter and all the winners, along with condolences to Rick O’Donnell and others who lost, this week is about giving thanks for the bigger picture.

We give thanks for constitutional government and democratic capitalism, the framework of liberty and law that has made these United States the freest, most prosperous, most open, most generous, most decent, and most powerful nation the world has ever seen. We hear the voice of conscience bidding Americans always use that power for good.

We give thanks for a stable, competitive, mutually respectful two-party system that forces consensus toward the center and fairly registers the people’s choice, so the trustees of power can be turned out when they lose touch or break faith – and the reins of authority can then be peacefully transferred. Much of the world lacks that.

We give thanks for the blessings of material abundance, opportunity, tolerance, innovation, cultural creativity, and the most optimistic educational system on earth, adding up to a magic escalator for group after group from marginal status to full participation in American life – minorities, women, immigrants, the disabled, who next? The striving of millions to come here isn’t just a policy problem, it’s an accolade to us.

We give thanks for living in the most religious nation in the world, a country where humanity’s restless search for God is unfettered by state-sponsored churches or compulsory worship, a country where much individual conduct is still regulated by the sense of moral obligation before an eternal Judge, allowing government’s hand to rest more lightly on our lives.

We give thanks for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. This daring, exuberant, risk-defying openness gives our system an almost miraculous capacity for self-criticism, self-correction, and self-renewal. This is what doomed slavery and defeated communism. It makes tyranny unlikely here. It is the jewel of humility in America’s crown.

We give thanks for our families. Parents and spouses, babies and elders, siblings and kids, eccentric uncles and cousins, grandparents and grandchildren, foster and adoptive relatives, those difficult in-laws, that couple who fits no conventional definition but just undeniably belongs together, the “stray” at your Thanksgiving table who doesn’t need to be blood to have a place in your heart – what would we do without them? Family transcends all politics, thank heaven.

But consider the last phrase. When “Oh thank heaven” can become a convenience-store slogan, America’s problem isn't theocracy, it's superficiality. Too many of us bring only a Hallmark faith to Thursday’s national feast.

The mere attitude of gratitude is not enough. As the turkey is carved, remember that thanks are meaningless unless given TO someone – in this case to the Creator of all things. “Our fathers’ God to Thee, Author of liberty, to Thee we sing.” From our house to yours, happy Thanksgiving.

Media indifferent to illegal alien crimes

(John Andrews in Rocky Mountain News, Nov. 11) What ever happened to investigative journalism? As a young White House staffer in 1974, I saw it bring down a president. In the past month, our lazy journalistic watchdogs couldn’t even sniff out the main story between two would-be governors. Granted, Bill Ritter’s victory over Bob Beauprez was so broad and deep that no great difference ultimately resulted from the October storm over plea bargains and leaks. Still that episode is worth reviewing, not as a rehash of the campaign, but as a case study in media attitudes.

You remember the endless stories about a federal agent with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) who allegedly gave Beauprez information on a criminal alien who had benefited from a plea bargain allowed by Ritter when he was district attorney. The media compliantly played up the Democrat’s attack on his Republican opponent for using the information in an ad. And they had a field day with the FBI leak investigation.

This was grossly hypocritical, because if the leak had come to them, they would have both used it and protected their source. It also revealed an odd disinterest in the information itself and its relevance to the former DA’s qualifications for higher office. Why weren’t the media energetically digging up this seamy stuff on their own?

Instead of joining one side’s “shoot the messenger” ploy against the other, a truly vigilant press would have been (and still should be) probing into what other skeletons are buried in the data on illegal alien crime. Try these questions for starters:

**What percentage of arrests for DUI offenses in 2005 were illegal aliens? Recall that Justin Goodman of Thornton was killed in 2004 on his motorcycle by an illegal alien driver who had six prior DUI and driving violations in Boulder and Adams counties. The man had never been referred to ICE for deportation.

** Does the Denver City Attorney’s standing policy of not asking questions in court about the legitimacy of Mexican driver's licenses presented by defendants have any consequences for the law-abiding citizens of Denver? Recall that the man who killed police officer Donnie Young had used an invalid Mexican driver's license to avoid jail in Denver municipal court only three weeks before.

** Why is it that a full year after the Colorado Attorney General stated that one-quarter of Colorado's outstanding fugitive homicide warrants are for people who have fled to Mexico, no newspaper has asked how many of the individuals named in the warrants were illegal aliens with prior arrests? (In Los Angeles County, there are over 400 such fugitive warrants.)

** How are sanctuary cities like Durango, Boulder and Denver responding to SB 90, the new state law passed in 2006 to outlaw sanctuary cities? What is ICE doing to respond to SB 90?

** If Denver received federal reimbursement for the incarceration of over 1100 illegal aliens in 2004, why were only 175 deported when they finished their terms? What subsequent crimes did the other 925 criminal aliens commit?

**After the murder of Officer Donnie Young in May 2005, the Denver ICE office renewed its routine surveys of the Denver jail population to identify illegal aliens subject to deportation. How many criminal aliens have actually been deported out of the Denver jail since then, compared to prior years when such checks were not being made?

** Nationally there are over 100,000 criminal aliens being sought by ICE "fugitive teams." How many of these criminals are believed to be in Colorado, and how many full-time ICE agents are looking for them?

Investigative journalism on these questions would require the cooperation of law enforcement, it’s true. But reporters routinely tap those sources (and protect their identities) when pursuing a story. After all, "the public has a right to know."

Then don’t we also have a right to know the criminal histories of illegal aliens, the consequences of plea bargaining, and the social cost of the special status afforded illegals by the sanctuary policies in Denver and other cities?

Colorado 2006 and Pike 1806

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, Nov. 5) “Make your election sure.” So urged a mass letter I saw recently. It was not a voter turnout pitch for this campaign. It was the Apostle Peter writing to believers about heaven. The ancients put our instant-gratification culture to shame when it came to foresight. But for a middle view between biblical eternity and the political present, consider the sweep of two centuries. That’s how long it has been since the Zebulon Pike expedition, America’s first look at the mountains and plains we now call Colorado. And as we conservatives brace for unheavenly results on Tuesday, I believe the longer perspective can offer us encouragement.

Autumn 1806 in these parts was not kind to Pike and his men. Weather kept them from the summit of the peak that would later bear his name. Their exploration up the Arkansas River and then briefly down the Rio Grande (where Spanish authorities arrested them) never gained the same glory as Lewis and Clark’s voyage up the Missouri. Zebulon Pike died a hero in the War of 1812. A descendant and namesake, age 84, still lives in Salida.

It’s worth asking what President Thomas Jefferson, who bought this vast territory from France, would make of the civilization that has arisen here 200 years later. “We are acting for all mankind,” Jefferson wrote. Upon Washington, Adams, Madison, himself and the other founders rested “the duty of proving what is the degree of freedom and self-government in which a society may venture to leave its individual members.” Has their proving stood the test? How does Colorado measure up?

The debate over such questions as Ritter for Governor, Matt Dunn for State House, the defeat of Judge Marquez, immigration penalties under Referendum H or a cannibis carnival under Amendment 44, will be settled soon. The transcendent question of whether our state still honors America’s founding principles should concern us long after the election suspense is over.

All of us created equal, our rights to life and liberty endowed by God not Caesar, the securing of those rights by limited government, its derivation of just powers from the consent of the governed – these timeless truths as voiced by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence are the yardstick to measure by. While sidebar issues such as his agrarian dream versus Hamilton’s commercial vision are fun for parlor discussion, what really matters is “the degree of self-government.”

I’ll argue that no matter whether Democrats or Republicans win this election (his likely preference between them being another tempting digression for another day), Mr. Jefferson would be generally approving of our 21st-century Colorado republic. We respect individual rights better than in earlier eras or in other countries. We enforce limits upon government better than most other states. He would applaud our commitment to universal education and to religious liberty.

Yet there are things he’d see here that would trouble the Sage of Monticello. Our notions of group rights and multiculturalism would alarm him, as would the cradle-to-grave welfare state. Our schools, so gratifying to Jefferson in concept, would sadden him with the civic illiteracy of their graduates and the union mentality of their teachers.

He and all the founders would be shocked at our militant secularism, unmooring politics from “the laws of nature and nature’s God” so that marriage is mocked and babies are unsafe in the womb. They would marvel in horror at the indifference of our elites to mass invasion by foreign migrants across open borders. Their legacy to Coloradans, though well-kept overall, is jeopardized by such post-modern trends, I believe.

The hubris of progressivism with its “living” constitution was anathema to the men of 1776. They sought fixed principles for government because they saw human nature as fixed – and they were right. That’s why their appraisal of us in 2006 is important. That’s why we should cherish what Katherine Bates in “America the Beautiful,” penned atop Pike’s Peak, called their “patriot dream that sees beyond the years.”

Remember, Colorado is the state once known as Jefferson Territory. May his principles always be our unmoving political landmark, just as the rugged mountain was for Pike, according to his journal: “Never out of sight in our wanderings.”

Nebraska needs the Colorado cure

(John Andrews in Omaha World-Herald, Oct. 25) As a Colorado leader with many Nebraska friends (we don't discuss football), I'd like to see Nebraska have the kind of thriving economy my state has. That's why I hope Nebraskans in this election will restrain taxes and spending with fiscal guardrails, as Coloradans did years ago. The possibility that Nebraska will pass Initiative 423, the Stop Over Spending amendment, is welcome news to me, unlike the Big 12 Conference football standings. The SOS plan to slow the runaway growth of government can help restore healthy growth to Nebraska's lagging economy. It worked for us in the high country, so why not for Nebraskans on the Plains as well?

This taxpayer advocate objects to the distortion of our Colorado success story that was foisted on World-Herald readers last month by big-government cheerleader Deb Crago ("Critical state services suffered under Colorado state budget lid," Sept. 28 Midlands Voices). Her phony scare propaganda deserves a rebuttal from the perspective of working families.

Ms. Crago and her friends in the spending lobby understandably dislike our state's version of the SOS amendment, a constitutional provision called the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. But my neighbors would tell you they like it fine. The amendment has been great for prosperity and quality of life in Colorado ever since voters passed it in 1992.

Back then, my neighbors were tired of the broken promises of politicians. They were fed up with a bloated budget and a sluggish economy - which may sound familiar in Nebraska today - so they did just what Nebraska is seeking to do. Citizens used the petition process to bypass political insiders and change things for the better.

It was a good decision. Over the years, our amendment has paid dividends in Colorado for job creation, family finances, leaner government and lower taxes. Its fiscal restraint has provided backbone when office-holders felt tempted. Its flexibility has allowed overrides when special needs arose. I can see Nebraska's SOS plan, Initiative 423, delivering all the same benefits.

Similar to Colorado's amendment and actually better drafted, SOS is quite simple. It would limit each year's increase of state spending to the sum of inflation and population growth. Any revenue above the limit goes first into a rainy-day fund and then becomes available for tax rebates unless voters approve spending it. That's common sense all the way, so what can Ms. Crago object to?

Apparently, she and other opponents, believing bigger government means a better life, resent the $3 billion in tax refunds paid out to hard-working Coloradans since the 1990s because of our amendment. They must deplore the additional $500 million in permanent tax cuts, passed by the Legislature to avoid collecting revenues we couldn't constitutionally keep. They miss the good old days of runaway spending. It has grown at only the rate of inflation and population since 1992 after growing at twice that pace in the decade before.

But have opponents no compassion for Nebraska's anemic economy and population outflow, young workers and retirees alike, worsened by bad public policy? My state, having gotten the public policy right, now ranks at or near the top in nearly every index of economic vitality and business climate.

Colorado's gross state product per capita expanded 20 percent faster than the national average in the decade after voters installed our amendment. During the 2001 recession, it was weak revenues - not our constitutional spending limit, as critics falsely imply - that pinched highways and higher education. With revenues strong again, voters in 2005 used the flexibility of our amendment to approve higher spending through 2011 so those areas can catch up.

And if Nebraskans want clinching proof of Colorado's attractiveness with fiscal guardrails in the budget, consider our booming population growth. When the spending lobby in Maine warned of "devastation" in my state, I replied that our more than 1 million new residents since 1992 top Maine's entire population. Some devastation.

Initiative 423, the Stop Over Spending amendment, could start to turn things around in Nebraska. The politicians and lobbyists hope Nebraskans don't pass it. I hope they do.

Ten reasons I'll vote for Beauprez

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, Oct. 15) Political crossovers are in. Rick O’Donnell, Republican for Congress, says his hero is the late Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. His opponent, Ed Perlmutter, boasts the endorsement of our former state Senate colleague, Republican Dottie Wham. Bill Ritter, the Democrat currently leading in the race for Governor, has some Republicans backing him. So I’ll cross over and predict that Bob Beauprez, the GOP nominee for Governor, might become this year’s Harry Truman. Notwithstanding the recent Denver Post poll showing Ritter ahead 50% to 35%, this thing’s not over yet. What Truman, the scrappy underdog, did to his favored challenger in 1948 could be the template for a come-from-behind Beauprez win. Bill Ritter as a latter-day Thomas E. Dewey: imagine that.

Now I’m no odds-maker. This is a guy who thought the Beatles were a flash in the pan. I never play the lottery, and my little boy used to beat me at Go Fish, which his four-year-old may soon do also. Yet I have this hunch about a potential Beauprez upset.

Winner or not, Battlin’ Bob gets my vote for at least ten reasons. Immigration, judges, jobs, taxes, education, health care, highways, water, values, and qualifications – that’s the deciding decalogue in Beauprez’s favor. Here is my case for the Republican nominee:

1. Curbing illegal immigration. Beauprez’s commitment to secure borders was clear from the day Tancredo endorsed him in the GOP primary. Ritter’s embrace of sanctuary and amnesty is evidenced by his outrageous plea bargains to help felons avoid deportation.

2. Appointing good judges. Whether judicial term limits pass or not, the next governor will get to name a lot of new judges. On their backbone will depend both public safety and the rule of law. The conservative Republican is the clear choice here.

3. Creating jobs. Beauprez has done it as a businessman, and he’s equipped to do it as Colorado’s CEO. With attorney Ritter will come overregulation, worker’s comp rollback, favors to labor unions and trial lawyers, minimum wage hikes, the whole job-killing liberal agenda.

4. Restraining taxes and spending. Ritter will fatten the budget with every dollar of revenue that comes in. He’ll probably advocate waiving the TABOR growth limits forever. Beauprez will squeeze the bureaucracy and fight for the taxpayer.

5. Excellence for classrooms and campuses. Ritter’s union friends include the teachers in government-monopoly schools and the professors in Ward’s World, our leftist university system. Figure education reform is DOA with Bill. Score this one for Bob as well.

6. Untangling the health care mess. Beauprez understands that consumer choice and market efficiencies are the only answer to a broken health insurance system and a Medicaid budget that is draining the state treasury. Ritter, as a Hillary-minded liberal, doesn’t.

7. Highways for freedom and mobility. The Sierra Club extremists who want you out of that SUV and into denser housing will present their IOU’s the first day Ritter is governor. Transit will be in and pavement will be out – as will energy development. If you drive, vote GOP.

8. Water for the new century. Density is just phase one for the Democrats’ environmental utopian allies. Ultimately they dream of returning the West to buffalo and beaver. Developing Colorado’s water for PEOPLE is better entrusted to Republicans.

9. Values for children and families. Beauprez unequivocally supports protection of the unborn child and traditional marriage between one man and one woman. Ritter, in contrast, has done the both-ways thing on these core values. To make sure, choose Bob.

10. Qualifications for leadership. Bob Beauprez (about whom as a friend I’m admittedly not objective) is superbly prepared to lead our state from his record in government, business, and civic life. The Democrat, a good and decent man himself, is simply less ready.

While I’m too young to remember “Dewey Wins,” the headline waved by a beaming President Truman, I’ll never forget how the upset stunned my parents. Will Ritter’s rooters get a similar shock on Nov. 7 as Beauprez wins at the wire? This Republican hopes so.