Here's a July 4 history lesson we should print on the back of the American Flag: If you hate long enough and hard enough, you can go to the very top of the Washington garbage heap.

Jesse Helms died today, 25 years too late, but the stench of his rotten career will always linger in the Senate, and over the South.

He was a hero to bigots and the cigarette corporations, a menace to the poor and downtrodden, and a mean little troll whose heart was so wrecked by wickedness that doctors had to patch it up with coronary valves from a pig.

Today is the day we, as Americans, celebrate our nation's Declaration of Independence from the British Empire. It's also a time for columnists to wax philosophical, or poetic, about patriotism. The subject certainly is ripe, given this election cycle's extra emphasis on it.

I'm not going to do that, because I think that patriotism is not usefully studied, professed, or criticized. It is something that I think is at its best when tested, and when celebrated.

The conscience of our nation is contained in the preamble to that Declaration, and it is the final arbiter to any such test.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The tides may rise and fall, the winds may shift, the ground may shake beneath your feet, but that beautiful idea does not shake, will not bend, will not ever fall. I will leave it to the individual American to look himself or herself in the eye and decide whether they meet that bar, or fall short. Today, as with every Independence Day, I prefer to celebrate the beating heart of our nation.

Here are some of my favorite love songs to America. What are yours?

On July 1, at the Mayor of Denver's annual state of the city address, a local singer named Rene Marie stood before the crowd, eager to hear "The Star Spangled Banner," the US' National Anthem.

Instead, she sang this:

Former Senator Jesse A. Helms, Jr., died today after a "period of declining health," according to a spokesman. He was 86.

He was born on October 18, 1921. He served in the US Senate from 1972-2003, after which he retired. During his Senate career, he was an outspoken, controversial figure. His name is synonymous with "Old South"-style politics.

The New York Times had this reaction, from former Senator Bob Dole:

"He was a conservative icon," Bob Dole, the former senator and Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview on CNN. "He was a good, decent human being."

But Mr. Dole, known for his wry sense of humor, acknowledged that Mr. Helms was not universally admired on Capitol Hill. "If there was a liberal meeting going on and someone announced that Jesse Helms was coming, the place would have cleared out in 20 seconds," he joked. He added that although he disagreed with Mr. Helms on civil rights, he did not consider the senator to be a bigot. "Was Jesse Helms a racist? I never spotted that in him," Mr. Dole said. "Jesse had black staff members. I could never quite figure it out."

MSNBC had this:

What part of the 2nd Amendment does Mickey Mouse not understand? That's the question the NRA wants answered in light of the decision made by Walt Disney World to prohibit their employees from keeping fire arms in their cars while they work. This decision comes in spite of a new state law--The Preservation and Protection of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Motor Vehicles Act of 2008--that went into affect in Florida on Tuesday allowing state residents to do just that.

Disney contends that its property is exempt from the law due to an exception for companies who have a federal permit for explosives. Disney has that permit because they put on fireworks displays frequently. Republican state Senator Durell Peaden thinks Disney is hiding behind a technicality. "I intended it to exempt places like defense plants, Air Force bases, things like that," he said, adding, "but not Disney. Not at all."

When the news of Disney's defiance hit NRA headquarters, their PR department came out with guns blazing. They quickly issued a memo to members titled, "Disney Thumbing Nose at the New Florida Gun Law." The memo accused Disney of being a "prime offender when it comes to firing employees for exercising Second Amendment rights." Disney also supports a court challenge to the new law.

In case you were wondering, SeaWorld supports the law.

The NRA will need all their ammo, because in addition to their battle with Disney the group also has plans for a pitched legal battle against the city of San Francisco and also plans to spend $40 million on the Presidential election.

I guess that Team Obama decided the Fourth of July weekend would be a great time to float the idea of refining his Iraq position. The idea is that most Americans (and hopefully media reporters) are too busy to pay attention to a very substantial shift in his Iraq stance.


GOPublius lays out the unfortunate choices of Mr. Obama:

John McCain has set a trap for Barack Obama, and its one Obama may find hard to avoid. Obama owes his current candidacy and his position at the top of 2008 Democratic ticket to his uncompromising anti-war stance. Through the fall and spring, Obama's position on the war was unmistakable, "Let me be clear: there is no military solution in Iraq and there never was...the best way to protect our security is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months, or one year - now!" As a regular part of Obama's stump speech, the freshman Illinois senator pledged, "I will end this war in 2009." Such a position worked well with the left-wing base of the Democratic Party, but over the course of the past year a funny thing has happened in Iraq - the U.S. has employed an increasingly successful military strategy, and its primary public proponent has been Senator John McCain.

...

...Will Obama campaign as the man who wishes to singlehandedly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq, or the man who flip-flopped on the central issue of his campaign and embraced Bush? ...

A year ago conventional wisdom told us that McCain's position on Iraq would surely doom him as a candidate in the general election. It now appears that being one of the few politicians that has stood firm on a single position that turned out to be correct might be his saving grace!

Which is another example of why I hold conventional wisdom with such a low regard. CW and $3 will buy you a very small (but tasty) coffee at Starbucks.

Hillary might have fared better, had she been the nominee, but unfortunately for her and the Democrats, she's not the nominee, and even if she was Obama and the left roots pulled her so far into the anti-war camp that her earlier strong position on the war in Iraq had been quibbled into meaninglessness.

Greetings from Florida, where our governor, Charlie Crist, has just announced his plans to wed his girlfriend of nine months. Crist, who is 51 years old, has been single for the past 30 years. His first marriage ended after less than a year, giving way to a three-decade-long stint as a bachelor. His fiancé, Carole Rome, 38, is the president of (no kidding) a Halloween costume business.

Why does any of this deserve your consideration? Well, timing, for one thing. It's no secret that Crist is on McCain's short-list for Vice President, and, oddly, marital status seems to be something of a sticking point in the race to be number 2. In fact, America has not had an unmarried Vice President since 1852, when Franklin Pierce gave the nod to William King.

No date has yet been set for the wedding, and while the sound of church bells setting the mood for the Republican Convention in St. Paul may simply be a coincidence, some wonder if this marriage itself is not, in some ways, its own kind of costume.

A federal judge in the Northern District of California has ruled in favor of a challenge to the Bush Administration's terrorist surveillance program, saying that the Executive branch has no authority to conduct warrantless surveillance except under the conditions set forth by Congress in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The lawsuit, brought by the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Muslim charity, alleged that the National Security Agency violated the FISA Act when it secretly monitored the foundation's communications under the controversial program. The judge ruled that FISA is the "exclusive" means of conducting such surveillance and agreed with the foundation's complaint.

"Congress appears clearly to have intended to - and did - establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence activities to be conducted. Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch's authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities."

The Bush Administration has consistently argued that the president's authority to order the surveillance stems from his inherent power as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. It says that enemy surveillance is a function of war fighting and not subject to congressional or court oversight. The Administration also argues that the terrorist surveillance program is legal since it monitors only communications in which at least one of the parties is outside the United States.

The judge's ruling in the case seems to run afoul of Constitutional law. Constitutional powers cannot be "limited" by statute, only by an amendment to the Constitution. Just as a presidential Executive Order declaring that Congress cannot pass a law raising taxes would be unconstitutional, it is similarly unconstitutional for Congress to pass a law limiting the president's authority to command the armed forces in war time. Supporters of the terrorist surveillance program argue that the war on terrorism trumps Congress's intent in the 1978 FISA Act, while the program's detractors say that FISA is the legitimate governing standard. Whatever the opinions of the opposing sides, this case seems destined to one day be decided by the Supreme Court.

What do you call it when elected officials - local, state or federal - get special perks, privileges and deals in exchange for their services, er votes?

Democratic corruption has become so frequent, its often pushed off the front page. (Try reading the Detroit News or Free Press and you'll see what I mean.) It's commonplace. It's routine. It's everywhere. It's passe.

But it is newsworthy when its party's standard bearer is exposed for getting special treatment and deals.

Let's look at the issue of Barack Obama's housing arrangement.

This self-declared "man of the people," Harvard educated and all, this champion of the people, snoozes in a six-bedroom, five and half bathrooms (including steam shower and marble powder room (presumably for Michelle)) four fireplace, four-car garage Chicago mansion.

Of course, the Obamas make about $500,000 a year. One of the neat things about their salary is the connection.

Barack Obama injected an "earmark" (pork barrel spending) into the federal budget for his wife Michelle's workplace. Unconnected, presumably, shortly thereafter she got a pay raise.

Nifty. Can you do that for your spouse?

Now before people bemoan that raising these issues is mean spirited or bad in some overly sensitive mocked-up moral tone, I suggest such whiners refute them, not label them.