Liberals Don’t Respect the First Amendment

“We don't have an Official Secrets Act in the United States, as other countries do. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets.” — Alan Dershowitz

Before continuing this blog post I want to remind the reader of the exact words of the First Amendment to our Constitution — a freedom that was so important to our Founding Fathers it was put at the top of the list:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The most basic component of freedom of expression is the right of freedom of speech. The right to freedom of speech allows individuals to express themselves without interference or constraint by the government. The Supreme Court requires the government to provide substantial justification for the interference with the right of free speech where it attempts to regulate the content of the speech. A less stringent test is applied for content-neutral legislation. The Supreme Court has also recognized that the government may prohibit some speech that may cause a breach of the peace or cause violence such as advocacy of illegal action, fighting words, commercial speech and obscenity. The right to free speech includes other mediums of expression that communicate a message. This includes letters, writings, books, TV commentaries, editorials, and e-mails. The level of protection speech receives also depends on the forum in which it takes place.

Despite popular misunderstanding the right to freedom of the press guaranteed by the first amendment is not very different from the right to freedom of speech. It allows an individual to express themselves through publication and dissemination. It is part of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression. It does not afford members of the media any special rights or privileges not afforded to citizens in general.

The right to assemble allows people to gather for peaceful and lawful purposes. Implicit within this right is the right to association and belief. The Supreme Court has expressly recognized that a right to freedom of association and belief is implicit in the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. This implicit right is limited to the right to associate for First Amendment purposes. It does not include a right of social association. The government may prohibit people from knowingly associating in groups that engage and promote illegal activities. The right to associate also prohibits the government from requiring a group to register or disclose its members or from denying government benefits on the basis of an individual's current or past membership in a particular group. There are exceptions to this rule where the Court finds that governmental interests in disclosure/registration outweigh interference with first amendment rights. The government may also, generally, not compel individuals to express themselves, hold certain beliefs, or belong to particular associations or groups.

The right to petition the government for a redress of grievances guarantees people the right to ask the government to provide relief for a wrong through the courts (litigation) or other governmental action. It works with the right of assembly by allowing people to join together and seek change from the government.

This is the crux of the issue being debated and addressed in the hearings being held by Congressional committees — The Ways and Means Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The subject of these hearings are the abuses by the IRS in targeting conservative and Tea Party groups for refusal to grant tax exempt status under 501C-3,4,and 5 status and the Department of Justice illegally monitoring the communications of AP and James Rosen of Fox News.

The late William F. Buckley once said of liberals: “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”

This could not be a truer statement. Just look at the progressive/liberals in the media today. While they claim they are for free speech, expression and assembly they say conservatives and Tea Party groups are not included. They decry any past infringements of the First Amendment against liberal groups and persons like the NAACP. They claim Sandra Fluke has a right to promote her ideas for government subsidized birth control but want Rush Limbaugh off the air for his harsh criticism of her and calling her a “slut.” On the other hand MSNBC’s Ed Shultz and call conservative radio personality Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut” and all is fine at the uber liberal network. Buckley was right.

On the issue of free speech both Limbaugh and Shultz were not exercising restraint in their speech, but they certainly had the right to utter their intemperate remarks. There are many more on he left like HBO’s Bill Maher who make a generous living out of nasty, insulting and gutter speech. But as the bestselling author Brad Thor states:

“I live in America. I have the right to write whatever I want. And it's equaled by another right just as powerful: the right not to read it. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend people.”

While all of this true the right of free speech and expression extends to the citizens and cannot be infringed upon by any government official or bureaucrat be they federal, state or local. A parade or assembly permit must be given to a Tea Party rally, a group of Hispanics marching with Mexican flags demanding amnesty for all illegal immigrants, or a bunch of Nazis. The only caveat is he propensity for violence — which must be proven.

Today there was some powerful and compelling testimony given before the Ways and Means Committee. This testimony came from average American citizens like you and me. It was not the testimony of bureaucrats trained in the art of obfuscation and duplicity. It was just plain people telling the plain truth. One of the women testifying was Becky Gerritson President of Wetumpka Tea Party in Alabama.

Gerritson spoke of demands asked of her ‘tiny group’ by the agency, including detailed contents of every speech ever given by someone involved in the Tea Party branch, copies of any communication sent to any member of a legislative body, including her own representatives, and the list goes on.

Gerritson fought back tears as she pointed her finger at the members of Congress sitting before her, saying of her group, “[we] had no party affiliation … It didn’t matter … the only notion expressed was that our representative government had failed us.”

“In Wetumpka, we are patriotic Americans; we peacefully assemble; we petition our government; we exercise our right to free speech. We don’t understand why the government tried to stop us. I’m not here as a serf or a vassal. I’m not begging my lord for mercy. I’m a born-free American woman, wife, mother, and citizen, and I’m telling my government that you’ve forgotten your place.”

She called the IRS’ demands a “willful act of intimidation to discourage a point of view” and “un-American.”

Gerritson again became choked up as she concluded her statement, saying, “I’m not interested in scoring political points. I want to preserve and protect the America that I grew up in. The America that people crossed oceans and risked their lives to become a part of, and I’m terrified it’s slipping away. Thank you very much.”

Another witness was Laurens Tea Party President Dianne Belsom testifying on how her group was targeted by the IRS. Belsom's chapter has not received tax-exempt status after more than three years.

Then there was Karen Kenny of the San Fernando Valley Patriots who spoke about the patriotism of her group and objected to being singled out while liberal groups — often those devoted to destroying the constitutional foundation of the republic — were given a free pass. "We're the San Fernando Valley Patriots, not Occupy Oakland," she said.

It did not take long for the uber liberal congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) to turn on the witnesses and blame them for their problems stating they were against gay marriage and Planned Parenthood and did not deserve any tax exemption due to their political and religious beliefs.

James McDermott (born December 28, 1936) is the U.S. Representative for Washington's 7th congressional district, serving since 1989. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The 7th District includes most of Seattle and Vashon Island, and portions of Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, Tukwila, SeaTac, and Burien.

He serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and is a member of the House Progressive Caucus. He was formerly the committee chairman, then in 1995, ranking minority member on the House Ethics Committee.

On April 28, 2004, Congressman McDermott omitted the phrase "under God" while leading the House in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The incident occurred after atheist Michael Newdow lost his court case to have the phrase "under God" dropped from the Pledge, and after McDermott had voted against a congressional resolution that called for overturning a court ruling that declared the phrase unconstitutional. In 1954, during the McCarthy era and communism scare, Congress had passed a bill, which was signed into law, to add the words "under God

In December 2004, the House Ethics Committee investigated McDermott over the leaking of an illegally recorded telephone conversation during a 1997 committee investigation of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich.

In the conversation, Mr. Gingrich, his lawyer and several other Republican Congressmen discussed how Gingrich's Congressional allies should deal with the political consequences of his admission that he had violated House ethics rules by giving inaccurate information to the House Ethics Committee for its inquiry into his use of tax-exempt funds. Democrats have described the conversation as evidence that Mr. Gingrich broke an agreement with the Ethics Committee that he would not orchestrate a politically motivated response to those committee findings.

The recording was made by John and Alice Martin, who claimed that they had overheard the conversation on a police scanner, decided to record it for posterity's sake, and then decided that it might be important for the Ethics Committee to hear. The Martins gave the tape to McDermott because he was the senior Democrat on the Ethics Committee. Within two days, reportedly after the Republican Ethics Committee Chair Nancy L. Johnson refused to allow a vote on making the tape part of the committee's records, sending the tape to the Justice Department, or taking any action against participants in the conversation, and over the warning of the Committee's counsel of possible legal liability, McDermott gave the tape to several media outlets, including the New York Times.

Rep. John Boehner, who was part of the Gingrich conversation, sued McDermott in his capacity as a private citizen, seeking punitive damages for violations of his First Amendment rights. After U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ordered McDermott to pay Boehner for "willful and knowing misconduct" that "rises to the level of malice", McDermott appealed, arguing that since he had not created the recording, his actions were allowed under the First Amendment, and that ruling against him would have 'a huge chilling effect' on reporters and newsmakers alike. Eighteen news organizations – including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The Associated Press, the New York Times and the Washington Post — filed a brief backing McDermott. On March 29, 2006, the court ruled 2–1 that McDermott violated federal law when he turned over the illegally recorded tape to the media outlets, ordering McDermott to pay Boehner's legal costs (over $600,000) plus $60,000 in damages. On June 26, 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated the judgment, deciding to re-hear the case with all nine judges. However, a split 4 to 1 to 4 en banc decision in Boehner v. McDermott, 484 F.3d 573 (D.C. Cir. 2007) affirmed the three-judge panel, but on different grounds; the Supreme Court declined review. On March 31, 2008, Chief Judge Thomas Hogan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ordered McDermott to pay Boehner $1.05 million in attorney's fees, costs and interest. McDermott also paid over $60,000 in fines and close to $600,000 in his own legal fees.

The Ethics Committee formally rebuked McDermott in 2006, writing he had "violated ethics rules by giving reporters access to an illegally taped telephone call involving Republican leaders a decade ago. Rep. McDermott's secretive disclosures to the news media risked undermining the ethics process" and that McDermott's actions "were not consistent with the spirit of the committee." Previously, the Martins pleaded guilty to violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. In 1997, Gingrich was reprimanded by the House for providing false information to the Ethics Committee and assessed $300,000 in costs.

This is the same McDermott who wanted free speech but is advocating its denial to ordinary citizens who have violated no laws or ethics. It so annoyed Chairman Paul Ryan that he had to rebuke McDermott:

If you thought Rep. Paul Ryan's take down of Democratic colleague Rep. Jim McDermott's "political theater" comments at today's House hearing on the IRS targeting conservatives was harsh, wait until you see Megyn Kelly's reaction. The Fox host convened a bipartisan panel to discuss the most heated moment of the hearing this afternoon, but saved the most outraged comments for herself.

Radio host Chris Plante also had some tough words for Congressman McDermott, who he said was "unencumbered by any quaint, old-fashioned notions of decency, honesty and integrity." In Plante's eyes, McDermott "decided to attack the people who were targeted for their political beliefs by the vicious arm of the federal government: the IRS." He added, "The congressman's dishonesty was outdone only by his shamelessness, his lack of integrity, and the vulgarity of the defenses that were seeing launched these days are really beyond anything I have seen in 25 years of watching Washington closely."

Liberal Fox contributor Leslie Marshall pushed back, defending McDermott's "frustration" and pointing to instances when liberal groups were targeted during the Bush administration. She added, that "any group, left or right, that is applying for this tax exempt status, as Americans and as a tax payer, I want them, left and right, to be scrutinized."

But Kelly got more heated as she delved further into the way McDermott questioned one of the tea party leaders testifying today about what questions should thought the IRS should be able to ask her. "Why is that the obligation of the woman from Iowa?" Kelly asked incredulously. "They so screw it up at the IRS in Cincinnati and Washington, that now the lady from Iowa has to come in before the House Ways and Means Committee and say 'this is the way it needs to be done'? How dare he put the burden on her?"

The hearing was the fifth congressional hearing on the IRS scandal. The agency has failed to identify the particular individuals responsible for initiating the targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups. The White House has denied any involvement, though it knew more about the scandal than it first claimed.Note how the liberal on the left does not listen to the opposing view but shakes her head and rolls her eyes in disapproval. This is typical of lefties. Buckley hit the nail on the head. If they cannot break he argument they go into attack mode. It’s their Alinsky training. Facts mean nothing moral equivalencies rule the dialogue.

While the lefties attack the ordinary citizens who exercise their First Amendment rights the cloud around former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman begins to evaporate.

Former Internal Revenue Service commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, a frequent White House guest during the period when the IRS was targeting conservative nonprofits, is married to the senior program advisor for Public Campaign, an “organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics.”

The IRS is under fire for improperly scrutinizing the tax-exempt nonprofit status of conservative groups between 2010 and 2012, demanding conservative training materials, personal information on conservative college interns and even the content of religious groups’ prayers. IRS supporters have defended the beleaguered agency by railing against outside spending and special interest money supposedly pumped into the 2012 campaign by conservative benefactors.

One of those defenders is the group of which Shulman’s spouse is an executive.

Shulman’s wife Susan L. Anderson is the senior program advisor for the Washington-based nonprofit organization Public Campaign, which claims that it “is laying the foundation for reform by working with a broad range of organizations, including local community groups, around the country that are fighting for change and national organizations whose members are not fairly represented under the current campaign finance system.”

Earlier this month, when news broke of the targeting scandal broke, Public Campaign president and CEO Nick Nyhart belittled the concerns of disenfranchised conservatives.

“There are legitimate questions to be asked about political groups that are hiding behind a 501(c)4 status,” Nyhart said in a statement provide to ABC. “It’s unfortunate a few bad apples at the IRS will make it harder for those questions to be asked without claims of bias.”

Shulman, who did not deny in congressional testimony that he visited the White House 157 times, met Anderson at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which they both attended. The couple own a house in Washington, DC’s fashionable Embassy Row neighborhood which they bought for $1.3 million in 2003 and is now estimated by Zillow to be worth $1.8 million.

Public Campaign receives “major funding” from the pro-ObamaCare alliance Health Care for America NOW!, which is comprised of the labor unions AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, and the progressive activist organization Move On, among others.

“Together we are building a network of national and state-based efforts to create a powerful national force for federal and state campaign reform,” according to Public Campaign’s website.

Public Campaign also receives funding from the liberal Ford Foundation, the Common Cause Education Fund, and Barbra Streisand’s The Streisand Foundation, among other foundations and private donors.

Public Campaign’s ninth-floor 1133 19th Street NW office in Washington, D.C. is located on the same floor as the liberal groups Common Cause and Center for Progressive Leadership.

This Public Campaign “holiday card” clip leaves little to the imagination regarding where the organization stands politically:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8e9e1-DEQi4

Well, whatever the overall politics of Public Campaign, there is no doubt that Susan Anderson herself is lefty and occasionally vitriolic about it. A cursory inspection of her twitter feed reveals cordial correspondence with peeps like Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation, a retweet of an NAACP leader's slam on "Koch brothers' money," a retweet of someone begging Harry Reid for "filibuster reform," criticism of Bob McDonnell for "blocking women's access to health care" and her own snarky speculation that "GOP pines for Old Europe after all." Of course money from George Soros is okay!

Here's a particularly pleasant offering. Twitchy has documented some of her more annoying, highly partisan tweets — a complete list here.

Admittedly, Ms. Anderson's politics may not be Mr. Shulman's but her twitter feed is indicative of the atmosphere that filled the IRS commissioner's home at the time conservatives were routinely being targeted by the agency he headed.

Ms. Anderson was also a supporter of, and active participant in, the Occupy Wall Street movement, attending and promoting Occupy DC in Oct. 2011

Interestingly, Ms. Anderson stopped tweeting in early May, about the time when the IRS investigation started to heat up. Coincidence? You decide.

As these scandals continue to unfold more and more will be revealed. For the past five years we have been living under an increasing soft tyranny imposed by the statists and masterminds occupying the seats of power in the federal government From the IRS to the EPA these statists, with the help of the left-wing media, have been doing the bidding of Barack Obama. They have gone wild with the power he has given them. Why on earth did Doug Shulman visit the White House 157 times in three years? What did they talk about? I am sure it was not about shooting hoops.

The passage of the 16^th Amendment opened the gates for tyranny imposed by the federal government. While opponents couldn’t stop the 16th amendment, they argued long and hard against it. Richard E. Byrd, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates made a particularly impassioned plea to reject the amendment, offering a potent rhetorical blend of state rights, limited government, and anti-tax convictions. Ratification, he warned, would open a new and dangerous chapter in American government:

“A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man’s business; the eye of the Federal inspector will be in every man’s counting house. The law will of necessity have inquisitorial features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it men will be hailed into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the tax payer. An army of Federal inspectors, spies and detectives will descend upon the state. Who of us who have had knowledge of the doings of the Federal officials in the Internal Revenue service can be blind to what will follow? I do not hesitate to say that the adoption of this amendment will be such a surrender to imperialism that has not been since the Northern states in their blindness forced the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments upon the entire sisterhood of the Commonwealth.”

The Virginia House of Delegates, under Byrd’s leadership, did not vote for ratification and the Commonwealth of Virginia had never ratified the 16^th Amendment. Richard Byrd was ringing the clarion of warning that went unheard or ignored for years. The progressives have used the IRS and the tax code not only to collect money they have used it to regulate behavior and impose a soft tyranny Perhaps (I hope) the American people will wake up to the abuses of the IRS for the past years and force Congress to abolish it and install a flat or fair tax — if we don’t the abuses will continue.

Even if a few mid-managers go to jail for a few years the abuses and tyranny will continue.

As William F. Buckley, Jr. quipped “The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.”

Two Events on this Day in History

“We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” — Winston Churchill

Two historic events happen on this day. Both were turning points in World War Two — one in the Pacific and the other in Europe. One was a victory and the other turned a military disaster into a victory.

We’ll begin with the Pacific theater.

Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States defeated Japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of World War II. Thanks in part to major advances in code breaking, the United States was able to preempt and counter Japan’s planned ambush of its few remaining aircraft carriers, inflicting permanent damage on the Japanese Navy. An important turning point in the Pacific campaign, the victory allowed the United States and its allies to move into an offensive position.

On this day in 1942, the Battle of Midway — one of the most decisive U.S. victories against Japan during World War II — began. During the four-day sea-and-air battle, the outnumbered U.S. Pacific Fleet succeeded in destroying four Japanese aircraft carriers while losing only one of its own, the Yorktown, to the previously invincible Japanese navy.

In six months of offensives prior to Midway, the Japanese had triumphed in lands throughout the Pacific, including Malaysia, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines and numerous island groups. The United States, however, was a growing threat, and Japanese Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto sought to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet before it was large enough to outmatch his own.

This fleet engagement between U.S. and Japanese navies in the north-central Pacific Ocean resulted from Japan's desire to sink the American aircraft carriers that had escaped destruction at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto, Japanese fleet commander, chose to invade a target relatively close to Pearl Harbor to draw out the American fleet, calculating that when the United States began its counterattack, the Japanese would be prepared to crush them. Instead, an American intelligence breakthrough — the solving of the Japanese fleet codes — enabled Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Chester W. Nimitz to understand the exact Japanese plans. Nimitz placed available U.S. carriers in position to surprise the Japanese moving up for their preparatory air strikes on Midway Island itself.

A thousand miles northwest of Honolulu, the strategic island of Midway became the focus of his scheme to smash U.S. resistance to Japan's imperial designs. Yamamoto's plan consisted of a feint toward Alaska followed by an invasion of Midway by a Japanese strike force. When the U.S. Pacific Fleet arrived at Midway to respond to the invasion, it would be destroyed by the superior Japanese fleet waiting unseen to the west. If successful, the plan would eliminate the U.S. Pacific Fleet and provide a forward outpost from which the Japanese could eliminate any future American threat in the Central Pacific. U.S. intelligence broke the Japanese naval JN-25b code, however, and the Americans anticipated the surprise attack.

The intelligence interplay would be critical to the outcome of the battle and began many weeks before the clash of arms. American radio nets in the Pacific picked up various orders Yamamoto had dispatched to prepare his forces for the operation. As early as May 2, messages that were intercepted began to indicate some forthcoming operation, and a key fact, the planned day-of-battle position of the Japanese carriers, would be divulged in a notice sent on May 16. By the time Nimitz had to make final decisions, the Japanese plans and order of battle had been reconstructed in considerable detail.

American combat forces took over where intelligence efforts left off. Scouts found the Japanese early in the morning of June 4. Although initial strikes by Midway-based planes were not successful, American carrier-based planes turned the tide. Torpedo bombers (Douglas TBD Devastator) became separated from the American Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bombers and were slaughtered (36 of 42 shot down), but they diverted Japanese defenses just in time for the dive-bombers to arrive — some of them had become lost, and now by luck they found the Japanese. The Japanese carriers were caught while refueling and rearming their planes, making them especially vulnerable. The Americans sank four fleet carriers — the entire strength of the task force — Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, with 322 aircraft and over five thousand sailors. The Japanese also lost the heavy cruiser Mikuma. American losses included 147 aircraft and more than three hundred seamen.

The only Japanese carrier that initially escaped destruction, the Hiryu, loosed all its aircraft against the American task force and managed to seriously damage the U.S. carrier Yorktown, forcing its abandonment. At about 5:00 p.m., dive-bombers from the U.S. carrier Enterprise returned the favor, mortally damaging the Hiryu. It was scuttled the next morning.

Analysts often point to Japanese aircraft losses at Midway as eliminating the power of the Imperial Navy's air arm, but in fact about two-thirds of air crews survived. More devastating was the loss of trained mechanics and aircraft ground crews who went down with the ships. Some historians see Midway as the turning point in the Pacific theater of the war, after which Americans rode straight to Tokyo; others view it as a cusp in the war, after which initiative hung in the balance, to swing toward the Allies in the Guadalcanal campaign. Either way, Midway ranks as a truly decisive victory for the naval forces of the United States. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." It was Japan's worst naval defeat in 350 years

When the Battle of Midway ended, Japan had lost four carriers, a cruiser and 292 aircraft, and suffered an estimated 3,057 casualties. The U.S. lost the Yorktown, the destroyer USS Hammann, 145 aircraft and suffered approximately 300 casualties.

Japan's losses hobbled its naval might--bringing Japanese and American sea power to approximate parity—and marked the turning point in the Pacific theater of World War II. In August 1942, the great U.S. counteroffensive began at Guadalcanal and did not cease until Japan's surrender three years later.

Books have been written and films made about the battle. Perhaps the most authentic film about the battle was made in 1976. Midway produced by Walter Mirisch stars Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, and Hal Holbrook as Commander Joseph Rochefort the eccentric naval code breaker. The film, while having a fictional story line regarding a naval pilot and his Japanese girlfriend, is an accurate portrayal of the events leading to the battle and the battle itself. It is well worth watching if you are interested in naval history. The film made with he cooperation of the United States Navy is one of the best portrayals of the war in the Pacific with the exception of Tora, Tora, Tora.

On the other side of the world on this day another war changing event ended.

On June 4, 1940, the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk on the Belgian coast ended as German forces captured the beach port. The nine-day evacuation, the largest of its kind in history and an unexpected success, saved 338,000 Allied troops from capture by the Nazis.

On May 10, 1940, the Germans launched their attack against the West, storming into Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Faced with far superior airpower, more unified command, and highly mobile armored forces, the Allied defenders were a poor match for the German Wehrmacht. In a lightning attack, the Germans raced across Western Europe. On May 12, they entered France, out-flanking the northwest corners of the Maginot Line, previously alleged by French military command to be an impregnable defense of their eastern border. On May 15, the Dutch surrendered.

The Germans advanced in an arc westward from the Ardennes in Belgium, along France's Somme River, and to the English Channel, cutting off communication between the Allies' northern and southern forces. The Allied armies in the north, which comprised the main body of Allied forces, were quickly being encircled. By May 19, Lord John Gort, the British commander, was already considering the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) by sea.

Reluctant to retreat so soon, the Allies fought on and launched an ineffective counterattack on May 21. By May 24, Walther von Brauchitsch, the German army commander in chief, was poised to take Dunkirk, the last port available for the withdrawal of the mass of the BEF from Europe. Fortunately for the Allies, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler suddenly intervened, halting the German advance. Hitler had been assured by Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe, that his aircraft could destroy the Allied forces trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk, so Hitler ordered the forces besieging Dunkirk to pull back.

On May 26, the British finally initiated Operation Dynamo — the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk. The next day, the Allies learned that King Leopold III of Belgium was surrendering, and the Germans resumed the land attack on Dunkirk. By then, the British had fortified their defenses, but the Germans would not be held for long, and the evacuation was escalated. As there were not enough ships to transport the huge masses of men stranded at Dunkirk, the British Admiralty called on all British citizens in possession of sea-worthy vessels to lend their ships to the effort. Fishing boats, pleasure yachts, lifeboats, and other civilian ships raced to Dunkirk, braving mines, bombs, and torpedoes.

During the evacuation, the Royal Air Force (RAF) successfully resisted the Luftwaffe, saving the operation from failure. Still, the German fighters bombarded the beach, destroyed numerous vessels, and pursued other ships within a few miles of the English coast. The harbor at Dunkirk was bombed out of use, and small civilian vessels had to ferry the soldiers from the beaches to the warships waiting at sea. But for nine days, the evacuation continued, a miracle to the Allied commanders who had expected disaster. By June 4, when the Germans closed in and the operation came to an end, 198,000 British and 140,000 French troops were saved. These experienced soldiers would play a crucial role in future resistance against Nazi Germany.

With Western Europe abandoned by its main defenders, the German army swept through the rest of France, and Paris fell on June 14. Eight days later, Henri Petain signed an armistice with the Nazis at Compiegne. Germany annexed half the country, leaving the other half in the hands of their puppet French rulers. On June 6, 1944, liberation of Western Europe finally began with the successful Allied landing at Normandy. Many of the British and French troops participating in that landing were veterans of Dunkirk.

Has America Changed Too Much?

Has America Changed Too Much?“Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.” — Barry Goldwater

In 1960, Barry Goldwater published The Conscience of a Conservative. In it, he noted:

“Conservatism is not an economic theory, though it has economic implications. The shoe is precisely on the other foot: it is Socialism that subordinates all other considerations to man’s material well-being. It is Conservatism that puts material things in their proper place — that has a structured view of the human being and of human society, in which economics plays only a subsidiary role.

The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man’s nature.”

Fifty-three years later that remains a constant. Unfortunately for conservatives, much of the hand-wringing over paths forward to victory involve haggling over taxes and balanced budgets and spending and debt to GDP ratios, etc.

Writing in Real Clear Politics Ben Domenech gets to the heart of this:

“The choice for the Republican Party is whether to invest more in the 2010 strategy of this populist strain, to refine it and connect more policy proposals to it … or to embark on an effort to restore the party’s standing as the adult in the room – the competent, clean cut, good-government technocracy that sees the chief appeal of Republican politicians as combining agencies and seeking out efficiencies rather than rolling back government power and draining bureaucratic swamps. The GOP swung back to this technocratic approach on a national scale in 2012, and let’s just say the electoral results left much to be desired.”

The budgetary and economic wonkery only gets the GOP so far and that isn’t far enough to victory.

In truth, I think it will take a magnetic personality to pull the GOP out of the gutter. We live in an age of personality politics. But that personality will have to have a message that resonates with the American public. What resonates right now with the American public is a deep-seated distrust of government. Any Republican way forward must capitalize on this. In other words, the faces in Washington who can play the role are very limited to people like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and — if immigration can go away as an issue and the base forgives him — Marco Rubio.

The message to seize on is pretty straight forward. Under Republican and Democrat policies in Washington, particularly accelerated in the past five years, the United States meritocracy has given way to an aristocracy.

Only those of means can get ahead. Increasingly, they view their role as making life comfortable for the less well-off instead of enabling the less well-off to become well off. Wall Street, banks, major corporations, politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and the rich are the only ones who can prosper because they are the only ones who can either navigate the system or afford to pay others who can figure out how to navigate the system.

For the rest of Americans, from small business to the middle class, the only path is one of dependence on a governmental structure too byzantine to figure out and, should one be smart enough to figure out, too costly through litigation, regulation, and complication to navigate through.

An America where, as Lincoln said, every man can make himself, is replaced by an America where men are made by how the government takes cares of their individual circumstances. Students are no longer trained to be creative, entrepreneurial citizens, but to be workers for others. The self-employed are encumbered to the point of needing to be employees of others. The nuclear family is disincentivized and destabilized.

The America where one could work hard and get ahead is less and less possible because Democrats wish to force us all onto a safety net on which all are entangled, ensnared, and punished if we escape. Republicans, for fear of being disliked, would rather nibble at numbers than paint a picture of a better America for everyone.

Just one fact worth noting: under the present system, enabled by Republican and Democrat alike, a single mother on $29,000 a year and government benefits would have to get to $60,000 in salary to make it worth her getting off the safety net. This is a bipartisan construct, but one only an outsider conservative can build a campaign around fixing to the betterment of the single mom and everyone else.

Ideas of the 1960s have now grown reactionary in our world that is vastly different from a half-century ago.

Take well-meaning subsidies for those over age 62. Why are there still senior discounts, vast expansions in Social Security and Medicare, and generous public pensions?

Five decades ago all that made sense. There was no such thing as double-dipping. Seniors often were physically worn out from blue-collar jobs. They were usually poorer and frequently sicker than society in general. The aged usually died not long after they retired.

Not now. Seniors often live a quarter-century or longer after a mostly white-collar retirement, drawing subsidies from those least able to pay for them.

Seniors are not like today's strapped youth, scrimping for a down payment on a house. Most are not struggling to find even part-time work. None are paying off crushing student loans. In a calcified economy, why would an affluent couple in their early 60s earn a "senior discount" at a movie, while the struggling young couple with three children in the same line does not?

Affirmative action and enforced "diversity" were originally designed to give a boost to those who were victims of historical bias from the supposedly oppressive white-majority society. Is that still true, a half-century after these assumptions became institutionalized?

Through greater intermarriage and immigration, America has become a multiracial nation. Skin color, general appearance, accent or the sound of one's name cannot so easily identify either "oppressors" or "victims."

So who exactly should receive privileges in job-hiring or college admissions — the newly arrived Pakistani immigrant, or the third-generation, upper-middle-class Mexican-American who does not speak Spanish? Both, or neither? What about someone of half-Jamaican ancestry? What about the children of Attorney General Eric Holder or self-proclaimed Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren? What about the poor white grandson of the Oklahoma diaspora who is now a minority in California?

Even if the 21st-century state could define who is a minority, on what moral grounds does the targeted beneficiary deserve special consideration? Is his disadvantage defined by being poorer, by lingering trauma from his grandparents' long-ago ordeals, or by yesterday's experience with routine racial prejudice?

If Latinos are underrepresented at the University of California, Berkeley, is it because of the stubborn institutional prejudices that also somehow have been trumped by Asian-Americans enrolling at three times their numbers in the state's general population? Are women so oppressed by men that they graduate from college in higher numbers than their chauvinist male counterparts?

Of all the consequences that would result from amnesty, one that hasn't been discussed enough is the expansion of affirmative action.

Affirmative action takes existing racial grievances, institutionalizes them, and then magnifies them. Affirmative action encourages "a victim-focused identity in minorities" and fosters "a parasitic diversity industry"

Affirmative action policies will benefit minority immigrants, and minority immigrants will naturally support affirmative action policies. How do we know? Because Hispanics are telling pollsters so.

Sixty-five percent of Hispanics believe that affirmative action should be used to ensure that more Hispanics get to college or university, and 68% support affirmative action in employment, according to a 2011 Angus Reid opinion poll. A 2012 Georgetown University poll showed that 63% of young Hispanics (18-24) support affirmative action to "redress past discrimination," along with 75% of young blacks, but only 19% of whites.

Of course, making up for past discrimination doesn't apply to people whose ancestors never set foot in this country, but fairness was never the goal of racial preferences; former Democratic Senator James Webb famously noted that affirmative action simply favors "anyone who does not happen to be white."

The policy is bad enough. The greatest harm is the poisonous racial grievance reinforced by the policy.

People who believe that their racial group is often discriminated against will support affirmative action. On this point, the open-borders Republicans have done an extremely poor job of understanding Hispanic viewpoints about how this country treats them. Sixty-four percent of Latino adults claim that discrimination against Hispanics in schools is "a major problem," and 58% said the same of the workplace, according to a recent Pew poll.

There are very few policy issues that liberals don't reduce to supposed racism. Even "righteous indignation against diversity and reverse discrimination" is one of the "implements of racism" for upper-class whites, according to law professor Mari Matsuda, a founder of the highly influential critical race theory

It's safe to say that when a racial group perceive a high degree of supposed discrimination, they will not be voting for limited government, but will instead favor reverse discrimination. Those who assert the contrary — pro-amnesty Republicans — have the extraordinary burden of showing some basis in history or logic for believing that groups with a racial victim mindset will reject racial preferences.

It is a false hope that any significant number of those who receive amnesty will vote Republican, unless the GOP gets in the affirmative action game. Give a group amnesty, and they'll be thankful to all Democrats and a few Republicans, but Democrats will give them more of what they want from the state. The choice will be simple.

Consider also the calcified assumptions about college education. The expanding 1960s campus was touted as the future gateway to a smarter, fairer, richer and more ethical America. Is that dream still valid?

Today, the college-educated owe a collective $1 trillion in unpaid student loans. Millions of recent graduates cannot find jobs that offer much chance of paying off their crushing student debts.

College itself has become a sort of five to six-year lifestyle choice. Debt, joblessness or occasional part-time employment and coursework eat up a youth's 20s — in a way that military service or vocational training does not.

In reaction, private diploma mills are springing up everywhere. But there are no "diversity czars" at DeVry University. There is no time or money for the luxury of classes such as "Gender Oppression" at Phoenix University. Students do not have rock-climbing walls or have Michael Moore address them at Hillsdale College.

The private-sector campus makes other assumptions. One is that the hallowed liberal arts general-education requirement has been corrupted and no longer ensures an employer that his college-graduate hire is any more broadly educated or liberally minded than those who paid far less tuition for job-training courses at for-profit alternative campuses.

Scan the government grandees caught up in the current administration's ballooning IRS, Associated Press and Benghazi scandals. In each case, a blue-chip Ivy League degree was no guarantee that our best and brightest technocrats would prove transparent or act honorably. What difference did it make that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, President Barack Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice had degrees from prestigious universities when they misled the American people or Congress?

The now-aging idealists of the 1960s long ago promised us that a uniformly degreed citizenry — shepherded by Ivy League-branded technocrats -- would make America better by sorting us out by differences in age, gender, education and race.

It is now past time to end that fossilized dream before it becomes our collective nightmare.

But, to begin, the Republicans must be able to relate. With distrust in government at an all-time high, a relevant Republican is probably going to be a guy who hates the status quo, not one who talks Washington wonkspeak.

As Domenech concluded:

“The Republican Party needs to understand that shrinking its policy aims to more modest solutions is not going to be rewarded by the electorate. Yes, they need to tailor their message better and find policy wedges which peel off chunks of the Democratic base (winning political strategy is built on an understanding that every drama needs a hero, a martyr, and a villain). But what’s truly essential is that the party leadership rid themselves of the notion that politeness, great hair, and reform for efficiency’s sake is a ballot box winner, and understand instead that politicians who can connect with the people and deliver on their limited government promises – not ones who back away from them under pressure – represent the path forward.”

Unless the Republicans can find candidates who can eloquently express true conservative they will not win. Just putting up candidates like Mitt Romney who had one note to play is not enough. They must convince the majority of the electorate that only through a return to the values of our Founders and the Constitution can this Republic be saved from the tyranny of bigger and bigger government.

Don’t Look for a Smoking Gun in the Oval Office

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions”. — Saul Alinsky. Rules for Radicals, Rule No. 12

In January 1942 a group of high ranking Nazi officials held a conference in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. The purpose of the conference was to inform administrative leaders of Nazi departments responsible for various policies relating to Jews that Reinhard Heydrich had been appointed as the chief executor of the "Final solution to the Jewish question". In the course of the meeting, Heydrich presented a plan for the deportation of the Jewish population of Europe and French North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) to German-occupied areas in eastern Europe, and the use of the Jews fit for labor on road-building projects, in the course of which they would eventually die according to the text of the “Wannsee Protocol”, the only extant copy of the minutes of the meeting. Instead, as Soviet and Allied forces gradually pushed back the German lines, most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe were sent to extermination or concentration camps, or killed where they lived.

The Wannsee Conference lasted only about ninety minutes, and for most of its participants it was one meeting among many in a busy week. The enormous importance which has been attached to the conference by postwar writers was not evident to most of its participants at the time. Heydrich did not call the meeting to make fundamental new decisions on the Jewish question. Massive killings of Jews in the conquered territories in the Soviet Union and Poland were ongoing and new extermination camps were in preparation at the time of the conference. They knew that in this case the decision had already been made, and that Heydrich was there as Himmler's emissary to tell them about it. Nor did the conference engage in detailed logistical planning. It could hardly do so in the absence of a representative of the Transport Ministry or the German Railways.

German historian Peter Longerich has written that one motive for Heydrich's calling the conference was to ensure that all the leading ministries were accomplices in his plan.

“From Heydrich’s point of view", he writes, "the main purposes of the conference were, firstly, to establish the overall control of the deportation programme by the RSHA over a number of important Reich authorities and thereby, secondly, to make the top representatives of the ministerial bureaucracy into accomplices and accessories to, and co-responsible for, the plan he was pursuing. To reiterate: the plan was to exile all Jews in the present and future areas under German rule to Eastern Europe, where they were to be exposed to extraordinarily harsh living conditions and fatally exhausted or murdered. Heydrich had pursued this deportation plan since the beginning of 1941; in July 1941, Göring had given him the authority to execute it; and with the first deportation of Jews from central Europe in October, the first stage in that pan-European design had been realized. With his first invitation to the conference, Heydrich had waited until the second wave of deportations to Riga, Minsk and Kovno had already begun. He clearly wanted to present the representatives of the supreme Reich authorities with a fait accompli.”

Adolf Eichmann recorded that Heydrich was pleased with the course of the meeting. He "gave expression to his great satisfaction", and allowed himself a glass of cognac, although he rarely drank. He "had expected considerable stumbling blocks and difficulties", Eichmann recalled, but instead he had found "an atmosphere not only of agreement on the part of the participants, but more than that, one could feel an agreement which had assumed a form which had not been expected".

At the conclusion of the meeting Heydrich gave Eichmann firm instructions about what was to appear in the minutes. They were not to be verbatim: Eichmann would "clean them up" so that nothing too explicit appeared in them. He said at his trial: "How shall I put it — certain over-plain talk and jargon expressions had to be rendered into office language by me". As a result, the last twenty minutes of the meeting, in which, as Eichmann recalled, words like "liquidation" and "extermination" were freely used, were summed up in one bland sentence: "In conclusion the different types of possible solutions were discussed". Thus the minutes must be read in conjunction with Eichmann's testimony to get as near as is possible to a full account of what took place.

At no point in these minutes or any other documents from the Third Reich will you find the name of Adolph Hitler mention in conjunction with the final solution of the extermination of Jews, Slavs, or anyone else. The Nazi bureaucracy gave him absolute plausible deniability and the only references to Hitler’s feelings about Jews, Slavs, and other Untermensch is to read Mein Kampf. Even to this day Holocaust deniers claim that the extermination of six million Jews and five million Russians, Poles, and other Slavs never took place. They will claim that since edicts from Hitler were ever found that the so-called Holocaust was nothing more than mere bureaucratic babbling. They claim than in the top-down dictatorial nature of the Third Reich no such program could have ever taken place without Hitler’s knowledge and approval.

What is overlooked is that every Nazi knew Hitler’s feelings on Jews, Race and Lebensraum. It was spelled out clearly in Mein Kampf. They did not have to ask what der Führer wanted to do about the Jews — they knew and Hitler knew they knew.

In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote:

“If the National Socialist movement really wants to be consecrated by history with a great mission for our nation, it must be permeated by knowledge and filled with pain at our true situation in this world; boldly and conscious of its goal, it must take up the struggle against the aimlessness and incompetence which have hitherto guided our German nation in the line of foreign affairs. Then, without consideration of 'traditions' and prejudices, it must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation.”

As the Obama administration descends into a whirlpool of scandals, a race has begun among Congressional committees and news organizations to find the proverbial smoking gun — the document that will link President Obama directly to the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, or to the Justice Department's unprecedented legal actions against the Associated Press and Fox News reporter James Rosen, or to the Pentagon's ghastly failure to launch a rescue mission when our consulate in Benghazi came under attack last September.

Study history, and you will understand why no such document is ever likely to be found: That just isn't how these things work. Very few people are aware of this, but as I stated above there is no document — not one — linking Adolf Hitler to the Holocaust. Why not? Because Hitler didn't need to sign a document ordering the slaughter of six million Jews. All he needed to do was to demonize his enemy in speeches at the Reichstag, on the radio, and from one end of Germany to the other — then hire thugs like Herman Goering, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, and Josef Goebbels. They knew what der Fuhrer wanted, and der Fuhrer knew he could trust his henchman to get the job done — no matter how, no matter what may be the law — and to not bother him with the gory details.

Nowhere in this blog post will I suggest, or even imply, that President Obama plans the mass murder of his opponents the way Hitler murdered his. That's absurd. Iam merely pointing out that President Obama has been going about the business of demonizing his political enemies, and then hiring thugs to destroy them without regard to the law, in precisely the same way that Hitler and his fascists did it in Germany. This isn't an accusation; it's an observation. After it’s the Chicago and Saul Alinsky way — direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.

Look at the record: From the moment he took office in January 2009, President Obama has spoken before Congress, on television, and at countless rallies across the country describing his political opponents in terms we haven't seen before in the United States. Time and again he's insisted that Republicans aren't merely wrong, but evil. Hardly a week goes by without yet another sneering comment about "millionaires and billionaires" — by which he means those men and women who actually built the businesses that created jobs for all the rest of us, not the ones he and the First Lady party with in Hollywood and on Martha's Vineyard.

His rhetoric heated up fast after the Tea Party movement gave the GOP enough oomph to win back the House of Representatives in 2010, and as the president geared up for the 2012 election. He urged Latino voters to help him "punish our enemies and reward our friends." He told his supporters at one rally to think of voting for him as "an act of revenge." Did you see the president at that Georgetown University forum on the future of Medicare when he trashed Paul Ryan's own plan, then went out of his way to publicly insult Ryan, while the Congressman himself was sitting in the front row too stunned — and too decent and respectful of the presidency — to respond in kind? Do you remember that television campaign ad describing Mitt Romney — one of the most capable, financially astute, thoroughly decent men who ever graced public life — as "not one of us"?

And while demonizing his political enemies, what sort of people did the president appoint to key jobs in his administration? His attorney general is Eric Holder, a sleazy Democratic operative who not only called the American people "cowards" for their approach to racial issues — this after the majority of us elected a black president — but who played a crucial role as deputy attorney general in the scandalous and still-uninvestigated pardon of Marc Rich in the Clinton administration's dying hours. The national security advisor is Thomas Donilon, another Democratic Party operative who got rich while serving as executive vice president for law and policy at Fannie Mae. And who was our secretary of state when the consulate in Benghazi came under attack? The same Hillary Clinton who, as the wife of Arkansas' up-and-coming governor, made an overnight $100,000 killing by trading cattle futures — a feat no professional cattle-futures trader has ever been able to explain, or duplicate.

No one who's spent time in our nation's capital comes away with a romantic view of party politics and the people who do this for a living; the Saint-Per-Square-Mile ratio in Washington has always been fairly low. But David Axelrod and David Plouffe? Have you ever come across two Chicago-style, hardball-playing creeps like these clowns? They make Richard Nixon's two White House thugs, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, look like choir boys.

Demonize your political enemies, then hire people like these, and the result is precisely what happened in Germany after 1933 and what's happening now to us: a kind of bureaucratic coup d'etat in which the legitimately elected government overturns the established relationship between the individual and the State and replaces it with something very different; a relationship that no one voted for, saw coming, or imagined could happen so quickly and so quietly.

Obama is great at giving flowering speeches at universities, political rallies, and even high schools. He aims his remarks at the young and impressionable who have very little knowledge of the Constitution or our history. They see him as a glamorous and charismatic figure — a figure that fills their heads with platitudes and failed progressive gobbledygook that would turn Woodrow Wilson’s face red. He has a cadre of zealots who are absolutely loyal to him no matter what the facts say otherwise. He has a Hollywood following that would make Leni Riefenstahl green with envy. Even his first nomination event in Denver at Invesco Field was reminiscent of Triumph des Willens as we were introduced to the anointed one. All that was missing was were the lonely man looking out the window of the Fokker tri-motor as it’s shadow passes over the assembled crowd and the torchlight parades.

He does not have to issue orders or directives to his sycophantic minions to do his bidding. All he has to do is make an Alinsky-like speech and they will march out like robots to do what they believe to be his bidding. Like Hitler in the 30s motivation is his chief weapon.

This is the United States in 2013, not Germany in 1933, and there's no real possibility that President Obama will get away with his attempted coup d'etat. We have something called a Constitution that separates the powers of government — when it works. There are members of Congress in both parties who are appalled by what the president has been doing, and even a few liberal news organizations are starting to wake up. But while the hunt for some document that would be the smoking gun will be entertaining — and while it would be nice to see a special prosecutor appointed who'd throw at least a few members of this administration who've perjured themselves before Congress into prison.

Education is probably more important than prosecution. Right now, the best use of their time and energy would be to expose the Obama administration's wrongdoings; to illuminate for Americans just what's been going on in Washington and to show voters — especially young voters — what sort of country we'd be living in if the president had gotten away with this. Never before have our politicians and our news organizations had a better opportunity to demonstrate just what happens when we vote carelessly, elect a zealot who appoints operatives with no sense of honor or comprehension of right-and-wrong, then parties with rock stars while his coup d'etat unfolds.

Yes, I realize that throughout this essay I've used an analogy that some people will find offensive or even repugnant. But I've done this deliberately, because this is no time to hold back or to mince words. And if the president doesn't like being compared to a Nazi — he should stop acting like one.

Up, Up, and Away in Temecula

“Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 41.

One of the things I like about living in south Riverside County is the annual Temecula Valley Balloon and Wine Festival each June. The festival usually takes place on the first weekend in June and this year was no different. It is a three day celebration of the wines produced in the Temecula Valley and the fun and excitement of hot air ballooning.

Each year the festival takes place on the shores Lake Skinner on the eastern edge of the City of Temecula. The festival, while not as large and famous as the annual and famous Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta held each September, is still a great celebration of ballooning and the fine wines of the Temecula Valley — wines that are on a par with the wines produced in the Napa and Sonoma valleys of California.

This year marked the 30^th anniversary of the festival. The Temecula Valley Balloon and Wine Festival, then known as the Rancho California Balloon and Wine Festival, was started in 1983 by Walt Darren, a commercial airline pilot and avid balloonist and by Evelyn Harker a veteran event organizer and fund raiser. Evelyn immediately suggested it might "fly" even better if it involved some of the area’s other natural attractions such as wine tasting, culinary presentations and entertainment. With an enormous task ahead, the assistance of two other community-minded individuals, Sherry Prysock and Mike Flaherty was enlisted and Evelyn became the first event chair person. The seed money was provided by Kaiser Development Company and sponsors came from the local community giving what they could with many contributions consisting of in-kind services and products.

At this time, there were only six wineries in the region. The first Balloon and Wine Festival was launched in the spring of 1984 and was a monumental success for a town of only 9,000 residents. More than 4,000 people were in attendance that year as 35 balloons were launched from the Rancho California Plaza area off Ynez Road (now Tower Plaza). The balloons flew over the serene pastures surrounding the area and the wine tasting was held in the parking lot of the current Tower Plaza.

As the Festival grew, music was added and the event was moved to the Sports Park. In 1986 as the event continued to grow, it was moved to Cherry Avenue and the first ever poster contest was held. During 1987-1988, the Festival was moved back to the Sports Park and in 1989; it was moved to its current location at Lake Skinner. In the beginning, parking was not even allowed on the Festival park grounds.

In 1988, a landmark year by all accounts, the Festival featured live big name entertainment with the Coasters and Little Anthony and the Imperials. In 1991 the Beach Boys entertained to growing crowds of locals and newcomers alike. Some of the early stages used were "handmade" by volunteers which is a far cry from the sophisticated production of recent years.

A few of the highlights and lowlights from the festival’s history during its years of growth and popularity are:

In 1991 the Temecula Valley Balloon and Wine Festival Association was formed when the Chamber of Commerce ceased producing the event. The mission statement of this new non-profit charitable organization was (and still is) to enhance the charitable, cultural, educational and economic development of the region.

During the 1992-1993 Festival years, no hot air balloons were launched but a balloon glow was presented by Paradise Chevrolet in 1993.

While the theme of hot air balloons and wine has always served to anchor the event, each year new attractions have been introduced. The Temecula Valley Balloon and Wine Festival has become a celebration of life with flavor and appeal for everyone and has become the premier event in the beautiful Temecula Valley.

In 1991 the festival was cancelled. In its place a concert headlined by the Beach Boys was held at the Rancho California —- now Southern California Golf Association —- Golf Course.

Perhaps it was the $25 ticket price, or maybe because the Beach Boys had a concert scheduled later that evening in Orange County, but attendance at the concert was disappointing. Some in the community wondered if the festival would ever recover. There was only one or two at the golf course. Highlight: No traffic, no lines, plenty of great seats for the concert.

In 1992 the Temecula Valley Chamber of Commerce, which had run the festival since the early days, turned over operations to a group of volunteers determined to keep the annual event alive. The event, renamed the Temecula Valley Balloon & Wine Festival, returned to Lake Skinner where it remains to this day. Traffic, though heavy, was manageable. The balloons were plagued, as sometimes happens near the Pacific Coast in Southern California, and the balloons were grounded on both days of the festival.

Fearing the trampling of endangered creatures at the nature reserve by automobiles, festival goers are required to park outside the Lake Skinner gate and ride yellow school buses to the festival grounds. This is not the case today as there is a graded parking area that can accommodate thousands of vehicles.

In 1994 for the first time since the event was reorganized in 1992, organizers said the festival made money.

Fog grounds once again grounds the balloons both days, but that’s not a bad thing for one man. A balloon pilot suffers a heart attack minutes after the Saturday balloon launch is cancelled. Had the skies been clear chances are he would have been soaring high above Lake Skinner when the attack occurred. The pilot was taken to a hospital and recovers.

Los Angeles radio disc jockeys Mark and Brian push a large Bob’s Big Boy statue dressed as Elvis Presley out of a hot-air balloon. “Elvis Bob” is attached to a bungee cord, however the length of that chord is “overguesstimated” and the statue smacks into the ground. Fortunately none of this stuff goes on today

In 1995 the event continues to grow and gain regional recognition.

With attendance up an estimated 35 percent over the previous year to an estimated 50,000 —- considered by most to be official high attendance mark —- festival organizers ponder moving the event to a larger location.

Balloons: Fly both days for the first time since 1989

Highlight: Scenes for the motion picture “A Weekend in the Country” starring Jack Lemmon, Christine Lahti, Rita Rudner and Dudley Moore are filmed in and around Temecula including at the festival. Many “locals” serve as “extras” on the film which, instead of being blockbuster boffo, is released straight to cable.

Entertainment: Lou Rawls, former Monkee Davy Jones, John Kay and Steppenwolf.

In 2000 in hopes of dodging the persistent fog of May, the festival is moved to June for the first time. The move pays immediate dividends.

Balloons: Fly both days.

The wine tasting area is moved from the back to the front of the festival area which pleases local wineries. A total of 14 Temecula area wineries participate, double the number from last year.

In 2008 about 40 balloons launch both days.

Headliners: For the 25th anniversary of the Festival Singer/Songwriter Kenny Loggins is booked to headline the main stage on Saturday. Pop rocker John Waite and rising county star Blake Shelton play Friday night, while pop band Ambrosia fills the Wine Stage on Sunday. The popular Motocross show returns Sunday to the main stage.

Highlight/Lowlight: Scenes for the movie “The Ugly Truth” starring Katherine Heigl are shot during the festival. Following the festival a former employee alleges spending improprieties causing sheriff’s detectives to launch an investigation. Festival officials open their books and the allegations are found to be baseless.

2010 brings sunny skies, warm temperatures and 40 soaring balloons each morning

Headliners: Paul Rodgers, the “voice of Bad Company,” Vertical Horizon, the Gin Blossoms on the main stage, jazz band Spyro Gyra on the wine stage and Motocross again on Sunday.

Highlight: The mostly completed multi-million dollar renovation of Lake Skinner by Riverside County provides better sight lines for the main stage and a more comfortable venue for festival goers. Saturday’s ticket price of $25, matching the mark set in 1991 for the Beach Boy concert, again leads to grumbling.

2011 balloons fly both days with sunny skies, comfortable temperatures in the 70s.

Headliners: Third Eye Blind, Dennis DeYoung: The Music of Styx and Ambrosia.

Great attendance, kudos all around. As always, someone who knows nothing about physics, is quoted in the newspaper because she’s disappointed the balloons didn’t fly in the afternoon.

Last year the balloons flew both days, although Sunday morning fog forces the pilots to drive away from the festival sight to launch.

Headliners: Lifehouse, Soul Asylum and John Waite

Organizers try a new traffic pattern to funnel patrons into the festival and also widen the entry way from two to four and six lanes. Food and wine pairings continue to draw rave reviews.

This year the balloons flew from the festival grounds on both days and on both nights the balloon glow was spectacular.

The hot air balloon is the oldest successful human-carrying flight technology. It is part of a class of aircraft known as balloon aircraft. On November 21, 1783, in Annonay, France, the first untethered manned flight was performed by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes in a hot air balloon created on December 14, 1782 by the Montgolfier brothers. Hot air balloons that can be propelled through the air rather than just being pushed along by the wind are known as airships or, more specifically, thermal airships.

A hot air balloon consists of a bag called the envelope that is capable of containing heated air. Suspended beneath is a gondola or wicker basket (in some long-distance or high-altitude balloons, a capsule), which carries passengers and (usually) a source of heat, in most cases an open flame. The heated air inside the envelope makes it buoyant since it has a lower density than the relatively cold air outside the envelope. As with all aircraft, hot air balloons cannot fly beyond the atmosphere. Unlike gas balloons, the envelope does not have to be sealed at the bottom since the air near the bottom of the envelope is at the same pressure as the air surrounding. For modern sport balloons the envelope is generally made from nylon fabric and the inlet of the balloon (closest to the burner flame) is made from fire resistant material such as Nomex. Beginning during the mid-1970s, balloon envelopes have been made in all kinds of shapes, such as rocket ships and the shapes of various commercial products, though the traditional shape remains popular for most non-commercial, and many commercial, applications.

Increasing the air temperature inside the envelope makes it lighter than the surrounding (ambient) air. The balloon floats because of the buoyant force exerted on it. This force is the same force that acts on objects when they are in water and is described by Archimedes' principle. The amount of lift (or buoyancy) provided by a hot air balloon depends primarily upon the difference between the temperature of the air inside the envelope and the temperature of the air outside the envelope. For most envelopes made of nylon fabric, the maximum internal temperature is limited to approximately 250° Fahrenheit.

It should be noted that the melting point of nylon is significantly greater than this maximum operating temperature — about 450°F. However, the lower temperatures are generally used because the greater the temperature, the more quickly the strength of the nylon fabric degrades over time. With a maximum operating temperature of 250°, balloon envelopes can generally be flown for between 400 and 500 hours before the fabric needs to be replaced. Many balloon pilots operate their envelopes at temperatures significantly less than the maximum to extend envelope fabric life.

The heart of the hot air balloon is the burner. The burner unit gasifies liquid propane, mixes it with air, ignites the mixture, and directs the flame and exhaust into the mouth of the envelope. Burners vary in power output; each will generally produce 2 to 3 MW of heat (7 to 10 million BTUs per hour), with double, triple, or quadruple burner configurations installed where more power is needed. The pilot actuates a burner by opening a propane valve, known as a blast valve. The valve may be spring-loaded so that it closes automatically, or it may stay open until closed by the pilot. The burner has a pilot light to ignite the propane and air mixture. The pilot light may be lit by the pilot with an external device, such as a flint striker or a lighter, or with a built-in piezo electric spark.

Where more than one burner is present, the pilot can use one or more at a time depending on the desired heat output. Each burner is characterized by a metal coil of propane tubing the flame shoots through to preheat the incoming liquid propane. The burner unit may be suspended from the mouth of the envelope, or supported rigidly over the basket. The burner unit may be mounted on a gimbal to enable the pilot to aim the flame and avoid overheating the envelope fabric. A burner may have a secondary propane valve that releases propane more slowly and thereby generates a different sound. This is called a whisper burner and is used for flight over livestock to lessen the chance of spooking them. It also generates a more yellow flame and is used for night glows because it lights up the inside of the envelope better than the primary valve.

The balloon launch area is surrounded by the tents and stalls of the sponsoring breweries and wineries. There are ample opportunities to walk about listing to the performing entertainers and purchase varying sizes of beer and wine. During the evening hours the lines waiting for a glass of wine or beer can get quite long, especially during the balloon glow.

This year there were 13 wineries and 7 brewers represented at the festival. A few of the better known wineries were: Wilson Creek, Monte de Oro, South Coast Winery and Spa, Van Roekel, Thornton Winery, and Canyon Crest Winery.

There is a very large food court located just beyond the launch area where you can purchase all varieties of food from bratwurst and burgers to cinnamon buns and ice cream. Also there is a gourmet restaurant located on the perimeter of the launch area where you can get a full meal. However, advanced reservations are needed and it’s quite expensive.

This was our third year visiting the festival and we took our two granddaughters (age 13 and 8) with us. I took my eldest granddaughter on the free tethered balloon ride. This s flight hat is tethered to the ground and rises about 150 feet above the festival grounds. It lasts about 5 minutes. She was quite impressed with the flight. The 8-year old did not want to take the flight as she does not like heights and the noise of the burner frightened her a bit.

After watching the balloons launch we left the festival grounds for some breakfast at Penfold’s, one of Temecula’s more famous breakfast spots. Then we returned home where the girls could take a nap before returning for the 8:30 p.m. balloon glow. A nap was needed as we were up at 4:30 a.m. to get to the festival grounds by 6:00 to see the balloons launch into the cool morning air.

Hot air balloons can reach altitudes 3,000 feet above mean terrain if the ambient air is cool and clear. But at Lake Skinner they hover at about 1,500to 2,000 feet as they float over the vineyards and orange groves making for a great panoramic view of the valley against the distant mountains. The altitude is determined by the temperature of the ambient air.

A balloon ride lasts about 40 minutes and can land 6 or 7 miles from the launch site. Not to worry though as a chase vehicle follows to balloon and is radio contact at al times. Once the balloon comes to earth it is collapsed, folded and loaded onto the trailer with its gondola. The passenger will ride in the van back to the launch site to enjoy the activities at the festival. The price of a balloon ride package is $210.00 per person and includes 45 - 60 minute balloon flight, Souvenir flight certificate. and Champagne and/or orange juice toast. Children: Must be 48 inches tall to participate, and must be accompanied on the flight by an adult. (No price discount for children).

General admission good for all day is $25.00 for adults and $17.00 for juniors (6-12). Children 5 and under are free.

One of the must see highlights is the balloon glow. Seven or eight balloons are inflated in the launch area and when it gets dark (around 8:30 p.m.) the burners are turned on full blast and the balloons are illuminated against the night sky. It’s quite a sight to see and a camera with a fast lens or a tripod is highly recommended. I used a hand-held Nikon D700 with a 35mm/f2.0 lens and shooting at ISO 1400. Even though the D700 is an FX camera (full frame DSLR) that creates very low noise (even at ISO 6400) I still wanted to keep the digital noise a low as possible. It worked just fine. The video I shot was with a Nikon Coolpix P510 that did a great job acquiring HD video. See a short video of the festival below.

Video of Temecula Valley Balloon and Wine Festival, June 1, 2013

My wife and I had a great time with our granddaughters at the festival. The got to learn about hot air balloons and they enjoyed the balloon glow. Kathy and I got our reward in watching the kids get a thrill out of the festival.

While not a large or famous as the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta the Temecula Valley Balloon and Wine Festival is certainly worth a visit.

For a gallery of photos from the festival please click here. To view a larger image of the photos shown click on the photo.