New Year's, The 'Especially American Tradition'

President Ronald Reagan called the New Year’s celebration “an especially American tradition.” It’s a time brimming with the “optimism and hope we're famous for in our daily lives—an energy and confidence we call the American spirit.” This spirit is what gives Americans the vigor to raise their glasses year after year, full of enthusiasm for a better future.

Tonight, nearly 72 percent of adults will be spending the holiday at home, according a recent Rasmussen Reports poll. Now, this could be due to a pinched wallet after the Christmas holiday, or perhaps merely because they want to spend more time with family.

Regardless, as you make your New Year’s resolutions for 2015, here are some words of wisdom from the great men who helped found and shape our nation, and paved the way for its indefatigable spirit.

(1). “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” - Benjamin Franklin

(2)."We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience." - George Washington

(3). “To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.” - John Adams

(4). "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." - Thomas Jefferson

(5). “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.” - Abraham Lincoln

Happy New Year!

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Liberals: If The Shoe Doesn't Fit, Make Everyone Wear It

Ann Coulter

It is a common practice of the left to stage an incident and then demand enormous legal changes to respond to their hoax.

Griswold v. Connecticut was a scam orchestrated by Yale law professors to challenge the state's anti-contraception law. The case was a fraud: The law had never been enforced and never would have been enforced, until the professors held a press conference announcing they were breaking the law.

But we still got the new constitutional "privacy right" which, less than 10 years later, transmogrified into a constitutional right to kill an unborn baby.

The premise of that case, Roe v. Wade, was also a hoax. Norma McCorvey lied about being raped to get an abortion in Texas, but was denied because there was no police report. There was also no rape: She had gotten pregnant for the third time by her mid-20s as a result of a casual sexual encounter.

After Trayvon Martin was shot by George Zimmerman -- the "white Hispanic," since upgraded to full "white" by The New York Times -- liberals howled about Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law. The case had absolutely nothing to do with that law: Zimmerman wasn't standing his ground; he was lying on the ground having his head bashed in. The jury accepted Zimmerman's claim of self-defense and acquitted him.

The law of self-defense has been around since William of Orange ascended to the British throne in 1688. But liberals are still harping about the Trayvon Martin shooting to demand the repeal of Stand Your Ground laws.

Jamie Leigh Jones made fantastical claims about being fed Rohypnol, gang-raped and then held at gunpoint while working for KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, in Iraq in 2005. Without considering the likelihood of a military contractor doing this to an American citizen, knowing she'd get back to the U.S. someday and be able to tell her story, our adversary media and well-paid Democratic senators believed every word out of Jones' mouth.

As always happens when members of a disfavored racial and gender group -- i.e., white males -- are accused of heinous acts, liberals heard Jones' claims and concluded: Well, the one thing we know is: There was a gang-rape. All that's left to do now is to investigate the military/fraternity/lacrosse rape culture.

Thus, for example, Sen. Patrick Leahy began a hearing on Jones' insane accusations with this statement of facts: "Jamie Leigh Jones [is] a young woman from Texas who took a job at Halliburton in Iraq in 2005 when she was 20 years old. In her first week on the job, she was drugged and then she was gang-raped by co-workers. When she reported this -- remember, 20 years old -- she reported this assault, her employers moved her to a locked trailer, where she was kept by armed guards and freed only when the State Department intervened."

Sen. Al Franken raved about "the culture of impunity" among defense contractors, saying, "Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by KBR employees." Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse helpfully added, "But as best I can tell, there is no legitimate intelligence function that involves rape."

And then, after all the grandstanding, it turned out Jones had made the whole thing up. DNA evidence proved she'd had sex with only one man, and he said it was consensual. The female doctor who examined Jones the day after the alleged attack found no traces of Rohypnol in her system. Both the female doctor, as well as Jones' own plastic surgeon back in Houston, contradicted Jones' claim that her breast implants had been ruptured. It also turned out that none of KBR's employees carry guns, much less machine guns. By the age of 20, even before Jones had left for Iraq, she was 0-for-2 on rape allegations, having already falsely accused two other men of raping her.

No grand jury would indict the poor, falsely accused KBR employee who foolishly had sex with Jones, so she filed a civil suit against that one man. The jury ruled for him, and the court ordered Jones to pay $145,000 in legal costs. Jamie Leigh Jones' place in the Crystal Magnum, Tawana Brawley Hall of Fame was thus secured.

But we still got Sen. Al Franken's pro-trial lawyer amendment to a Defense Department bill, touted as the "Anti-Rape Amendment," prohibiting military contractors from including mandatory arbitration clauses in their employment contracts. Any Republican brave enough to oppose this sop to trial lawyers was denounced as "pro-rape" in mass-phone calls to their offices and by liberal prophet Jon Stewart, who railed on his show, "How is ANYONE against this?"

Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson's shooting of Michael Brown is today being used as grounds to demand all sorts of new rules for cops. Most people had a pretty good sense of the case after seeing surveillance camera shots of Brown assaulting the manager of a liquor store he was robbing about 10 minutes before his encounter with Officer Wilson. By the time the grand jury documents were released, there was no serious doubt that the shooting was justified.

But again, as a result of a hoax racial incident, Democrats are demanding race quotas for arrests. To hell with due process. If we can stop just one thing that never happened from ever happening again, it will have been worth it.

The only new rule we really need is one to stop these infernal liberal hoaxes.

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'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' Activists -- and Historical Ignorance

Larry Elder

What to say about "activists" pushing the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" "movement," even as police shootings of blacks are actually down 75 percent over the last 45 years? Some protestors, many old enough to know better, say ridiculous things about race relations, like "things have gone backward." Time for perspective.

Booker T. Washington was born a slave. In his autobiography, "Up From Slavery," written in 1901 -- just a mere 36 years after the Civil War -- Washington wrote:

"As a rule, not only did the members of my race entertain no feelings of bitterness against the whites before and during the war, but there are many instances of Negroes tenderly caring for their former masters and mistresses who for some reason have become poor and dependent since the war. I know of instances where the former masters of slaves have for years been supplied with money by their former slaves to keep them from suffering. ... One sends him a little coffee or sugar, another a little meat, and so on. Nothing that the colored people possess is too good for the son of 'old Mars' Tom,' who will perhaps never be permitted to suffer while any remain on the place who knew directly or indirectly of 'old Mars' Tom.'...

"From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.

"I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction, and, besides, it was recognized and protected for years by the General Government. Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution.

Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. ...

"This I say, not to justify slavery -- on the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a missionary motive -- but to call attention to a fact, and to show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose."

As for the future, Washington said: "When a Negro girl learns to cook, to wash dishes, to sew, to write a book, or a Negro boy learns to groom horses, or to grow sweet potatoes, or to produce butter, or to build a house, or to be able to practice medicine, as well or better than some one else, they will be rewarded regardless of race or color. In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not long keep the world from what it wants."

Nelson Mandela was beaten and imprisoned for almost three decades. When released at last, some supporters criticized him for showing too much grace and forgiveness toward his enemies. But Mandela's attitude toward forgiveness set the tone for the nation. After his death, a South African wrote:

"History now shows (Mandela) did lead South Africa back from the abyss. But he did more, and it was this that sealed his reputation forever. He showed the world and his countrymen -- black, white, rich, poor -- that revenge is not the answer to years of injustice. Who among us, in coming out of prison after 27 years, would have had the generosity to turn away from settling scores? Who among us would have refused to avenge ourselves on those who had treated us with such cruelty?

"But he did. Nelson Mandela sat down with his enemies and forgave them and moved on. And in doing so, he rescued his country, and he rescued each one of us, and gave us hope that there could be a future for our beautiful, fractured land. And for the greater earth that we all share."

Washington, born a slave, and Mandela, held captive for nearly 28 years, demonstrate the power of forgiveness -- and of looking ahead. And these men forgave their actual oppressors.

My mother, born in the Jim Crow South, used to say, "The truth will not set you free -- if delivered without hope." The "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" "movement" is neither truthful nor hopeful.

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N.Y. Mayor de Blasio Active Supporter of Brutal Communist Regime

No surprise. De Blasio just oozes hate

With Bill de Blasio making headlines for fanning the flames of racial tension between police and protesters it's worth recalling newsworthy information about the New York City mayor's dark past; that he was an active supporter of a brutal communist regime well known as one of the worst human rights abusers in Latin America.

Judicial Watch uncovered and reported the scandalous details last year. De Blasio was an active supporter of the communist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in the 1980s. He was so enamored with Soviet-backed revolutionaries that he traveled to the capital city of the war-torn country, Managua, to aid their cause by participating in a relief mission. Upon de Blasio's return to the United States, he joined the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York (NSN).

The records show de Blasio was an ardent supporter of the communist revolutionaries in Nicaragua, who raised funds for the Sandinistas and was a subscriber to the party's newspaper, "Barricada" (The Barricade). He traveled to Nicaragua in 1988 and became active in the NSN upon his return to the U.S. New York's mayor has been unapologetic about his involvement with a foreign Marxist political movement accused of slaughtering innocent civilians and practicing the "disappearance" technique of eliminating political foes.

In fact, the Sandinistas were renowned as one of Latin America's worst human rights violators. During three years of revolution they carried out thousands of political executions and the disappearance of thousands more who were considered anti-revolutionary, according to a Russian-born scholar cited in a news article. By 1983 there were about 20,000 political prisoners held in the Marxist regime's jails, the highest number of political prisoners of any nation in the hemisphere with the exception of Fidel Castro's communist Cuba.

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