Click here to view the embedded video.

I don’t think it is. Obama says he is a Christian. O.k. What type of Christian is he? He’s certainly not Catholic or Orthodox; no one would call him evangelical. His sparse attendance at church makes it hard to even label him a traditional Protestant. His lack of an identifiable religious affiliation is part of a larger problem about Obama the man that has persisted since his early days of his campaign: he is largely an empty shell.

Every man has to be from somewhere. Every man has to believe something. The little we know of Obama is that his father was a muslim and he did in his early childhood have Muslim schooling. He goes to the middle east and speaks directly to the Muslim world. His State Department sponsors extensive outreach to Muslims. He publicly celebrates Ramadan. I’m not saying any of this makes him Muslim. But when there is little else to cling too, that hardly makes 20% of Americans irrational. What else are they to believe?

A former Justice Department attorney who quit his job to protest the Obama administration’s handling of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case is accusing Attorney General Eric Holder of dropping the charges for racially motivated reasons.

J. Christian Adams, now an attorney in Virginia and a conservative blogger, says he and the other Justice Department lawyers working on the case were ordered to dismiss it.

More here from Fox.

Mr. Adams weighs in:

Soon after his confirmation, Attorney General Eric Holder labeled us a nation of cowards, a people supposedly unwilling or afraid to discuss race. Based on my experience as an attorney at the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, Holder has far more to fear from that discussion than do the rest of us . . . the Obama administration doesn’t believe some civil rights laws protect every American.

Read the rest of his commentary here.

• South Korea confirms that North Korea sank a military ship (submarine);
• North Korean supreme leader takes credit for it;
• South Korea begins war exercises with their allies;
• South Korea begins psychological warfare with radio blasts, etc;
• South Korea cuts off trade with North Korea;
• North Korea expels South Koreans from their country.

Call me crazy, but I think we’re going to war. Sinking ships, cutting off trade, executing war games and expelling foreign nationals all are things that are lead up to open warfare. I pray we don’t because if South Korea goes to war, we go to war. If North Korea is willing to sink a submarine and stake claim, I don’t see it a far reach for them soon to be planning to bombard the DMZ and invade the South. Yeah. It sounds crazy. But I think this situation is quickly becoming deadly serious and we’re going to be entangled right in the middle of this.

Congress Becomes Madison’s “Overbearing Majority“ from The Weekly Standard.

Let’s cut to the chase. Madison:

“[M]easures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority…By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community…”

The usually worthy Volokh blog recently made a hash of “democracy” vs. “republicanism.”

What the Georgia legislature was trying to get at, I think [and they did it poorly as well], is that a “republic” implies much more than majoritarianism, which would be a strict reading of “democracy.” [The introduction in the Volokh discussion of "representative" also gummed things up.]

A republic requires and effort toward consensus, hence the Electoral College, and even moreso the Senate: the smaller states are not at the mercy of the larger ones, and indeed in the Senate have equal say.

From the official Senate website:

A key goal of the Framers was to create a Senate differently constituted from the House so it would be less subject to popular passions and impulses. “The use of the Senate,” wrote James Madison in Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, “is to consist in its proceedings with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.” An oft-quoted story about the “coolness” of the Senate involves George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who was in France during the Constitutional Convention. Upon his return, Jefferson visited Washington and asked why the Convention delegates had created a Senate. “Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” asked Washington. “To cool it,” said Jefferson. “Even so,” responded Washington, “we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”

[Our republic also places limits on majoritarianism via the Constitution, although I doubt the Obamacare legislation will be found unconstitutional in any significant way.]

But the disposition towards consensus instead of mere majority has a long history as the American political ethos. Social Security, Medicare and the Civil Rights Acts passed with a significant number of votes from both parties. Indeed, the American Creation blog had a behind-the-scenes controversy recently, and the “winning” side was actually the minority.

Good faith requires such things, and good faith is essential to the smooth running of a republic. This is the essential truth that was lost in the recent Congressional controversy. The parties just can’t take turns steamrolling each other—that threatens stability.

We all don’t have to agree, but agreeing to disagree only gets us halfway there.

We have to agree to agree, despite our reservations. That’s the heart of “consensus,” and of this American republic.

It’s sort of—if I may—like “love, honor, and obey” in a Christian marriage:

As a nation, we “love and honor” each other quite seldom, like how we responded to being attacked by The Axis in WWII, and even for a brief time after 9-11.

But who, in any decent marriage, doesn’t “obey” their husband or wife when push comes to shove in a Big Decision, no matter who’s “stronger” or weaker?

As citizens of a republic, we obey each other. That’s how it works. Sometimes majority rules. Sometimes the majority obeys the minority, out of respect for the other. This is good will, and good faith, because no republic, no marriage, can survive without both.

I think even the congressional Democrats realize now that they steamrolled their fellow Americans on this Obamacare thing, in pursuit of what they honestly thought is good for the country. And regret it, because it wasn’t right and it was disrespectful to the rest of us.

They didn’t get a single GOP vote. They ignored the polls. They made no effort at consensus. It was un-republican [small "r"], and it was un-American.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And the 1-0 pitch…

Click here to view the embedded video.

You’re a little left there Mr. President. Could it be an omen for his next SCOTUS pick?