More than anything else right now, what this country needs is leadership, backbone and vision. Unfortunately, the problem, as foreign affairs analyst Nile Gardiner recently observed, is that the Obama presidency “increasingly resembles a modern-day Ancien Régime: extravagant, decaying and out of touch with ordinary Americans.

During a White House Islamic celebration Friday, President Barack Obama gave his strong support for a mosque to be built at Ground Zero in New York City, in keeping with the “great diversity” of Islam which “has always been a part of America.”

“Conservatives, being conservatives, have a soft spot for the good old days…” Nostalgia can run rampant at class reunions, but sometimes it reminds us of things with which we need to keep in touch.

After the lavish, taxpayer-funded trip to Spain by First Lady Michelle Obama and entourage, she has been compared to Marie Antoinette. If Michelle is like Marie Antoinette to whom shall we compare Barack? The thought that he’s Louis XVI is unthinkable. George III is too easy.

The best of the best from Dakota Voice last week, including: Tea Party Infiltrator Caught on Camera; Obama Involved in Sherrod Black Farmer Lawsuit Payout; Journalists Versus Black Conservatives; Ground Zero Mosque Opponents Censored, File Suit; Barack Obama Has No Class; Obama Administration Promoting the Transmission of AIDS; Condoning Homosexuality in Military Culture Threatens Freedom; and more!

You know that a lot of your money was wasted on the nearly $1 trillion in porkulus, er, stimulus funding bill passed last year, right? You probably had no idea how fantastically much of your money was wasted on so many fantastically stupid and useless things, did you? Take this test of real and fake spending projects…then vote accordingly in November.

Some Democrats have read the Tea leaves this year and recognized that if they have any hope of getting re-elected in November, they will have to run against their own party, or hide what party they belong to. How do you know a loser agenda (like the liberal Democrat agenda?) when you see one? The people pushing it won’t be seen in public anywhere near it.

Despots come in all sizes and shapes and their robes aren’t always purple. Sometimes they are black. Do Americans today have the courage and conviction of our forebears? Do we have what it takes to secure our freedom? Have we become a nation of sheep? Will we be governed by the courts or by the Constitution?

Priorities in Washington have always been influenced by who’s got the money as opposed to who’s got the ideas. Today more than ever. And for the poor? The main way to end the poverty cycle is to get poor children educated. And it’s the teachers’ unions that fight school choice.

A new Tea Party group was announced in Rapid City today: the South Dakota Tea Party Alliance. Formed by several former members of the board of Citizens for Liberty, along with radio talk show host Shad Olson, the group plans an aggressive agenda for political engagement in Rapid City and working with other Tea Party groups across South Dakota to promote a return to constitutional government.

Much has been written about the harm that illegal aliens cause to Americans, legal aliens, hospitals, governments, and others in the U.S. In this article, we see how the illegal alien problem harms America’s senior citizens.

Truly, our country is currently being run by a group of enemies of America; there can be no question about it to anyone with even one eye half-open. And at the head of the treacherous pack is Barack Obama, a man without an ounce of class.

Democrats just can’t seem to catch a break these days. Surveys and polls all over the place are revealing that they’re out of touch and their approval rating is scratching the bottom of the trash can. Confidence in congress is at historic lows, and the American people are fed up with the entrenched ineffectiveness and self-serving nature of these so-called leaders.

Who is accountable? Who is immune? How much does it cost to have a chance to win? Or, is the game rigged and the poor (or disfavored) need not apply? Does it matter who (or what) is right? Or is it a matter of who is on what side and how much money and manpower [...]

In what sounds to be a reasonable proposal, it would surely be a test of Muslim tolerance of the type that they have been preaching about to us. Proposed names for the bar under serious consideration include: “Suspicious Packages,” “Turbin Cowboy,” “You Mecca Me Hot” and “Jihunk.”

It’s a beautiful thing when the electorate has their eyes wide open. And the latest poll finding that 57% of likely voters consider the Democrat agenda “extreme” indicates a healthy number of Americans are wide awake. No wonder congressional and presidential approval ratings are down the drain.

A new survey finds that half of Democrats polled believe that soldiers who oppose homosexual behavior should be punished, regardless of their religious beliefs. But as the president of the Center for Security Policy reveals, forcing open homosexual behavior onto the military may not just be a career-destroyer for some soldiers: it may crucially damage the effectiveness of the U.S military altogether.

In a government-run medical system, there is a lot of room for charges to slip through the cracks…and into the lap of the patient. Sometimes the government fails to do its part; in others, medical providers may fail to communicate properly with government payment agencies. Either way, the consumer is often left holding the bill.

Apparently the soon-to-be-replaced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is getting very desperate. He’s whipping out the race card and playing it with brazen ferocity: “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican. Okay? Do I need to say more?”

More information is still coming in on Shirley Sherrod, and the video of her confession of racism was just the tip of the iceberg. We recently learned after the Obama Administration quickly threw her under the bus that she and her husband had received $13 million in a discrimination lawsuit settlement, and that some of the numbers associated with that lawsuit don’t add up. Now it is coming to light that one Senator Barack Obama helped push through legislation making thousands more alleged discrimination victims eligible for a seat on this gravy train.

It just isn’t looking good for President Barack Obama and by extension the re-election chances of his socialist, er, Democrat friends in congress. Zogby’s latest poll results find Obama’s negatives outweigh his positives in all of 13 major policy areas. Maybe he should do congressional Democrats up for re-election a favor and just go on vacation until after the election is over.

Pamela Geller, with the group Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and the American Freedom Defense Initiative, contracted with CBS Outdoor to place “Preservation of Ground Zero” advertisements against the proposed mosque at Ground Zero in New York on Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) buses. But MTA refused to run the ad because the plane that appeared to be flying into the Twin Towers was “objectionable.”

For several months we’ve known liberals were so desperate to smear the Tea Party movement they were willing to infiltrate Tea Party events and behave in a racist or otherwise negative manner. The latest one seems to be a fellow by the name of Tyler Clay Collins who showed up at an event in Kentucky over the weekend attempting to portray himself as a tinfoil hat-wearing Rand Paul supporter.

It’s extremely rare that you’ll see a Muslim condemn anything done by another Muslim, up to and including acts of terrorism, but Raheel Raza’s recent column in the Ottowa Citizen does just that, recognizing the proposed mosque at Ground Zero in New York City for what it is: a deliberate insult to America at the site where Muslim extremists killed nearly 3,000 Americans in one day.

When liberals are in charge of our government, there really isn’t any policy or action that is so insane you could say, “No, there’s no way they’d do that.” So it is that we learn the Obama Administration wants to put HIV-positive prisoners into general prison populations and expose other prisoners to this deadly disease. The administration also wants to decriminalize the intentional exposure of another person to HIV by an infected person.