Category Archives: Expository

The four most important words you’ll hear this Christmas

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Hark the herald angels sing,
Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled.

One ubiquitous Christmas holiday phrase is “Peace on Earth.” As the hymn above shows, that is entirely appropriate; however, we tend to assign an earthly context to it by mistake. It’s not about peace between men at all; rather, it means peace between men and God. Those four most important words I alluded to in the title are the last four in the verse above: “God and sinners reconciled.” That is the source of peace on earth.

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:13-14)

That peace and good will didn’t transmit from man to man; it came from God to all men. Since the fall of Adam, that peace between God and men did not exist. By giving the gift of His son, however, God was offering that peace and good will to men once again:

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

There’s your peace…

“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.” (Romans 5:18)

Repeatedly in the Old and New Testaments, the Bible reminds us that “there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Romans 3:23 points out that “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” We need as Savior, one whose birth we celebrate each Christmas. As the angel told Joseph:

“Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20)

This was the Savior foretold by the prophets. For example:

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

God’s desire is to restore that fellowship and peace, reconciling (see those four important words once again) us to Him through his Son:

“For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled…”

If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know that I believe what Jesus says in the Bible: “you must be born again.” He means that in order to be forgiven and assured a place in heaven, you must put your faith and trust in Him. We can not do anything to assuage the sin that we carry in our lives; only He can.

By placing your belief and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive your sins, acknowledging that He made the only sufficient sacrifice for them on the cross, you can be saved. Only then will you be able to truly partake in that “peace on earth” that the angel of the Lord spoke of when declaring good news to those shepherds.

I love the spirit of Christmas as much as, if not more than, the next guy… but the joy, the spirit, the family time, the celebrations, the lights, the gifts… those are all simply a by-product and a shadow of the joy that God extends to each and every person through His son, the one through whom we enjoy unspeakable joy and peace each Christmas and throughout the year.

With all due respect, I think you’re a little late

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alcohol_billboard_60d_0081I have seen this billboard, or one similar to it, a couple of times. I finally had to stop and take a quick photo because I think it reveals a problematic mindset.  Your opinion may vary from mine, but I think that age 13 is far too late to be teaching our children about alcohol.

I’ve never been into drinking.  When I was younger, I didn’t see my parents do it – other than perhaps a single Fuzzy Navel or something at a wedding.  My dad had more alcohol in the house than I bet 99% of American households, but he didn’t drink it; he collected unique bottles, cans, and miniatures.  What I had witnessed in other people consuming alcohol was the change in their behavior, and it didn’t seem like something worthy of pursuit.  Thankfully my parents backed those observations up with admonishments about what alcohol can do to people’s behavior and consequences to its use.

Later, as I became an adult and my childhood love of motorcycles really took off, I definitely wanted nothing to do with alcohol.  I used to say that alcohol was “against my religion”: motorcycling.  This was, of course, before becoming a Christian.  I simply knew that alcohol would severely impact my ability to ride, and that was unacceptable.

Meanwhile, having accompanied friends to Shades or other bars or nightclubs, I couldn’t see a point to alcohol consumption or hanging out in places dedicated to it.  I’m thankful for that too.

The Bible warns about alcohol, in that “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” (Proverbs 20:1)  Based on my experiences above, and my convictions now as a Christian, I’m quite fine doing without alcohol or its effects.  And I’ve never needed it to have a good time.

Wow, I’ve really digressed, but I felt it important to give some background.  Now back to my original point: if you have convictions one way or another about alcohol, 13 is far too late to talk to your children about it.  By then your behavior has probably influenced them way more than your words will be able to.  If they grow up around people consuming alcohol, they’ve already formed their own perceptions.  If they see it as perfectly acceptable behavior, good luck lecturing that out of them.

Our children were told about alcohol, how my wife and I feel about it, and what the Bible says about it when they were around the age of four.  They watch a kids’ gospel western show that has an episode devoted to it, and it sparked curiosity in them.  Their questions prompted us to tell them our stance on alcohol consumption from a personal, practical, and biblical perspective.  We train them on so many other things, alcohol is just one more part of the picture.

At some point they’re going to be old enough to face those choices for themselves, and I’m not going to try to shelter them from that.  In the mean time, I’m making sure not to squander the opportunity to teach them while they’re young, explain why we believe what we do, and help them apply that long with everything else we teach them.

Frankly, by age 13 I’m sure many kids have already had exposure to alcohol.  If they run into that at such a fragile age with no preparation by their parents they’re going to be at a far greater risk to make poor decisions.  Peer pressure is all but unbearable at that age, so unless a child has a firm foundation it’ll be very hard to resist.

I appreciate the well-meaning message of this billboard.  I simply think its message needs to be applied much earlier.  Parents leading by example will help reinforce the admonishment they give their children.  With all our children face at the age of 13, they had better be well trained already.  Otherwise they’re getting too little too late.

It’s okay, Bismarck; the sand is safe

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safe_sand_28754I just got done running a bunch of errands for my wife and myself, from Menards to south Walmart and points in between.  I’m glad to count myself not among one of the unlucky drivers rammed by an out-of-state “new arrival” winter driving noob, or who kissed a curb because a seemingly innocent looking turning lane was actually a rocket chute to disaster, or who realized that being able to brake or turn safely is a privilege not always available to everyone.  No, I was one of the lucky drivers who was able to drift around town in four wheel drive with my Spidey sense tingling but made it home intact.

I had to run to the south Walmart in my travels, so I thought I’d inspect the Public Works building on South 26th Street to see what kind of preparations were underway.  After all, tomorrow morning brings the start of a busy work week, and seemingly every intersection in town has been glazed to Zamboni-esque perfection.  As you can see above, those responsible for making things safe for local drivers must be tucked snugly away with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads or something.

It was maddening to see absolutely ZERO sand or gravel applied to major intersections. For example, the top of 9th Street – where one turns onto State Street to continue north – had a particular mirror-like sheen that made the right turn extremely treacherous, and doing so without either ramming a curb or drifting into the adjacent lane a feat of skill.  Then to see that apparently nobody’s gearing up to do it later is infuriating.  Crashing is dangerous and expensive.

This reminds me of when I left Bismarck to attend NDSU.  I looked outside in astonishment that the City of Fargo was actually plowing the streets while it was still snowing!  I’d never seen anything like that.  No matter how bad and impassible Bismarck roads seem to get, it becomes apparent that someone must make the decision to keep all snow removal assets in the garage until the snow stops.  After all, we’d hate to have to clear a street twice, wouldn’t we?

Watch out in the morning.  You’ve been warned.

The real Thanksgiving

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Public education teaches us that Thanksgiving was a day in which the poor, helpless, hapless settlers gave thanks to the Indians for saving them from extinction in their new colony. While the settlers did have good relations with native people all around them, and both parties benefited from these friendships, this account of the story is wrong. These colonists set aside a day of thanksgiving to God.

I noticed that even our Dear Leader got it wrong, intentionally or otherwise. Today’s Thanksgiving Day address states, “We give thanks for…people who were already here, our Native American brothers and sisters, for their generosity during that first Thanksgiving.”  As recently as 2011, President Obama’s proclamation on Thanksgiving Day, inaccurately declared that “The feast honored the Wampanoag for generously extending their knowledge of local game and agriculture to the Pilgrims…” but this was not the case.

One only needs to examine the writings of William Bradford, governor of Plymouth, to find the following (which you can read for free on archive.org):

I may not here omite how, notwithstand all their great paines and industrie, and the great hops of a large cropp, the Lord seemed to blast, and take away the same, and to threaten further and more sore famine unto them, by a great drought which continued from the 3. weeke in May, till about the midle of July, without any raine, and with great heat (for the most parte), insomuch as the come begane to wither away, though it was set with fishe, the moysture wherof helped it much. Yet at length it begane to languish sore, and some of the drier grounds were partched like withered hay, part wherof was never recovered. Upon which they sett a parte a solemne day of humilliation, to seek the Lord by humble and fervente prayer, in this great distrese. And he was pleased to give them a gracious and speedy answer, both to thier owne and the Indeans admiration, that lived amongest them. For all the morning, and greatest part of the day, it was clear weather and very hotte, and not a cloud or any signe of raine I to be seen, yet toward evening it begane to overcast, and shortly after to raine, with shuch sweete and gentle showers, as gave them cause of rejoyceing, and blesing God. It came, without either wind, or thunder, or any violence, and by degreese in that abundance, as that the earth was thorowly wete and soked therwith. Which did so apparently revive and quicken the decayed come and other fruits, as was wonderfull to see, and made the Indeans astonished to behold; and afterwards the Lord sent them shuch seasonable showers, with enterchange of faire warme weather, as, through his blessing, caused a fruitfull and liberall harvest, to their no small comforte and rejoycing. For which mercie (in time conveniente) they also sett aparte a day of thanksgiveing. This being overslipt in its place, I thought meet here to inserte the same.

In the grateful and humble spirit in which our nation was founded, I plan for our family to spend this extended weekend giving thanks to God. Yes, there will be football, but only as part of fellowship as we remember and account all for which we can be thankful. We still live in the greatest nation on earth and enjoy the fruits of those principles set forth by the founders of this nation and the God whose providence has been showered upon us for well over two hundred years.

Now that the stores are opening on Thanksgiving Day, I have decreed that nobody in our family will go out shopping on Thursday.  I may do some online shopping on Friday now that retailers are starting to wise up and mirror some in-store deals online.  If you have different convictions than mine, that’s your business.  Have fun.  But I’ve had it with the commercialization of the holidays and choose not to take part.

Extremist left-wing enviro hate group’s propaganda accuses ND power plants of killing people

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Someone gave me this flyer that they were handed outside the federal building on 3rd and Rosser last week:sierra_club_propaganda It comes from that well-known enemy of personal property rights, the Sierra Club, and it accuses MDU’s Heskett Station power plant of killing eight people per year as well as causing a litany of horrible medical problems.  It exhorts the recipient to contact Sierra Club shill Wayde Schafer to “join us in our campaign to encourage Montana-Dakota Utilities to be a good neighbor by transitioning our community beyond coal and investing in clean energy”.

Riiiiiiiiight.

catf_propaganda_mapThey go on to cite a map from “non-partisan” Clean Air Task Force (ahem) which performs the service of putting these scary black circles on a map wherever there’s a facility generating energy for North Dakotans.  Their website indicates that they pretty much hate any power generation that doesn’t come from a “renewable” source, although even they seem to agree that turning corn into ethanol-based gasoline is a disaster.  They don’t like coal, they don’t like oil, they don’t like gas, and they’re motivated by Global Cooling Global Warming Climate Change™, a phenomenon whose only purported solution is global socialism.

ala_sota_2013Oddly enough, if you go to the American Lung Association’s website you can find a report that’s three years newer (CATF’s is from “estimated 2010 impacts”) in their 2013 State of the Air report (PDF).  In it, North Dakota gets phenomenal reviews for its air quality.  If you want to pick a group that’s “non-partisan” I suggest looking at the ALA before believing anything from a site that won’t be happy until we’re one step removed from the stone age.  North Dakota’s data from the report is available at this link if you don’t want to download the PDF.

ala_bismarck_honored_2013It didn’t take more than a few seconds to find this release, also from the American Lung Association, congratulating Bismarck (which is downwind from Heskett and most of those other nasty black dots on the CATF map most of the time) on receiving an “A” grade.  From the report:

“The State of the Air Report covers eight counties in North Dakota that have permanent air quality monitors: Billings, Burke, Burleigh, Cass, Dunn, McKenzie, Mercer and Oliver. This year’s report looks at data collected from 2009-2011 time period and verified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

That doesn’t sound like the cesspool of black death alleged by the CATF and amplified by the radical hatemongers at the Sierra Club in their propaganda, does it?  If you’re handed stuff like this from extremist liberal groups, take my advice and take whatever they tell you with a grain of salt.  Do your own research.  It won’t be hard to find easy refutations to their propaganda.

I intentionally used terms like “radical”, “extremist”, “hate group”, et cetera because that’s what these leftist use to label anyone who disagrees with them.  It works both ways, commie.

Time for a little Photoshop

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heidi-howThe Democrats have not passed a budget, something they’re required to do by the Constitution of the United States, in YEARS.  Rather than have their spending actually show up on a piece of paper, they’ve relied on “continuing resolutions” to break the law and borrow more money from China.  This is not only unsustainable, but it’s illegal – and it’s the REAL reason for the government shutdown right now.

Heidi Heitkamp, self-proclaimed “Independent Voice™ for North Dakota”, is in lockstep with her political party.  Given the fact that she has aligned herself with them, and not the majority of her constituents, I decided to play in Photoshop a little bit.

Click on the image for a full size version.  Please feel free to download and share.  Have a good weekend!

When government happens and nobody’s watching

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county_commission_28086I admit it: I’m often way too busy to attend the various board, commission, and committee meetings that take place as the gears of our local government grind away.  If nobody attends, though, those gears threaten to grind away at our liberty.  Who then do we blame?  I’ve come to the conclusion that we have the government we deserve.

Case in point: last night’s Burleigh County Commission meeting on adopting a Home Rule Charter. I tentatively agree that we need a new jail, although I’m intrigued by others’ opinions that many are jailed unnecessarily while awaiting trial or detox and that rehabilitation of convicted criminals here is not proportional to incarceration.  As we plod ahead toward building a costly new correctional facility, the best way to do it is with a home rule charter and temporary sales tax (yeah, I know).

A group of people are going about the process of designing that charter, and a meeting last night was held for public information and comment.  The room was nearly empty.

When sales taxes in Burleigh County increase by a half percent, will you notice?  If so, will you be upset?  If you’re upset, do you know why?  If you know why, is it because you disagree with the idea of funding the jail with sales tax instead of property tax?  Unless the answer to ALL of the above questions is YES, please do us a favor and shut up…unless you’ve actually attended any of these meetings and given your input.

By the way, despite hundreds of millions of dollars of ill-conceived “shell game” property tax buy-downs by the state legislature, last night the Commission voted to raise your taxes again.  I had to leave before that portion of the meeting, unfortunately, but I did watch the feed live online.  You can do so on the Dakota Media Access website.

I know we’re all busy…heck, I rarely find time to get to one of these meetings.  I do, however, try to stay on top of issues that are important to me and make arrangements to attend those.  When I do, I try to arrive with a well informed and thoroughly pondered opinion and a willingness to walk to the podium and make it known if I think it will contribute to the discussion.  I wish I could make them all, but we’re understandably busy.

Busy or not, these commissions meet and make decisions that affect your daily life, your liberty, your property, and your prosperity.  “I was busy” is of little consolation when  you find yourself on the wrong end of some board’s policy decision…so stay informed, get involved when you can, and let’s hold our local government accountable.

Kudos to KFYR; profanity has no place in public discourse

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Posting has been a little light (okay, I haven’t posted at all) in the past week because of a big live production event I needed to prepare for and execute. In times like that I usually resort to simply posting snippets on this blog’s Facebook page or Twitter feed.

Let me preface this post by saying I have no animosity toward AJ Clemente. He was nervous, goofed up…sure, we all do that. However, I do think KFYR-TV, my former employer, did the right thing by terminating him.

First, some random thoughts on the whole debacle:

– If you screw up at any job you’re likely to be reprimanded. If you screw up really big at any job you can expect dismissal. Dropping the F-bomb in your first sentence on the air is a big screw-up. Period.

– People who I know who know AJ Clemente say he’s a nice guy, a good kid and taking it all humbly. Good deal, I wish him the best. I hope he learns this valuable lesson and cleans up his language off camera, like I had to do back when I was in broadcasting. Thankfully I was in the control room instead of on the set, or I may have had a similar incident before I straightened out.

– It looked like there were a few audio and communication problems. For instance, the music cut out during the headlines. There may have been something amiss. Even so, when you’re in a TV studio at 5:59pm, you ought to assume that your microphone will be open without warning.

– It looked like AJ said “gay” at first. If you keep watching though, it appears that he’s trying to pronounce the name of the London Marathon winner, Tsegaye Kebede. If you had to figure out the pronunciation of that name for your broadcast debut, you’d be flustered too. Of course, that stuff should be figured out before the newscast starts. The sad thing is, people of a certain ideological persuasion won’t have any problem with the F-word or S-word, but will be “offended” by the perceived use of “gay” in a bad context. Sad.

– Before I became a Christian, which would be during my long stretch at KFYR-TV, I was well versed in the use of the F-word and other profanity…so I’m not acting high & mighty. I’m speaking from experience: if you don’t talk like that in your daily conversation, you won’t blurt it out on the air. In fact, I bet AJ would not have said it if Monica Hannan or other KFYR-TV management was sitting in the studio to observe. But when your guard is let down, and your mouth is trained to spout profanity, bad things can happen.

– It’s totally ironic that the TODAY Show led off with the story Monday morning, and KFYR had to carry it. I am told that AJ will be making some TV appearances this week, including on LIVE! with Kelly and Michael, another show carried on KFYR. Awkward.

– Letterman’s Top Ten List was pretty funny, though. Thankfully it’s available online so I don’t have to suffer through what his show has become to catch the list.

– By the way, there are plenty of broadcasters from my time who I never heard utter a profanity – even off camera. You’d recognize them because they have had long, respectable careers in North Dakota broadcasting and in many cases are still on the air. As you can imagine, it’s easy to have additional respect for those people because of their behavior.

– By the way, when I worked at KFYR-TV it was expected that all employees, not just on-air personalities, conduct themselves in a way that reflects the station in a professional manner. That included off the job. When you deal in a product and brand so publicly seen, that’s the nature of the business. Every move you make is viewed by thousands of eyes, everybody deals with your business on a frequent basis, and you represent that. My view on it is that if you don’t like the scrutiny, perhaps broadcasting isn’t the job for you.

– There have been well-known broadcasters terminated because of what they did in their private lives, because it reflects on their employer. Again, that’s the nature of the business.

– I’m dismayed at all the people who think AJ was treated unfairly. This is going to be day four of KFYR-TV being dragged through national news because of this incident. If you did something to put your employer in this kind of national spotlight, do you think you’d still have a job?

– This brings up the larger issue: profanity should not be an accepted part of public discourse. It’s called profanity because it is profane. The fact that so many people think it isn’t is a sure sign that things are heading in the wrong direction in our culture, even here in good ol’ North Dakota.

– This event was preceded by baseball player David Ortiz yelling, “This is our f***ing city!” at a baseball game when talking about the Boston Marathon Islamic terrorist attack. People cheered this deplorable outburst, and the FCC said it wouldn’t fine anybody. Why? Has this language suddenly become acceptable?

– One interesting tidbit is all the Generation-Y types who say, “Come on, KFYR – your page has had more Facebook likes than ever because of this!” as if that’s a meaningful metric of anything. Only in the self-absorbed world of the modern social media junkie, perhaps.

So, once again, I hope AJ can recover from this and hopefully make some vocabulary adjustments. It’s too bad to have a simple rookie mistake take on such magnitude. Maybe this notoriety will help him get back on his feet and get a second chance. I sure hope so, and wish him the best. I still think KFYR-TV did the right thing, and will be seen as an establishment which does not condone profanity – a position which I think reflects the majority of North Dakotans.

Conrad and Dorgan: No longer masquerading as North Dakota residents

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Now that he’s no longer carpetbagging for a North Dakota senate seat, Byron Dorgan can finally be honest about where he’s really lived for the last twenty years: Virginia. The former senator’s home has been featured in Home & Design magazine.

It may be news to you, but the meager apartment buildings above are where Senators Conrad and Dorgan claimed to live “on paper” so they’d be eligible to run for office as representatives of North Dakota. I lived in one of these buildings, and (if the Senators’ appliances were the same olive green as mine) they were hardly what one would expect of a United States Senator. No worries, though…I never ran into either of them while living there, and I doubt these apartments were more than a technicality to facilitate their re-election. They are the addresses they used to claim residency.

This ornate hand-written address label no longer exists, so I suppose the Senator and Kim have moved on. After all, there’s no reason to have a North Dakota address anymore. Certainly these lavish accommodations in no way compare to their Virginia mansion.

In case you’re a new reader, you probably don’t know that former senator Kent Conrad actually owns these two buildings via an LLC that he formed. If you only frequent North Dakota media, you probably don’t know that Senator Conrad was under ethics investigation for a sweetheart mortage deal from Countrywide Financial on this property, which consists of sixteen units in two buildings, even though the company’s policy for the rest of us is to finance nothing larger than a four-plex. Democrats even went to the point of changing the locks on committee room doors to prevent Senator Conrad’s conduct from being discovered!

Isn’t a corruption investigation involving a United States Senator from our state newsworthy? Apparently not. Oddly enough, KFYR/KXMB/WDAY seemed uninterested in this circus; same with the Tribune, Forum, or other state newspaper groups. In fact, this scandal didn’t seem newsworthy to them until after a Democrat committee chaired by a co-conspirator let Kent Conrad off the hook. THEN it was front-page news. If I was an assignment editor or news director at one of these organizations, I’d be asking myself some tough questions after either missing this or willfully ignoring it. If some blogger with a few minutes of spare time and a Google search can come up with piles of relevant information but their newscasts and printed pages contained nothing, isn’t that cause for a little self-examination?

Oh, and about Senator Gaylord “Kent” Conrad: don’t think that he was left out of the “expensive east coast mansion” situation. He has a million dollar house on a Delaware beach that didn’t show up on his financial disclosure reports.

I wonder if newly-elected “independent voice™” Heidi Heitkamp is paging through the real estate pages out there on the east coast?

Bismarck Tribune omits two important words from my letter to the editor: Heidi Heitkamp

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About a week ago a letter I wrote to the editor of the Bismarck Tribune was printed. In it I called upon Senator John Hoeven to back North Dakotans’ view of gun control, reminding him to do more than just be “not Byron Dorgan.” I just posted the video of that original exhortation a few days ago, so scroll down if you haven’t seen it.

My writing style tends to be verbose at times, albeit not nearly to Clay Jenkinson levels, so I chose my words carefully. The original letter is posted below:

Dear Senator Hoeven,

Thank you for voting for the “fiscal cliff” deal to raise taxes on 77% of Americans, including my little family. Our tax increase is equivalent to picking out a monthly bill and doubling it, although you Washington types claim it was only punishing “the rich.”

At a Take Back Washington Summit a few years ago, I mentioned that we wanted you to win that Senate seat and be more than just “not Byron Dorgan.” Those high hopes are beginning to fade, especially after watching you waffle on 2nd Amendment rights on C-SPAN. Please reconsider who you represent: North Dakotans want no part of the gun control Senator Heitkamp’s ilk are proposing.

I wish I could keep the faith, Senator…but you need to earn it. You said, “We’ll have to see…” when asked about gun control. I felt the same way about your term in the Senate, and what I’ve seen so far is not what North Dakotans need from their Senator. I expect you’ll ask us to send you back for another term in a couple of years; please give us some reasons to do so by standing up for our constitutional rights.

I’ve seen longer letters to the editor, so I figured that I was within limits and likely to see my entire letter printed. So it was, minus one line inconvenient to North Dakota Democrats:

“North Dakotans want no part of the gun control Senator Heitkamp’s ilk are proposing.”

To whom am I referring? It could be the North Dakota Democrats who introduced their own weapons and magazine ban legislation in the state legislature this session: House Bill 1415 and House Bill 1416 (click on them to read the text in PDF format on the legislature’s website). These bills have since been yanked without discussion to avoid embarrassing Democrats.

On the national stage, who is it that’s talking about “gun control” (actually “people control” if they’re honest)? Democrats.

Who’s been quoted as saying that the American people need to be “brainwashed” when it comes to guns? Attorney General Eric Holder, a Democrat.

Who has said, “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States, for an outright ban, picking up everyone of them (every gun) Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in. I would have done it”? Senator Feinstein, a Democrat.

Who is taking to the stages across America and lecturing us once more on what we “need” – this time for hunting? Democrats.

Senator Heitkamp herself has had to perform an intricate dance in order to placate the fringe groups who helped her win her Senate seat as well as her party masters in Washington, DC who want to charge full-tilt toward gun control…all while trying to cling to the “independent voice for North Dakotans” mantra on which her campaign was based within our state’s borders. If she wants help from the Democrat National Committee in another five years, she’d better deliver on the liberalism. Doing so will remind North Dakotans what happens when you send another partisan leftist to DC our behalf.

Given the fact that Heitkamp’s support came largely from out-of-state organizations seeking to enforce a Democrat majority in the Senate, I expect her loyalties to continue to lie with those whose values oppose those of North Dakotans, as do the loyalties of Democrats even within our own legislature. For some reason, making even a passing remark about this association is too much for the Bismarck Tribune to let slide.