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Call to Sacrifice

Video: ABC's This Week
Obama Tells Stephanapolous
Everyone Must Sacrifice For
"The Greater Good"

View the Clip HERE.

Pat McCrory never borrowed a dime to finance his campaign

Only four hours into her term as North Carolina's first female governor (if that's what she wants as her theme, so be it...) tireless Frank Rouse reports: BEVERLY WATCH:

Lets start off this edition of "Beverly Watch" with a link to a story about a N. C. Democrat Party fundraiser. Excerpts: The January 22 party at a private Raleigh home solicits donations from attendees ranging from $500 for a "Friend" to $10,000 for a "Host." Perdue's campaign finance reports show she and her husband Bob Eaves loaned her campaign more than $900,000 and the loans are outstanding.

A spokeswoman for the Democratic Party says the fundraiser was for the Party, not Perdue. Yet the invitation tells those wishing to attend to RSVP to Perdue's Web site: (- WRAL News Story)

And, now for the VIDEO!

Attached above is a copy of the invitation, and if all of this isn't enough, here's a blog entry from the Greensboro News and Record.

Raise hell about this. Don't let her make a mockery of the election laws. We've been pushed around too much by character-challenged Democrats. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!

The gov-elect raising money through the Democrat Party to pay off her debt…this unlimited individual money, then transferred to pay back money she and her husband lent her campaign is wrong. Lending her campaign her own money and then getting paid back by powerful interests, after the election is over and without the public knowing before the election… is just wrong!

Pat McCrory never borrowed a dime to finance his campaign and finished debt free.

Frank A. Rouse, Morehead City
far@frankarouse.com
252-808-0050

Republican Revival Will Start in the States

By STEVE MOORE

The Weekend Inteview: WSJ Online

Haley Barbour has a message for Republicans still dispirited by the November elections: "We've been in a lot worse shape than this. . . . When I first started working in politics during the Watergate era only 16% of Americans identified themselves as Republicans." He recalls one incident in the mid 1970s when "Mary Louise Smith, the chairman of the party, appointed a committee to change the name of the party. You can't get much lower than that."

Read more HERE.

Message from State Auditor Les Merritt - Final Day in Office

Distributed via e-mail today

Dear Friends,

Today is my last day as your State Auditor. It has been a privilege and an honor to serve as The Taxpayers' Watchdog for the past four years, and I believe our team has made a positive difference for the people of North Carolina.

During the past four years, we accomplished a number of important things:

▪ Reduced a backlog of investigative audits -- some more than three years old -- by 76%.

▪ Took steps to ensure that state-funded non-profits, which spend hundreds of millions of your tax dollars, file the required reports disclosing how they spend your money. When I took office, nearly 1,000 of those non-profits had failed to file the required reports. We took action, and within a few months nearly 90% of that group had filed the required reports.

▪ In an effort to be pro-active and prevent problems from developing in the first place, we launched a new initiative to educate personnel from funding agencies and grant recipients on key issues related to compliance and transparency. Our staff has now trained in excess of 10,000 personnel from funding agencies and grant recipients.

▪ We shortened the processing time for non-profit reports from five months in 2005 to approximately three days in 2007.

▪ We exposed 27,000 invalid Social Security numbers being used in six separate state entities.

▪ In another effort to be pro-active, we developed a "strategic auditing" process to help identify unusual trends and potential problems in state spending. The strategic auditing process uses existing hardware, software and skills in the Information System Auditing Division to analyze millions of state transactions -- far more than normally are checked during a regular agency audit.

▪ In another effort to be pro-active, we launched a new initiative in January 2008 to follow up with previously audited agencies to ensure that they are actually making the needed changes identified in earlier audits.

▪ We conducted approximately 50% more performance audits during 2005-2008 than were released during 2001-2004. This increased emphasis on performance audits comes in spite of the fact that in 2005 numerous performance audit staffers were shifted to help clean up the backlog of investigative audits.

Our staff has worked hard to transform the Office of the State Auditor into a more pro-active agency that works to prevent problems rather than simply cleaning them up after the fact, and I am proud of our efforts.

In closing, please join me in congratulating Beth Wood on her election as our next State Auditor. I wish Beth well, and I hope she will continue to make the Office of the State Auditor a more pro-active agency and that she will aggressively hold politicians in both parties accountable for how they spend our tax dollars.

Thank you again for the privilege of serving as State Auditor for the past four years. It has been an honor.

Sincerely,

Leslie W. Merritt, CPA
State Auditor of North Carolina

Milwaukee to open nation's first "Gay" Middle School

The intent is not assimilation. The GOP underestimates the nature of our political opposition, and moderate though some might fancy themselves, the opposition will not allow us to define the terms of the debate. They will call this freedom. We must call it segregation.

Kathleen Gilbert
LifeSiteNews

Milwaukee's Alliance School, one of the few officially "gay-friendly" high schools in the country, has been given clearance to extend their pro-homosexual curriculum to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.

The proposal went through easily last month, with the city's board of education unanimously approving it by default, as it was not pulled for further discussion or a vote. Tina Owen, Lead Teacher of Alliance, said they would be accepting applications from middle-school-age children for the 2009-10 school year immediately.

Marty Lexmond, the director of school innovation for Milwaukee Public Schools, told U.S. News and World Report that such an institution was needed to help adolescents, who are now increasingly publicly identifying their sexual orientation as early as middle school.

Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute was dismayed that the motion went through with no discernable opposition.

"I'm stunned that the religious leaders, the Christian pastors in Milwaukee, did not rise up in righteous indignation against this school," lamented Higgins. "That is what I find perhaps equally [as] troubling, if not more so."

"I think it's unconscionable to be affirming this in public schools," said Higgins. "This is not an issue for public schools. And kids at 11- and 12- and 13- and 14-[years of age] are confused on many issues - sexuality [being] one of them."

Regina Griggs, executive director of the group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), agreed.

"To affirm an 11-year-old? Please," said Griggs. "They haven't even gone through puberty, but they know that they want to have sex with other men and women? I'm sorry, but it's ridiculous."

The original Alliance high school opened four years ago, also with little opposition. Other similar plans across the country, however, have not had it as easy as the Milwaukee school.

In Chicago, plans for a "gay-friendly" high school were recently delayed due to concerns from both sides of the debate, as some feared that the plans amounted to segregating homosexuals. And when Manhattan's Harvey Milk High School opened in 2003, named for an openly homosexual politician of the 1970s, students met with protesters outside the school's doors.

Why Pat McCrory isn't seeking another term...