By Theodore King

Paul Ryan

The Republican and Democrat Conventions

The Health and Human Services Mandate

The Harbinger

In a rare attempt at reform, the U.S. House of Representatives on July 23rd by a vote of 327 to 98 with only one Republican -- Bob Turner of New York -- voting no, passed Ron Paul's H.R. 459, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2011 (aka Audit the Fed). All five members of the Oklahoma delegation voted for this good and needed bill.

If the Senate takes up and passes the bill and the president signs it into law (not all of which events may happen), the Federal Reserve Bank will be audited for the first time in its 99 years. H.R. 459 authorizes the Government Accountability Office to audit this institution, which is a collection of private banks that set monetary policy for the federal government.

Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is a good pick for Governor Romney. He has proved to be a good campaigner with no scandals or other distractions. He is probably more conservative by conviction than Romney.

Ryan, as many of you probably know, has Oklahoma ties through his wife, Janna, who is a native of Madill in Marshall County. She is related to former governor, senator, and current University of Oklahoma president David Boren and his son, Congressman Dan Boren. She worked in the 1990s for Democrat Congressman Bill Brewster of Oklahoma's third district. The Ryans married in Oklahoma City. Ryan is the first Catholic on the Republican ticket since William Miller in 1964.

At the Republican National Convention, the Romney campaign, led by Ben Ginsberg, the national committeeman from Washington, D.C., tried to change the party rules so that the party's nominee in 2016 could handpick the delegates from the states -- bypassing the state conventions where delegates are now elected. A successful opposition to the proposed change was led by Morton Blackwell, the national committeeman from the Commonwealth of Virginia who founded The Leadership Institute in Arlington, which has been training young conservatives for public policy careers since 1979 and where I interned in the fall of 1996. Mr. Blackwell, who worked in the Reagan White House and who is greatly admired, made the following remarks about the proposed change that he characterized as "that obnoxious provision" and what happened to it:

"In place of that obnoxious provision was inserted a guarantee that delegate votes would go to candidates who won those delegate votes in binding presidential primaries, a matter which would have been routinely enforced under the existing rules.

What did change was a rule that gives the Republican National Chairman the right to change party rules.

For practical purposes, the new Rule 12 adds to the power of the RNC Chairman (or to the White House when there's a Republican President) the ability to change party rules at will.

The record will show that during the Convention Rules Committee meeting, as a member of that Committee from Virginia, I repeatedly warned Mr. Ginsberg that his power grabs would hurt the Romney campaign by outraging grassroots conservatives and libertarian activists whom we want to support our candidates this year. Unfortunately, Mr. Ginsberg continued on his path. There are some folks who, if you give them a fur coat, think they're King Kong."

Mr. Blackwell continued:

"Most of the news media and those of us in the convention hall agree that the vote on adopting the Rules was obviously close. Some believe the "NO' vote was louder, but Speaker Boehner ruled that the "ayes' had it.

I was the youngest elected Goldwater delegate at the 1964 national convention. I have attended every national convention since, and I've represented Virginia on the RNC since 1988.

Nothing like this has ever happened before in living memory at a Republican National Convention.

When they were presumptive Presidential nominees -- and when they were Presidents of the United States -- neither George H.W. Bush nor George W. Bush ever attempted to undermine the means by which power within the Republican Party structure can rise from the bottom up.

My views on the controversy at the 2012 Republican National Convention regarding the Rules of the Republican Party http://www.redstate.com/morton_c_blackwell/2012/09/04/99/"

What is important to note from this is that Mitt Romney owned the Tampa convention. As its presidential nominee, he had the power to push for rule changes, and he wanted "that obnoxious provision," which is a forecast of what Libertarian or Tea Party activists can expect from a Romney presidency. Of course, Barack Obama must go, but we must not think that if Mitt Romney becomes our 45th President, everything is going to be okay. Mitt Romney is not our friend. For instance, just 10 years ago he supported abortion on demand when he was elected governor of Massachusetts!

The Democrat convention was what it always is, a freak show. There was the chairman of the Rhode Island delegation who, before announcing the state's delegates for Obama, announced that he hopes someday to marry his male "partner." There was former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm having what appeared to be an anxiety attack on stage. If I were from Michigan, I would be embarrassed that that woman was once my governor. Also speaking from the podium was Sandra Fluke, the 30-year-old law school student who wants taxpayers to pay for her contraception because she's loose. That same night, Bill Clinton spoke. There is a joke in there. Use your imagination.

There was the vote from the convention floor to place a reference to God in the party platform (God had been left out) and to insert language that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel (it had been left out). When the vote was taken to place God and Jerusalem back in the platform, the NO cries appeared to prevail! The party bosses, as corrupt as the GOP bosses, placed the language (to placate sane people) in the platform despite the wishes of the Jacobin mob from the floor.

Bill John Baker, the chief of the Cherokee Nation, was an Oklahoma delegate to the convention. One of the other Oklahoma delegates mentioned Woody Guthrie as "the People's Poet." Woody Guthrie was a bona fide Communist. He should have received honorable mention at that convention.

A Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requires religious institutions that provide services to the general public -- such as hospitals, schools and soup kitchens -- to have contraception and abortion-inducing pills available for their employees through their insurance covered under ObamaCare. Institutions that do not comply are to be fined millions of dollars.

This mandate is ingenious in a diabolical way. The Obama administration is betting that these institutions will comply with their mandate or suffer bankruptcy. If these institutions, most notably Catholic hospitals like Mercy in Oklahoma City and Saint John and Saint Francis in Tulsa, and Catholic Charities do not comply, they may be forced to close or sell off their assets. Hospitals could be sold to secular corporations or the federal government. This is ingenious in a diabolical way because it eliminates the Church more profoundly from society.

Oklahoma Wesleyan University in Bartlesville and Hobby Lobby Stores have joined the Catholic Church in lawsuits against the Obama administration's HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (who claims affiliation with the Catholic Church and is the former governor of Kanas and defender of the late, late-term abortion "doctor" George Tiller). As former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee has said on many occasions since the mandate came down: "We are all Catholics now."

This is a departure for me. I recommend a book, The Harbinger, by Jonathan Cahn. As a nation, we are not living right and will soon find ourselves not being free. Next January 22 will be the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. The nation has accepted child sacrifice as a norm: out of sight out of mind. In America today, a baby can be killed in her mother's womb, but in most places no one can smoke a cigarette in a bar and in Oklahoma not even in a state park! Our priorities are upside down. We are going to pay a terrible price for the normative evil of abortion.

Jonathan Cahn, a Messianic Jew, makes a stunning case that America is in the same peril in which ancient Israel found herself. The Harbinger thoroughly and convincingly investigates the possibility or, more probably, the likelihood that Isaiah 9:10 explains our future as a nation since September 11, 2001. You need to read this book to understand the danger in which we live. This book is an amazing eye opener.

We were once One nation under God. Now we are One nation under Surveillance.