With today’s statement by Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD) that she has decided against running for South Dakota’s opening U.S. Senate seat in 2014, there are no names on the table with sufficient name recognition and resources to inspire serious hope that anyone more conservative than former governor Mike Rounds. It appears likely that instead of sending someone to Washington who’s serious about fixing our nation’s problems, we’ll be contributing a vote to maintain the status quo.

In the wake of recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program of mass surveillance directed at all American citizens, Edward Snowden, the alleged leaker of the documents proving the government’s misdeeds, is being hailed as a hero by some, a traitor and criminal by others, while some simply don’t know what to think. Here’s what I think.

In France, a repeating refrain is ‘the rights of children trump the right to children.’ It is a pithy but forceful philosophical claim, uttered in voices ranging from gay mayor ‘Jean-Marc’ to auteur Jean-Dominique Bunel, who revealed in Le Figaro that two lesbians raised him. The right to a child, according to Bernheim and Barret, does not exist; it would mean changing children, as Bernheim says, from ‘child as subject’ to ‘child as object.'” The French recognize that this obsession with “me, myself, and I” comes at the cost of the greater good.

Let us take Edward Snowden at his word. For a moment, assume he disclosed publicly the National Security Agency’s (NSA) broad, sweeping surveillance of all telephone, Internet, and email communications everywhere — not to hurt people or undermine security but to stop an unconstitutionally intrusive program. Did he do the right thing? Should we be thanking Snowden, or throwing the book at him?

In an America that seems to be run by those who loathe and hate this great country and everything it stands for, every patriot needs a little pick-me-up every now and then, a reminder of what it is we are being patriotic about, and what it is that we need to continue fighting for.

Alliance Defending Freedom made public Monday audio of a phone conversation that the Internal Revenue Service placed to a non-profit organization in which an IRS agent lectures the president of the organization about forcing its religion and beliefs on others and inaccurately explains that the group must remain neutral on issues such as abortion.

There is a deep and abiding sense of unease permeating American society. From the IRS targeting politically conservative groups to the Department of Justice targeting journalists for surveillance, from the revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) is tracking the telephone calls of most Americans to the public spectacle of whistleblower Bradley Manning’s trial, in recent weeks there has been no shortage of evidence that the new “normal” in the United States is not friendly to freedom.

Of course, it’s hard to resist being cynical. It’s a daily battle to keep hardening of the heart from setting in. The horrific deluge of wickedness gushing from the Obama administration is almost enough to make even the most seasoned patriot want to check out. But, even in the face of what is clearly the ongoing, deliberate destruction of our American republic by enemies within, checking out is not an option.

Secretary of State John Kerry is now set to embark on his fifth visit to Israel and to the so-called Palestinian Authority to push for a Two-State-Solution. But this is yet another appalling euphemism which in reality will spell out the eventual destruction of the reconstituted Jewish state and the extermination of its people by a Muslim world that will never accept a non-Muslim nation and will wage eternal war against it - the Dar al-Harb - until it is utterly destroyed.

The American Left rejoices greatly in its new “lawless revolution” under Barack H. Obama that has finally over thrown our Founding Father’s vision of America. Today the Left celebrates the birth of a new nation to replace our old one which was founded on the Laws of Nature and of Natures God.