SB 63, a bill to “protect the privacy of the records of individual students,” was heard today in the South Dakota Senate State Affairs Committee. The bill is intended to protect the privacy of students and their families in the collection of data surrounding their educational experience. The bill passed the committee 9-0.

SB 64, a bill to adopt a waiting period before adopting new education standards and to allow for public comment, was heard in the South Dakota Senate State Affairs Committee today. The bill was passed out of committee 7-2.

You may not have heard about Texas State Senator Wendy Davis and if you have, it is likely that what you know is, at best, a carefully crafted narrative of her life story.

These are some of the bills of interest in the 2014 South Dakota Legislature which will be considered in committee today and tomorrow. They include education and privacy issues, Common Core standards, taxation, and special military license plates.

From the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce, the schedule for legislative crackerbarrel meetings in Rapid City for 2014, has been released. Legislative crackerbarrel meetings are open to the public. They are held from 9am to 11am on Saturday mornings at the South Dakota School of Mines New Classroom Building. They area a good way for citizens to hear from their elected representatives, to ask their elected representatives questions, and to let their voice be heard by their government.

The Agriculture Department spent around $150 billion in 2013, or almost $1,300 for every U.S. household. Not only does the U.S. Constitution not authorize us to subsidize a particular industry (e.g. agriculture), the “ag bills” that are being passed these days are mostly welfare bills that provide food stamps (another thing not authorized by the U.S. Constitution) to many people who don’t need or deserve this “charity.” This is another federal department we can do without.

Woe! Woe! Woe! Unto you Abortion America!! Woe!!! Forty one years later and 55,000,000 abortions and will not Almighty God hold this nation FULLY accountable for the barbaric villainy which is called Pro-choice?!. Woe unto you Abortion America! Woe! You are absolutely consumed with your self-seeking unbridled passions of licentiousness!

In a recent conversation, a member of Congress told me that he thought the original Constitution was flawed because it did not require a balanced federal budget. Therefore, he was in favor of a Balanced Budget Amendment and saw this as a way to limit the runaway spending of the Congress. I bring up this conversation as an example of what you might call “over-looking the obvious”—or “not being able to see the forest because all the trees are in the way.”

To the extent that art really does imitate life, every American owes it to themselves and to our troops to see the blockbuster film, Lone Survivor. Panned by some cynical elites as “shameless war-porn,” in reality this movie portrays the heroism and sacrifice of four members of Seal Team 10 during a mission gone bad in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2007.