Despite the predictions of most mainstream pundits, I now forecast that John McCain will be our next president barring some completely unforeseen event. In early 2008, when the Rev. Wright scandal broke, it was clear that Obama lacked the judgment needed to be president. However it was not clear if McCain had the judgment either.

For those not familiar with the Wright Scandal, Wright is a hate-mongering preacher who gives Christianity a bad name. He spewed his vile interpretation of religion in Chicago from 1972 until early 2008 when the media (lead by Rolling Stone magazine) started publicizing some of Wright’s comments. These comments were quite racist (anti white) and anti-American. Wright was a close family friend of Barrack Obama. Wright married the Obamas in 1992 and Obama had been a member of Wright’s church from 1992 onward. I do not blame Obama for the hatred his "spiritual advisor" spewed forth for decades. However, the fact that Obama exposed his family to this type of mental illness from 1992 to 2008 shows Obama does not have the judgment and/or character to lead our great nation (or even a banana republic). When someone has this severe of a judgment problem, I was very confident that the American people would notice it and vote against him if they had a viable alternative.

However, my fear was the McCain would show a similar lapse in judgment. Many of my liberal friends are thrilled with McCain – in their words, they cannot lose, they just can vote between a big liberal and a little liberal. Likewise, my conservative friends were very unhappy with McCain’s nomination and many had decided to stay home or vote for a third-party if McCain nominated a liberal running mate. With the nomination of the conservative Sarah Palin, McCain has ensured that conservatives will get out and vote. I will discuss Governor Palin in another post, but the great judgment that McCain showed with this selection shows he is still a canny senator and I am confident that he will be our next president.

There are many things about the United States of which I am proud, but I recently learned something that made me want to stand up and cheer. With all of the partisan bickering going on in Washington, one sometimes wonders how many people are keeping their eyes on the really important issues.

Partisan bickering is not limited to our country of course. While I have not kept up with my blogging, I still communicate with a network of international friends, many of whom I only know through the internet. Recently, Middle East politics arose in a thread between an American libertarian, an American conservative (myself), and two Englishmen whose belief systems I would hesitate to classify other than well left of most Americans. One of the Englishmen stated that President Bush is thoroughly discredited here and may yet stand trial at the Hague one day. In other words, he was stating his hope that President Bush would be put in trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Court; a court of which has no jurisdiction over the United States or about 40% of the world’s countries. The ICC’s jurisdiction is much smaller if you count by population as the three most populous countries in the world (China, India, and the USA) think the ICC is fatally flawed and refuse to join it.

Honestly, I am not positive if the Englishman was serious or just trying to get a rise out of me. By now, he fully understands how I feel about national sovereignty even if he has trouble truly understanding how important this is to most Americans. Most Europeans see national pride as a problem since they, wrongly in my opinion, attribute nationalism as a contributing factor to World Wars I and II. One could more logically argue that Europeans were a contributing factor to these wars, but I digress. Given this anti-nationalism background, many Europeans support the International Criminal Court and many seriously support bringing Americans before it because they think they have the right to veto our nation’s actions.

So what would happen if some arrogant European tried to arrest one of our soldiers, or even our Commander-in-Chief, and charge them under the ICC? This is not just the dream of my European leftist. This is a dream of many people like him. Google “ICC Bush” and you’ll find links to news stories with this wish, not just leftist bloggers. It is not just Anti-Bush or Anti-Americanism; many of these same people want to bring former Prime Minister Blair up before the court as well.

Fortunately, the Unites States has already made their position abundantly clear with more than just speeches. About the time the ICC was becoming a reality, our legislature passed the American Service-members' Protection Act of 2002. I knew that it was put in place to protect our troops and citizens. However, I recently heard an expert discuss it and he stated that this legislation is effectively an open declaration of war on any person or organization who attempts to place a single US armed forces personnel, from the lowest private to the commander-in-chief, under the power of the ICC. This got my attention, so I looked it up myself.

SEC. 2008. AUTHORITY TO FREE MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES AND CERTAIN OTHER PERSONS DETAINED OR IMPRISONED BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT.

a. AUTHORITY- The President is authorized to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person described in subsection (b) who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.

This legislation gives the President of the United States the legal authorization to use any and all force he deems necessary and appropriate if the ICC ever attempts to put our armed forces on trial because the ICC disagreed with the United States. This means the President could send in the Marines to rescue any hostages or otherwise use the full power of the United States to stop the latest fascist threat from Europe.

Legislators from both parties helped pass this bill. It is nice that some people in Washington understand that sovereignty is still worth protecting. This bill is about perfect. It only has one weakness; it depends upon a strong US president to use it.

Thanks to the King of Fools, this blog along with others, is now online. My consulting business website was hacked and malicious code was placed on it. Security precautions were put in place to hopefully prevent a recurrence, but these precautions messed up my blogging software installation which affected this blog and one I host for a friend. I kept fooling myself that I would make the time to fix this, but between my two jobs, family, and fixing up our new house, I should have known better. I finally admitted the truth and hired the King of Fools to fix things.

I believe Paul Burgess deserves the title of Solport's biggest supporter. He made a comment on the King’s test post before I even had time to start blogging again. Many thanks for the interest! And yes, I will start blogging again, at least through the political season.

We are now back online.