http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

Starting next year, there will be four new pennies to collect, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

The obverse (or heads) part of the coin will stay the same, showing the 16th president facing to the right.

But the reverse (tails) part of the coin will show different times in the life of Lincoln, who is widely considered to be one of the country’s greatest leaders for freeing the slaves and saving the Union during the Civil War.

The designs for the new pennies were shown for the first time yesterday near the Lincoln Memorial.

The first new penny will be available Feb. 12, Lincoln’s 200th birthday. It will show a log cabin to honor his birth and childhood in Kentucky.

The others will show his life as a young man in Indiana, his professional life in Illinois and his presidential years in Washington (when the U.S. Capitol was being built).

The other side of the penny will continue to show the likeness of Lincoln designed by Victor David Brennan. It was introduced on the Lincoln penny 100 years ago.

A Lincoln commemorative silver dollar also will be issued next year.

Abraham Lincoln did not really free the slaves. The 13th Amendment did. The Emancipation Proclamation said “all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Only those slaves captured by the North by that point were set free. Maryland and Delaware were both slave states and not on of the supposed rebel states. While not recognized by any other government the Confederate States of America was a separate nation with it’s own government defined by their own (though heavily borrowed from the USA) constitution. Therefore from their perspective the Emancipation Proclamation meant as much as if it had come from England. Lincoln also said this of the Corwin Amendment, “[H]olding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” which read:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

As for saving the Union… a highly questionable action. Even if ruled unconstitutional there is plenty of evidence that such a claim is incorrect from a legal standpoint. For example: When ratifying the new constitution, Virginia (1788), New York (1788), and Rhode Island (1790) included clauses indicating they were free to leave the new federal government confederation should it become oppressive. It seems obvious that they would not have joined if they believed it was a one way trip. From a moral standpoint its reprehensible. The Declaration of Independence clearly says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Lincoln was in no way a great leader but a statist who put his beliefs in keeping together a union of people who did not wish to be under the same government umbrella above the lives of over 600,000 individuals.

For more information read Thomas DiLorenzo’s books Lincoln Unmasked and The Real Lincoln. Many complain his views are one sided but given the works written in excess of Lincoln’s greatness I think that’s excusable. You can also find a decent interview with DiLorenzo on CSPAN’s Q&A at Google video.

http://www.nytimes.com/…

The Bush administration on Saturday formally proposed to Congress what could become the largest financial bailout in United States history, requesting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets.

The proposal, not quite three pages long, was stunning for its stark simplicity. It would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt.

A $700 billion expenditure on distressed mortgage-related assets would be roughly what the country has spent so far in direct costs on the Iraq war and more than the Pentagon’s total yearly budget appropriation. Divided across the population, it would amount to more than $2,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

“This is a good foundation of a plan that can stabilize markets quickly,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. “But it includes no visible protection for taxpayers or homeowners. We look forward to talking to Treasury to see what, if anything, they have in mind in these two areas.”

In Florida, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic presidential nominee, said he would press for a broader economic stimulus initiative to be part of the bailout plan for financial firms.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, issued a statement on Saturday saying he was reviewing the administration’s plan. He also urged the administration and lawmakers to consider his own plan for creating a trust within the Treasury Department to aid ailing mortgage lenders and other financial institutions.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in a statement: “This proposal is, and should be kept, simple and clear.” He added, “Simply put, now is not the time for partisan plans or pet projects.”

Some Democrats, including lawmakers like Mr. Frank and Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and the chairman of the banking committee, were adamant about including provisions to promote government action to stabilize real estate prices and help troubled borrowers refinance their mortgages.

Still another group of Democrats was pushing for a wider stimulus package that would direct help more directly and immediately to Main Street, perhaps including an increase in unemployment benefits and investments in infrastructure projects, including bridges and roads, that would help to create jobs.

A fourth, smaller group of lawmakers was highly critical and in some cases adamantly opposed to the plan. That group included including Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, and Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont.

“The free market for all intents and purposes is dead in America,” Mr. Bunning declared on Friday. “The action proposed today by the Treasury Department will take away the free market and institute socialism in America. The American taxpayer has been misled throughout this economic crisis. The government on all fronts has failed the American people miserably.”

COME ONE, COME ALL! FREE MONEY! FREE FASCISM! ALL YOU CAN CARRY!

I have to laugh because otherwise I may cry.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) — Senator Jim Bunning said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, by rescuing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is acting like China’s finance minister and both Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke should step down.“I sincerely believe that Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke should resign,” said Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky on the Senate Banking Committee. “They have taken the free market out of the free market.”

Paulson and the federal regulator for Fannie and Freddie placed the two largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies in a government-operated conservatorship on Sept. 7, ousting their chief executives and eliminating their dividends. Treasury also may purchase up to $200 billion of stock in the firms to keep them solvent.

“We no longer have a free market in the United States, we have a government controlled free market,” Bunning said in an interview. Paulson, a former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., “is acting like the minister of finance in China.”

Bunning, 76, criticized Paulson’s successful effort in July to obtain congressional authority to pump unlimited amounts of money into Fannie and Freddie to keep them afloat.

“When I picked up my newspaper yesterday, I thought I woke up in France. But no, it turned out it was socialism here in the United States,” he told Paulson at a July 15 Senate Banking Committee hearing.

Back in July, Bunning called for the Fed’s “monetary policy responsibility” to be “taken away”.

Bunning is a little late to the party and a little off but it sounds a lot better than a lot of those criminals in DC are saying.

To restore the people’s faith in government? You’re are on the LP ticket right? hmmm…

The national LP may be in dire straits but Kentucky seems to me at least putting on a show. Sonny Landham has been unanumously removed from the Kentucky LP US Senate race ticket.

Anthony Gregory over at LewRockwell.com/blog reports:

The latest scoop on Sonny Landham, belligerent warmonger and protectionist LP US Senate candidate: The Bluegrass State’s Libertarian Party voted 9 to 0 to take him off the ballot.

Since then, the Kentucky Secretary of State has reversed his decision to let the LP withdraw the “Libertarian” endorsement on the ballot. Richard Winger says that under the circumstances, the LP can either let him stay on the ballot as a Libertarian, or “the party can submit its petition in the middle of August, which will mean that the petition will only be valid for president and vice-president, but not U.S. Senator (the deadline for the presidential and vice-presidential candidate is in early September, but the deadline for all other office is in early August). In that case Landham won’t be on the ballot at all.” A commenter argues that stripping all these signatures from him might be unfair to Landham.

I spoke with the Chair of the KY LP, Ken Moellman, who confirmed that this about sums up their circumstances right now. Under today’s ballot access laws and in this post-McCain/Feingold world, the party faces three currently undisclosed options of what to do, which they will consider at a special executive meeting the chair called for this evening, Moellman told me. Landham will get to give his case. I will give an update when they decide which course to take.

http://www.cnn.com/…

Ron Paul, as of the end of the 4th quarter 2007, is the number one Republican fundraiser still in the race in the following states:

• Montana¹
• Alaska¹
• Hawaii
• Kansas¹
• New Mexico
• North Dakota²

Is second in:

• Washington
• Oregon
• Idaho
• Iowa
• Wyoming
• Arkansas
• Wisconsin
• Kentucky
• Nebraska²
• Minnesota²
• Oklahoma²
• Indiana²
• Tennessee³
• Mississippi^2,3
• Georgia^2,3
• West Virginia^2,3

¹ Including Democrat candidates. ² Giuliani raised more before dropping. ³ Fred Thompson raised more before dropping.

Obviously money doesn’t mean votes nor will those locations where he has gained rank because of some dropping out help him much. It is however interesting with regards to how the MSM regards him as a gadfly. He’s raised more from the numerous branches of the military than all other candidates combined. He raised more than twice what any other Republican did in the 4th quarter at nearly $20m. He’s the number one Republican fundraiser in 5 states and second in 8 without removing those who have dropped out.

My ranking of donations per capita has been updated with 4th quarter numbers, top 5:

1. New Hampshire
2. Wyoming
3. Nevada
4. Alaska
5. Montana