Senator Lindsey Graham joined us today. If you missed it check out the interview below.

On March 1st of last year Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to end lifetime alimony payments. The logic was pretty simple. It's not fair to make a spouse pay alimony for more years then they were married.

Florida was on the verge of becoming the 2nd state but Governor Scott vetoed the bill earlier this month. In his veto he wrote "As a husband, father and grandfather, I understand the vital importance of family. In weighing the issues associated with this bill, however, I have concluded that I cannot support this legislation because it applies retroactively and thus tampers with settled economic expectations of many Floridians who have experienced divorce.”

The reason for alimony was obvious from the beginning. Both parties had entered a contract for life with God as their witness. The husbands portion of the contract was to provide and protect. The wife's was to submit to the husband and be a helper. Those are the roles as defined by God in the Bible, in places like Genesis 2, Ephesians 5, Colossians 3 and others. Again the contract is for life so if the man dies first he should have life insurance or savings to provide for his wife till she passes. If the contract is broken the wife is in the most dangerous position because she was his helper. How can she survive? So alimony forced the husband to honor his commitment to provide and protect for his wife till her death.

There was a cultural shift in the 60's and 70's where women wanted the right to become providers. They wanted men to become more of the helpers. It was an open rebellion against God's plan for our lives. And we can see our stubbornness to do things our way has hurt us.

  Now we have women who earn more than their husbands paying alimony because they have become married to the corporate ladder. Society has lost its way. We are wandering through a minefield with no idea where we're going. Gay marriage is another indication of how lost we are. Liberal people would tell you this is enlightenment. That gender roles are simply for reproducing. That a woman and man are equal in all other categories. I would argue that they were equal when they were performing the roles assigned to them by their creator. That a woman whose main function is to be her husbands helper is of utmost importance. God declares Himself as mans helper in Psalm 121. Does that make God below man? Of course not! The wife is equal in importance and value to God and to the marriage as much as the brain and the heart are of equal importance in the body. If the heart felt slighted because the brain made all the decisions and wanted to do that job imagine the mess we'd have. And that's the mess we have now as a society. America has rejected God's direction in marriage like we've rejected His direction for sex, money management, raising children, keeping the Sabbath holy, and just about anything else He put in place for our happiness.

It doesn't surprise me then that one of the 3 most liberal states in the nation was first to pass alimony reform. I'm sure there are plenty of men in SC who want to scream at me and perhaps a great many hardworking women too. One who will get the chance is Wyman Oxman who is the founder of SC Alimony Reform. He will be our guest after 5 today to explain why I'm wrong and that we really do need to follow Massachusetts lead and set up a formula so that people don't have their lives ruined paying alimony forever.  

is this one better than the "shipped" commercial? 

Tuesday the Commanding General of Fort Jackson was suspended after a woman told authorities she was involved in an affair with him. After a fight he bit her on the lip causing her to need medical attention. Yesterday a West Point Sergeant was suspended after he was found in possession of videos and photos of female cadets taken without their consent. And today ABC Columbia reports that a woman at Fort Jackson who tried to report a Lt Colonel for inappropriate touching was turned away by officers on the base! "They told me and my husband that that was just the Lt Colonel's mannerism"! 

  And if you thought it was bad for women in the military it appears to be even worse for men! According to the Center For Military Readiness President Elaine Donnelly sexual assaults are rising faster than reported just a few weeks ago. And as the Washinton Times points out the fastest growing group of victims are men.

The number of reports of sexual assaults among military personnel have actually increased by 129 percent since 2004. They jumped from 1,275 to 2,949 in just eight years". Among the assaults formally reported, 88 percent of reports came from women and 12 percent from men. Women are identified as the attacker in just two percent of all assaults, meaning most men who suffer assault are targeted by other men. So we’ve got a male-on-male problem here. The Department of Defense doesn't want to comment on this. They know that the numbers are there. They say that they care, but all the attention is usually given to the female members of the military who are subjected to sexual assault. Of the 26,000 total cases approximately 12,000 victims were women and 14,000 were men who are remaining silent".

Yesterday members of a House panel passed a bill that would strip commanding officers of their authority to unilaterally change or dismiss court-martial convictions.The push to eliminate a commander’s ability to reverse criminal convictions of service members is rooted in a case that stoked widespread outrage on Capitol Hill. Lt. Col. James Wilkerson, a former inspector general at Aviano Air Base in Italy, was found guilty by a military panel in November 2012 of charges of abusive sexual contact and aggravated sexual assault. Col. Wilkerson was sentenced to a year in prison and dismissal from the service, but Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, commander of the 3rd Air Force at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, reviewed the case and overturned the jury’s verdict of guilty. Lindsey Graham doesn't like the bill. “For Congress to reach down and change 200 years of tradition because people don’t like what the commander did in Aviano, I think sends a terrible signal to the military justice system. The issue here is why are there so many assaults and why is it so hard to get people to come forward.”  Sen Graham is correct that the issue is how do we get victims to come forward. He's absolutely wrong if doesn't believe victims are afraid to report the crime of a superior because even if they're convicted by a jury that can be wiped out. Lindsey Graham has done some great work on the Benghazi issue but if he wants to help thousands of silent victims he will change his vote on this.

Yesterday morning a Republican Senate aid told Breitbart that the Gang of Eight is trying to pass this bill as fast as they can to minimize public scrutiny. “There is a relentless drive to push this bill through at any cost because it’s backers know that once the American people find out what’s in it they will rise up against it.” And as if on cue... last night just before 8 they passed it through committee. And the folks in the gallery made it clear that their intention is to fulfil the campaign promise of our President to "fundamentally transform the United States of America". The chants start off with the famous Obama campaign chant of "Yes we can" and then listen to what happens at the :38 second mark.

They switched their chant to "Si se puede". That is actually a return to the chants original form. Which was used in the 70's by the United Farm Workers union and has been used by lots of other unions since then. Obama is very pro union so he translated it into English...well where he had to, and announced his intentions to fundamentally transform our country. 

A lot of people agreed with Obama that America needed to be transformed, and so they elected him President...twice! Part of that transformation has to do with the language. With so many people moving to our country who speak Spanish isn't it closed minded to expect them to learn our language?

C'mon people! Be bigger than that! We have so many advantages over most immigrants, which is why they have gone through so much trouble to get here, do we need to add to their suffering by making America impossible to navigate due to the language barrier? So we translate some signs, and have to press 1 or 2 when you call a government business. What's the down side, that you may actually start to learn another language yourself?

Well there's more to it than just that actually. First off tax dollars. Canada which is 1/10th the size of the United States spends 2.4 billion dollars a year translating signs from English to French! Now I don't imagine we would have to increase that cost proportionately but lets say triple it 7 billion dollars a year. The entire sequester was 85 billion for a year. Obviously these billions add up quick. Now percentage wise there are a lot more French speakers in Canada than Spanish speakers here. Approximately 22% of Canadians speak French as their primary language. We currently have about 12% of the people who live here speaking Spanish as their primary language. However that percentage has skyrocketed since 1990 when it was around 5 percent. As the percentage of people who speak Spanish exclusively has risen so has the rate of poverty for them. In Canada there are certain areas designated as French speaking. They go as far to suspend kids from school who say things in English in schools that are French speaking and people can be fired for slipping in to English in those territories as well. I would argue that they are not really a united country. They have intentionally decided to keep themselves separate out of a romance of history. Much like certain people in the south prefer to fly the confederate flag as way of honoring their history. It serves as a barrier from uniting all American's under one flag. The Canadians who feel like they are honoring their ancestors are in reality hurting their country and more specifically themselves. As Time magazine pointed out last month the French kids who want a future are learning English on the side and leaving Quebec in record numbers.

English is the language of the world. That isn't a conceited statement. That is a fact. As the NY Times reported every call center in the world uses English. In Sweden most businesses demand that their employees speak English while at work because so much of their business is done with English speaking countries. It is the language of every air traffic control center in the world. It is the most dominant language in the history of the world with a quarter of the world's population currently communicating in English.

It wouldn't be a bad thing for American's to learn Spanish or any other language. It would be a disaster for Spanish speakers to not learn English. If we were to allow 12 percent of our country to continue to be alienated by not forcing them to immerse in our culture we are hurting them and ourselves. The fans of immigration reform sing the praises of what immigrants can offer the country. They need to learn english or they won't be able to fully integrate. We're a melting pot of immigrants. My grandfather moved here from Italy. I'm sure most of us can trace our roots to non english speaking lands. We love their food, their music, their art, and even their language! But as a melting pot we transform you to us. Us is what we've made ourselves into. We're distinctly American. Not British, or Spanish, or African, or Chinese or any other culture. We have different regions and sayings and accents, but if you're an American you speak english. This bill the gang of 8 is trying to pass that allows people to stay here without learning english only serves to hurt the immigrant and the country in my opinion. So maybe the sign wasn't so wrong after all!