Peggy Noonan -- former Reagan speechwriter turned Wall Street Journal columnist and chronicler of the Reagan legacy -- has a great piece about the unveiling of Reagan's statute at the U.S. Capitol.

Summarizing Sen. Mitch McConnell's speech: " ... in the 1980s, when the world said America was over, America said not quite, and when they said freedom was yesterday, America said I don't think so. Reagan 'stood taller than any statue.'"

But here is the portion that grabbed me:

The colors were presented. The U.S. Army chorus sang the national anthem so beautifully, with such harmonic precision and depth, that some dry eyes turned moist, including those of the crusty journalist to my right. Congressmen hear choirs sing patriotic songs all the time and grow used to it. The rest of us do not and are stirred. Tourists walk through the Rotunda and think to themselves that they'd die for the signs and symbols of this place. Lawmakers experience the Rotunda as a connecting point between House and Senate that's too often clogged by overweight tourists in shorts from Bayonne. We need term limits. When the music no longer moves you, you should leave. When you cannot leave, you should be pushed.

Amen.

Former Gov. Janet Napolitano was back in Arizona yesterday doing what she does best -- handing out other people's money:

Napolitano wouldn't elaborate on details during an appearance here Thursday in which she announced grants of about $59 million for local law enforcement efforts to combat crime along the southwestern border.

I'm all for fighting crime along the southwestern border. But Secretary Napolitano has a long history of spending money that doesn't exist, failing to provide any details, and then leaving other people -- usually Republicans -- to clean up the mess.

So now, in a day of multi-trillion dollar federal deficits, she is all smiles as she hands out federal money that is borrowed against our future. Meanwhile, six years of Napolitano overspending in Arizona created a huge problem she has left for Republicans to try to clean up, and even now there are no easy solutions.

History repeats itself. At some point, a responsible Republican administration will have to clean up the mess created by Obama administration overspending.

But it sure is fun to hand out money.

Every President makes political calculations when nominating Supreme Court Justices.

President Obama, with no Latinos in his Cabinet, was under intense pressure to choose a Hispanic woman, and federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotamayor was a perfect fit. Already, Democratic strategists are crowing about "locking up the Hispanic vote" for years to come as a result of this pick.

Republicans may be wary about opposing the first Hispanic high court nominee, despite her obvious liberal judicial philosophy and a You Tube clip showing her joking about federal appeals courts being the place where policy is made.

But if Democrats try to make too much of this historic first appointment, Republicans will be quick to remind them of their disgraceful treatment of federal appeals court judge nominee Miguel Estrada -- who after two appointments, 28 months and seven Senate filibusters -- withdrew his name from consideration. Estrada was opposed by Democrats precisely because they feared he could later become a Republican appointee to the Supreme Court. President Bush also appointed the first Latino Attorney General of the United States.

From my perspective, with the goal of a color-blind society in sight, I would like to see the focus for all candidates for high office be on their ability and judicial philosophy rather than their heritage or skin color.

For the first time since Gallup began asking this question in 1995, a majority of Americans identify themselves as pro-life:

The new results, obtained from Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46%, in both August 2001 and May 2002.

The May 2009 survey documents comparable changes in public views about the legality of abortion. In answer to a question providing three options for the extent to which abortion should be legal, about as many Americans now say the procedure should be illegal in all circumstances (23%) as say it should be legal under any circumstances (22%). This contrasts with the last four years, when Gallup found a strong tilt of public attitudes in favor of unrestricted abortion.

Of course, prior to Roe v. Wade and in the early days of our nation -- before any polls were taken -- the vast majority of our citizens knew the obvious: abortion was the taking of an innocent human life. The predecessor to the American Medical Association pushed for statutes on abortion during the mid-19th century -- an effort to codify the common law understanding that abortion was murder.

About a decade ago I wrote for the East Valley Tribune that abortion would end in America for the same reason slavery had to end -- it violates our nation's founding principles. We know as a people that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights, including the right to life. Our compassion as a people for the innocent, the vulnerable, the weak -- all of these values demand that we work to protect children in the womb.

While the continued movement toward life is a testament to the tireless efforts of pro-life leaders to increase public understanding of the issue, we have much work yet to do.

One fact these Gallup results make clear -- we have now elected a President and put in place Democratic political leadership in Congress who are dramatically out of touch with America on this vital issue.

Got an email today from my Congressman, Harry Mitchell. Somehow they got my email address and sent me a nice email promoting Mitchell's new website, which of course promotes all the great and wonderful things Harry Mitchell is doing to improve my life.

And to top it all off -- I'm paying for his emails and his website!

Ironically, at almost exactly the same time, I got an email from the Goldwater Institute exposing the level of abuse of taxpayer funds by Arizona politicians to promote themselves.

The title is: "Shameless self-promotion: How politicians use your money to get re-elected."

I have some familiarity with the concept, having run for Governor against then-incumbent Janet Napolitano, who happily spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of our money to promote herself. And actually, there is much more than the report reveals -- as author Shawnna L.M. Bolick notes, the totals represent only "the tip of the iceberg."

Most disappointing to me is the presence on this list -- in a big way -- of politicians, including some friends, who are conservatives. The temptation to use your office to build name ID must be extraordinary, but I hope this report will encourage conservatives to abandon this practice as a violation of our commitment to fiscal integrity with taxpayer funds. There are plenty of ethical ways for an incumbent to stay in front of voters while performing legitimate functions of the office.

Take the time to read the report, and let your legislators know how you feel about your tax dollars being used for self-promotion rather than legitimate governmental purposes.

David Souter never belonged on the Supreme Court, something even he seemed to acknowledge by his decision to resign from a lifetime appointment in good health at the age of 69.

Winston Churchill's description of a political opponent applies to Souter: a modest man with much to be modest about.

Souter was nominated by the first President Bush during an era when liberal Democrats controlled the Senate Judiciary Committee, and on the heels of President Reagan's failure to get conservative Robert Bork onto the Court. Souter was touted as a "stealth" conservative who could get approved by the Senate because he hadn't really done anything they could complain about.

For about three years, Souter seemed to confirm that judgment. But beginning with his decision to reaffirm the essential holding of Roe v. Wade and his decision to block a simple prayer from being offered at a high school graduation, Souter has for many years formed a liberal, activist voting bloc with two Clinton appointees and Justice John Paul Stevens, appointed by President Ford.

The lesson for those who oppose liberal judicial activism? Make the case for originalism -- as Chief Justice Roberts did very effectively -- and let the political chips fall where they may. We can't win if we aren't willing to make an argument for the correct approach to the judiciary.

Once again we have a justice appointed by a conservative Republican who has wanted to leave the Court for years, but instead waited around for purely political reasons so that a liberal Democrat could pick his replacement.

For Souter -- having done his part to prevent the Rehnquist and Robert courts from fixing past judicial activism, and having deprived new generations of preborn children of the opportunity to have their lives protected by law -- now he can return to the anonymity and solitude he so strongly desired and richly deserves.

National fear over the flu formerly known as swine. A worldwide economic crisis, felt particularly strongly in Arizona. Serious threats of Islamic terrorism, and belligerence from nutty leaders in Iran, Russia and North Korea.

And a sense that the team in charge really doesn't have any idea what it is doing.

It seems like America is in trouble.

But we've been in tough spots before. On Thursday, 146 years will have passed since Abraham Lincoln called the nation to prayer and repentance in the midst of a civil war that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Americans. Famously, Lincoln wrote in his April 30, 1863 Proclamation for "A Day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer":

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

I'm not really concerned about whether it is politically correct to call people to pray, but I think Lincoln was on to something. Next week is the National Day of Prayer, and I'm delighted to be speaking at a citywide prayer breakfast in Flagstaff.

But a number of national and state leaders have asked us to start a week early, by remembering Lincoln's Proclamation and spending Thursday, April 30, 2009 as a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer. I will be reading Lincoln's entire Proclamation at a Christian prayer event Thursday at the State Capitol at 11 a.m. I hope to see you there, but if not, you can follow along at home -- please consider taking Thursday, April 30, as a special day to fast and pray for our nation.

One of the things I find most inexplicable about our nation's headlong rush into governmental control of the economy is the failure of so many supposedly bright people to understand the basics of a free market economy.

Unshackled by bureaucratic, centralized control, people make rational choices. Success is rewarded, failure is penalized. In particular, people are motivated by knowing they live in a system where they will be rewarded financially through excellence in their chosen profession.

If you are one of the best singers, actors, baseball players, inventors or businessmen in America, it will pay off for you. In fact, success is rewarded in just about every arena -- except the profession of teaching. Might that have something to do with our abysmal record on public education?

Since 1960, after being adjusted for inflation, government spending on education has quadrupled. Does anyone believe our students are four times better educated now than in 1960? The issue is not how much we've spent, but how effectively we've spent it.

When I ran for Governor in 2006 I argued that if we want to attract and keep the best and the brightest in the teaching profession, we needed to institute a form of merit pay that rewards the most effective and successful teachers. I even suggested that under this system, we should be prepared to pay six-figure salaries to the very best public school teachers.

Now the Goldwater Institute has issued a report: "New Millennium Schools: Delivering six-figure teacher salaries in return for outstanding student learning gains." Read it. Pass it around.

And if we're serious about improving public education, let's start putting incentives into the teaching profession like they exist in the rest of the American economy.

After listening to President Obama's speech on the economy this morning, it occurs to me that this President is not only relying on our ignorance of history, he is willfully exploiting the short attention span of the American people.

The impression he leaves is that the American economy has always been a disaster, always on the verge of disaster -- until he came along to rebuild it. The reality is that our economy has long been the envy of the world, and even during the Bush years - despite an unprovoked and unprecedented terrorist attack, despite a Category 5 hurricane direct hit on New Orleans, etc. - the economy was so strong that Democratic governors were riding it to easy re-elections as late as 2006 (that's a sore point, sorry).

President Obama needs to talk down the economy and our American history in order to maintain the support he needs to do all the radical left-wing things that liberal ideologues have always wanted to do, including socialized health care, and widespread government control and regulation of the economy. He needs us to be scared; he needs a crisis. But those who understand history know that increasing governmental control of the economy and increasing government spending by taking money out of our pockets and out of the private sector will be an economic disaster.

What can those of us who believe in economic freedom and liberty do? Well we can start by showing up to stand in opposition. And your first opportunity to do so is tomorrow, on April 15, by participating in one of many Tea Parties throughout the United States. I will be attending the Tea Party at the Arizona Capitol Wednesday evening.

Hopefully our mere attendance at the Tea Parties won't put us on the federal government's "right-wing extremist" watch list.

While President Obama continues his international apology tour - asking forgiveness of the world for every American sin, real or perceived -- it was great to see President Bush celebrating America's unique pastime and getting a standing ovation from the crowd at a Texas Rangers' Opening Day baseball game.

It reminded me of the time President Bush took to the mound in Yankee Stadium -- shortly after 9/11 and under heightened security concerns -- and blew a fastball past radical Islam.

I'll give Obama credit for some basketball skill, but no President throws the opening pitch better than President Bush. And I love baseball.

According to a story by the Associated Press, "The Taliban's new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan had been a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center...".

Released in 2007, this terrorist is one of 60 former detainees at Guantanamo Bay who are now actively fighting American forces on behalf of radical Islam. His role - counter the U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan.

The notion that we are planning to either release prisoners of war during wartime or bring them to America and pay for their defense lawyers would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic.

As I write the stock market has dropped from its high of more than 14,000 to below 7,000, more than cutting in half the investments and savings of millions of Americans. The drop has been even more precipitous since Congress began intervening in the market with bailouts and so-called "stimulus," and since we handed over control of the economy to the free-spending, "let's try anything" team of President Obama.

Winston Churchill said it best: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

President Obama has us well on the way to spreading the misery equally.