Government surveillance is a growing concern that John Whitehead has written about in his book, A Government of Wolves. In a recent column, he analyzes the speech given recently by the president on NSA surveillance.

President Obama opened his speech with these words. “At the dawn of our Republic, a small, secret surveillance committee borne out of the Sons of Liberty was established in Boston. And the group’s members included Paul Revere. At night, they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the British were preparing raids against America’s early Patriots. Throughout American history, intelligence has helped secure our country and our freedoms.”

John Whitehead was on my radio program recently and was amused by the idea that the Sons of Liberty used surveillance (like we have today) to protect the colonists. In his column he also criticized that inference from the president that “rather than condemning the NSA for encroaching on our privacy rights, we should be commending them for helping to ‘secure our country and our freedoms.’ Never mind that the Sons of Liberty were actually working against the British government, to undermine what they perceived as a repressive regime guilty of perpetrating a host of abuses against the colonists.”

Welcome to this upside-down world where greater government surveillance of our daily lives is compared to American patriots fighting the British. Every few days we learn of one more encroachment into our lives from the NSA and other agencies. For example, we learn one day that the NSA has been collecting metadata on all of our phone calls. In another story we learn that the NSA collects 200 million text messages from us each day. In yet another story, we discover that the NSA have implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allow it to conduct surveillance and create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.

John Whitehead also talks about the sophisticated use of drones, the militarization of the police, and a future electronic concentration camp. We face significant threats to our liberty and privacy and are not well served by a president who pretends this is the sort of thing 18th century patriots would have done if they had the technology.

John Fund has written two books on the subject of voter ID and has written a recent column on “Winning the Fight for Voter-ID.” He criticizes the decision by a Pennsylvania judge that voter ID laws violate their state constitution.

The judge concluded that “the law had been implemented in a sloppy, haphazard way and that the state had not done enough to help provide IDs to voters who lacked one.” Opponents of voter ID won’t get much help from the ruling though, since it was a fairly narrow ruling unlikely to impact other states.

One troubling part of the ruling was the statement by the judge that “the state offered no evidence to support the claim that the law was needed to block voter fraud.” Of course, there is abundant evidence that voter fraud does exist. One Philadelphia city commissioner issued a 27-page report citing cases of voter impersonation, double voting, and voting by non-citizens.

Chris Matthews on MSNBC is from Pennsylvania and agrees that voter fraud has become a Philly tradition. On his program he explained how someone would call a voter and ask if he or she planned to vote. If they were not, all of a sudden someone with that name showed up at the polls to cast a vote.

A 2005 bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform issued 87 recommendations. One of the most important was support for national voter ID. This only makes sense in a world where we are required to show a photo ID to rent a video, cash a check, or board an airplane.

How easy is it to commit voter fraud? John Fund points to New York’s watchdog Department of Investigations that sent undercover agents to polling places and claimed to be individuals who died, moved out of town, or were sitting in jail. They found that most (97%) of the agents were allowed to vote. They voted for non-existent write-in candidates so that no voter fraud was committed in their case.

A judge in Pennsylvania may not think voter fraud is an issue. There is lots of evidence to demonstrate that he is wrong.

Over the last few months we have learned quite a bit about the National Security Agency. It has already been criticized for its data mining of phone records. Now we are finding out how much they have been using technology to spy on other countries.

The NSA has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers worldwide in order to spy on various agencies and even provide a path to launch cyberattacks. Although much of this software has been implanted through computer networks, the agency has also developed sophisticated methods to infiltrate computers that were previously impervious to hacking.

Some of the hardware looks like something from a James Bond movie. One device looks like a normal USB plug but has a tiny transceiver buried in it. This allows the NSA to penetrate systems using radio frequencies. They now can tap into computers and networks that could not be accessed before.

The NSA targets are supposed to be our enemies. That would be the Chinese Army, which our government has already accused of launching digital probes and attacks on American industrial and military targets to steal secrets and information. The program has also targeted Russian military networks as well as systems used by the Mexican police and drug cartels.

The news reports about NSA spying always end with the assurance that this spyware and radio frequency technology has never been used within the United States. If you believe that, then you are welcome to that belief and I hope you sleep well. I have my doubts that all of this sophisticated technology is only used outside our borders.

An agency spokeswoman explains that they only use this technology against “valid foreign intelligence targets” and “do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies.” We can only hope that is true. Congress is attempting to provide more oversight by requiring the NSA to provide unclassified reports. Let’s see what they find.

Last week was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and I had Bishop Harry Jackson on my radio program. One of the topics we discussed surrounded his column on the “Recipe for Minority Success.”

Everyone is experiencing tough economic times, but the greatest hardship seems to be falling on the African-American community. The African-American unemployment rate remains a shocking 13 percent. In fact the black unemployment rate in America is twice that of whites, and nearly three times that of Asians. Black homeownership is the lowest in almost 20 years. Those are just a few of the sobering statistics that remind us that there is much to do if we are to achieve minority success.

Bishop Harry Jackson believes we need to return to the tradition of black entrepreneurship, and give some encouraging examples from history. Sadly, when we think of minority-owned businesses today, he says, we tend to picture immigrants (Latino or Asian). One study of race and entrepreneurial success found that stereotype to be true. Black business ownership is far lower than the national average.

There are some things that the government can do to encourage entrepreneurship in the black community. In the past, Representative Jack Kemp proposed enterprise zones where tax benefits would be given to start-up businesses. Senator Rand Paul has proposed something similar to revitalize Detroit. The capital-gains tax would be suspended for new ventures. An income tax break might be available for the new employees of new companies. Property taxes might be waved.

The church and Christian ministries can also have an important role. Bishop Harry Jackson talked about some of the programs his church and others have developed. I would add that it is important that pastors and church leaders promote the importance of marriage and family. In a recent commentary, I talked about how marriage is a key element in preventing poverty.

There are lots of ingredients in the recipe for minority success. It is past time for us to pursue programs in government and the church to address poverty.

How long will the Federal Reserve be able to prop up the U.S. economy by buying our debt? It is a good question that few seem to be able to answer. I have in front of me a number of articles. One article warns that: “the Fed purchased a stunning 61 percent of the total net Treasury issuance, up from negligible amounts prior to the 2008 financial crisis.”

The article was written some time ago, but even then the writers were warning that: “the U.S. government is growing increasingly more dependent on borrowing to finance itself.” In the past, foreign investors like Japan and China purchased America’s debt. They are no longer buying as much, but they do hold an increasing amount of our debt nevertheless.

This leads to the question in another article. When it comes to financing America’s debt, “Is there enough money in the world—and at what cost?” Mark Steyn mentioned this article in one of his columns. He believes that the “fact that sane men are even asking this question ought to be deeply disturbing.”

The answer from the authors is that technically there is probably enough money in the world to finance America’s debt. But realistically, that is unlikely. By the year 2020, it would take 19 percent of the GDP of the world’s governments to buy our debt. While that may be theoretically possible, it is very unlikely. At some point our creditors will simply give up on the United States of America.

Most Americans would be very concerned if they understood our current financial circumstances. They aren’t because no one seems willing to tell them the truth. Have you heard the president talk how much debt the Federal Reserve is buying? Have you heard any congressional leaders talk about this? Has the mainstream media explained the possible threat?

The next time you hear politicians talking about budgets or the debt ceiling, remember that they are ignoring a much greater financial problem. And the next time you see the media obsessing about the latest scandal, remind yourself how they are avoiding talking about what is really important.

When the war on poverty was declared fifty years ago, it began a debate about how to provide welfare to the poor without it becoming a disincentive to work and self-improvement. Most of us are willing to help the truly needy, but we also have a nagging feeling that the welfare state sometimes punishes work and incentive.

In a past column I talked about the claim from the Secretary of Public Welfare for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He explained that a single mom is better off earning a gross income of $29,000 than earning a gross income of $69,000. Why is that? If she only earns $29,000, she then receives all sorts of welfare benefits so that her total net income (including benefits) is $57,327. If, however, she was able to earn $69,000, her net income and benefits would be $57,045.

In other words, she would do better financially earning just $29,000 than she would if she could get a much better job and earned $69,000. That, my friends, is what you call a major disincentive! It also illustrates one of the problems with the current welfare system in America.

If you want to see this on a graph, I recommend you go to the article “When Work Is Punished: The Tragedy of America’s Welfare State” by Tyler Durden. The graphs he has posted are helpful in showing where we have the highest “welfare cliffs.” There are thresholds were government benefits for food, housing, and child care stop. A single mom in Pennsylvania qualifies for certain benefits until she hits a key income threshold. At that point, she must earn much more in order to do as well as she did as a recipient of government aid.

While we are having a discussion about how to help the poor, we should concentrate on a government benefits scale that often punishes work, incentive, and independence.

Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. When the Supreme Court removed most state restrictions on abortion more than forty years ago, who could have predicted the world we live in today.

When the ruling came down, few understood the long-term implications. I remember speaking on the issue in college classrooms a few years later and wondering when the Supreme Court would reverse its decision. By the 1980s, it seemed like only a matter of time that abortion would once again be restricted in America. That did not happen.

A whole generation of young people has grown up never having known a time when abortions were illegal. They may have seen some protests and may have heard some debate about the subject. But that is perhaps the sum total of their experience.

Those of us who are older can see the impact. Abortion has left a scar on the soul of this nation. In the 18th and 19th centuries, slavery was a scar on America’s soul. Today abortion leaves the same scar, even though it may be invisible to many people.

I see the evidence of these scars when I take phone calls from women who were exploited by abortion. I see evidence of these scars when I hear the cavalier comments of young people about human life. I see those scars when I hear people debate related issues like stem cell research and physician assisted suicide.

But I also see the healing when I see the good work of pregnancy resource centers. I understand from people working in this area that there are three times as many pregnancy resource centers in this country as there are abortion clinics. In many ways, the pro-life movement is winning the war of ideas.

And I am encouraged that so many young people (our future leaders) are pro-life and understand the importance of being pro-life. So there are some encouraging signs even as we see the scars left by abortion.

Over the last few weeks we have learned much more about the military policy of the Obama White House. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates details his experiences in his new book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.

Secretary Gates writes that the White House “was by far the most centralized and controlling in national security of any I had seen since Richard Nixon.” He added that “political considerations” became a factor “in virtually every major national security problem we tackled.”

Secretary Gates describes how the military was subjected to “micromanagement and operational meddling.” Often the White House staff would “call a four-star combatant commander or field commander.”

He found that the president was rarely emotionally involved in most of the military policy. He describes how President Bush was “passionate about the war on Iraq.” Although he worked for President Obama longer than President Bush, Gates rarely saw much passion in President Obama, except for one issue. He saw “deep passion” when it came to removing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy concerning homosexuals in the military. “For him, changing the law seemed to be the inevitable next step in the civil rights movement.”

Secretary Gates felt that when it came to the war in Afghanistan, those in the White House engaged in “a good deal of wishful thinking” when it came to strategy. The president was angry about the request from top generals for a major military surge. He was also “deeply suspicious of their actions and recommendations.”

It is not surprising that tensions grew between the Commander in Chief and his military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan. We probably didn’t need a book from Robert Gates to explain that, but the book did provide confirmation. One of the reasons Joseph Biden was added to the presidential ticket in 2008 was to add gravitas and foreign policy experience to a freshman senator. This book confirms that it didn’t help very much.