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The Salt Lake Tribune - ... former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman won’t attend next month’s Republican National Convention or future GOP gatherings until the party starts to tackle the "bigger" issues.

"I will not be attending this year’s convention, nor any Republican convention in the future," Huntsman said, "until the party focuses on a bigger, bolder, more confident future for the United States — a future based on problem solving, inclusiveness, and a willingness to address the trust deficit, which is every bit as corrosive as our fiscal and economic deficits."

Huntsman had racked up two national delegates with his third-place finish in New Hampshire and another from the Texas primary, a point that could have guaranteed him a speaking role.

The former Utah governor was uninvited to a Republican National Committee event in Florida in March after he suggested that the nation needed a third-party candidate who offered an alternative to the Republican and Democratic options.

In a statement this week, Huntsman said he wanted his party to return to its moorings that mirrored his last-minute campaign theme of "Country First." {Read More}

Reuters

NPR - Judge Richard Posner, a conservative on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, has long been one of the nation's most respected and admired legal thinkers on the right. But in an interview with NPR, he expressed exasperation at the modern Republican Party, and confessed that he has become "less conservative" as a result.

"I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy," he said.

Posner, who was appointed to the appeals court by Reagan, speculated that the leaks about the deliberations over the national health care law — which are apparently designed to discredit Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion upholding the law — would backfire. "I think these right-wingers who are blasting Roberts are making a very serious mistake," he said.

"Because if you put [yourself] in his position ... what's he supposed to think? That he finds his allies to be a bunch of crackpots? Does that help the conservative movement? I mean, what would you do if you were Roberts? All the sudden you find out that the people you thought were your friends have turned against you, they despise you, they mistreat you, they leak to the press. What do you do? Do you become more conservative? Or do you say, 'What am I doing with this crowd of lunatics?' Right? Maybe you have to re-examine your position."

Reuters - A conservative federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan said in an interview published Thursday that the Republican Party has gone “goofy” and that “these right-wingers who are blasting [Chief Justice John] Roberts are making a very serious mistake.”

“I mean, what would you do if you were Roberts?” Judge Richard Posner, of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, told NPR. “All of a sudden you find out that the people that you thought were your friends have turned against you, they despise you, they mistreat you, they leak to the press, what do you do? Do you become more conservative? Or do you say, ‘What am I doing with this crowd of lunatics?’”

He was referring, of course, to conservative backlash over Roberts’s opinion upholding President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Posner said “there’s been a real deterioration in conservative thinking” over the past 10 years...

Here is a part of history everyone should know about. We need to more fully appreciate the great leaders who did so much to give us our Declaration of Independence at a great peril to themselves and their families. We need to do all we can to save this great document and appreciate our freedoms.

Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence?

Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died.

Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons
serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons aptured.

Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or the hardships of the Revolutionary War.

They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

What kind of men were they?

Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated, but they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.

Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.

Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.

At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.

Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy
jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.

John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished.

So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and silently thank these patriots. It's not much to ask for the price they paid.

Remember: freedom is never free!

It's time we get the word out that patriotism is NOT a sin, and the Fourth of July has more to it than beer, picnics, and baseball games…