2013 American of the Year: Ted Cruz

The junior U.S. Senator from the great state of Texas, Ted Cruz, has been selected as this website's 10th annual American of the Year, marking the first time that someone born outside of the country has been so honored.

Cruz was born in Canada, in the city of Calgary and province of Alberta in December of 1970 to a Cuban father and American mother from Delaware who were there to work the oil business.

Cruz' parents moved to Houston, Texas in 1974, and he went to a Baptist high school, becoming Valedictorian of his 1988 graduating class. He then went to Princeton University, where he became a debate champion and noted speaker, graduating in 1992. He then attended Harvard Law School where he graduated magna cum laude, while also dealing with his parents divorce during this time.

In 1995, Cruz served in Virginia as law clerk to a true, great conservative jurist, J. Michael Luttig of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and in 1996 became the first Hispanic to clerk for the Chief Justice of the US when he worked for William Rehnquist.

After working a few years in private practice, Cruz joined the presidential campaign of George W. Bush in 1999 as a domestic policy advisor, and was influential in the court process during the contested Florida election results battle at both the state and Supreme Court levels. This led to a role in the victorious Bush administration for a few years before a return to Texas.

During the Bush campaign, Cruz met his wife, Heidi Nelson, a New York investment banker who would go on to work for Condoleezza Rice at the White House and who now works for Goldman Sachs. They now have two daughters together.

2010 American of the Year: Ron Paul

There was no bigger development on the American political and social scene in 2010 than the emergence to power of the "Tea Party", and that movement arguably had no bigger inspiration than Texas congressman Ron Paul.

Emerging in the wake of the disastrous Presidential election of 2008 that saw Barack Obama win the race to the Oval Office for the Democrats, the Tea Party (basing it's moniker on the historical 'Boston Tea Party') espouses a firm adherence to the U.S. Constitution, drastic reductions in government spending, and reducing the national debt and budget deficit.

A longtime critic of what he perceives to be the frequent misuse of our nation's military power by the American military-industrial complex, Paul inspired the Tea Party with his Libertarian-based run for the 2008 Republican Party nomination. Paul fell short, but his agressive criticisms of the American foreign, domestic, and monetary policies, especially in attacks on the Federal Reserve system, struck a chord with many.

For his leadership example and principled stand on the vital economic and Constitutional issues at this fragile time in American history, Ron Paul is named as this website's annual "American of the Year", following in the footsteps of previous honorees Glenn Beck (2009), George W. Bush (2008), Chuck Cassidy (2007), Billy Graham (2006), Bill O'Reilly (2005), and the first honoree Pat Tillman from 2004.

Lost Opportunity to Teach Charity

Two small private schools that were little-known outside of the Dallas, Texas area were thrust into the spotlight last week. The Covenant School girls basketball team put a whuppin' on the girls from Dallas Academy, a whuppin' to the tune of 100-0.

You read that right, Covenant scored 100 points in a high school girls game. That might be worth talking about under some circumstances. Most girls basketball contests end with the winner scoring in the 40's or 50's. Scoring 100 points shows that you either have an outstanding club, or the other team was really bad (at least in comparison), or some other freakish thing occurred such as a multiple overtime game.

In this game, we can blame some of the above. Covenant is a Texas state-championship contender, Dallas Academy is not very good, and there was indeed something freakish afoot here. But that freakish event was not some multiple overtime thriller in which one team scored those 100 points and the other scored in the 90's.

No, in this one, Dallas Academy scored zero points. None, nadda, zilch. They came up empty. They put up a donut. Nothing on the board, no balls through the hoop.

Think about how hard this 100-0 thing is to have happen. There are 48 playing minutes in a regulation girls high school basketball game. Each basket is worth two points. To score 100 points, Covenant was scoring at better than a basket per minute throughout the game. Meanwhile, Dallas Academy did absolutely nothing.

It's A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

For the 2nd time in three years, the City of New Orleans prepares this morning to be blasted by a powerful hurricane. The devastation wrought back in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina is now legendary, but a great deal of that horror was not a creation of God, or Mother Nature, or any kind of natural or supernatural being or event. The devastation was brought on man by man.

For at least decades, the governments, both local and regional, and the people of the Gulf region were warned that this was going to happen, it was just a matter of time.

It is not the responsibility of the federal government to build giant walls and roofs so that men can be protected from every possible disaster. Men need at some point to take responsibility for their own actions and lives.

When you purposefully and intentionally make the decision that you and your family are going to live in an area that is historically prone to certain natural events, then you have chosen to take on certain risks and have the responsibility to ensure that you and yours can survive and recover when those events occur.

Immigration Nation Bordering on Insanity

For two hundred and thirty years now, the United States of America has been a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. As we have grown up as a nation, that reputation has only grown greater, has only become more solidified.

When people in other countries dream of a better life for them and their families, it is America to which their dreams turn.

There are no hordes of protesters marching in the streets of Moscow, Beijing, Paris, Tokyo or Mexico City hoping to ease their process of becoming citizens in Russia, China, France, Japan or Mexico.

As Neil Diamond famously sang: “They’re comin’ to America!”

For all the negative blather you hear about America from our own liberal press, the foreign press, and the many citizens of foreign nations interviewed on those broadcasts and in their articles, it is America to which they come to escape oppression and infuse hope into their lives.

In our past, we have been an immigration nation. We were born and nurtured through our earliest years as a nation as immigrants from England to a new set of colonies and then a new free country, on what is now the American east coast.

We grew and thrived, spreading across the land from east to west, thanks in large part to massive immigration from other European nations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

We are an immigration nation at our very core. That is our heart and soul, the accumulated values and experiences of our individual forefathers and our families’ ethnic and racial heritage, combined with the melding into American customs, laws and values that have formed over the centuries.